Who wrote "The Truth of 50 Years Ago"?

Sure it's not technically canon, but I don't know how you can be so dismissive about the theory when even here you refer to the Master Emerald altar being replicated by Gerald. Seems like he already knew about Hidden Palace and the Master Emerald's significance to me considering the perfect resting place he built for it. He doesn't have to be Indiana Jones to discover any of this considering his grandson discovered all of it just crashing into an island on accident. It literally does make some sense even if unintentionally. It doesn't matter if GUN was the one who discovered all this since Gerald literally uses that research to power the eclipse cannon. He could have known everything GUN knew, regardless of any personal Indiana Jonesing.

 

Except... us?

 

He doesn't even have to have visited these temples themselves, but rather just seen photos or something of the murals that more capable people took photos of, if the idea of Gerald running through Lost World doesn't work for you.

 

Something important to remember:

Shiro Maekawa, who wrote Adventure 2, disliked the Mega Drive games, and specifically tried to make SA2 feel as different from them as possible. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

I very much doubt that he would've looked to S3&K for inspiration.

 

My knowledge on the lore is rusty, but is it also possible Gerald might have gotten his information about the Chaos Emeralds and the murals from manuscripts of some kind? Like he was never shown an exact image of what we see at the end of Lost World or what 3K's Hidden Palace depicts, but he was given written descriptions that were unearthed elsewhere.

So he kinda did some guess work on how things were meant to look or how these things were meant to tie into one another? I don't think there's anything that directly contradicts this idea as far as I can recall. It could be as simple as some sort of ancient scroll or stone manuscript that described these things somewhat accurately.

 

Icecap in SA1 also has some differences from Sonic 3. I think it's still supposed to be the same location. I don't get getting on Kilo's case about headcanons not being facts right before assuming Gerald must've just found some other artifact somewhere. Why then isn't it probable that GUN/Gerald found another artifact depicting the Doomsday prophecy somewhere?

 

I feel like a lot of people are forgetting a very important fact about the Hidden Palace Zone: It's on Angel Island, which was in the air and secret to the rest of the world, so not exactly accessible by Gerald.

 

If we're going to go by logic here:

Gerald recreated the surface altar of the Master Emerald found on Angel Island. This presents a two possibilities:
1. Gerald somehow found detailed construction records of said altar. This would probably come from a detailed account much like the Bible's accounts of the construction of the Ark of the Covenant or various temples.
2. Gerald visited the alter himself and made a detailed account.

Using Occam's Razor here, the latter is the simplest and thus most likely explanation.

The first option would require us to assume that the echidnas displaced from Angel Island kept records of this altar and that Gerald was able to locate them. It would also require us to assume that these records were remarkably detailed, something that is admittedly possible given my biblical example. We also have to ask why would a society that just lost the emerald and the altar, much less were cataclysmically decimated, hold on to such records? Further, we don't have any evidence that the Echidna Society produced more than simple murals such as the Chaos Mural which would not be sufficient for Gerald to recreate the altar in such stunningly accurate detail.

Whereas, if we go with the second option, the only question would be how or if Gerald interacted with the inhabitants. Knuckles' age is roughly 15 or 16, which means that he would've been born roughly 34 years later, and likely means the only inhabitants on the island 50 years ago would have been Knuckles' parents and/or grandparents. So there's more possibilities here:

1. Gerald did not encounter the island's inhabitants, possibly because the Master Emerald was in the Hidden Palace Altar at the time with those inhabitants who were guarding it.
2. He did encounter the inhabitants at this altar because the Master Emerald was there. This would presume that: A. There was some sort of conflict or B. Gerald interacted and left in peace.

Given that Knuckles knows nothing about the outside world, it would seem option 1 is most likely.

Also, While we know he researched the Chaos Emeralds and very likely had to have had them on hand to create the Chaos Drives, there's nothing to suggest the emeralds were present at Hidden Sanctuary 50 years ago given that the Emeralds disappear all over the planet when brought together and in Sonic 1 they were in the special stage dimension.

So logically speaking, it is very likely Gerald did visit the surface altar on Angel Island, but not very likely he came across the Super Sonic mural.

Planes had to have existed 50 years ago if massive space colonies existed. There's nothing to prevent him from reaching the Island, but there's no evidence he found Hidden Palace either. Presuming he did research the Mystic Ruins, it's not a stretch to say he found evidence of Angel Island's existence given these people were committed to warning future generations of Chaos.

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As for the actual topic, I would assume Shiro Maekawa wrote it given it was his story.

 

There simply isn't any way to reconcile your theory unless you want to believe it. If "he had to have known SOMETHING" is evidence enough for you than Shadow looking like the figure on the mural made by the culture Gerald and GUN were obsessed with is evidence enough for me. I wouldn't keep trying to school people on the mural theory since that's apparently not what you're doing.

 

I personally believe Gerald had access to Angel Island. Whether he saw the HPZ mural is much more contentous, but there are a few overlapping pieces of material that seem to tell an interesting story around the Hidden Base area specifically.

• Hidden Base is likely on Angel Island.
  - The Master Emerald shrine that Knuckles, Rouge, and Eggman are fighting over is in this location. I used to think it was trying to convey the existence of the shrine without needing too many unique assets, but there is really no reason the Emerald would be here without it being on the island.
  - The world map has a harsh, rocky, elevated, and specifically shadowed in exclusively one edge dividing the sand and water. This is more interpretive, considering the world map is not a literal representation (no world map in Sonic appears to be, beyond depictions of specific 1990s islands at a macro scale), but it was clearly at least intentfully constructed in this specific way. In this way, the reason there's a fucking pyramid in the middle of San Francisco is that it fell there.
• The Hidden Base belongs to Gerald and was merely taken over by Eggman.
  - Hidden Base has a teleporter directly linked to the Ark... The Dark story characters make their way back and forth between Earth and Ark without apparent means at their disposal. It is technically possible that Shadow could be using Chaos Control every time until the Hidden Base scene is depicted, and Eggman riding a personal machine, but how would Rouge get up there? It's cleaner to assume that this is the mechanism they use constantly, and therefore it would be something Shadow knew about at the beginning of the game - which means it predates Eggman's knowledge of the Ark.
  - We can't definitively state that Eggman would never build a space shuttle, but it's easily the most esoterically mundane thing in a game filled with fantastical machinations. Far easier to connect the dots to the real life space race that was approximately 50 years in the past when this game was made, and therefore the connection of publically funded technology to a publically funded researcher is... admittedly a leap, but a smaller one. (Yes, I know the Shuttle was a later invention.)
  - The keys in Egg Quarters have white moustaches specifically, like Gerald's. Okay, this one's tenuous. But the bait and switch of one Robotnik's egoism for another feels plenty poetic, when the Ark itself is confirmation of this shared trait.

Taken together, they suggest that Gerald not only explicitly explored Echidna civilisation, but kept an avenue to continue doing so after the Ark was constructed.

 

Not to entirely disagree but I thought it was extremely out of place and deeply weird to have a shrine with the exact same stonework texturing as the mystic ruins stuff in the heart of the Ark, which we see in the same room as the biolizard in SA2. I thought it was ridiculous at the time and I think it's still ridiculous now, while also being fascinating because what plot thread is that damn altar a remnant of?

 

I do want to add a bit to this. The Sonic 3 manual described Angel Island as "the legendary floating island" and says "The ring reminded Sonic of a legend he once heard about a "mystery island."" So the world knew about Angel Island but yes was unsure of if it was real. Does not really prove or disprove Gerald went to it. Professor Gerald did study ancient cultures in general, including the Fourth Great Civilization that created Emerl and the fire god Ifrit. And he had access to a Chaos Emerald when he was studying Emerl in Sonic Battle. So yes I think it's a fun fan theory that Gerald went there and got the inspiration to make the ultimate lifeform a hedgehog but its not canon.

Sonic 3 and Knuckles does get referenced frequently in games Maekawa wrote. You can find Sonic, Tails and Knuckles talking about Mushroom Hill in Sonic Heroes.

 

A couple points could be made about the whole Maekawa not liking classic thing.
A) He may not enjoy it from a story and character perspective, but still took the previous world building elements and details into consideration.
B) Maekawa was never a director, just the writer, a writer who puts together ideas into a cohesive manner with dialogue. If Maekawa didn't want the ULF to be based on the Echidna murals, then maybe Iizuka did.

 

A lot of people asked the mural/Gerald question in the panel announcement.

If anyone is going to the anime expo panel and they are also taking in person question it could be a good to ask who wrote report and the two Shadow thing.

 

About Gerald needing access to Angel Island:

In Runners, it's revealed Knuckles has a secret temple on Earth which is specifically for the purpose of keeping the Master Emerald when his adventuring away from Angel Island.
And as early as Sonic R, we saw things like Echidna statues outside of Angel Island. So it looks like the Echidnas did travel the Earth and build structures in various places.

So it's not too hard to believe that Gerald could have found a secret template on Earth, which presumably has a replica shrine (and maybe other bits of Echidna lore) without having to go to Angel Island.

(And yeah, I know Runners is no longer canon. But it was at one point, and some of its explanations for things still persist on in other sources. So while it's not an unproblematic source, it probably is still a good reflection of how Sonic Team view Sonic's world).

 

The hidden palace theory never really made sense to me because it falls apart if you think too hard about it. The figure representing Super Sonic in the Hidden Palace mural has spiky hair but otherwise looks nothing like him. It’s a fairy with wings, clothes, and a staff. Shadow isn’t. Likewise, the Biolizard doesn’t actually resemble Perfect Chaos other than being reptilian (and reusing his stock sfx roars I guess), so the Mystic Ruins mural thing doesn’t work either. But if anyone were to ask Maekawa, Iizuka, etc. about the mural theory the answer would likely be noncommittal. They don’t want to step on anyone’s theories or headcanon because they want the fans to enjoy speculating and connecting the dots themselves. If you asked in a fashion like, “did you intend for this to be the case while you were making the story?” then you might get a solid yes/no answer.

But regarding the actual topic of the thread, has anyone thought about asking Maekawa about it directly? He’s on Twitter fairly often and interacts with with fans.