SONIC X SHADOW GENERATIONS - Dark Beginnings

It all wraps back to SA2 for me; retcons won't ever replace those two pieces of media existing to begin with, but it feels bad that its original text is falling away, even if it's gradual, and that content following from it won't make use of its strengths in the same way. The new content will have its own strengths for sure, but it's just bittersweet.

Also oh my god those final lines from Kirk in episode 3 have been echoing in my head for the past few hours. Say what you will about his gravel, but I absolutely adore how effortlessly he is shifting between a whisper, to a softness, to a growl like that. This may be my favorite Shadow voice of them all by the time we're done with this game...

 

We now have a full version! I wasn’t even mashing refresh on my YouTube subs for this one, I just happened to be there!

 

I called it!

 

https://www.tumblr.com/sonicthehedg...now-playing-the-full-compilation-of-all-three
We also got some nice art on the socials.

 

Sooooo.... Is anyone gonna talk about that "Bonus Ending"?

Because holy shit.

 

My takeaway was that Black Doom might have been regrown from the larva in the ARK despite the scientists supposedly destroying all evidence? Might be a perk of the Black Arms hivemind that any individual member could in theory become Black Doom if the original died.

 

If that's the case, and Shadow is a full Black Arms being, then...

 

The presence of the larva (aka Death Leech) on board of the ARK is a new element in Shadow's backstory, iirc. The original lore was that Black Doom gave Gerald only samples of his blood which was used to create Shadow. The fact that a live Black Arms specimen was also kept is not just completely new but also an important plot point, seeing as the larva features prominently in both the anime and the manga. This absolutely has to be how Black Doom survived the ending of Shadow '05.

 

This better than the original assumption of time travel bringing him back and him just somehow being aware of that.

 

"We meet again, Shadow the Hedgehog"

 

I can absolutely see Black Doom trying to hijack Shadow.

 

I've thought since the beginning that that's what the Doom Powers are all about. Black Doom is trying to corrupt/take over Shadow. And when Doom is finally defeated, Shadow will lose access to those abilities.

Full spoilers are out already, so I hope everybody remembers to respect that in this thread. If you know anything, don't bother commenting!

 

Yep. Makes sense.

It's wild that this game has made me interested in the Black Arms. I fucking hated the story of Shadow being created by alien DNA and literally everything introduced plot wise in ShTH. But Sonic Team stuck with their mistakes, got a decent writer on-board and created something that's genuinely quite exciting.

Frontiers was a mostly great showing for character interaction and personalities, but it didn't have much story to tell. And the it was still presented with a ton of holes and gaps, things that were poorly explained and the audience just had to kind of piece together on their own from external sources. I'm still salty that the Koco get no proper introduction or clear explanation. In fact, neither does Cyberspace, the Master Emerald or the Ancients. Most of the explanations in that game come from random lore dumps in the Final Horizon optional dialogue. Characters are on-point, but the story ain't. This seems to be going knuckling down on the story too. I'm really, really stoked to get into this game. Gameplay? Looks mid. But the story is hitting so right.

 

I'm not a fan of the idea that there's been a larva on the ARK for the past 50 years and NOTHING has been brought up about it.

Like, it was missed by G.U.N. while destroying all the evidence 50 years ago, the cast during Sonic Adventure 2, and any sweeps they did for the Black Arms on the ARK after Shadow the Hedgehog?

 

It was in a capsule. I've no difficulty believing that it managed to hide away somewhere if the casing was broken or through some other means. Plus there is time travel at play in this story too. I wanna know how Shadow gets to the White Space without being trapped like everyone else.

 

It also helps that the "alien" element in Black Doom (and the Black Arms) is not really that apparent, even in Shadow '05. They're "aliens" in the same way the demons in the Doom video game series are, which is not much at all. Black Doom always came across to me more as a Satanic archetype, with how he manipulates Shadow and tries to get into his head.

It's good to see that Generations is putting greater emphasis on the demon part over the alien part.

If the larva is part of the hivemind, then that means Black Doom was able to observe how Gerald was planning to betray him by building the Eclipse Cannon. Bets on Black Doom manipulating the GUN to raid the ARK? The only way he could hide was if this was all part of his plan.

The manga + - actually seems to imply the larva played a role in Maria's death.  

 

Yeah, maybe there's some bootstrap paradox shenanigans going on with Black Doom sending the larva he grew from into the future to ensure it'd happen, or maybe the thing just slithered away in the chaos of the GUN raid and just wasn't found by sheer happenstance.