SONIC X SHADOW GENERATIONS - Dark Beginnings

This is Shadow's personal battle, and Abraham would have insisted on taking all of GUN to the ARK to help him. They would have only get in his way.

It had to be done this way.

 

F**k the police, that's how we do. Shadow don't ask for permission, we take shit when we need it.

RAAAAAAAH.



Jokes aside, the shorts were fine.

@The Deleter explain?

 

Came here just to say that was incredible.
Caught me off guard.

 

I hope we see a version of these shorts that are all compiled together into one 15-minute thing. I'm honestly not sure they really needed to be separate at this point. It seems like this is basically just a really long opening cutscene for the game.

 

​

>Help send Shadow into space
>Invites Shadow to Sonic's party knowing he's not going to come because he's in fucking space
>Shows up to Sonic's party like if nothing happened

 

Fucking hell that was actually incredible.

 

Yeah, it feels all three episodes should be joined together into one. Even the titles can be put together.

Shadow and Maria Finding the Way To the ARK

 

Literally she knew all about the Time Eater! I would love it if they have cared enough to slightly change Rouge's dialogue in this scene (and get subsequent conversation text in White Space).

 

? You mean the presumed TTo50YA retcon?

(Edit: link isn't working, maybe this will work)

It could be argued with enough semantics I guess, but the way Rouge put it, it sounds pretty clear they're leaning towards GUN being the ones who commissioned Project Shadow now, alongside abandoning the big "intentional" question mark TTo50YA had on how Shadow ended up on prison island to begin with. "GUN captured him" works as an answer if they want to answer it now, but Rouge was reporting from GUN intel to begin with.

 

So when are we getting that song from the end of the short, standalone? I agree that the moment felt slightly forced (if justified since they're trying to build up something surrounding these Maria visions and the whole "remember" line from the first episode), but that song caught my attention. Maybe it'll be in the game proper?

 

I'm guessing it's the credits song.

 

I love the Truth About 50 Years Ago as well, and it is a shame that the one thing that could be salvaged (the president being the one to commission the project and GUN allegedly finding out through a whistleblower) from it has been retconned.

But unfortunately Shadow's game had already ignored huge parts of it by showing his origin and getting rid of the ambiguity of the story.

 

I never really saw an issue between The Truth About 50 Years Ago and Shadow the Hedgehog. It's mostly focused on the general premise, and it's really more a recap of Sonic Adventure 2's backstory through Rouge's investigation.

 

A simple prologue to show why Shadow was on the Ark.

Maybe the real purpose was to allow Shadow to at least have another connection...with this...GUN Commander who's never been in anything before.

---

Wait, is this implying that the Ark is the only level that doesn't take place in the past? Or will reality warp once he gets there and the Time Eater makes white space?

 

I'm mainly talking about the ambiguity that the game and the report goes into if Shadow is the real one or a replica and had fake memories. And that the whereabouts of the capsule are still unknown.

Obviously the game showed that his memories are real and that yes, he's the real Shadow hence the capsule whereabouts don't matter.

Perhaps the only big criticism I have with the shorts are all the exposition in the dialogue. It was a bit too much having Rouge explain Shadow's backstory to Shadow for example. Maria does this a lot too in her dialogue.

I did think the Knuckles short was more to the point and more natural in its dialogue.

But at the same time it is supposed to be an intro to the character so not sure how they could've handle it better.

Good thing I'm not a writer cause idk how they do it.

 

Its the gun commander from Shadow The hedgehog

 

Look at it this way. Shadow Generations is a sequel to ShTH, which is a sequel to SA2, which are games from 19 and 23 years ago respectively. Shadow himself hasn't been relevant as a character in 18 years. There's a lot to cover, but ultimately Dark Beginnings had just 15 minutes to accommodate both old and new fans as a prequel to Shadow Generations. Yes it was exposition heavy, but I think it did a fine job of setting up the game.

 

I don't think that's the same thing; Shadow remembering a part of his memory that was repressed in SA2 throws ambiguity out the window as well, though to a much lesser degree. In order for him to remember his past Gerald had erased at all, he had to have that memory one way or another; they can't have it both ways. ShTH made use of an "are you the real Shadow" ambiguity as well, but it threw it out via flashbacks in a similar way.

That + Shadow's game leaning into the whistleblower angle with Maria's dialog from Lost Impact, potentially.

To me, the real value I saw out of that storybeat in the modern day, would have either been an answer to the notes Ian kept receiving from Sonic Team on whether Shadow was the real Shadow or not, (God I hope they don't stick with that as a curveball now; the clone route was the only one that made sense out of these to me) or a proper expansion on a storybeat that many people immediately chalk up to part of SA2's plot holes, that being everything surrounding Gerald and Shadow on prison island. We can see that it was intentionally left vague from TTo50YA, so they could have cooked with a full breakdown of the events if they had wanted to... having Gerald realize he needs to brainwash Shadow to get his way would have been some potent stuff in terms of storytelling, for example, alongside exploring how Shadow was after the incident without the removal of his memories.

 

Is it just me or was the audio mixing terrible? I had to use subtitles.