Sonic X Shadow Generations thread, movie level out now

Yeah, I dunno about all that. To quote myself from a year ago in the Continuity Thread:

The only IDW comics I've read are the classic stuff and Scrapnik Island. I definitely have some idea who Tangle and Whisper are, both through general osmosis and the ability to look things up on the internet. If someone is a Sonic Fan™, they'll be a similar boat. If it's some average joe normie non-Sonic fan, well, they're probably not gonna understand references even to non-IDW characters like Blaze or Silver. So I'm not really sure who loses out here.

 

You're literally on a Sonic forum with the most hard-core Sonic fans out there saying "most Sonic fans know who they are" when this is your sample size.

People outside this sphere know Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Eggman and Shadow. That's it.

I know people in real life who don't even know who Rouge the Bat is (a 22 year old character) and asked me who "ROGUE the bat" was in the movie because of the casting postings.

Let alone Big. Let alone Gamma. These are characters from games that sold literally millions. Then you're saying you expect them to know some character from a medium selling comic (10000 issues a month).

You can have the games effect the comic but you should NEVER have things go the other way around as it just leads to confusion and feeling locked out the lore unless you're keeping up with EVERYTHING sonic which could learn to people getting burned out in general. (MCU is failing currently for a multitude of reasons now but this is one of them).

The main games should always try to appeal to the largest part of the Fandom and not the 10000 or less issue selling comic Fandom.

 

I kind of agree with Mana here. But that's mainly because I don't really like most of the IDW OCs, at least not enough to want them in the games. In my eyes they aren't much different than any of the old SatAM or Archie OCs, and they just bring the same cast bloat problem. The comics are fine but I'd rather they keep those characters separate from the games.

 

Characters should be used well in places where it would make sense and nothing else. If this means comic characters in the games that's fine, but don't just do it because you can. All you have to do for an outside observer is make sure they know what a given character is about when you reintroduce them. Sonic is not a series with such complex character histories that you can't bring the audience up to speed quickly. It's all in the execution. The problem with the MCU and such is that it's bad execution. But we've had characters (legacy and otherwise) show up in the game as "oh this is another one of Sonic's friends" before and it hasn't set the world on fire. The IDW cast are not so inoperable that they would be uniquely challenged by this.

Rather, the games have pretty established roles for characters, and because the comics strive to be stories with tons of different plots shooting left and right, a larger cast lets more complex stories be told. This isn't going to happen in the games, so they're probably not going to put Tangle or Jewel or what have you in a place where they would be redundant.

 

No, I'm saying that it's okay if they don't understand the reference. The same way it's okay if they don't understand the reference to a game character they're unfamiliar with. Which has a high chance of happening, because the games alone have a lot of continuity and backstory and lore and characters in its roster. The only people who will have kept up with all of that are the diehards. Welcome to anything with a long ongoing continuity. If someone is curious, they can (and will!) check out the works said character is from, or just look it up on the internet. What medium said work is in, or how much it sold, is irrelevant. This would be a "problem" even if games were the only media Sonic had.

 

There reason WHY the games started scaling back on how many characters it used in a story during the 10s, excluding Forces which many of you believe to be a misfire, is BECAUSE the amount of Continuity and lore that had been built up to that point. That's a very poor point.

I've personally never seen any company make a comic book spin off the main canon for any series (Scrouge Mcduck and Donald's nephews were introduced in a comic series but they're so different from the Adventurers they are in Carl Barks books they're different characters) but if SEGA feels a 10000 (or less) an issue selling comic should be the thing everything else reflects on then that's their choice.

 

Idk I feel like they were making the opposite point actually, which is one I often find myself making and that you've more or less corroborated here.

There are several game characters who are complete unknowns to wider audiences and even casual Sonic fans. You've just meanted Rouge, Big, Gamma, etc., but there's plenty others, of course. You think some kid playing Sonic Battle in 2003 on the first game system they've owned is going to find it worthless just because they don't already have established knowledge of everyone? Or are Amy and Metal Sonic too difficult a wall to surmount because their first appearance was on failed peripheral back in 1993, despite intermittent appearances since? We'd better start snatching those copies of Superstars off of players, lest their tiny little minds spin trying to comprehend the appearance of Fang after almost 30 years of languishing in obscurity!

"Continuity lockout" is in effect happening all the time in the series because every game is going to be somebody's first and a lot of people haven't even played most of them. If someone wants to know more, they can use the internet. If the want to remain ignorant, that's fine too. The world has kept turning and will continue to do so. And beyond that, there are plenty of solutions to this supposed problem. Sonic already has a well-established social media presence and is a marketing machine offline too - despite my facetious remark, they did put out a video explaining Fang in the run up to Superstars. Or you can do in-game bios like Generations given that summarise who these characters are and what they're doing here, given this information pretty much fits on a post-it note in most cases (Tangle is literally just "she helped Sonic save her village once").

It's not like we're about to see the resurrection of Doctor Starline or someone who succumbed to the Metal Virus appear as main villains in games or something. If they want Silver to appear in a new game, they'll make it happen regardless. What the book does is show us his decision to stay in the past which lets Sonic Team not worry about trying to justify him continuing to come back after saving his future so many times as well as sidestep questions about how time travel works for him, and provides a reference point for those who want to seek it out in terms of something that they clearly weren't interested in devoting run time in a game to anyway. It's weird how this insistence that we spoonfeed audiences information only ever comes up in response to the slightest and most benign synergy between the games and other media when the games have been doing continuity lockout and contradictions for pretty much two decades at this point.

 

My anecdotal piece is that as a Kid i played heroes without knowing a peep about who the chaotix were, i had only played the first two adventure games so I had no idea where they came from, but it didn't matter to me cause they were just cool new characters to get attached to and were evidently a team. That was always enough for me and i imagine as long as IDW characters show up when they actually matter in the games, then it will be the same for others.

 

I don't remember them giving any reason for why they started scaling that stuff back in the 10's, let alone the amount of continuity and lore built up, but drop the interview if you've got it.

Either way, it's really not a poor point. You speak of Forces like its an aberration here (and as if bringing back old stuff was its "misfire"), but it was (eventually) followed up by Sonic "Member Berries" Frontiers. So they're scaling back up again, IDW or not. Is that a "bad idea"?

 

https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/54374/idw-publishing-loses-200-000-quarter

Well the IDW comics aren't making any money and the company might be getting closed down so that's my last comment on why they shouldn't be made Canon.

 

The annual 10-k reports for IDW show they've been making net losses since at least 2020

 

I mean they're already canon, so too late on that, but I think IDW closing down would probably accelerate the cast getting folded into the main games. There's no ambiguity over who owns these characters this time, and Tangle, Whisper and Surge at least or all pretty well liked.

 

Unrelated to anything we were actually talking about, but alright.

 

In an effort to veer back onto topic, I'm kinda torn between references to Black Doom and Ian Flynn's involvement and how either may affect Shadow's characterization this time around.

From my understanding, Izuka-san (as much flack as he doesn't really deserve) kinda missed the point of Shadow's character when he wrote the story for ShtH2005. He was originally written by Maekawa as someone who was cold, calculating, and bound by the wishes of others. Because of Maria's wish, was bound to give humanity a chance to be happy. He'll do that my any means necessary, but he's hardly the edgelord that Izuka-san turned him into and kept him as ever since (barring 06, but that's Maekawa's doing again). Bringing back Black Doom kinda invites that portrayal or Shadow which isn't encouraging.

That said, Ian has said that he doesn't like writing for Shadow because of those flanderizations of his character. If he seems generally excited about the prospect of writing for Shadow in this new game, maybe the problem is gone? Say what you will about his writing, but he has brought the core quartet's characterizations back on track.

Just curious what everyone's take on this is.

 

See, I'm aware of this, but I'm intentionally ignoring it because the idea of making a Silver game and NOT clarifying his future by just setting it in the present is just as bad as doing it awfully.

That, and they've done a similar thing to Blaze and I want her as far away as possible from Silver.

 

After spending some time playing shadow the biggest issue is the opening where he states "pathetic humans" and just walks away, it's in direct opposition to his character in sa2. Ignoring that and taking a somewhat hero aligned neutral path is no where near as contradictory. It's still essentially retreading old ground but it's not as bad as people make it out to be. That being said the game as a whole is not a good portrayal of shadow and while there is some interesting things they could bring back I'm not confident Flynn can do that without bringing back the bad stuff as well.

I'm actually also wondering if they're also going to canonize an ending of shadow with this or not. I could also see them retconing shadow to be apart of this in a sort of time loop, thus every ending is cannon in a way and then the events leading up to last story is after he breaks the loop. There's not one path in shadow that 100% lines up with last story so this would be a way to fix that (at the cost of making it really convoluted).

 

I'll take my accolades now, thank you.

 

If you change the graphics settings to low and lock the fps to 10 this line changes to Playstation 2

 

IDW SHOWS QUARTERLY PROFIT
Cash flow is obviously a concern with losses that size, but the company said in its annual report that it expects to be able to fund its operations from its current cash balance of $3.6 million at the end of the fiscal year. That’s down from $10.0 million in cash at the end of October 2022, a bigger drop than the loss, due to growth in finished goods inventory and accounts receivable.

The company said that it expects to generate positive operating cash flow at an unspecified future point due to the operating expense changes it made in 2023. IDW cut staff in April (see "IDW Lays Off 39% of Staff, Delists Stock"), and its employee count remained down substantially at the October 31 annual report cutoff: 47 full time employees in 2023, compared to 84 employees on the same date in 2022.

Looks like we're canon again boys

 

1. They're still not making a profit as of now I looked into several reports before I posted thst.

2. You do realize that tagging me about a situation I said I no longer wanted to talk about anymore, with information that doesn't change anything I said, is annoying and rude right?