Sonic X Shadow Generations thread, movie level out now

It's definitely interesting that he didn't learn about Shadow's character before taking on the role, let alone doing it for 13 years... But hey I'm not a professional VA, I don't really know how much dedication they're gonna put into their job, I sure know I don't put any dedication into mine

 

Shadow's appearances since Kirk came on have been a pretty poor representation of his character, so I'm not really shocked that he didn't really get him until now. Before this game, his most significant appearance was, what, Forces? In a 20 minute DLC episode.

The fandom always wants to put the blame on the actors when they're just doing what they're told. Sega didn't really care about how the characters were portrayed and represented until recently, so it's not too shocking that voice acting would reflect that change.

Up until 2022, the only characters that Sega really gave a shit about were Sonic, Tails, and Eggman.

 

Yeah, 2010-2019 Shadow was a character that only existed for the sake of existing. It's only (and finally) now that they're ACTUALLY doing something with him.

 

Also, I've noticed that between this game and Frontiers, we have a pretty nice parallel and retread of the Adventure games.

Adventure/Frontiers: Marks a significant shift in the franchise, as noted by the developers themselves and dealing with a new gameplay style and are experimental in nature as a result. Frontiers marks the return of multiple playable characters that aren't just reskins of Sonic, much the same way Adventure diversified the cast from the Classics. Both stories deal with an ancient civilization that sealed away a monster that almost destroyed the world in the past and returns to continue that in the present. Said civilization has a significant connection to the Chaos Emeralds. Tails, Knuckles and Amy all receive some major character development and one of the other major characters in an invention of Eggman's that develops sentience and sacrifices themself in the end. Also Big is there for some reason.

Adventure 2/SxSG: Don't know much yet, but Shadow is once again a major character in a game that's dealing with his past, and it's the first time since 06 (Well, Forces but that sucks) that a character has their own campaign seperate from Sonic's. Even the marketing is very Adventure 2 esc with the focus on the duality of Sonic and Shadow.


It was probably not intentional, but it's a funny string of coincidences.

 

It was during the Anime Expo panel. Timestamped is a pretty in-depth conversation about Shadow's motivations and just the process of working on the games. It's actually a little bit more unfortunate than that, he said he was learning more about the character and his motivations that exact day (July 2024) than he had over the whole course of voicing him and he wished he'd been able to talk to Iizuka about things he'd said that day sooner. Not that he didn't learn anything and apply it in the process of working on Generations and its promotional material, but it's clear it's a process of learning for everyone.

 

Full Metal Overlord fight

To be honest I am really disappointed they just reused Spaceport/Network Terminal/Chemical Plant assets and called it a day. It would be so easy to just throw some Airship debris into the ocean. They even created an hd models for those

 

I think the re-use of assets was smart for its context. Considering it's just a boss batle, it made since.

Remember Yakuza makes stuff like this all time as well.

 

Not a real Sonic game anymore unless Chemical Plant assets show up.

 

I’m ngl I don’t care about reused assets unless it’s egregious like Frontiers reusing the generations levels for the upteenth time. So much crunch happens in this industry and budgets are bloated, a little asset reuse ain’t gonna kill anyone

 

Here's the source of that footage. It also includes Space Colony ARK and Kingdom Valley Act 1. Highest quality recording of the game we've seen so far

 

Agreed, I'm pretty sure Speed Highway in Generations reused assets from Skyscraper Scamper and nobody cared about that.

 

This is fairy egregious though, at least in my opinion. They've lifted the background assets from one level and pretty much just called it a day. We saw the same assets from Forces' rendition of Chemical Plant reused in Frontiers, and even if not the similarities would still be too much.

The difference between the two scenarios is context. Metal Overlord reuses the assets of Network Terminal (etc) verbatim in virtually the same context, with the only difference being that you're on the water surface this time and don't see iconic Chemical Plant blue tubes. Apart from the Metal Overlord himself and the ships he throws at you, it is literally just Network Terminal. With Speed Highway reusing assets from Skyscraper Scamper, the entire city looks different and level new assets are used in addition to old ones. It's convincingly a whole different location, even though you can easily pick out several reused and modified assets.

 

I think "just doesn't really look all that convincing" cuts it here. It's not that big a deal, but there were things they probably should have done if they wanted to make it more distinct.

 

"It looks convincing, but you can tell." is what was said.

 

I don't think anybody outside this fandom is going to notice or care that the Metal Sonic boss is using slightly inappropriate assets for the fight environment

 

The asset reuse here made me look back at the Heroes stage and realize that it had the iconic yellow and black "caution" tape that Eggman loves to use.

That probably singlehandedly made me ok with them using space port assets.

 

and additionally, Sega absolutely pulled shit like "have them read the lines out of context and use the first take", which is how Sonic Adventure was recorded. they outright might not have been even given context before doing their work in the booth.

 

Kind of weird they didn't use more assets from Final Fortress/Dark Arsenal from the racing games, unless I'm missing them.

 

Hell as someone in the fanbase I CAN'T even tell what they specifically reused, which yeah I admit doesn't mean anything because it really just means I'm dumb technically but still I've got to hand it to them for at least not making it ENTIRELY obvious to people outside the fandom. They won't notice lick, really. Hell likely they wouldn't because the kind of people playing this (and hell even streamers) have utterly forgotten Forces outside of being "another bad Sonic game" so they won't notice shit because of that alone.

 

It's not really saying much that a person who isn't a fan wouldn't notice visuals from a 7 year old game.