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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 มิ.ย. 2022
- As always, thanks to Windii for the translations. / girlbossuran
I take solace in knowing that I probably will not have to make another video as long as this for the rest of the Sonic series. This is just ridiculous. But I hope it was worth it and you all like it.
This was probably the most fun story video to make so far. Poking this mess full of holes was enjoyable. Realizing all the things wrong with it was like a game in itself. And people say 06 isn't fun.
Hope I didn't overdo just playing out scenes with no commentary. I did it more here than any of my previous videos. I wanted to preserve a lot of the better moments, rather than just explaining them. The good scenes deserve a chance, at least.
Let me tell ya. I was so very tempted to upload just the first part of the video, and then put up the rest the following day and call it "The Story of Sonic 06 (For Real This Time)". Or even uploading the beginning with 2 hours of a black screen after to really fool people. Woulda been funny, but I decided to be merciful.
You can support me here if you want. ko-fi.com/pariah695 - เกม
Something I forgot to touch on, why does Mephiles even bother to mess with Shadow? How does that help him further his goals at all? He doesn't need Shadow for anything. So he has no actual reason to even bother with Shadow.
I guess he is pretty sadistic, so maybe he just does it for fun. And by that extension, you could argue everything he does is just to cause misery for his own entertainment. But I find that an extremely stupid justification for his actions if that is the case. That's just a cheap way to weasel out of the fact that his actions are illogical. If that was the case, why doesn't he just go around killing random people? That would cause a lot of suffering.
Wanting to torture Shadow as revenge for sealing him away, sure. But everything else is still dumb.
Didn't he kill all the people when he fused with iblis
It's really not that complicated, but people don't tend to put much thought into Mephiles' thought process for some reason..
Mephiles' core motivation is to take vengeance on all mortals after the Duke of Soleanna split him from Iblis, in an attempt to control his powers over time (and see his late wife again). Hence why, once he becomes Solaris again, he wipes everything out in a rage, as opposed to going back to the harmless flame that used to watch over Soleana. But thanks to Shadow, he was sealed away before he could even attempt to find a means to rejoin with Iblis.
10 years later, when Mephiles is finally freed from the Scepter of Darkness, he initially wanted revenge on Shadow for sealing him away. He tried to do this by trapping Shadow in the hell-ish future destroyed by Iblis. However, after coming to realize Shadow's fate (being imprisoned by humanity), he found that he and Shadow were both victims of the same injustice, and were contained unfairly by humanity. He then offers Shadow a chance to join him, likely out of pity, but also because Shadow could be useful in helping him gather the Chaos Emeralds. However, Shadow refuses, and when Mephiles asks if he forgives humanity of their folly, Shadow simply states he determines their own destiny. Mephiles then resumes his original plan to get revenge on Shadow and attempts to kill him on the spot, until Omega showed up and pushed him back.
Realizing Shadow and his friends (namely Omega) could pose a threat to his goal of rejoining with Iblis, he attempts to cause a rift between them by revealing Omega's hand in sealing away Shadow in the future.
Finally, he confronts Shadow again in Dusty Desert, and offers him one last chance to join him and "rewrite the future." But Shadow calls him out, saying that he doesn't believe Mephiles is after revenge anymore, he just wants to destroy everything. To which he's both right, and wrong. Mephiles is clearly consumed by hatred and malice (this likely why, despite being the mind of a sun god, he takes the form of a dark shadow).
Well put. Though i hardly see his insistence on Shadow joining him as "torture". The way he speaks about it well after Shadow made it clear he isn't gonna budge makes it sound like he is pretty darn sincere and doesn't get why Shadow wouldn't join him. Which of course he has no reason to so its weird.
@@ChaddyFantome As in _Shadow_ had no reason to? Of course he did, lol. The world was going to betray him in the future and wrongfully imprison him out of fear and confusion (worse, it would be at the hands of one of his best friends). As far as Mephiles is concerned, Shadow really shouldn't be so resolved to defend them at that point.
@@DLxxx No, as in Mephiles had no reason to.
when you a royal chef in solaris and your cutting onions, and the princess walks in and unleashes satan:
So many characters in Sonic are basically just the devil.
Mephiles, Iblis, Dark Gaia, Black Doom, and the Ifrit
@Ліав Габріель Гонсалес A villain in Rivals 2
@Габріель Укр Also there was a different Ifrit in secret rings. And that one legitimately got summoned from hell
@@PurplePikmin383 don't forget "the end"
@@PurplePikmin383 Sonic is also technically a demon, as seen in Sonic and the Black Knight (also the SMT mobile game lol)
I seriously appreciate that you keep the story to a separate video. A lot of reviews, particularly of 3D Sonic games, spend a disproportionate amount of time on the story to the point where it cannibalizes the rest of the video, leaving no time for gameplay discussion. This way, everything gets ample time to breathe.
I really dislike that too. It seems weird to me to review a game, and not talk about the actual gameplay for like 15 minutes out of a 23 minute long video. I know story is a big draw for a lot of people in games. But to me, the gameplay is what matters most. That's what I want to hear about.
@@Pariah6950 a game will only be rememberd well if it has good and Fun game play the original 2d sonic games (1, 2, CD, 3k)have little to no story but the game play îs amazing wich îs way i think the 2D games are remaberd so much more fondly than 90% of the 3D games. 3K has the most story and even then most of the cut sense last 10-15 seconds
Facts. Even when the story takes up so much time, it never goes any deeper than a basic plot summary and its always frustrated me a little
@Ella I agree and disagree at the same time because a games' story should and has to inform the gameplay to be meaningful and have a positive effect on the game. Whatsmore is, like Pariah exemplifies, often the gameplay informs aspects of the story.
I do very much appreciate and encourage him to continue this format for all the reasons listed. It's a breath of fresh air and let's all aspects breath on their own. But I also do think there is merit to doing both congruently as games are experienced as a whole rather than seperately.
Where is that profile picture from
I know its super generic but I always thought replacing the kiss with Elise's Tear to resurrect Sonic would make it like iblis has Pheonix abilities which is why silver never can beat iblis in the future because iblis regenerate infinitly.
yo that's cool actually
The kiss is overblown, but it's too infamous at this point to include in any remake/adaptation. That's an excellent alternative
@@anguset yeah the kiss is pretty bad but people make it seem like the end of days.
@@TheEvo1utionZ I’m not aware of any legends specifically surrounding the Phoenix’ tears myself, but IG there’s already the cliché of characters reviving when cried on.
Not that you could do like Final Fantasy with Phoenix down, so tears are probably still the best option
@@TheEvo1utionZ I’m not aware of any legends specifically surrounding the Phoenix’ tears myself, but IG there’s already the cliché of characters reviving when cried on.
Not that you could do like Final Fantasy with Phoenix down, so tears are probably still the best option
That alternative is pretty great. If I ever do a project that involves this story, that’s my new canon for it. lol I didn’t even know there was a romance between the two until then. I just thought it was Sonic inspiring a person bound by strict duties and emotional restraint (hence her lack of personality) being freed by Sonic every time they just run around and enjoy nature.
Silver knows who Eggman is because in the beginning cutscene, Eggman introduced himself and sonic saves Elise, all with Silver watching. He probably heard everything that was going on then and learned eggman's name
Thank you. I was so confused when I heard him say that, lol.
@@DLxxx do you also know why Elise was thinking of Silver when Sonic shows up???
@@ataladin87 Elise must've caught glimpses of silver who was involved during the events where iblis was sealed within her or when silver left elise with the blue emerald.
@@crimsonzone8984 *_EXACTLY!!!!_*
To this day I still firmly believe the only reason Blaze is in 06, is because the writers needed a royal character to seal Iblis, so they looked at Blaze and they said "Hey, she's a princess and she can use flames!" and then they completely ignored her in the whole story into the very last moment when she coud be sacrificed.
They didn't want to bother creating a new character especially for this reason, so they brought back Blaze just to throw her to the bin, and it shows they didn't plan any character arc for her.
Yeah, as you said, subtility is not this game's forte.
She does so little in the game that some people theorized she was nothing more than Silver's imaginary friend.
@@robertlupa8273an unrelated note,but both blaze and egg man nega were retcon to be from different dimensions,blaze in 06 is in the future and everyone ignores that the story of 05 happened so they retconned her back into being from the sol dimension,and the same thing happened with egg man nega except that the retcon for him to be from the future wasn't undone which like...him being from the future makes absolutely no sense at all
They didn't even use the fact that she was royal, all they used was that she can control flames
This leads into another issue that he failed to mention in the video.
You’re telling me they chose to make a new character that is introverted as fuck, has a latent flame in her soul, struggles with her personality and duty instead of having Blaze as the main focus?
This was meant to be a fucking REBOOT!!! A REBOOT!
To this day, It boils my blood to even think they chose this route despite having an empty canvas to work with.
Either…
A: Make Blaze the main focus and replace Elise.
B: Omit Blaze entirely and make a new character for Silver.
Instead they decided to have them both in anyway.
This is only HALF the reason why I hate this piece of shit story so damn much.
Pontac and Graff didn’t nearly fuck up as bad as this. And at least they were usually in charge of the English Script. They didn’t have to write a full on soft reboot.
@@gameman5804weirdly enough sonic rivals, 06, and rush were all written at the same time. I think the inconsistencies in Blaze’s story were setup in 06 and were supposed to fully explained in a silver game that was never made. While i guess they thought she had enough spotlight in rush.
Especially too how they never backed down from this plot point and continue to pair up blaze and silver in EVERYTHING.
THANK YOU for pointing out the weirdness of Sonic & Elise kissing is largely an art style clash issue
Sonic straight up looks like a theme park mascot costume next to her
To be fair to Silver, Mephiles was a being that seemed to have in-depth knowledge of events, and also time travel powers- while Amy doesn't even know that the world is going to be destroyed and has nothing but her own gut feelings, which she even admits might not be true. Silver would have zero reason to trust her over Mephiles
So in other words, Silver is a realist.
@@crimsonzone8984
He's also an optimist
my personal theory for what they mean by "when elise cries iblis is released" is that its not necessarily when a tear rolls down her eye i think what they mean is whenever elise goes through immense emotional pain (when sonic is killed literally right in front of her eyes, she cared a lot about him and had feelings for him, and her reaction when she realized sonic was fucking dead supports this theory). it's really the writing's fault for not specifying what the fuck it means for her to go through to release iblis
wouldn’t iblis be released as soon as she realises her father, the only family she had left is gone then?
wouldn’t iblis be released as soon as she realises her father, the only family she had left is gone then?
she was told by her father to not cry and be a good girl. elise is not an idiot in this case she’s respecting what little she remembers of her father
Yeah. Eggman clarifies that in the Japanese version of the last story.
@@ironicpolis7798 she’d go through extreme emotional distress
Here is my TOTALLY HEADCANON take:
I've always seen it as "Iblis needs to be released completely by crying, if Elise dies with Iblis inside her then Iblis is corrupted".
The Sun being associated with fire and time makes sense if you bare in mind that the sun is essential for human time-keeping.
Mephiles being shadowy seems to be born of the lack of life/fire in his half of Solaris, whereas Iblis's constant rebirth seems to be about its disconnect from time.
The one I heard regarding Mephiles is that, since he's Solaris' consciousness, he's absolutely PO'd and bitter about getting ripped in half and sealed away and it's reflected in him going dark.
Funny observation I made when you were talking about Shadow being a character with biblical references as part of his character.
When Mephiles is showing Shadow himself, essentially in stasis, look at the position he's in when inside that container. It almost looks like he was crucified. They *really* leaned into that whole thing with him, didn't they lol.
And it's really strange to me as well, after all, this is Sonic, not Evangelion.
funny to see this comment after frontiers lol
"Get in the fucking robot, Shadow!"
@@nightlydata2181 Yeah they literally brought Rei's japanese VA as Sage for the game lmao
@@DaHeis ye I know & as a fan of both it's cool to it for both languages
Funnily enough that actually had a meaning in Sonic,Evangelion literally only had all that imagery because it looked cool.
I still don’t agree that this wasn’t the right direction for the Sonic series.
Honestly, if it wasn’t for stories like the Adventure and Heroes and Shadow and Unleashed and even the Storybook series, I don’t think the franchise would have much appeal passed the classic era. Hell, even Sonic CD and Sonic 3 & Knuckles had that type of story and lore minus not being as large scale and not having a big giant monster at the end(I guess eggman counts) but they still had that anime epicness to it. I think that style of storytelling compared to character stories like Mario (even the RPGs) gives him is differing appeal.
I don’t mind if Sonic stories scale down a bit and also don’t have a giant monster at the end and change up the formula for what kind of stories Sonic can tell but I argue Sonic’s anime tropes and style is like half of what people love about this series. You can still make a Sonic story simple and to the point while still having those roots in him and whatever story he is in. And that’s because it felt like the Sonic series had a vision and at least some passion about the stories they were telling and bringing out all the characters quirks and personalities in interesting and effect ways and even having character development big or small that gives a lot of fuel for fans to create and make stories and characters and all that.
It’s just that these stories a lot of time are badly written or have badly written elements mixed with the good/great stuff and that is mostly because, like a lot of things about Sonic, is due the Sega’s money and management issues that cause development problems and rushing to get to a holiday release (at the time) and honestly for me and fans like me, causing SEGA to learn all the wrong lessons. I think the stories going back to “classic” style of storytelling for Sonic (which I argue isn’t really that at all, they are just really REALLY simple kids stories by that point) hindered the series further in the long run as much the badly written, Demi god ones did but I think the latter was mostly due to declining quality and not because it wasn’t the right direction for the series, imo.
I see a universe where stories like Shadow the hedgehog and Sonic 06 would be stories that could work for most people and most sonic fans if they just had way more time to iron things out because all the pieces are there. Even in gameplay, P-06 proves this. They really did having something great on there hands.
All that being said, I think this series going back in this direction makes sense when it comes to appealing to a wider audience and I think it’s what gives Sonic a lot of his appeal compared to characters like Mario where he can go into the more anime style, epic stories, imo. I just think you need to change up the formula a bit, which is why I’m happy Frontiers (at least it’s story anyway) is going in the direction it is because l think Ian Flynn stirkes great balance about what makes a sonic story great without being super self-indulgent and brings out the characters personalities and uses more effectively. Some people would say kids wouldn’t be into it nowadays but honestly, I would say otherwise considering what the Sonic 2 film managed to accomplish.
But that’s just my two cents. Great analysis videos all around and I agree with mostly everything else. Hope to see more from you!
Hard agreed here! I *love* the silliness of it too at the same time! You've got these cartoon woodland critters taking everything and themselves so seriously--the dissonance of the talking animals + JRPG-Anime-Style serious plots are just fun. I unironically love it.
This just about sums up my thoughts best. The shift in tones between '06 and Forces reminds me to some extent of what the Mario series went through after the earlier Paper Mario games and Super Mario Galaxy.
Both got a lot of attention for their more serious atmospheres and character-driven stories, but ever since Miyamoto stepped in they never went back. Though the simple format of Mario games has its appeal, comparing it to what we had feels almost like a handicap, and seeing formerly important characters like Knuckles and Shadow get demoted to one-note sidekicks very much comes off as a similar case.
I know for certain that the Adventure games are what got me into the series beyond a casual level.
I think you kinda nailed my thoughts on Sonic stories. Your last paragraph specially resonated with me as on why I don't like stories like '06 and or Shadow. Basically for me it makes them feel like a bad sopa opera with all drama and the heavy mood, whereas other serious Sonic stories like Frontiers, Unleashed and SA1 strike a much natural balance.
Not saying Sonic can't have high stakes and serious moments, it's just that you should balance the seriousness with some bit of light-heartedness. Afterall they are colorful cartoon animals. Play a bit with them, make them say funny things, explore their relationships and toy with their personality. Make the story endearing! So when the serious moment inevitably comes it makes us care even more. I think SA1 nailed this kind of story the best.
The Japanese manual of Sonic 06 confirms Shadow was created by Gerald and Blaze was linked to the Sol Emeralds. Thus, we can conclude the continuity was intended to be the same. This is further supported by an 06 level appearing in Sonic Generations.
"Everything is canon"
*Audible sigh*
Cry about it@@sirkjohno0129
Before watching this, aoi can mean both blue and naive and can refer to either Silver or Sonic. And 06 was written as a prequel to Rush and the only continuity error was Blaze having her princess look instead of her caped look as described in the leaked script.
Caped look? Is there concept art for that?
@@leonardoalvarenga7572 There is concept art of a caped Blaze in Generations 3DS (the cape has a square wave pattern like Silver's gold rings), and there is a fall-themed Sonic Channel wallpaper where Blaze wears a different cape.
Minor point: during The Last Way level in Shadow's game, Shadow is able - and in fact is required a few times - to use Chaos Control, in spite of Black Doom currently being in possession of all seven Chaos Emeralds during that time frame. A spin-off game released around that time, Sonic Battle, implies that Shadow's also able to just use Chaos powers at-will without the emeralds, he just needs focus and the right headspace for it. Hell, the fact he doesn't seem able to actually perform huge time-space stuff without them still keeps it balanced enough in my eyes.
Honestly, there's so many interesting things to discuss about this game's story. As much as I feel that a few of your points could've used some elaboration or second thoughts to get them sorted out, it really just makes me want to do my own video on my own perceptions of those points, so I suppose it's doing a great job at generating interest there! Either way, this has been a very fun series to watch through, and I can't wait to see even more of your videos.
It's sensible that he can do basic Chaos stuff without an Emerald, but needs one for more powerful abilities. Forgot about The Last Way, but that too I would chalk up to a continuity error. Now that I think about it, there's a missed opportunity here. Instead of retconning that Shadow can use Chaos Powers without an Emerald, have that be some character growth. Coulda done it at the end of Shadow the Hedgehog. Shadow gains his conviction and is able to harness his own internal Chaos energy. Woulda been cool.
Watch KingK's video if you haven't haha
Yeah I’ve been saying that since the opening cinematic for Shadow the Hedgehog. He warps around just fine in that without any emerald in sight. Granted it’s not like the opening cinematic is canon, but I’d at least expect it to not contradict canon
eggman looks sexy in this game, if you disagree you’re lying
He looks cool in cutscenes, terrible in game
His beady eyes scare me
He looks terrible, if you want sexy, you have AOSTH Eggman
The thing with the past, present, and future all happening at once and only time travelling back to after when you've left is basically how time travel works in Bill & Ted.
"The clock in Soleanna is always running."
Sure, but this game doesn't take time to establish it's time travel rules. Following Back to the Future, everyone accepts Spielberg's rules as gospel, so if you're doing it differently like Dragon Ball did with Trunks or the same rules in Avengers Endgame, you gotta lay it out for the audience.
@@aortaplatinum Sure, I get that. Also, for a story trying to be taken seriously, a comparison to Bill & Ted's mechanics (when not explicitly laid out like that) isn't meant as great praise.
I believe that's how time travel works in Phineas and Ferb as well, with different times running concurrently, though I could be remembering that wrong.
Some people think that Mephiles intentionally went with his convoluted plan of his is because that he is a sadistic, psychopath who enjoys messing and toying around with others. Like what he was doing to Shadow for example. Even though Mephiles hates Shadow, he still tries to toy with Shadow for sealing him away.
Another thing is Blaze and existence in the narrative. It is mentioned that one of the writers wanted to connect Sonic Rush with Sonic 06 but couldn't for some reason. And as for Silver's reasoning to jump at Mephiles's offer is that you have to remember this. Silver lives in a post-apostolic, hell scape where people are devoid of all hope, due to a fire monster that no one knows the origin of or how to stop it. Which if anyone of was living in his scenario from the start, would be inclined to at least listen to Mephiles's offer. Even though you make some good points that Silver and Blaze should at least have a reasonable debate of the situation.
Honestly, if they wanted to connect Blaze to 06's story they probably should've done one of two things:
1:Replace Elise entirely as a character with Blaze as main focus. Elise and Blaze have multiple things in common, they both have some sort of affinity to fire, are royalty, and are related to the word 'Sol' which means sun in I think latin(someone correct me if I'm wrong) in some fashion, with Blaze coming from the Sol dimension and Elise coming from the kingdom of 'Sol'eanna. Solaris is a creature who exists beyond dimensions and time, so just have him pull some time space shenanigans and merge the two dimensions into one, histories and all. Have it be that the events of the Solaris project cursed her with her fire powers(a side effect of being merged with Iblis), and that that curse also burdens her with an eternal responsibility to contain Iblis. The red dot on her forehead could be the seal that keeps him intact. Maybe her curse also causes her to reincarnate from the past where Soleanna was still intact, to the future where she's slowly losing her grip on Iblis with each death weakening the seal or something, which is why the future is the way it is. This would tie Blaze from the present and the future, and explain why she's still alive after hundreds of years later. You could also make her immortal, but I don't really like that tbh. Reincarnation is a way cooler concept, personally.
2:Turn Elise into a cat and have Blaze be a distant ancestor who she inherited her powers from. The events of 06 take place in the Sol dimension. The curse of Iblis passes on through the royal bloodline, which is why Blaze can control fire. Another thing about Elise in the game is that she could manifest a protective aura(Escort Stages), could sense spirits(remember Sonic's death), and have visions/premonitions(the vision she had of Iblis and Silver at the beginning of the game). Like my previous take on the story, the seal weakens through rebirth and reincarnation(except it's merely the power that reincarnates into the host instead of the host themselves) and Blaze has inherited those powers as well but also is more powerful as a result. That could play into gameplay and the plot somehow, for anyone interested in that. Also I forgot to account for why Sonic would be in Elise's timeline. Just time shenanigans with Solaris put the current timeline in the past, or it could be that Sonic goes to the Sol dimension, sees the state it's in, runs into Silver and Blaze in which they tell what's going on, and comes up with a plan with the everyone else to travel to the past to find someway stave off Iblis' awakening, which will inevitably lead to them meeting Elise.
I know I've also said alot, but an additional idea for the sake of leading an avenue for Elise and Blaze's character development is that they both tend to suppress their emotions, and become distant. This could tie into the curse, with their state of mind possibly being the catalyst for the seal weakening, they keep to themselves or only show surface level friendship in moderation. Although, I like the idea of cat Elise being sort of a 'Weiss Schnee' type tsundere tbh. The banter between Sonic saving her could be hilarious, with Elise's reserved nature clashing with Sonic's devil-may-care attitude, the possibilities for humor are limitless. But yeah, Blaze and Elise could have some heartwarming moments with them forming a kinship(not just literally) over having feeling taxed from the curse. Just thought it would be neat.
Also the Sol Emeralds could play into this but idk how it could be implemented.
@@utopian4769 Really good ideas! 👍
@@utopian4769 (Tiago face plums) idiot thats not how You do it the way i do remakes is that i take what the Game already had and expand on it insted of ditching everything like You did and Elise was not Even the problem the problem was the story and nether of those 2 options are good becuase as said before your not fixing anything Your just ruining the Game by ditching what it already had
The problem with Mephiles is that he doesn’t have a good reason to pin it on Sonic’s head. It isn’t Sonic he’s after, it’s Elise. Even for the kind of character Mephiles is supposed to be, it’s still a stupid plan.
Also, why should it matter as to HOW Iblis is released when the Chaos Emeralds can control Time and Space and are unlimited in power? Solaris is literally a beast made of that power to manipulate and destroy the space time continuum, it sounds like it wouldn’t have made a difference if he killed her or made her cry.
I kinda fell for the joke at the beggining as I was like "I knew he was going to say that It's good!" but I also felt like It's impossible to put 06' story and good in the same phrase so yeah.
You made me notice even more plotholes than I thought, especially regarding the Silver story, people trash so much on Sonic just because of the romance but Silver is really worse.
As a side note, I always thought that in Sonic vs Shadow in SA2 the script was never intended for them to use Chaos Control in-battle, for me It's clear they just use because devs couldn't create better A.I. for the enemy so they just had to make them teleport in some way lol
It's like considering the Special Attacks characters use in those last battles cannon so like, suddently Knuckles is able to summon a thunder or Rouge can make some weird ass wave out of nowhere, that's definitely just gameplay element and they couldn't fit in the story so... It's pretty much "shut up forget about it."
Now I disagree that every single Sonic game was having too epic stories, that's just not true because in the meantime there were always spin-offs and much simpler games being release like the Advance Series, Rush and other spin-offs, players would play more of these simpler games while waiting for the grand ultimate game to be release. So I can't say It's all too dark, It's more that the media was blaming wrong aspects and Sega learned those wrong aspects, Sonic 06 didn't suck because of trying to have complex story neither any of other Sonic Team titles but Sega thought that was a problem so we had Colors... Gens... Lost World...
Do you plan in making a separate video only for the story on these titles? I mean, Sonic Heroes kinda has the simpler story but even then you still have a lot to talk about.
The spinoffs and handhelds are definitely less story focused and such, which I like. But I do still think it's a problem for the main console games to be doing this same thing so much.
I'll still do separate videos for gameplay and story. For games with less to talk about, thank god. I don't want to make super long videos like this all the time lol.
The romance that is one-sided if you choose the Amy portal in the Test of Love, mind you.
I think with how Sonic at this time period was always doing Big Epic Stories for better or worse - 06 to me, knowing that it was trying to be somewhat of a reboot, really comes across like their last ditch effort at really trying to capture the Japanese otaku audience they've never really had. Heroes and Shadow don't really do THIS as much as Adventure 1 and 2 do, and it wouldn't surprise me if they decided they needed to go back to the drawing board a bit and actually work on the brand relevance in Japan. This is all speculation on my behalf, but SA2 (as far as I've seen) is one of the better remembered Dreamcast games in Japan, despite Sonic as a whole not being super popular there, I think in big part of how anime it all is; Sonic has always been Dragonball lite but the kind of anime and manga SA2 and this game pull from, are obviously more cult-following series, on top of that. SA2's influences were primarily a variety of anime and manga from the 80s and 90s (i.e. Bebop, Bokutama, Nausicaa). I don't think anyone's ever gone on record to say where besides Dragonball this game pulls its influence from, though Final Fantasy is an obvious one, I suspect all of this is meant to be reminiscent of different anime that were popular in the early 2000s. Time travel, kingdoms, apocalypse plots, heavy handed religious symbolism - all of this was in vogue in the world of animanga a few years prior, so of course when it came time to reboot Sonic for the next generation, they looked to where they'd had success in Japan prior and tried their best to emulate the same thing for a younger audience.
It obviously didn't work, thanks in no small part to 06 being the kusoge it is... (though for what I can discern 06 isn't really as unanimously despised amongst Japanese fans as it is in the greater gaming scene overseas. Criticisms of the game from Japanese sources are of course far less informed by the circlejerk we've had in English with our bad 2010s TH-cam reviewers.) 06 on top of being poorly strung together is also hilariously tropey in its execution even in the good parts, in a way that I know would appeal to some overseas anime fans but probably comes across a bit more trite to anyone with a proper familiarity with the scope of animanga as a whole. I haven't played the game in Japanese, so hearing Omega say "約束の時だ" in this video took the fucking wind out of me. It's so endearing when Sonic Is Anime, it's not great at it, but they know how to hit on all the dumb tropes of writing people love bad anime for.
If this game had been successful, I suspect they would have kept trying to do this indefinitely and it most likely wouldn't have ended very well for them. I do really love these (sometimes dumb) anime stories, and there's something so fucking funny seeing them come out of the cartoon rat games that I think watching them try to top the previous game each time would have been hilarious if nothing else, but it's not a sustainable model. I'd like to see Sonic games go back to "being anime again", but not every game has to be SA2, and 06 is a game I really think they could only have done like this, falling on its face for the most part and only occasionally tripping into a taste of something good. Heroes might not be the kind of game to send weeb kids like me into Sonic obsessions, but it is my favourite Sonic game in general, so I have absolutely no issue whatsoever with them going back and forth between "light hearted cartooney sonic where everybody is flanderized and nothing matters" and "serious dark anime sonic where the characters Go To Hell" if it makes it feel fresh every time. I wish the last 10 years of Sonic hadn't been infinitely more of the former than the latter with barely any of the personality of either, but it is what it is... It'll be interesting to see where Flynn's take on a semi reboot in Frontiers ends up, given the comics have been pretty good at balancing Sonic's tones into a nice middle ground, which is something I don't think the games have ever actually found.
Sorry for always leaving long rambley comments, idk if you read them, but your videos always go into the kinds of depth that make me actually think about this stuff. You touch on SO MUCH in this video I never thought about. Even if most of the problems with this game don't personally hamper my enjoyment of it, it's easy to understand why they'd bother other people when you're laying out the issues clearly and concisely, without stopping every 5 seconds to complain about how "gross" the Elise and Sonic stuff is like every other "review" of the game's story does. The comments on your videos are always a fairly even mix of people who like the game and don't, which is nice. I generally find most reviews of Sonic games end up alienating people who aren't from the same "camp" as the reviewer.
Sonic has been trying to tell epic stories since the classics.
For the time, things like sonic 3k and cd were very grandiose so it only makes sense for adventure to carry on the trend
Great comment and thanks for the context, did you live in Japan? The best way around this would have been to do what Megaman has done by splitting its titles up into subseries. Make the main series lighthearted and less convoluted with a handful of characters and some basic eggman plots. Then have a seperate parallel series like Megaman X where they can explore all those grimdark, shonen, "lets kill a god" storylines. They technically started doing this with Sonic Boom and Movie Sonic and honestly I feel like that was a great move on their part, so it seems they may start going down this route
@@kian7406 I would say partially, Sonic 2 has an epic story (even if on a small scale)
@@maude7420 this is just wrong tho. The ‘gods’ were always an element of classic sonic lore and people make it out to be so simple when one look at the Japanese manuals prove otherwise.
約束の時だ = "It's time to make a promise"
Definitely another of those "you have to excuse it" things because Maekawa tends to leave big giant holes for interpretation, but I always read this story's massive glaring issues as intentional, because during the Last Story, it's explained that Solaris is fucking with ALL spacetimes simultaneously. This would obviously create paradoxes and tons of nonsense realities, and could even be used to explain away the plot holes in the previous Maekawa stories.
I love the shit out of Sonic X seasons 2 and 3 but yeah I had always wondered why 06's writing felt so X-ish. You can really tell lol
Oh! One tiny detail I did really like playing through the story again is that if you talk to Soleannans in the Adventure Fields as Sonic, a lot of them, especially in the old castle town Adventure Field you start Sonic's story in, will talk about Lord Regis being a scientist and a genius. This wouldn't mean much, but that also implies that Regis was very likely present during the Solaris Project, and may even have sabotaged it in order to kill duke Soleanna and take over as leader of the kingdom.
Excited for your Unleashed video, hope you got an Xbox Series so you can play the night stages without a half second of lag 😬
Previous Maekawa stories were just Heroes and SA2. Heroes doesn't have a story, so it doesn't really count, but what plot holes does SA2 have?
Headcannon:that's the reason for every single plothole in any Sonic game, cartoon or piece of media, and the reason for the different cannons existing.
@Daniel Fahimi while I like SA2's story, I believe Pariah highlighted them in his "Story of SA2"
I know there are more, but the only one I really remember off the top of my head (in detail), is when Shadow leaves Rouge with the Emeralds while he goes to fight Sonic. Shadow already caught Rouge trying to take the Emeralds, but just leaves her there with them, and even more so, Rouge just DOESN'T take them after he leaves for some reason.
I know this is more of a headcanon, but I highly doubt that any issues present within 06's story were intentional because of some (most likely, unintended) writer's loop hole at the very end of the story.
i'll always have a bit of a soft spot for this story bc i'm a team dark fan first and a logical thinker second and even though the execution was pretty shoddy, their core relationship will never be this good again (in the games at least, thank goodness the comics held out for a while). as shadow has increasingly been written as a one-dimensional "i don't need friends" edgelord over the past ten years or so, i really miss team dark just genuinely caring about and supporting each other like they do here.
Jesus, the whole Sonic 06 being an inverse counterpart especially when seeing how Chaos and Iblis are literally opposites on a fundamental level, what a pill to swallow.....
It gets deeper when you realise Mephiles is basically evil Tikal or how The Duke and Elise are Gerald and Maria.
This game sure does like to rehash. Surprised Dark Gaia in Unleashed wasn’t a plant based monster
@@PurplePikmin383 well it came from the Earth, so it’s Earth.....
With all of that maybe if the game was about an alternative dimensions that mirrors the main dimension (hmm i dunno like the Sol Dimension or something) instead of time traveling (maybe Silver could have been a Sol Shadow counterpart) Meh i dunno maybe my idea is pretty bad too
@@ChaddyFantomeim late but how is Tikal evil Mephiles
With silver I think a lot of his fans like him more due to supplementary material like the comics such as archie and IDW as opposed to game material. He has this much less cocky, more naive, much more almost boyscout-esc enthusiasm for mundane and small things like gardening and such since he doesnt have that in his future. He's like if you kinda took sonic and instead of going one direction and making shadow, with that sorta darker viewpoint, general experience, and cockiness he has, you went the exact opposite direction. He has a focus on his convictions but he's way more naive, much more of an enthusiastic about things he's never really experienced, less extreme and fast, and in general a calmer more humble character. Again, you get that idea more in supplementary material, 06 kind of gives a general base but its so bare bones and not great. Due to how bad 06 did on every front they dont really like referencing him in newer games so he never really got the same chance to expand in game like shadow did due to SA2's even now beloved status. You can see that sorta more softer and naive but still determined interpretation by his fans in fan works, notibly stuff like the official sonic IDW comic writer Evan Stanley's unofficial fan comic "Ghosts of the future", often times and I think that's due to official supplementary material doing WAY more with him than the games. You can kinda see the same thing happen with his relation with blaze too with supplementary material to a lesser extent since its way harder to get those two together with a logical reason and give them a lot of time together. A good scene from IDW that really shows the appeal of their pairing is that garden scene from I believe the 2019 annual. It sums up both his appeal and their dynamic well on why that has fans.
Fair enough. But none of that is canon to the games. Game Silver sucks. And when I just say Silver that's who I'm talking about.
@@Pariah6950 oh definately Im not arguing that at all. Im more talking in general why I think he and his relation with blaze has a fanbase as large as he does. I doubt its in large part due to 06 honestly cuz you're right, 06's silver story is utterly awful. Plus I like taking sonic characters in a similar way you'd do say something like TMNT or super hero comic characters or even public domain where they have all these different interpretations, refiltered ideas, and different takes on core concepts. I just feel the other canons silver's been in beyond the game canon have treated him WAY better. Plus IDW and to a lesser extent later archie does try to be as close to the games as possible even if its a canon of its own so its not like he's radically different vs say a SATAM silver would be compared to the game. I think that's why you dont really see anyone specifying a specific silver like "archie, game, or idw silver" like you would with robotnik fans specifying the "cartoony Adventures of", "Archie" or "SATAM" robotnik usually. Leads to a kind of conflating overlap with "06/game silver" I think. Again not talking about 06 since that game's an utter mess, just this is generally why I think he has fans. His fanbase has a very "in spite of the game" feeling to it from what Ive seen. Kinda feels like you can see that reflected in fanworks too since it feels like they take more from those works honestly.
@@Pariah6950 didnt Sega say everything is cannon?
@@soulbound2 From what I recall the idea behind that is basically "dont think about it too much, dont worry about it too hard and you'll have more fun". Its more a figurative mindset than a hard literal thing, especially given stuff like sonic 4 is just ignored and chronicals is straight up uncanoned because ken penders is so annoying they just dont want to deal with him even tho they still own the game.
Also random thing on my earlier comment I just realized. Silvers an optimist but a realist, shadow's a pessimist but an idealist, and sonics an optimistic idealist. Kinda interesting paralells I guess.
@@soulbound2 That was a joke, not to be taken seriously.
Also Mephiles's planning fails on absolutely every level.
As you mentioned, Mephiles could've solved everything by just going to the future with the Chaos Emerald.
As you mentioned, if he had to join with Iblis at the time of release he could've just killed Elise and then fused with Iblis.
But even if we assume Iblis has to be released specifically with tears of grief to release Iblis, Mephiles could've just killed Sonic from the beginning.
Him attempting to manipulate Shadow doesn't even work and him attempting to manipulate Silver actively makes things more difficult since he gets Sonic stranded into the future and very nearly causes Elise to die via jumping, and the one time Silver actively helped keep Elise alive quite literally could have been done by Mephiles, the time traveling character.
Bonus points, his manipulation attempts with Silver actively lead to Shadow being able to survive his first encounter and get back into the present time, due to Silver's first assassination attempt getting Elise captured and causing Sonic to get stranded into the future, which directly leads to Rouge getting to the past and delivering the Chaos Emerald over to Omega.
It's not even a case of his ultimate plan working because everyone else are idiots, he literally could've solved things on his own right off the bat while only needing to speak with Sonic once when the Egg Carrier crashes.
while i get his complaints about mephiles trying to tempt shadow, ia ctually quite like it. instead of using the past since shadow has already overcome it, mephelis tries to use the future to minipulate shadow, but it doesn't work because shadow has already grown and been through this so he knows it's all bullcrap. we get to see the fruits from all the stuff he went through in the previuos games, it's pretty cool imo
If I had to rationalize it, Mephiles' plan does line up with his trademark sadism. He didn't have to go through all this trouble to merge with Iblis, like you pointed out, but maybe he chose to in order to cause as much suffering as possible. Giving Silver false hope, trying to tear Shadow away from his team, and the cruel irony of Sonic technically being the Iblis trigger are all things I'd imagine Mephiles would relish.
It's also possible he was trying to gather all the threats to his power (Sonic, Shadow, and Silver) to one time period, so that even if he couldn't tempt Shadow and Silver, they would still be wiped out by Solaris. It's also been shown throughout the story that that Silver is similar in power to the other two hedgehogs, and he was even able to constantly keep Iblis in check, so leaving him alive in the future would pose a threat to Mephiles.
And the "he's stupid" argument doesn't quite work either, because that's literally what he ends up doing: cutting to the chase and straight up killing Sonic in front of Elise after his convoluted plan didn't pan out. He was never worried because he could always just take the simple route. He had all the time in the world. And he couldn't have done it earlier like you asserted; Elise had to get attached to Sonic for killing him to be worth anything.
It doesn't excuse the lazy writing, as the plot of the game still hinges on Mephiles basically just wanting to fuck with every character, but his plan still isn't as dumb as people make it out to be.
The reason Mephiles doesn't go after Sonic on his own is because he has Shadow on his back, who would be a big obstacle if he took that approach. This is confirmed in the official 06 guide.
@@oldnnew1402 Except that he went after Sonic on his own and killed him anyway, regardless of Shadow being there or not. Bad writing is bad.
I'm guessing Mephiles needed the tiny flame Iblis to fuse with bc he COULDN'T do it w/ the giant monster one from the future. It seems like Iblis slowly becomes its own individual when it's either not sealed in someone or fused w/ Mephiles, so presumably by Silver's time its identity as an independent creature (as opposed to "Solaris' raw power in physical form") is too firmly established for Mephiles to fuse back with.
I think the reason why they used so many aspects from the previous games is(silver being tricked like knuckles,iblis being a elemental monster like chaos etc.) this game is supposed to be a soft reboot to the series.Change of artistic vision already can be seen but I remember they promotised 06 as "Sonic's great return" too.
1:04:36. Silver emphasizes that the hedgehog he sees in the vision from Mephiles' chaos emerald is blue. For that reason I doubt he would mistake a black hedgehog, either Shadow or Mephiles for a blue one. Its also worth mentioning that there isn't really much of an opportunity for Silver to mistake either Shadow or Mephiles for Sonic anyway since he sees them so soon after seeing Sonic (seeing them literally right next to each other in Shadow's case and like straight out of the vision with Mephiles).
This stuff happening in SA2 is much more understandable I think since everybody knew who Sonic was after the events of SA1 and nobody knew who Shadow was since he was locked away for 50 years and lived on the ARK before that. Also, they were never really seen together by almost anyone in that game, definitely not by the public. I'm not gonna try and explain what they thought they saw on top of the bridge at the start of Radical Highway because that was SEGA's job but I don't see how they would so easily be able to just think "oh that's a whole new hedgehog guy. sick!".
the sally mention was really funny my lord
i really like to think throwing in sally instead of elise would kinda make it better, and replace the janky humans with weird sonicy characters like forces did, although im not sure how times sally has been in a mainline sonic game, if at all, but thats just my head canon
There's a 3rd form of time travel. It's like causality loop, but without the previous version of any timelines continuing to exist. You change something in the past, the future changes. When you arrive in the past, all the universe knows or cares about is that more matter spontaneously existed and to effect it with physics. The memories of anyone that arrives are now simply faulty, as they're remembering a future that will not occur.
Given that the universe has no reason to care about consistency, (as that's more of a human thing), I think this version makes the most sense... But it also explains why time travel would be impossible.
Let's say someone invents time travel. From that point forward, there are an infinite number of people who could be impacted by it. For each, there's exists a non-zero probability that they'll want to stop the invention from having been made and have access to time travel to do so. Any non-zero probability becomes a certainty to occur in an infinite sample size. Therefore, any time someone is about to invent time travel, someone spontaneously exists with memories of a future that will never occur and stops that from occurring.
I'm not suggesting that this game uses this version.
2:16:20 I think the reason mephiles does all this is because he is pure evil and wants cause as much pain as possible or it could be what you just said about them trying to tie the plot points together.
Amy saying she'll choose Sonic over the world, Silver saying he's unwilling to sacrifice Blaze to save the world, Rouge saying that she'll always be by Shadow's side even when the entire world is against him, and Elise saying she doesn't care what happens to the world because she'll never get to meet Sonic, all of these scenes were born from the same general idea.
"I care about you more than I care about anything else."
Notably, it only actually works in one of these scenes and the rest all come across as either really extreme or really stupid, hahah.
Yeah, the only reason it works with Shadow and Rouge is because it's the world that will end up betraying Shadow because everyone fears him, not Shadow betraying the world. And Rouge trusts Shadow that no matter what he will still do what's right.
Elise met him over a day ago
And there was barley a anything except just romance
It didn’t work for Amy as she was still the obsessed fan-girl at this time and it made her look worse.
It didn’t work for Elise because existence itself was on the line.
And it certainly didn’t work for Silver and Blaze because nothing was set up and established to begin with.
14:04 I like how Sonic just leaves Amy with the guy trying to kill him. I mean, sure, he's not attacking her and stopped because of Amy, but Sonic doesn't know why, he wouldn't have any reason to think she'd be safe left alone with Silver, so it really bizarre when you give it any thought.
in Amy's defense, sonic should know how crazy she is when it comes to changing villains hearts (gamma and shadow) and it working. this was no exception either, silver actually stops and goes off to sit down near the ocean and think a college ethics 101 question lol
@@EclipseHedgehog that doesn't mean he should leave her with this guy he doesn't know who's trying to kill him, lol.
@@AC_Dragneel I guess he trusted her enough. He must have heard their conversation and silver wasn't going to attack through her to get to him. The stupid princess needed rescuing again and time was on the essence. I guess you could say he made a bet since hes quite the gambler lol. Either way sonic was losing and needed a way out and I dont see him stopping to have a chit chat or using her as a shield if they were to fight again.
@Eclipse it's not about trusting her, it's about not trusting him. It makes no sense for him to leave her other that that's what they decide for the plot. Grab her and go, stay, and fight (not like Sonic hasn't fought battles he couldn't win before) literally anything other than leave Amy alone with this guy he doesn't know who's trying to kill him.
@@AC_Dragneel That makes sense, but Silver's already stated multiple times to Sonic that he's trying to save the world, and Sonic seems that he doesn't want to fight him if he doesn't have to. They most definitely don't dwell on this for nearly long enough to make it seem anything less than contrived to an average viewer even if you do see the scene twice in the game and from different perspectives, so I don't exactly blame you.
The snapcube dub has made me incapable of watching that scene of Sonic and Elise on the field without laughing.
30:03 not having to constantly worry about her status as a Princess for once and just get to have a friend by hanging out with Sonic
I think with Silver, the comics have made people like him more. Cause yeah his story here isn’t doing much good for him.
Also he has a really cool character design and most people don't really care *that* much about the plot of Sonic games, plus most people didn't play this game since it sucks.
yeah he's a character people more so like in spite of the games. he's a very "supplementary material does him well" kind of character.
@@Andrei-vv4ou i care a lot about the plot of sonic if the gameplay's shit who cares but if the story's bad then that's inescusable
@@sandudelcea6707 Nothing wrong with that but you are in the minority
@@Andrei-vv4ou cybershell and game apologist are a joke to you then ?
I think you misunderstood something at 33:50 and 1:22:30. It is a causality loop, Sonic always saved Elise. But shortly after Sonic saves her, Mephiles kills him, which makes Elise cry, releasing Iblis; then, either Mephiles or Iblis kills Elise. The citizens of Soleanna wouldn't know that Sonic had rescued her, so they would've assumed that she just died in the explosion.
Then, this creates a future where Silver is to be born and manipulated into traveling back, as well as lining up the Chaos Emeralds in their proper places chronologically. Once the chaos emeralds all return to the set time, the chronology shatters as Mephiles becomes Solaris, a god outside of time, breaking the if-then stable timeloop and appearing shortly after Sonic's death.
Basically the crux of the time travel confusion is that it's all a stable time loop, but the loop creates a god that is... *immune* to Time? Or something like that
Exactly couldent have said it better myself
Holy shit, it was a functional plot all along
So, I've concluded that, between Shadow's spinoff and Sonic '06, particularly the stories, if someone likes one game, they're going to dislike the other, but nobody ever seems to generally like both. It always happens, and as a fan of both, I can't help rolling my eyes whenever it comes up. No disrespect to you, of course (though the hate on Silver kind of stings), it's just something I've come to notice.
I like 06 as a game. Just not the story.
@@Pariah6950 Interesting because usually the people who are more charitable to 06 do so because they like the story, at least for Shadow and Silver.
@@maroonkennedy6213 Most Sonic fans care about the story than the game it's attached to that's why.
And yet Sonic felt nothing (in fact, he was oddly manic) over an entire metropolitan getting destroyed with thousands (half a million?) dying in Sonic Adventure 😂
@kaleidoscopicvoid There was no shown corpses and there was the city cheering against Perfect Chaos. No official lore shows some huge bodycount and including X means that the Station Square inhabitants ran into shelters.
@@galten7361That makes absolutely 0 sense. It's not like there was a warning that a water monster was gonna just start hurling tsunami's at everyone. Chaos start immediately after getting the red emerald and made quick work of the city. I am willing to believe a group of people could've survived but there is no convincing argument that majority didn't just kick the bucket that day.
In regards to fixing the romantic aspects by putting in the equivalent of a princess sally, I also feel like you could do the same thing with Blaze. Because she's also a princess, she has a similar responsible personality to Sally and her flame powers could be an explanation for being the host of Iblis.
I'm writing this as I go along so sorry in advance for the formatting.
First, nice one with the opening bit. You almost had me goign for a moment.
I'm gonna disagree about Amy mistaking Silver just being "because he is a hedgehog" The game repeatedly makes parallels between Sonic and Silver (though not nearly as much as it probably should have) similar to Shadow, and like with Shadow this pays off in the scene where Shadow, like Sonic as you mentioned, seems to have whatever quality that lets him do Chaos Control just as Sonic does. Whatever sense lets Amy find her way to Sonic, it led her to Silver and I feel like the point of that was to be a sign to us as the audience that "Hey, there is something special about this guy similar to Sonic", Elise makes the visual connection between the two in the opening cutscene as well.
The point about Elise just getting to be a girl is called to when Amy talks to her in Soleanna. Amy and her just talk about their crushes and she gets to just be a girl rather than just a princess.
Silver sees Sonic fighting back Eggman in the opening scene.
I find not enough credit is being given to the scene with Amy and Elise. Elise's character arc in many ways parallels how Amy was inspired by Sonic to pursue a more free attitude and grow in part due to her love of him. The game even makes a point to highlight the whole "one-sided love" thing, paralleling Amy and Sonic's dynamic. I'll chalk that one up more to personal taste, but its personally one of my favorite scenes involving Amy because to me it reinforces the strengths of her resolve involving love in general, which I think is important. Often people see Amy's love of Sonic as just some crush, when Amy is,. in general, a person that loves love and romance in general as opposed to it being some tacked on element of her character. Here is one of the times wee see that fascination and belief in love highlighted in a way that encourages and inspires someone to grow and I wish we would get more of that with Amy personally.
I never made the observation about the point about how Silver should be saying "Hey Mephiles why does the Iblis trigger look like you, huh?!" That's a really good point.
I'm glad you accurately described how the time travel works in the game. Its something that a lot of people don't get and for good reason because the game doesn't explain itself in regards to it...basically bat all. Which makes it hard for people confused about the game.
That said you make a mistake about Sonic saving Elise in the end of his story. The Egg Carrier crash we see is actually the result of Sonic fighting Eggman and causing it to start being destroyed. What Sonic sees when the Egg carrier is crashing is his own self having already gone back in time to save Elise.
Doesn't explain why Silver's future is messed up though unless Elise just died of old age and Iblis was freed anyway. But that doesn't make sense because Mephiles releases Iblis from her anyway and erases the timeline so there shouldn't even be a Future for Silver to come from 06 is a mess and talking about t is both stupidly fascinating and painful.
I agree That Silver and Blaze's relationship isn't sufficiently developed. That said, I disagree with the argument that the problem is all they talk about is their mission. Like, they live in a future and they are together the only ones who participate in the stopping of Iblis and made a promise they would not stop until they did. That bond is very much built on that mission and is something they have seemingly been doing for quite sometime. Its kind of all they had to their lives in the future so I believe it is very valid. My issue is more we don't have more scenes with them in general. Blaze makes a comment about the past looking so serene similar to Silver. Would have been nice if they conversed about how their resolve to save the future was enhanced due to their mutual appreciation of the past and what they are fighting for.
I agree with your point about Elise being a human to an extent, but I think the hubworld set up also plays a huge role in this. Elise being human would not be an issue if they gave her some means of enhancing Sonic's gameplay. She has the shield thing but that comes off more as a sort of compensation tool rather than a form of empowerment. I think hubs play more a roll because for example, Sonic running through wave Ocean has little to do with dropping Elise but still has this same scenario of redundancy because the game needs an excuse to funnel you back to the hub. its an issue that was present in SA1 as well and it will be back in future games to varying degrees particularly Unleashed. Only one I think handles it fine is Rush Adventure.
I will say that for tis faults, I do think Sonic's story in 06 IS better than his story in Sonic Adventure. Something people don't talk about enough is the ludo-narrative dissonance that happens as a result of Sonic's story focusing so much on developing his dynamic with Elise. in that because the player doesn't care about her and she seemingly only serves as a ball and chain to limit his abilities in certain levels, it creates what I feel the source of the distaste for his story in 06 along with the repetition of her being kidnapped. Sonic story, bar none, is the single most important story in the game and imho the only one where things that happen actually matter all that much, and yet people seem to feel Silver's and Shadow's are better because they focus more on fighting the main villain while Sonic's, despite Eggman being involved, isn't really focused on stopping Eggman at all but building his dynamic with Elise...which it doesn't do that well anyway.
The game has a schism between things that are important vs things the player cares about in this regard.
Silver and Shadow's stories, in many ways, as large goose chases where they run around in circles not doing much. Silver gets the key to removing Iblis from the future I guess but that accounts for very little of his plot. And Shadow chases Mephiles around but doesn't really accomplish much in that regard. But at least they had the supposed bonds they strengthen over the course of the game for people to appreciate I suppose. ..even though they et erased by the end of the game.
I do like that there is that recurring element of promises and remembering throughout each story though as well as the idea of "the world vs a person you care about". So points for parallels and consistent theming. (part 1)
I agree with your criticism of Silver's arc, but I think you are missing the the actual nexus of the sacrifice parallelism. Its less about the moral implications of defeating someone for the future and more about the emotional sacrifice that comes from someone caring about someone in each scenario.
What makes Silver start questioning his act is that Amy's emotional reaction impacted him, and likewise, which parallels with Silver's own emotional reaction to losing Blaze. Not saying it was done super well, just that I think your criticism is misplaced.
Personally I don't HATE Silver but I do think his inclusion in the way it was was very much kinda forced. They wanted him to be a sort of Trifecta with Sonic and Shadow and I feel he muddies their dynamic as a result. As for him popularity, I'm gonna be real and say its largely because of what I like to call the Sonic analogue effect where people will like a character purely on the basis that they are positioned as one Sonic-Offshoot or counterpart in terms of "being a main character" or "on par with him in power and perceived importance".
Shadow has some of this, but as you mentioned, he is very much if not the single most layered and developed character in the entire franchise even if you combined every other character and its not even close, so there is a lot to hang on to by comparison. Silver is not the only character to get this for the record, but he is probably one of the more blatant examples of it.
Omega is my fave character after Sonic himself so I'm right there with you with how they handled him in 06.
That said, I do like that the detail from Sonic channel about omega being made to stop Shadow is in here. Its good for every reason you said and more because it vindicates Omega's frustration with his talents being wasted just that much more.
I am so SO glad you made a point of Mephiles being a retread of Black Doom. It bothers me when people dismiss Black Doom hard but then give Mephiles praise for stuff Black Doom did, and in my opinion did much much better. That said, I don't mind it insofar as an addendum to his arc from his game.
I like that you highlighted that element of Shadow and how he connects with people. Another thing I think to add to that is how in most of these scenes he is turned away from Rouge and Omega, you know to highlight how he is distant in that way. he gives his acknowledgement to Rouge by agreeing, but his back is turned. There is a lot of nuance with his character in this respect I feel not enough people pay attention to and pick up on.
Mephiles warping the Emerald stop himself in the end REALLY bothers me because he spends a decent amount of time trying to find them...but now seemingly for no reason since he can just warp them all to himself...through space and flapping TIME... and somehow without this ruining the spacetime continuum and the events of the game with the snap of a finger....
Nice shootouts to Madoka lol! That got a smile outta me.
100% agree about about the whole "Elise being human isn't the issue" thing and the kiss is massively exaggerated.
I also agree with your statements about the ending, right down to the fact that as nice as it is in a vacuum, it isn't really earned.
I also 100% agree with not every story needs to be the epic end SA2/06 style story. I'd say ideally those would be like anniversary milestones or something to that effect.
Overall a great watch and highlighted a lot of things I feel not enough people do with this games' writing.
Something I'm surprised you didn't highlight is the conceptual parallels between Elise and the Duke and Maria and Gerald. I imagine you are aware of the parallels between Helen from Sonic X and Elise but since Sonic X has nothing to do with this series of videos, to makes sense you wouldn't touch this. I believe the X writer for this game openly stated that Helen was an inspiration for her.
Can we talk about Mephiles trying to turn Shadow to the dark side for a bit? Why...does he even do that? How does this further his goals at all? The only thing I'm left to think is that he adopted some of Shadow's own character and memories or something because it comes out of nowhere and ultimately doesn't service his motivations at all.
I kinda disagree with your bits about Amy in relation to X. Amy in X's main thing was more that she was constantly more temperamental. To me, 06 Amy seems a lot more like a chilled down version of her character from Heroes.
One more thing I wanna highlight is, at least to my knowledge, it isn't clarified that Shadow straight up joined GUN in the game. Correct me if I am wrong. From my readings, he was called in by the president according the the instructions booklet similar to Rouge, though that's kind of splitting hairs. He's still shown to be willing to do so if his interests align so that's all that really matters.
Now onto the comparison between Chris and Elise. Personally I find Elise', even a undercooked as it is, was ultimately more palatable than Chris. Because unlike Chris who had all the time in the world to justify his attachments, he neither had the nearly understandable circumstances or even comparable pressures and situation Elise had, nor was his actions nearly as forgivable by comparison and I'll leave it at that since I don't want to post to get even longer.
Overall loved the video. Not gonna lie, I've been chomping at the bit for this for quite some time. One thing I feel like coulda been done better is the elaborations on your points regarding the Sonic X writer. You set it up like you were gonna go more in-depth with it and I feel it kind of doesn't really. It instead comes off as a sort of pin to offshoot issues you have with certain elements onto. While I'm hardly the biggest Sonic X defender ever, I feel more could have been done with exploring the elements of X and its writer and how that may or may not have affected the writing in a more concrete manner. (part 2)
Looking forward to whatever you have next.
Oh shoot, I forgot. As n aside, I believe the whole reboot thing was a plan/attempt to merge Sonic X with the games that didn't go though due to its reception. But that's just my hypothetic.
Wow. Lots to say lol. Thanks.
I did note the sorta parallels between Sonic and Silver, but it doesn't really come together nearly as much as Shadow. He's overall a totally different beast, ya know? Also did forget that Silver would have been watching Eggman in the intro. Nice catch.
While what you say about Amy and love is true, that does come from Sonic X mostly. She does have a temper there, but most of what she talks about is lovey dovey stuff. Game Amy, while that is still a part, it's not nearly as emphasized previously. Though it does kinda work here to push the idea of Sonic getting Elise to change. Kinda.
Maybe Sonic does destroy the Egg Carrier? I'm gonna chalk that up to cutting something from the game because we never see or play anything where that happens.
I will definitely agree that Sonic's story in 06 is much better than SA1, even with its problems. At least it is a story.
I see what you're saying with Silver. Amy says if it came down to the world vs Sonic, she'd choose Sonic. Silver has to choose the world vs Blaze, what does he choose? That could have been really good if it was better executed.
I probably should have mentioned it, but I think the mocap in the cutscenes is pretty darn good in this game for the most part. The nuance in Shadow's animations you mention is a good example. The cinematography is fairly simple but the animations aren't awful.
I was going to say something about the parallels to Gerald, another plot element lifted from a previous game, but this video's long enough. And that's not really very important. Same goes for talking about Yoshimura. I'll talk about her during Unleashed, since that has less story and it's all her writing. I do want to do a video on Sonic X eventually.
And the GUN soldier NPCs you can talk to make it 100% clear Shadow is a member of GUN.
@@Pariah6950 Well what can I say. Your videos, being a lot more thorough than most triggers a lot more conversation. That's a compliment by the way. I consider myself a rather analytical and opinionated person in general so at least to me, part of what I enjoy about this content is how much more you seem to be willing to actually dive into things beyond a surface level. triggers my conversation reflexes I guess.
I'm gonna double down about my point about Amy. stuff about her liking love and romance is in her character as early as SA1 in her bios and Heroes in particular does have tons of lines about her talkign about the power of love and the like. It's just Heroes is a less story focused game.
I think that's mostly gonna come down to personal opinions at that point but to me at least, I find it to be a huge strength of the character rather than a derailment. Its also not really what I think the issues with Amy in X is. It tends to more be her constantly being angry and coming off as capricious, as well as less emphasis on her compassion and wholesome elements in relation to other characters. At least as far as my own observations.
In regards to the mocap, yea I think that's fair. Really 06 more suffers from lack of much facial animations.
I didn't know the writer for Unleashed was the writer for X. If that's the case, I think that cements my earlier statements regarding Amy all the more.
I didn't know about such NPC statements/ Ill have to look into that. Thanks for the clarification.
Also a heads up. Your channel is growing. Stuff like this where you can converse with people won't last forever so enjoy it while you can! Again, love your stuff and hope to see more.
before watching the video i'll leave this comment and edit it afterwards: i've always thought the story of 06 had the potential to be one of the greats, but because it was rushed like the rest of the game, there are too many holes for me to consider it seriously. even though i think there's loads of charming and interesting moments, and i wouldn't say this story was bad, i could never take it seriously for the convoluted mess it ended up being. i will however watch the video with an open mind and see if i think the good outweighs the bad in my view, brb.
THE AFOREMENTIONED EDIT: Wow jesus I didn't notice a good amount of the plot holes presented here, really pulled a 180 with my expectations there and i gotta commend you for that. I still think this story could've been salvaged in an ideal world, because even with lots of fundamental structural issues, the core strengths of it could've shined through and I don't personally need a story to be 100% cohesive for me to enjoy it, I just want to have a good time. Though I will admit that I severely undercut the current state of this game's narrative and how terrible it got at times, it makes me question if what I just said about fixing the story is actually feasible. Sonic is a franchise that people have connected with for so long in their lives so I can see why so many people (including myself) could end up glossing over all of these mistakes and the awful writing. Especially with the time travel, like I knew that shit was bad from the get go but I never stopped to think about how terrible it actually was, I don't know if there's any way to save that while keeping the game's narrative even remotely similar to what it ended up being. I'd have to look at the story again and think about it for a while to really gauge what my actual opinion is at the end of the day. Nonetheless, great video and good work as always!
The story was flawed from its very conception, no extra development time would've fixed that. The very premise and base ideas set it up for a lot of paradoxes and plot holes.
There's also that thing that it was originally meant to be a story for a new Sega ip, not for Sonic, so that didn't help either
I do like a lot of ideas presented in this games story, but I think you’d have to turn this into pretty much an entirely different story to make it work. People talk a lot about how it’s rushed but there are just as much fundamental flaws as good ideas, so even if they got more time to flesh it out it probably would be less infamous but not as good as I think it could be.
@@Kaplykos I mean time travel as a concept has made some great stories I think it could have been pulled off
I still believe the problem was rushed development though. Developing a game often comes firstly with coming up with the concepts and fleshing out them to the point you have a clear path to take and minor deviations, specially when the game is as big as 06 tried to be. The fact they had little time to make it, just mean that they didn't even considered the ingredients before taking them to the oven, cuz the chef was yelling at them that they were already late. Game needed another draft and more ppl developing it for sure, cuz for what it seams, they were already rushing things even at the pre-production phase considering that, despite sonic adventure not having overall the best of writing, 06 is subpar considering even those flawed stories.
@@Kaplykos I feel like the writers had solid ideas but had to try to throw them together under very strict conditions and without much thought, resulting in how messy the story is. IMO its very much a "worse than the sum of its parts" situation. In it's current state it's somewhat unfixable, but maybe later drafts of the story by the original writers would've resulted in a more cohesive and impactful story. There's really no telling with a game like 06.
People (like myself) like Silver in concept the most. His execution in 06 and Rivals being the issue with both those games having trash tier writing. Silver had a chance to be the next shadow but because this game was rushed and the story needed a second draft (or 12) we may never see the potential of Silver. You know, until you read the IDW comics with Ian Flyan writing...
Silver in the archie comics was also amazing. Pretty much nearly every character is so much better in the comics (IDW shadow suffers to mandates but he’s getting there). If you love sonic stories, read the comics.
@@shadamyandsonamylover I agree to an extent with those comics. I grew up with a lot of Sonic Universe and not really liking it. IDW is more digestible when reading all of it cause I don't have to read all the OG Ken Penders junk either.
@@budybas well, to each their own. I hate Ken Penders for what he did to archie after leaving but I did love his stories. Even if they were crazy.
@@shadamyandsonamylover I've seen posts (specifically from a silvaze fan) write about silvers story trying to put all the pieces (like symbolism, themes, foreshadows, etc.) together on paper and though they do a good job trying, in execution it leaves a lot to be desired. Mostly throughout the story is terrible pacing, awkward mocap (though i will admit silvers got a lot of sentai/kamen rider exaggerated movements), lack of music in a lot of scenes, boring tone, filler, faces that barely emote, etc. and as clement said in his mega review; you're hardly smiling when watching the story unfold. At least for the wrong reasons lol.
And on the comics though i'd agreed. though they share the same backstory, he's certainly not trunks in terms of how he acts. he's hardly serious like him or shadow for that matter and loves and fascinated by the beauty of nature since he's never seen in (gardening, you wouldn't see Trunks doing that), admiring happy faces, not afraid to be a shy fanboy, he's naive, but is always trying to be optimistic. I was groaning at a certain character in both times he went to who was given a sword in one of his story centered issues (still an awesome 4 issues though) I did realized "if they gave that sword to silver it'd be way too on the nose". I like how he's not as fast as sonic or shadow, doesn't have a physical weapon and has to rely on his psychic powers to get around and fight. that and the secret freedom fighters mini saga was a neat idea too, it was awesome that they plugged in his leather costume from rivals. and I looove how the brought in the time stones to have his time travel instead of a time machine or mephiles do it for him. That was such a good idea. and that achievement reference of him being a "Knight of Chronos"? that's such a cool title one i'd consider him to be despite of all his failures, faults and hiccups. Spoilers
and even if you root for silver, you can also completely understand sonic's annoyance with him. It's the boy who cried wolf, silvers been wrong time and time again and we all know how impatient our blue boy can be. i am glad they got to work together before the first genesis wave.
@@EclipseHedgehog sonic being angry at silver is literally what I live for. Their dynamic is awesome in archie. So far it’s all just wholesomeness on the IDW side and it’s fine. I miss the edge of archie tho.
Ive been lookin forward to this, thanks for uploading dude!
I hope it flatters you to hear that I’ve been keenly awaiting this video!
I've gotten a few comments like this. It definitely does! Thank you.
The Pariah645 upload I’ve been waiting for! This is exactly, and I mean _exactly,_ what I’ve been waiting for
I’ve been binging your videos today and I love the amount of work you put into these.
The intro to this one was HILARIOUS. I’ve learned something even tho I do consider myself a sonic lore enthusiast. Loved your SA2 one.
You might be my favorite TH-cam channel ever. Seriously, keep up the amazing work. The effort you put into these is insane. Take care and have a good day!
Thank you for releasing this after I got off work, I need to listen to sonic lore to calm down now.
Man no matter how much reviews i see, yours are still way better and you always give a different perspective
I love your videos man keep it up. The way u explain the stories of these games are so good.
Excellent video
Can I say something? I really appreciate your content and the effort you put into it. I'm surprised that just 1 month ago you were doing a full analysis of Sonic Heroes, and then Shadow the Hedgehog.
I don't know if these videos were already being made during the last months or if you just have a lot of free time, but I really enjoy them and you have a way of narrating and formulating that really makes it entertaining to listen to 1 hour of criticizing the plotholes or just chatting about the game's mechanics.
I'll be waiting for the review of Unleashed, by far my favorite game in the series. Keep up the good work!
In a side note this game's music fucking slaps and i can't believe how such a memorable theme as His World came out of this. The Crush 40 guys are straight up legends.
More than ever, I've been seeing so much more Sonic '06 content on yt. I don't know if it's because of Project '06, or just pure coincidence. Maybe just the algorithm.
Sonic 06 is probably rehashing so much because it was an anniversary game, but also Sonic being Shounen is why it's so good, it's what makes it unique compared to most Platformers
I love hearing people talk about this story in more than just the "ahh the kiss!" Cause it has so much that I'd just awful from a fundamental standpoint. Great video!
I do ask, what's the next sonic game? Is is secret rings or are you jumping straight to unleashed?
He said after 06 he will be going back to the handhelds, so the Advance & Rush series. Also the next one will probably be Riders, since Riders was released a few months before 06.
@@quasar4780 what about rivals
@@DrakeMystical I said "probably"
i personally feel that Mephiles is just a character who wants to cause as much pain as possible to Elise and shadow by attempting to split the dark team, of course he fails there but he does succeed in making Elise cry, i do still agree though that his plan is flawed, just my head-cannon thought id share it
big fan of your stuff
The wait was worth it I genuinely love these longer videos because you can go in to depth with either the gameplay and the story without trying to find away to condense both gameplay and story aspects.Makes me wonder what you're thoughts will be when Sonic Frontiers comes out.Theres really more I would like to say however I can't really find the words to convey my thoughts.Great content I can't wait to see what comes next and remember to just smile
1:13:13 You actually hit the nail on the head here. Sonic 06, at the time it was released, was intended to be a complete reboot of the franchise, nullifying previous games for a new canon. However, after the negative reception of the game and it’s story, this was retconned.
I enjoyed this video, Though I wanted to answer your question on why people (including me) like Silver in 06. It could be little things like him having Psychic abilities being pretty cool also his character design. To genuinely liking his Story and Character even though both could be handled better. It is kind of a shame that (at least so far) you don't seem to like him but I'll respect your opinion
As much as I love him in IDW, I wish he had kept a bit more of his badassery.
All you have to do is replace Elise with Blaze. She was a cardboard cutout in Silver's story anyway.
@@Harrinsain What exactly is your interpretation of Elise's arc? Because I really don't see how it's the same as Blaze's beyond some surface level similarities.
If anything, the solution should simply be to fix the progression of Sonic's story. There's nothing inherently wrong with Elise herself.
There's not much to her character at all to begin with DL.
@@DLxxx
Elise is a knock off.
An introverted princess who struggles with her duties and emotions with a latent flame in her soul. Her kingdom is even named “SOLeanna”.
She had no reason to exist.
About Mephiles being stupid.
I think he did that for the sole purpose of entertainment. He enjoyed manipulating the characters while he still could, as he still (technically) had his goal to carry out. He was so confident in his plan working he decided to have some fun before doing the inevitable. Obviously he is still a bit dumb for underestimating the characters as they do defeat Solaris in the end, but I think this was supposed to be the reasoning, and his hamartia.
It’s hard to root that in actual evidence though there’s no real or very little evidence to support that
@@InternetFanatic fair.
Though I honestly think the idea of villain plots being heinously complex all for the hell of it is just plain cheap in that it shows it wasn't given enough thought to have any deeper reasoning, there *is* truth in what you're getting at.
If it's anything he's got going for him personality-wise, he's a sucker for theatrics. Nearly all his animation involve him either bowing like when he greets Shadow, waving his arms like a ringmaster during exposition, or even using phrases like "the final curtain call." Makes me wish they dipped a little harder into that aspect of his character to make him a tad more unique of an antagonist honestly.
I've heard in another video that Mephiles chooses all these overcomplicated schemes simply out of sadism. He could just go and free Iblis right away as soon as he himself was free, but he enjoys it far more to play the cast against each other and cause as much misery as possible in the process of achieving his reunion.
About the contradictory time travel mechanics: I don't care to check, but maybe the intentions of the traveller matter regarding what you end up with?
Shadow only wanted to show Silver what happened 10 years ago and Silver just wanted to witness, therefor they only end up in a causality loop.
Sonic wants to save Elise, and therefor ends up creating a new timeline.
Maybe Chaos Control is that absurdly powerful that the user's will decides how they want to affect history when time travelling?
Alot of what you mentioned in the video like Elise having an emerald that the other characters just so happened to not notice despite the other games could be explained by this game originally being a reboot for Sonic.
Until Generations came and said this game was canon 5 years later.....
That's a whole thing. I'll talk about it when I get to Gens.
06 has been referenced in a lot more games than just Generations. Generations didn't establish it as canon.
It's here everybody! This is not a drill! It's here, finally it's here!
I haven't finished the video yet and I don't know why I'm specifically pointing this one out but that cutscene between Elise and Amy is wayyy cuter than I remember it.
Like I know you compared her to her Heroes counterpart but she wasn't really that interesting there either given she was imo wayyy more crazy about Sonic there
33:51 Sonic has a great sense of morals. Not to mention he's spent the past however many days trying to keep Elise safe just for her to die. Death is absolutely a thing to get worked up over. You don't need to be in love to feel like shit over that. I think the only other time Sonic watched someone die was Shadow, who didn't die in vain, which I could believe wouldn't affect him as much as Elise.
OMG IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS AHHH
I think this story purposefully parallels previous games storylines a lot because it was the 15th anniversary of sonic and the devs probably wanted to do all the subtle references and callbacks. Like eggman trapping sonic, villain tricking a character into being against sonic, silver being able to perform chaos control on his first attempt thru sheer will, etc.
A detail that I kinda liked is that the beginning of the game you can't access the part of the hub where eventually fight Silver and CPUs say that part was destroyed by Eggman's attack, but they also say someone is helping to rebuild it and that person is Tails which I thought was cute
This one goes straight to my favorite vids list!
At about 1:10:00, I think the writers could have explained Silver’s decision to leave the chaos emerald with Elise as a way to stabilize Iblis, but that still in no way explains the blue emerald bootstrap paradox
I honestly kinda like Mephiles trying to do the Black Doom thing again - the fact that *we* know it's futile serves to underline Shadow's growth, and theres a certain satisfaction to watching this devil guy try desperately to tempt someone when he has no idea it isn't going to work because he has no idea who Black Doom is. Shadow never seems genuinely tempted by Mephiles in this game - shaken by the knowledge that humanity will seal him away for a crime he didn't commit, sure, but not tempted to actually take his revenge.
even though its another messianic trope to add to the list, its still awesome to see him be so triumphant telling evil to p- off.
I swear, Elise is the physical embodiment of every bad damsel-in-distress cliche people accuse Princess Peach of being. Like, y'know how some games show Peach as being a really well-written and capable character, like the Paper Mario games for instance, and even in normal games she's not *powerless* or anything, and yet people usually write her off as a useless damsel-in-distress who gets kidnapped every other Tuesday and does nothing about it? That's what Elise ACTUALLY is, she gets kidnapped more in one game than Peach does in a year and she does LITERALLY nothing, it's horrible.
Pretty much the only ones who say that about Peach are going off internet memes/fanon and aren't that familiar with the actual Mario games.
Peach is a damsel in distress though,Elise is just much worse.
@@Cr102y At least Peach has a personality somewhat. Elise has the personality of a wet paper.
I agree to a extent, but you have to dive deeper into the narrative to understand why Elise is the way she is. Ever since Elise's mother died she has been emotionally distraught which in turn would cause the Duke to attempt to control Solaris so he and Elise can go back in time and reunite her mother. When her father died and sealed Iblis within her, she's most likely had to be sheltered and kept away from tense situations, as to not cause her emotional stress, because that would release Iblis and bring upon disaster. Even though the Duke told Elise as a child to grow up and be a strong princess, she was way too young to have all these responsibilities put upon her, and her way of being strong is fighting back her emotions, so when you put her in these tense situations where Sonic is being attacked by Silver, or when Eggman sends Sonic and Co. to the past, she doesn't really have a choice but to fall back and try to stay calm, because she knows the implications if she is put under extreme stress and cry.
I'll enjoy watching this video over the course of a few days
If Elise hurts Sonic's feelings, he will lose rings and enter into invincibility frames.
The werehog is very close for his vet visit
I think Shadow being able to use chaos control after the final boss of SA2 isn't a continuity error, but because he was in the super form he had absorbed the chaos energy from all 7 emeralds so it makes sense that he can use chaos powers.
At least that's how I like to imagine it.
I meant the last boss of the Hero story, where he and Sonic are fighting.
@@Pariah6950 oooh right
I actually forgot about that-
Yikes 😬
😅😆
Wait, somehow I'd never realized that Blaze was getting sealed into a different dimension in the ending. I guess I'd just never seen the cutscene in full. But was THAT how they were trying to tie the sol dimension into all this? Does Blaze just canonically have Iblis inside her forever now? She does apparently refer to her flames as "my curse", according to the wiki.
On the subject of Shadow joining GUN, this is actually a very nice continuation of the ending of Shadow the Hedgehog, considering commander whats-his-face ends his character arc with accepting that what happened was more Gerald's fault than Shadow's, and Shadow now being part of his organization is honestly a really nice way to conclude that storyline.
I just checked the wiki to see if anything else supported that, and apparently the commander *apologizes* to Shadow in one of the expert missions, and invites him over to his house? Even the wiki says "this is presumably the time that Shadow became a GUN agent", which does make a lot of sense. Man, I'm learning some very interesting subplots through this series!
There's a common theory that this was a prequel to Sonic Rush and was meant to explain how Blaze wound up in the Sol Dimension, but afaik absolutely none of this is canon and can thus be ignored.
@@F1areon Yeah, after seeing "The Story of Sonic Rush", I see that it doesn't make a lot of sense, but this is just what I first thought when I saw that cutscene.
@@graysongdl But yeah you definitely weren't alone in thinking that; I've seen lots of folks wonder if that was what they were going for, too.
@@F1areon Yeah, this just kinda happens with Sonic Team. Retcon out of nowhere, no explanation, people are left to guess. Every time.
Oh this is gonna be popcorn-worthy. Not because I expect any defending, but because you break down sonic stories like no other and give them the deepest analysis.
Holy crap,the fake out ending was classic! LMAO Bravo sir
The reason people like Silver is because they use context and what little story he has to fill in the gaps of his character and see him as actually compelling. Like, the bones of his characterization are there, they just need to be actually well written to utilize it properly.
7:29 "Windows XP Land." HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA
Heck ye! An 2 hour long vid
This will be perfect was background noise for when im working in my stuff
I really apreciate yr vids by the way, l love when reviewers are not scared of telling their opinion or not falling into Crowed Speech problem so l really apreciate yr cotent
the thing I noticed is in sonic adventure 1 the final story is just super sonic saving the day. In sonic adventure 2 it's super sonic and shadow saving the day. And in this game it's super sonic, shadow and silver saving 'time?' whatever. So does this mean this is sonic adventure 3?
Shadow's absolutely a hacker. Just look at how he broke into Eggman's server.
When they finally found the computer room?
I finished the video.
I'm glad to have seen someone who I share my points exactly. Last year, the Sonic community was very annoying for a return of "Shonen Sonic", with some folks trying to pretend 06 was good and a misunderstood masterpiece, and to have someone remind us that, no, it was crap, it's very refreshing.
You even pointed out many things I wanted to point out: the Sonic X influence and mistake, Omega's characterization, Elise resemblance to Chris, Mephiles idiocy. It almost feels like there's really nothing for me to say other than, I can't wait for your eventual review of the Rush ttles.
Will you review Sonic Rivals too? Because the stories of those games aren't good. What about the Storybook titles? Will you review them before eventually going to Unleashed when the soft reboot happened?
The current plan is to do the Advance and Rush games next (Battle as well), then probably Rivals, Riders and the Storybook games. Then Unleashed. Don't know if Rivals will get full story videos, there's barely anything there. But I'll definitely talk about them. Gotta rant about that stupid Eggman Nega retcon.
@@Pariah6950 The irony that Rivals gave Nega more characterization than Rush.
I can't wait.
As much of a cop-out counterargument as it is to say this but I'm pretty sure every Sonic fan under the sun has a knack for pretending X game is "good actually" and claiming this or that's the only TRUE(tm) way Sonic franchise should be. If you don't like annoying things then maybe you shouldn't be within close vicinity of the little blue animal Bill Clinton.
I mean, i wouldn't say is perceived as a misunderstood masterpiece, but the game definitely was going for something great if not the pre-production and actual production rush, debacles and shit it went through, and the few good things it did are being avoided because of the pile of shit it came with in it, which is probably why there have been a raise of fans of it and the whole adventure era tone. More like ppl missing what those game had going for that made the franchise throughout the 2000's getter a new fan base. As a fan who followed the franchise since sonic 1 on genesis, i just feel kinda sad that the whole deal happened since at the time i really was hoping for the franchise to go well with it's new direction and really felt that, given more 36m/2 years of development the could have been the next adventure 2 in the eyes of the fanbase. What i think it should have been taken from the whole trash talking of forces and colors story as well of the praise for 06 and adventure that have been happening lately is that, ppl actually care about sonic lore and world being respected, even though things being treated as too serious like the dark age games did, isn't gonna work.
@@Canalbiruta They are in love with an idea, considering Sonic Team doesn't share that love for lore, at least in consistency. I see the result, and even without the excuse of the game being rushed, the story is still terrible.
to me, Silver is carried by his design and stories in extra media. but to be honest, I haven't reread his stories in Archie with my critical adult brain vs how I originally read them, with my spongey child one. but i like him a lot
28:21 nah not even just an anime protag, some people are just more shy about getting compliments than others
I think a good way to fix the weird issue of Mephiles being in the future, but not fusing with Iblis, and Silver not asking why he can't do the job himself would be to have him still trapped inside the Sceptor of Darkness, and to be able to speak telepathically to Silver idk maybe because he’s a telekinetic, so he instructs them remotely
"TIME TRAVEL IS BULLSHIT!"
As Cell from TFS would say: Multiverse Theory is a 🤬.
Sonic 06 got the best music, best shadow, and my favorite Sonic ending.
Your videos are great mate. Just wondering if you’re covering ‘spin-off’ games like the storybook games or the boom games? Would be hilarious to hear your critique on boom.
I'd also wanna know if he'll cover the storybook games, especially Black Knight.
@@ILikeMakeBelieveUnironically He has already said that he will cover the games in the storybook series.
Oh boy, I was waiting for this movie
What I like about Shadow's meeting Mephiles in Flame Core is that Mephiles seems to be standing RIGHT NEXT TO IBLIS. Also, gotta give props for making it like a large flame and a lifeless looking monster are shooting Shadow a PARTICULARY nasty death glare
TWO HOURS AND THIRTY MINUTES
this gon be good
Eggman's carrier crashes because time travelling Sonic was inside saving Elise, Sonic and Co. just didn't know that because they hadn't time travelled to get there yet. In that moment there are two Sonics existing simultaneously. Time travel.
Also I love this game and its story and had a big teenager crush on Elise lol I know it's never gonna be that everyone love sor hates the same things, but I never got all teh hate for this- it's not buggier than teh Adventure games and it looks beautiful, like that intro cutscene still blows my mind.
Whenever I see anyone talk about this game, I always think of Snapcube's Sonic 06 Real Time Fandub. Now THAT is a good story
The way I like to think of it in order to force my brain to force things to make some sort of sense is that the day when Solaris was tampered with and split into two it created a bit of a time bubble in the immediate area where there is now a cause-ality loop, one where the only way to break it is to completely defeat Solaris. Through this, part of the reasoning behind Mephiles' intentions is that he is bound to this bubble and cannot leave it and wherefore needs to learn to work around it, something that can be done through tampering with others who enter into this loop (as Sonic and friends obviously weren't originally there when the incident initially happens). Along with this, if Elise's death could cause the unleashing of Iblis then regardless of if Sonic ever saves her or not she will die sometime between now and the next two hundred years, so if Silver's future is caused by this specifically then it will happen regardless of anything done in the past. Plus we see near the end of the story that when Iblis is unleashed, it's unleashed quite literally immediately, whereas when the Egg Carrier crashes at the end of Sonic & Silver's Kingdom Valley stage we really don't see any of that at all. That news article could've simply been made up by Mephiles just to trick Silver, ending up getting Sonic and friends too, even if there is nothing to hint at that specifically (I guess that's why it's called "head cannon" though, right?).
I think maybe this game should have been split up in two games
The first part would be called “Sonic The Hedgehog Flames of Disaster” with Sonic,Tails, Knuckles and Crisis City on the cover. This game would focus more on Silver as the antagonist but he turns around near the end of the game. It would release in 2006 and Sonic Team would have enough time to finish it because it’s only half of 06. “My Destiny” would be the theme song of this game.
Part two would be called “Sonic the Hedgehog: END OF THE WORLD. This Chapter two would introduce Mephiles and show why Silver acted that way in the first part. Mephiles’ plot would also be less flawed and convoluted. The boxart would include Sonic, Shadow, and Silver in Kingdom Valley. This game focuses more on Team Dark and Mephiles but Sonic and Silver still get their levels. It would release in 2007 or 2008. This game would introduce “His World“ as the theme of the game. Also Secret Rings would be completely fucking cancelled
Both of these games wouldn’t have multiple campaigns, just one coherent campaign. The story would be way different than we see it today. This would be the good ending of how 06 turned out.
Maybe this duology could just be called Sonic End of the World 1 and 2 or....
Sonic End of the World: Flames of Disaster
and Sonic End of the World: Scepter of Darkness
And then they could rerelease the game with both games combined and call it “Sonic End of the World: Legacy of Solaris”
I know “Legacy of Solaris” is already the name of a mod but it sounds so cool
Sounds like how FF7 Remake was split into different parts, it allows the story to be fleshed further
With the Sonic and Elise kiss. People were more bother with the bestiality part instead of the necrophilia part. For me it was the necro part than Sonic getting kiss by Elise.
Why could not Elise just be a superpowered human?
We do not know that humans cannot have gameplay abilities. Judging by the Robotnik family they probably can especially Elise who kind of does have the power of a god sealed inside her.
I think that the art style might be the bigger problem than the species?
I think it would be fine if humans were actually similarly stylized as the main Sonic crew, like in Billy Hatcher.
@@Tybis That would've been badass.
That was I thinking too, maybe in the Sonic's story, she acts as an usual damsel in distress. But in last story, she gained some kind of superhuman power fueled by her grief over losing Sonic, with her power somewhat closer to Sonic's anthro allies that helps her finding the chaos emeralds in the time-space rift and reviving Sonic as well (with that infamous kiss replaced by Elise's tears), or even joining the actual fight against Solaris. It could be the perfect opportunity to flesh out the character development of Elise.