Sonic X Shadow Generations thread, movie level out on the 12th

Guess we're walking a thin line between in-depth dialogue and well animated animation then.

Come on, there hast to be a middle ground.

 

A well-made dialogue won't matter if the story is bare-bones.

Also, obligatory repost incoming...

 

Maybe their storyboards need improvement. Have full-blown comics instead of regular concept art.

 

I'm just gonna have to agree to disagree... But I will get more in detail for the sake of the discussion. Most of the lore was in Gerald's Journal or specific NPC dialogue at specific points of the story... And honestly, the fact that Shadow DOESN'T do the same old of falling for Black Doom's (or Mephiles') manipulations shows not only has he grown as a character but also shows that he's learned that Black Doom isn't trustworthy. Honestly find it ironic you complain about this while simultaneously complaining about the generic quality of the of dialogue... At the end of the day the Sonic series is a series for 'everyone' with its primary audience being kids. And I'd personally put the level of lore and interesting details in this game's story above anything we've had since Colors, only really rivaled by Frontiers and SOME parts of Forces and Lost World.

Also, the 'stakes' were that Black Doom was going to become the conqueror of the universe or some shit. He was going to do his plan from Shadow's game where he'd eat all the Humans and take over the planet/eventually the Universe. Honestly most villains in the series have even less going on for them than that- usually just Eldritch Abominations summoned by Eggman, or his own creation which went on an egotrip.

I just really can't go back to the super-meta, self-referential and non-serious banter and writing we've had in the past decade. If Ian is a "0/3", Ken and Warran Graff were like -1000/0.

 

There was nothing meta or even self-referential about any game from Colors to Mania...

Humor isn't inherently self-aware or meta, it's nonsensical to act like it is. Though I had to specify Mania specifically because of that entire game and some of Forces dialogue is actually meta.

 

I have to agree with Mana on the story. Black Doom's plan was stupid with no interesting twist to it.
Unleashed story, for example, is also extremely simple, but it makes you care by fleshing out the world. SxSG doesn't have the luxury of doing that, so instead Ian/Sonic Team had to present a compelling narrative to compensate for the lack of atmosphere/world-building, but they didn't.
Maria and Gerald are criminally underutilized, considering how much they were hyped up. They do nothing and then go away.
The only reason their final dramatic scene isn't viewed as laughable (like the infamous "sad" flashback of Sage and Eggman s̶t̶a̶n̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶d̶o̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ bonding) is because these characters had more screen time and things to do in previous games. And it's never a good thing when a piece of art has to rely on previous work to have emotional weight, it has to earn it itself.

 

Being a retread meant that it was never really going to earn that weight on its own merits...

Not that the final scene would be laughable regardless, it's just the characters fading away...it's just empty.

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Not only should Maria and Gerald have been in place before the 5th level of the game, the story should've focused more on Shadow's anger...

If anything really deserved the course correction type of writing that Frontiers was going for, it's Shadow's story in this game...and that alone would've provided enough meat to build a narrative. This just needed a lot more time to tell its story, he got the course correction...but with no real build up to it.

 

The stories for Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 weren’t perfect, but I wish they would revisit how focused they were, without big empty stretches where nothing happens.

Starting with Heroes, 3D Sonic games began facing issues with storytelling. Even 06 and Unleashed, which tried to follow the SA1 template, couldn’t capture its strengths.

I liked Chip, but the locations and NPCs in Unleashed never resonated with me as much as Station Square or the integration of Mystic Ruins and Egg Carrier did. The broken world in Unleashed felt oddly normal most of the time.

Shadow has similar issues that have plagued the series since Colors—introducing cool story elements that are either left unresolved or settled too quickly. Remember in Colors and Lost World when Tails was brainwashed or turned into a robot, but it was resolved in one cutscene? No boss fight, no significant impact, just a missed opportunity.

Shadow’s story struggles because it’s set within an established arc—we already know he’ll show up for the Time Eater fight to say "you got this Sonic/on your feet."

The narrative introduces interesting ideas that aren’t explored. Are Shadow’s new powers corrupting him? Can Black Doom control him? Could he change Maria and Gerald’s fate? These concepts are touched on but not fully developed.

The fight with Sonic and Shadow’s anger at Black Doom (when Gerald and Maria are there) had potential for deeper exploration. If Shadow hesitated while fighting Sonic, did he feel ashamed? Could that have made him reconsider using his powers or caused internal conflict, justifying their use but wounding his pride?

There’s an unexplored goldmine here.

The temptation to change Maria and Gerald’s fate could have been a central struggle, or he could have found a path to save them, only to have it destroyed by Black Doom, giving them more involvement.

The game isn’t bad, but it needs more substance, especially in the middle, and they should drop the reliance on static conversations with characters.

 

The journal establishes that Gerald had already referred to Biolizard and Shadow as Project Shadow prior to Maria adopting it as the latters name. She had plenty of time to come up with how the name could make sense in reference to showing the way to curing her and many other illnesses of the world.

 

That doesn't make it any less contrived or unbearably saccharine.

 

I, for one cannot believe a game made for ten year olds starring a cartoon animal has on-the-nose and emotionally straightforward writing.

 

There's nothing wrong with those things.

I just find Maria to be disappointingly bland in this game. And that particular line is horribly overcooked. They could have gotten the point across with any number of similar lines that wouldn't induce my gag-reflex. I'm not gonna pretend it's a big issue, which we run the risk of doing if we focus on this one point.

Maria is lame. This was likely the one chance they had to put her in something of a spotlight and develop her into a actual character instead of a polite plot device. They were on the cusp of accomplishing that with Dark Beginnings, but dropped the ball with the actual game.

EDIT: lol let's cross out that typo

 

A polite plot device...

 

Well if there is something that we definitely know about Maria is that she's polite.

 

I don't think Maria's a hag at all, to be honest.

 

Did Maria really need to become anything other than a motivation for Shadow? She is a character of 50 years before the main timeline. Nothing she does or has done would be of any consequence outside of some contrived retroactive continuity. For the tone of the series as it stands and her role in this game's plot, she's absolutely fine.

 

Am I allowed to like it? We have to remember this is anime-level storytelling, which is often going to be kind of cheesy. I agree the build-up could’ve been better, but I liked the last few scenes and they read as heartwarming to me.

 

The game was a 6-level bonus pack-in with another title and mainly served as a way to reintroduce Shadow and his story, which hadn’t been touched for almost 2 decades. It was never trying to be the next Adventure game, just a side-story that can also act as a crash course on Shadow’s history for people (primarily elementary and middle school aged kids) who are new to the games. I think Shadow Generations managed to nail all that and still feel natural for the most part.
Most of the complaints I’ve seen ITT read either like the person at best wanted something more complex/higher budget, or at worst has a bizarre Ian Flynn hate-boner.

 

Okay I do have a question. When they say Ian Flynn does the writing for these games scripts, does that mean he's heavily involved in the story telling decisions that will indicate what the games about? Or is he simply providing a script to a story already settled by Sonic Team once they're deep into developing the game?

I only ask that because the last two games he's been involved with have been plot-lite, but mainly because these games have been much more heavily about demonstrating a gameplay concept (Open Zones/Starfall Islands in Frontiers, and essentially a clip show of Levels for Shadow Generations), with the story an excuse for that concept to exist in-universe. Ian can write very solid stories with solid motivations and many moving parts, he has done in the comics many times, and I wonder if he isn't restricted by the fact that the story is being driven by the developers and his job is really just to fill in the gaps between set-pieces.

 

She's Shadow's motivation, which in itself is fine. She gets so much screen time and so much attention for that though., they had an opportunity to do something more than with her here, but that's not what they chose to do. They only want her to be a sweet friend that Shadow lost. Considering that that's angle they're going for with Maria, she needed to appear less.

Dark Beginnings was fine, because it shows us a bit of her fun side and how she stood up for Shadow. I can believe why Shadow would care based those those small insights. But in ShGens she just stands around being a tragic angel. There's nothing else to be seen. She hardly even questions what's going on. There's a lot of attention brought to nothing. I almost think it would have been better to have only had Gerald in the game for the most part, with Shadow then being tempted by the possibility of somehow seeing Maria without wanting to give in to Black Doom at the same time. The game could then end with him coming face-to-face with her and ultimately choosing against the timey-wimey shenanigans that would let him stay with her.