Hm, I suppose that brings up a good question. When is an addition merely an addition, when does an addition to something become a rewrite, and when is a rewrite really a rewrite?
There isn't a sense of that in Dragon Ball either, really. Goku says he attracts bad guys as justification for staying dead after the Cell arc, but that totally does not follow from the series up to that point, which was almost entirely the heroes reacting to threats after they present themselves. Just seconding BigTigerM in that it makes way more sense that the emerald's power caused whichever Chao to regress physiologically and tap into some old primal DNA. It's actually one of the more elegant retcons the series has made. Just dunno why they'd bother Chaos's own backstory when it doesn't add much other than confusion. Though all this being said, it's hilarious just how much the game utterly ignores the Chaos connection. Not a single character acknowledges that the ancients literally all look like Chaos except Eggman, the one character who I don't think actually saw any ancients in the cutscenes. This is a bigger question than a Sonic forum is ever going to solve, because within the realm of fiction, there's literally no such thing as a fact. The delineation between a story intentionally lying to its audience and a story that literally overwrites established information is subjective enough to kill a small child.
Honestly, I'm just glad they're doing something with it, instead of just using it to Super Sonic battles in the games. It's not perfect, but I like SEGA is trying to expand a bit the universe. I don't think everything needs to be mega complex, but I like extra core being added, to make things flashy. I actually want even more them to explore Chaos Emeralds in further games, since not everything was explained in Sonic Frontiers anyway.
The bigger issue for me is "how and why?" Why do they even have a connection and a relationship like that in the first place? Before you could have inferred they had some shared origins. Now that the Chaos Emeralds are from somewhere not on Earth, is the same true for the Master Emerald, or do they just so happen to have magical energy interactions with each other?
Frontiers suggests that the Master Emerald was on Earth before the Anciencts arrived with the Chaos Emeralds. Didn't they say their ships were being drawn to Earth, or am I imagining that?
I don't see this happening as I feel the emeralds are meant to be a mystical kind of item, that has no rhyme or reason.
Every island/island group has its own set of emeralds, and only the set belonging to the Starfall Islands fell from the stars. No I don't care if the canon disagrees.
You're correct, they say the Chaos Emeralds are being pulled in by something and it cuts to a shot of the Master Emerald glowing in a field. 1:21:55 Actually, that gives us a maximum for when the Ancients arrived on Earth: they have fossils of grass from 145 million years ago, so it would've been within that timeframe. So the Emeralds were between Gaia Cycles when they arrived and were pretty much an anomaly for that last one... I should move to the Headcanon thread if I think of anything further.
Honestly the general idea of "the emeralds are from earth, but got flung into space at some point and found by aliens which then drew them back" is probably my preferred way of explaining it. Considering the emeralds separate every time they're used, maybe it could be some sort of cycle. Like they usually get flung across the planet, but every millennia or so they get flung across the galaxy, idk. Actually, now that i think about it the distance that the emeralds separate varies a lot. Like, in the classic games they got spread across individual islands, and in unleashed they were across the globe. Maybe it could be some rule, like every time they are used/used by the same person, the distance they get shot out increases. And then they gradually get drawn back in towards the master emerald so they never stay lost forever. But that is getting into head canon territory. edit: i had misremembered the plot of sonic unleashed. looking up trying to find how far apart the emeralds are scattered every game, they never seem to be farther than a single island/land mass, continent at most.
Yeah, this has been proven to be untrue since Sonic 3 where the Chaos Emeralds which Sonic collected at Westside Island are carried to Angel Island by Super Sonic after the destruction of the Death Egg and are then stolen by Knuckles; but feel free to headcannon as you wish!
They weren't? Sonic had to travel to put them into temples, but he had them on his person since the very start. Hence Super Sonic in the opening cutscene.
If I recall, didn’t South Island need the Chaos Emeralds to keep it from sinking? I think multiple sets are an easy way to explain something like that. Plus, to be fair, there are the Super Emeralds
You’re correct. Time and again the chaos emeralds have shown they just teleport or piss off to wherever they are needed. Almost as if they are a natural balancing force in Sonic’s universe, capable of good and bad usage. The origin of the emeralds really doesn’t matter, what matters more is their mysticism and why they almost seemingly have a mind of their own at times. That’s the part of them that they should never touch or explain.
Nah that's fine too, they should go nuts. I dunno, you guys are kind of overrating the mystery of these things, when their role in the story is extremely conventional. They're not people, there's not really any character traits that would get undercut if they elaborated on stuff. I think we all just got so scared of midi-chlorians in The Phantom Menace that we treat everything like it's explaining The Force away without remembering what made The Force special
The Super Emeralds aren't a new set of Emeralds, they're upgraded/supercharged Chaos Emeralds. When you enter a Warp Ring in the Sonic & Knuckles half of S3&K, Sonic actually loses whatever Chaos Emeralds he has. If you had all 7, you can't go Super anymore. They get placed onto those pillars in some kinda "uncharged" Super Emerald state, and you have to beat the Special Stage to "charge them up". As for the South Island Sinking thing, all the old Game Manual Lore isn't really in-play anymore. Honestly, it was never really something SEGA ever kept track of or expanded upon, so I've never understood why everyone treated it as Gospel. I'm trying to use evidence from things we actually see while playing the games. But again, people can headcanon as they wish. All I'm saying is that "one set of Emeralds for each island" causes more lore complications than the actual canon where there are just 7 Chaos Emeralds.
Except they're being ignored now, evidenced by Sonic Origins, which contradicts several manuals. But this is not the thread for that.
I mean the games have contradicted things here and there for a long time to some extent, but I'd say it's fair to call the manuals at least tier-2 canon these days, supplying details that definitely still come up here and there but not being canon in the places where the games and SEGA's word still disagree with em. That said, I've recently gained an appreciation for the completely-spartan approach to interpreting Sonic 1's story, where Eggman isn't necessarily evil or trying to take over the world so much as just negligent and uncaring for personal profit, and Sonic is just fucking up all his stuff because it sucks. It's only really once you get the giant space stations and evil laughter that the facade drops
Correct. They've been retconned by future games, namely Origins. They were the story, and now they're not. One of the curses of multi-national-multi-media franchises with a never-ending story spanning decades involving the input of thousands of creatives. Things are gonna get changed and dropped along the way. You can like it/hate it/ignore it as you see fit... I like the old Archie Sonic lore more than modern Sonic lore, but if you're discussing "what is currently canon", the old Game Manuals are really no more relevant than Archie was. Just outdated supplementary tie-in material.
