The Sonic the Hedgehog Continuity Thread of Love and Timelines

Silver and Eggman Nega are from the future. Blaze never was intended to be. It was just a fan theory made by people who didn't play Sonic Rush before 06.

 

This might belong more in the "unpopular Sonic opinions" thread, but I'd just like to toss my worthless two cents in here.

Sonic has never had any clear cohesion, it's been a massive identity crisis right from the start. Trying to comport a trove of contradictory elements to arrange it into some timeline is a fool's errand.

The timeline is pretty simple. Sonic 1, Sonic CD (maybe), Sonic 2, Sonic 3K, Adventure 1, and Adventure 2 as the series finale. Everything else is a spinoff, 'nuff said.

 

At least this list includes the games with the Chao Garden. That's the only part of the game series that really matters to be honest.

 

I was going to post this in the Frontiers thread but that is talking about the new update so I guess I'll just post it here since it's more lore related. Bumblekast info time!


Ian Flynn: and while I would like to tie The End into more of the "space opera stuff" and I did pitch some Black Arms attachments at one point it was like "let's not get too crazy here Flynn"
18:02

 

I kinda... wanted some space opera stuff (?) lol.

 

I'm fascinated to see what, if anything, they add to the End in future updates, either on the gameplay or lore side. Kirby Star Allies' post-launch content ended up developing the visuals of the final boss arena of its second quest over time, leading to a whole new epilogue mode in the final update and (if I recall correctly), a new variant of the final boss in the arena mode. It'd be neat to see Frontiers do something similar, maybe introduce a segment of Super Sonic fighting the End after the shmup phase alongside Super Tails, Super Knuckles and Super Amy in an homage to the Final Hazard fight from SA2.

 

While I'd be fine if they revealed that The End destroyed the Black Arm's planet or something, I think making connections between stuff just because they came from space runs the risk of making the universe feel small, so I'm not surprised that whatever it is that Flynn had in mind didn't pass through

 

No no... let's hear him out...

Considering their entire thing is arriving at worlds and consuming them, I could see them as more being worshipers of The End.

Might be why they were so focused on the Chaos Emeralds, beyond getting the Black Comet down to the surface: to release The End and let it continue its thing.

 

Yeah, I didn't like that too much. I personally would love to see a new art style that sits somewhere in-between Uekawa and Ohshima's style (think Saturn-era or OVA Sonic). By acknowledging the appearances in-universe, they sort of cement the "classic" and "modern" design as inherent to their respective eras, rather than just being an artistic choice.

 

45:01 - So you’ve said recently City Escape takes place in Westopolis but from previous info they’ve said it’s Central City, the game also refers to the city level as the capital and in Shadow the capital of the United Federation wasn't Westopolis it was CC, is this a mistake or a retcon?

- Little column A, little column B. It's inconsistency over the years and this is what the current standard answer is. There's an entire committee to review this type of thing, it can be changed if I am wrong. Ultimately it's not that big of a deal.

 

Flynn’s script already felt a bit too indulgent with the references to past games, and everything connecting together makes the world kind of small… but despite that I really do like the idea that the Black Comet was used to escape their planet as The End destroyed it

 

I do wonder if they're working towards a canonical world map. Frontiers referenced some places from unleashed and with the great cannon clean up of 202X, a rough map certainly would make things more consistent. The language used in Tails Tube about how there's many small islands that you can't see on a map (or whatever can't remember it word for word) seems to be them covering their backs incase they do want to add more islands in the future.

 

Wait, when was this?

 

You could jump to 1:56 but it's better to listen to the whole question and answer at 0:10

 

I always figured Westopolis was just another United Federation city, like maybe the LA to Central City’s San Francisco, but maybe they’re connected? So more like the Kawasaki to Central City’s Tokyo.

 

Man, The End is just so bland. Retconning it to Black Arms, as an army of worshippers is actually an excellent idea.

As of now it's just Sonic's World Galactus...

 

I dunno. It IS bland, but I feel like The End being a manifestation of entropy doesn't gel with it being an offshoot of an existing alien group that is just a tangible living species. I suppose if it received the same amount of focus and development it wouldn't make much difference though, it would just come off as even more of a non-sequitur.

The problem is that it's really hard to quantify the Sonic pantheon.

Chaos was "the god of destruction", but in SA1 it's basically just a weird monster with his own lifespan, and the lore that it's actually the evolutionary offshoot of an alien species reverted to its more dangerous form doesn't really contradict that because its status as a "god" was never really elaborated upon.

Mephiles/Solaris is...something time related? Maybe? It might be capital-G God, but who the hell knows. Apparently he can die, though, so whatever it is he does can't be that important. I don't blame Flynn for trying to connect him to Time Eater, since Time Eater is similarly underdeveloped, but at least being named "Time Eater" and having stuff from 06 in Generations means you can kind of view him as a chronological custodian of sorts, literally eating time or offshoot timelines or something that shouldn't exist (okay, that's basically just Lord English).

I don't know anything about the Ifrit. Haven't gotten around to Rivals yet

 

Huh, interesting.

Yeah I'd always assumed they were different cities.

Slight headcanon territory here, but if we had to reconcile the statements in SA2 and Shadow with this current position, then perhaps Westopolis is simply the western section/subdivision/borough of the capital city, and "Central City" is the, uh, central one? In the real world, San Francisco itself is on the western side of the wider "San Francisco Bay Area", after all, so they could easily spin this as a similar case. Maybe someone could ask Ian if this is how it's supposed to work, or if Central City is a different city entirely and not the capital.

 

Westopolis and City Escape look completely different even when the former isn't being blown to pieces. They make sense in that the GUN commander would naturally have ties to both, but that's a tenuous connection at best.

 

Central City could be the actual, well, City.

Like it's the New York City, while Westopolis is, say, Queens.