Spoiler Thread - SONIC X SHADOW GENERATIONS (SPOILERS!... Obviously.)

This is a massive reach to conclude over a few leaked cutscenes bruh.

 

Much of the comedy is two or three sensible chuckles. Valuable in so much how rare they are. Colors was at least a funny game that constantly made jokes.

I will say though, if the "Nobody calls me that anymore" line is removed, I will be somewhere in the ballpark of "mildly disappointed".

The rewrite is hardly making Shakespearean or Flynn/Sonic Team's best efforts, but adhering closer to the tone of Shadow Generations/Sonic Frontiers (which still just amounts to the characters taking the situation seriously with some urgency) and having the characters at least say things that sound like what they would say in their voice is what the game should have been in the first place.

At worst, the changes do nothing to improve the story, but that only makes me want more changes, not go back to the original. I only wish the Sonic half got as much attention as the Shadow half, but it's easy to see why it didn't.

 

Looks like Chaos Island has no noticeable pop in. They're learning!

Unfortunately it still looks like a mess of floating assets, but I guess there's nothing they can do about that part of Frontier's DNA. It wouldn't be Chaos Island without them.

 

One of the things I liked about Shadow's story is him misremembering Maria as some kind of psychopath ordering him to exterminate humanity. We really didn't know much about her but it turned out we didn't really have much disconnect with Shadow as we thought because he didn't remember her properly either. It's not a profound point and I'd say the Maria back story plot is quite badly written on the whole since she looks out of place in the game aesthetically and isn't a terribly fleshed out or even interesting character. But that one scene is cool.

 

Oh my god that's a huge change

They really took that Jett video to heart lmfao

 

I like to think minus the memory altering, Shadow's own anger kind of twisted her words to justify his own actions.

 

I've been playing Shadow Generations for about 4 and a half hours now, ATM I'm trying to go for the S rank in chaos island act 1 (which is surprisingly tough). Game is really really good, I like it more than base generations so far even if it's a bit shorter. The hub world is an absolute treat

 

We have canonical designs for Maria's and Ivo's fathers!

Spoiler

My bet is that the man on the right is Eggman's father since he has the shaded glasses and grin. Whilst the other man is Maria's father. He looks kinder.

 

I've played it as well. It is absolutely not as good as Sonic Generations imo. But I do think it is better than Frontiers. Shadow feels a bit slippery to me, but that might be because the feeling in my hands is fucked up...

 

Before quality comes in, Shadow Generations is far more interesting than Sonic Generations, and even if I wasn't already burned out from playing the latter for years now, I would definitely play Shadow Generations more.

In terms of quality... yeah, Shadow Generations also wins. The big thing is that while Sonic's highs are higher, Shadow's never gets low either, and it on average does more with having Chaos Control built in compared to Generations working on Sonic's base abilities and level design.

It's definitely more sensitive than Generations or Frontiers. Harder to make him just run in a straight line.

But it's nowhere close to Heroes or Shadow '05 levels of slippery. I got used to it quickly. I prefer it, actually: it saved my ass a few times

 

FINALLY some good news wrt SA2 lore

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GaSdpkEXYAA_YrL?format=jpg&name=small

Gerald's Journal has been posted online, though I'm not sure the extent of it, considering Volphied mentioned it fleshing out Maria's life on the ARK, and her influence on Shadow. Regardless, TTo50YA hasn't been completely abandoned; The President of 50 Years Ago still requested Project Shadow while hoping to achieve immortality. The people who are funding the ARK are still redacted, so even though we know GUN is intended to be in that position from Dark Beginnings, it's not outright written in stone in this document itself. What I find weird is that it's kind of implying that the President stepped in to distance them from the ARK itself; did the details change to accommodate TTo50YA even after Dark Beginnings was written??

 

I'm pretty surprised anyone prefers this over Sonic Generations. The level design in Shadow is much better than Frontiers or Forces, but it's still leagues behind Sonic Generations imo. I'm also not a huge fan of the level picks in Shadow's campaign. Is Shadow's story better? I guess. But that's only because Sonic Generations has no story.

 

The details of DB aren't 100% flush with the game itself.

Spoiler

The game's intro says Shadow went to the ARK because Gun detected a disturbance there, not because of any sort of premonition. Rouge's report on the Time Eater to Tower never seems to play into things either.

 

Is there a full version anywhere?

 

I played a bit of the Shadow Gens side earlier, but I didn't play too far. Game kept wanting to crash in Rail Canyon lol.

My thoughts:

• Controls like a better Frontiers. Air control feels better as does the timing on using the Homing Attack. Doesn't feel as good as vanilla Gens does at high speed, but it gets the job done.
• Boosting feels REALLY squirrely and hard to wrangle. But I was also having stick drift issues, so I don't know how much of that is the game's fault. It's definitely not my controller, and a friend who played it said they had the same problem. It's likely either something to tweak in the emulator settings, or a bug with running the game. Not sure. It was the emulator. Ryu's deadzone settings are just crazy low.
• I still find myself wanting to press A -> A for the Homing Attack, but I do admit that's a me problem. Still wish using A -> A was an option, however.
• I like seeing us use the Chaos Spear! That's a fun addition to the gameplay.
• Level design is fun but not super interesting. I like the variety in routes, though there's not a lot of engagement compared to Unleashed, Colors or Generations. Not nearly as bad as Forces or Frontiers could get, though. This is both from me playing and watching friends stream it. If I end up pleasantly surprised by the level design later, I'll be sure to bring it up.
• ST specifically keeping only one Frontiers slider (the one that decides how quick you decel) is nice. But i wish it was set to 50 or 75 by default instead of 100 lol.
• Visuals look generally pretty good, surprisingly so for Switch. Cutscenes are the best animated since Unleashed, if not even moreso. The lighting however is much worse than vanilla Generations, very pale, rimlit and low-contrast.. at least it keeps a stable framerate!
• I've only seen the "Shadow's Story" opening + the first few cutscenes and I gotta say, I really like what it's doing so far. Cool!
• Open zone White Space seems neat so far, and in line more with what I want in a Sonic game than Frontiers by a decent amount. But I've heard from friends who've played further say it's missions and collectible requirements get annoying.

Overall, I like it. I might tinker with the emu a bit more, but I'm already getting the game on the 21st via the Steam preorder, so I'll give further impressions then.

 

This is weird, but ngl I'll take whatever discrepancies I can get if more accurate details find their way in between them

Found it:

https://x.com/frog_dub/status/1847750284648599617

Edit: "Perhaps with his funding and clout, I can find a way to cure Maria" LETS GOOOOO?!?!?

 

Yep, I just finished reading it...

Spoiler

This journal finally confirms it, Shadow was awakened and really did meet and befriend Maria. The flashback mission from STH2005 where he stops the artificial Chaos is mentioned. Gerald's meeting with Black Doom gets mentioned and detailed. The details of Maria's deaths are not confirmed in a new capacity, and they still leave open the Truth of 50 Years ago ambiguity about the capsule not being found after it ejected the ARK, but that is most likely Rogue's incomplete understanding of the events, rather than Shadow not being the same one who awakened on the ARK. I would say this proves definitively (almost) that Shadow's memories, incomplete as they seemed to be, were (mostly) real, and Gerald only slightly distorted them when he "finished" the recovered Shadow on prison Island. There are real photos of Shadow, Maria, and Gerald all together. In order to deny that the Shadow we know is the original, you'd then have to assume 2 copies of him exist in the wild somehow, and one's capsule was simply "never found", which is far, far less likely given all the other evidence.

Finally, I can put this theory to bed, definitively. Shadow and Maria had a real, canon friendship, and it's all but certain that the shadow we know was her friend.

 

Okay, Ian has basically done this to infuse Battle's lore into SA2's lore, since the higher ups that demanded Emerl, and all the journal entries, are all laid out here. That means that GUN might still be the group expecting Shadow as a weapon, we'll see.

There is another thing though.

Spoiler

One of Gerald's sons had another Daughter, presumably the one described to be an archeologist....

... Is it her time??? At long last, pink haired lady???

 

OOOOOH

OOOOOOOOOOOH

Spoiler

GUN WASN'T ABORD THE ARK WHEN THE ARTIFICIAL CHAOS EVENT OCCURRED, AN SOS SIGNAL WAS SENT OUT TO GUN

AND IT HAPPENED RIGHT BEFORE THE ARK INCIDENT

HE DID IT?!?!

HE MADE THE BIOHAZARD THAT GUN RESPONDED TO AND LOST IMPACT ONE AND THE SAME IN CANON?!?!?!

I am on the FLOOR holy shit

 

Forget about all that.

They really removed the part where Knuckles calls Classic Sonic fat?! This is my personal 1984.