Sonic X Shadow Generations announced, releases Autumn 2024

I don't think Shadow is really in need of any rerailment since, at least from my perspective, Shadow's been more or less perfectly fine in jp material. Script differences and whatnot. Feel free to point to any glaring examples of him just plain not being Shadow in jp stuff, and I'm more than willing to agree with you.
This is why I was hoping for Toyoda to write, I think he can do a lovely Shadow. Goal-oriented and surely arrogant, but not to the point of him being a reckless dummy. Shadow is an intelligent man, he knows how to be efficient.

 

But again, I think that's not where the conversation is. Nobody accused you of thinking "Sega was blameless", what I'm saying is that in-context, the debate here really isn't "Pontac and Graff had any influence versus none", it's "people vastly overestimate the level of control they had over their own work".

 

Yeah, I feel like if the writers had absolutely zero influence on how the games are written, people wouldn't be having those debates about which writer is best.

 

yeah like, the entire reason why Amy's story happens in Adventure 1 is because she is protecting a flicky, no matter how much she gets chased or captured. she is asked by a robot with a fucking gun to hand over the bird while she's in Eggman Jail and she's steadfastly refusing. when Zero like, punches out one of the flicky's parents she goes ballistic and has that cathartic fight with Zero.

she's also the one that kickstarts E-102's face-turn by showing compassion to him. these are not new traits.

 

Joe's argument was that Pontac and Graff couldn't possibly have had any influence on the characterizations.

As I said, the comics had less flanderized characterizations for the same characters around the same time when Sega was seeking brand consistency. And even if Joe or you try to dismiss that based on assumptions like "lol the comics no one read, like Sonic Team would have cared that much about the characterizations in them", Pontac stated in the quote I posted that he and Graff did have input in characterizations.

 

I never said they were new traits. I even mentioned her talking Shadow into joining the heroes in SA2?

I said she was a nuanced character who had flaws but was a hero when she needed to be. That's a real hero to me.

Someone who goes into long speeches about they are a hero and so strong and help people in need isn't a hero to me. It's someone who is feeding their own ego.

Did ANYONE say Amy having compassion is a new trait actually?

 

I never said that you said it was new, I'm merely pointing out that Amy's compassion overrides concern for her own wellbeing in Frontiers. She's helping the koko reunite with its lost lover, she's being selfless and compassionate. When Sonic dismisses the endeavor as a waste of time, she gives him a "What The Hell, Hero?" speech for ignoring their plight. Arguably, her level of reaction to it was unjustified, and that in itself shows she can be flawed by letting her compassion get the better of her. I don't think Ian is removing her character flaws in this instance, he's just working with what Sonic Team has mandated for her at the moment.

 

No, it wasn't. This is why I keep using the word context. If you look at what you were replying to, Joe was himself responding to a discussion about how Flynn was not the sole voice behind Frontiers's repeated references to other Sonic material and people don't wholly understand that SEGA makes a lot of weird demands. As I already said, it's an exaggeration to say "everything" was dictated by SEGA and Sonic Team, but it is absolutely not unfair to suggest that the examples in question, "exact words and character traits", were things they took an absolute stance on. That exaggeration is taking place should be obvious, because they are writers. If SEGA wrote the entire thing themselves, they wouldn't have hired them.

Your argument appears to be that people who disagree with you think Pontac and Graff didn't actually work on Sonic. And uh...nope! That's not what anyone is saying. Maybe you should go ride a bike or something.

There's something truly special about saying "this proves the other person believes what I say they do" and then linking a thread where you made the exact same mistake as right now.

 

Yes it was.

This argument is older than the last pages. I did mention a while back that Pontac and Graff wrote the characters more flanderized than contemporary comics, to which he basically retorted "Nope, going by Graff's words, they had no influence on the characters. They just wrote them like that because Sega said so".

https://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?threads/the-supreme-topic-of-other-knowledge.8815/page-500

That is what I was debating against. I was arguing that he was taking the "Sega controlled everything" claim too literally, and they still had some influence considering they were the writers as you said.


Before you go "that was another argument from another thread, it has no relevance here", I'm going by it because Joe specifically referenced it here. My initial response to him in this thread was thus about that argument, and I was quoting the post in which he referenced it.

 

How long do you suppose the Shadow campaign will be? How many hours, how many stages?

 

I expect it to be shorter than Generations. Like 5-7 zones?

Hopefully it will have a decent amount of side levels/missions, though.

 

Sounds about right. I'm expected 1 act a piece, maybe with some side acts or minigames or something

 

Would be cool if there were bonus missions using other characters like the main game. It was a really creative use of them that gets overlooked and everyone just says that they were nothing but cheerleaders. And it would also be a fun callback to StH05 and partnering up with various characters.

 

Honestly I think Shadow Generations will be to Sonic Frontiers similar to what Kingdom Hearts 0.2 was to Kingdom Hearts III in terms of content. 0.2 is a short, maybe 1 hour game based on the engine used on Kingdom Hearts III. In that case it was intended to be a preview of the engine at play, but for ShGen it's simply a much smaller game using prexisting assets, engine, and gameplay engine. I wouldn't expect it to be on par with Sonic Generations content wise.

 

I think I'm setting my expectations too high, but since it's being billed as a collection, I think Shadow Generations will be rather big

 

Longer than Forces

 

I don't think we have any good way of knowing. We've never gotten a game like this from Sonic Team! They keep talking about Shadow like it's a substantive portion (and the visuals certainly aren't phoned-in), but we can't assume anything. We don't even know how much (if anything) has been done with Sonic.

 

Yeah I do like those missions quite a bit, would also be a good way to bring Omega in after he was sidelined in the original Generations game. Heck, Big also wasn't there, so let's see where that pairing goes!