Sega DogTagz

Hmm... Joker is technically another Sega rep. Cool. Jokers a solid choice. Also, you can pimp out his School uniform and his Dancing All Night outfit as an alt. I wonder what stage they will use to represent it... The Velvet Room? Mementos? LeBlanc? (lol)

At least the 06 model attempted something more... realistic (lol I guess it does fit with what that game was trying to do). Considering Sega once partnered up with SOAP - It wouldn't actually surprise me too much to see a Nike swoosh under there now.

No reason to expect anything other than base Sonic + Realistic fur texture. It will be interesting to see how much fur they give the guy (I think D. Pikachu has fur that is too long for the sake of added detail) but should still be the Sonic we all know and love. All I know is his shoes better be absurdly shiny. Also, I hope they give his sneakers a more realistic bottom sole design, like Archie did. Never liked the basic horizontal sweep Sega just throws on their Sonic model.

Just to throw out a baseline definition of the term That last bit is pretty much Shadz in a nutshell. Where as Sonic is cool by virtue of heroism, radicalism and quite frankly popular-ism (he has all the friends) - Shadow gets it done by being the resident take no nonsense badass. There is no reason to shy away from that. Its what he was designed to be.

Shadow doesn't even need to shake the edgelord moniker. The best parts of that trope are a good deal of what makes Shadow so appealing as a character - especially when put in contrast with the rest of the cast. Embrace the good, weed out the unnecessary.

I'm not sure what you guys were expecting to end up being so shocked and appalled by the writing. We knew what this was going in. I'm just on board for this issue for the art work. At least that seems to be holding up pretty well.

Playing through Eevee now. There is some enjoyment to be had here, but the nerfs to the battle formula and abilities really takes a lot of the wind out of its sails. I've blown bast Lt. Surge and I'm pretty sure I havn't used an attack outside of Pay Day since I got that TM. My little Eevee is so overwhelmingly powerful (its not even like I've been pumping him up with Candy either) that nothing threatens the guy. All I care about is breaking the games economy and buying enough pokeballs that I'll never have to worry about them ever again. Also, I ran into and caught a shiny Rattata yesterday. No combo chain, just running around the world. I think its the first all true natural encounter Shiny I've gotten in like 4 generations.

lol We are basically on the same page here. I'm just saying Sonic Team ignores the narrative as a practice because its a clusterfuck and a solution to the problem isn't available as presented - and your saying they shouldn't ignore it and go with he nuclear option to fix it - because it is a clusterfuck. So. New Car it is. I like Mustangs.

Fix'd Now it'd be god tier

Time is such a long burn that limiting him becomes the problem. If timey BS says no about reusing points, then you have to define a "point". Is it a week? a month? a year? I'm looking for a solution that fits within the current narrative. I'm not here to argue that Silver or Blaze can't be put into a situation that works, I'm simply stating that by going full tilt into changes and retcons, you are essentially waiving the white flag on their current narrative as it stands. Sure I'll have a care to drive, but lets not mistake that for fixing the original car. My entire argument is look how broken this car is - how do you expect them to fix it, and every single response has involved in some way shape or form of getting a new car. If the canon is so far FUBAR'd that it can't be fixed then fine, burn it down. I just want to point out from a narrative standpoint how handcuffed S. Team is with the stais quo. Its a self-inflicted wound, but its there. Its a clusterF at this point - but our first solution shouldn't always be to insert a new reality when the one we have isn't agreeable. That leads to its own storytelling problems. One of the very few things this franchise has going for it is the investment a lot of people have in the characters. Constant reboots and revisions endanger that.

Does it take much long term foresight to hear about Sonic being killed by Infinite - jump back a week - and warn somebody? The standard was established when the original Rush described her role as Guardian. The game stated that she held watch over them for practically all her life. Much like Knuckles situation with the Master Emerald the Sol Emeralds were under her protection until Eggman came in and stole them from her prior to the original Rush. In the status quo scenario - Blaze is much more likely to have all the Sol Emeralds in her possession or at the very least within arms reach. Have the Sol emeralds even even been presented in Special Zones in the games? I think only the Choas Emeralds have that distinction. No its not. A solution would work within the established rules set before us. A retcon is a tacit admission of failure via sweeping that existing rule set under the rug and inserting something that works better. If I asked you to fix a busted jalopy, and you instead chose to replace it with another car all-togther - I'm not going to say you fixed the jalopy. That's what I mean by moving the goalposts. You addressed the problem by changing the rules proceeding it after the fact. You didn't accomplish the original goal, you just changed the problem around to make a viable solution something more palatable. Would a retcon work? Of course. Technically speaking a retcon can fix any problem. Thats kind of the point. But it is also a testament to how much of a narrative corner Silver is currently written into if it has come down to requiring a canon altering insert to have his time travel make any kind of sense. Solaris existed in all timelines at all times. 06 explicitly stated that mucking things up in on point of time wouldn't have any effect on other parts of the timestream. Iblis as a part of Solaris would likely have that same effect - hence why he had to deal with Iblis in the future. Silver came back in Rivals 2 specifically stating his future was destroyed by the Ifrit. In the Forces tie-in comic, Silver specifically came back to help deal with the impending calamity that doomed his future. Every-time Silver comes back with dire warnings on how to save his future, its tied to the current plague befalling the heroes. Specific, detailed information that lead him to come back to a specific point in time. And all that is before we deep dive off of the constant biographies and descriptions of Silver that go out of their way to label him as from Sonic's future (and even date it approx 200 years). All that is before we consider that Sonic ended up in Silver's time when he was booted through a time machine in 06. When Omega went into stasis for 200 years - no surprises here - he ended up in Silver's world. There is way more evidence pointing to Silver's world being the definitive and unquestioned future of Sonic's than any argument you could build against it.

Thats not solving the issue at hand. That would be washing your hands of it via retcon. You're not offering a solution anymore than your moving the goalposts. I agree with a lot of what you said. That would be the obvious, safest approach, but with the Silver that we have in the here and now, that is not an option left on the table. He's been a part of the "prime" timeline (stealing archie's lingo now) in both the games and comics, so there is no doubling back to the alternate future angle. Had Sega lead off with that approach, we'd be in a better place right now, but they didn't so we are dealing with the fallout. I'll reiterate that I have yet to see a quick clean solution to the problem at hand. The fact that the first idea that came to your mind is to nuke the canon from orbit and start fresh lends a bit more credence to my feelings. Furthermore - even if that was an option that was on the table, it only solves half the problem of detailing Silvers ability to time-travel. If you remove his ability to come back and prevent tragedies with future knowledge, you still have to contend with the reactive element in his ability to go back again and fix things he sees happening right in front of him, (like Sonic did to save Elise in 06). Not only do you have to limit him from impacting the plot with historical knowledge, but you have to find a way to handcuff his time travel so that he can't go back an additional week to warn Sonic about getting bodied by Infinite - or set up an Ambush for the Time-Eater at Sonic's B-Day Bash. And you have to do all that for every plot now until forever, in a narrative space thin enough that we can barley get throwaway lines for major side Characters like Knuckles. Blaze is the Guardian of the Sol Emeralds and is more likely to have them in her possession in comparison to anyone and the Chaos Emeralds. It sets a different standard.

Same problem. If there is 1 safe spot for Silver to consistently travel to, then that is all he needs. If he cant travel to the events of Sonic heroes due to temporal anomalies, but can accurately travel to a point prior, then there is nothing stoping him from telling Tails to secure Froggy ahead of time to prevent Metal Overlord. Then there is nothing preventing Silver from later returning to that same point in time and giving him the full details of the Phantom Ruby, allowing months of lead time to develop a countermeasure. If Silver can accurately travel to any spot in history accurate to a few months to a few years, even if it isn't convenient to stopping the threat - he is more than capable of distilling future knowledge to the appropriate parties. The comics have a better shot of getting away with it because they have more real estate. Blaze made it clear that she was not aware of what was happening in Sonic's world, and didn't bother to visit over the last 6 mo or so as she had no reason too. There could be a difficulty in communicating with Blaze, which would explain why she wasn't immediately tapped to deal with Infinite. As far as we know, Blaze has the ability to pop over on a whim, but doesn't keep too close of an eye on Sonic's world in the meantime.

I don't think its something we can chalk up to being lazy or not caring... at least not in Silver's case. Its just that - particularly from a videogame standpoint - there really isn't a way that you can establish a viable, recurring and plausible time travel insert that will satisfy the masses without creating more problems than it fixes. Creating a stable time-travel item/ability/whatever for Silver to utilize to move back and forth at will creates more plot holes than the one Sonic Team is willing to sit on by flat out ignoring it. The second you hand Silver the ability to rip open a portal and come back to a specific point in time, then he instantly breaks every plot past present in future. You have to start asking why he didn't come back yesterday and prevent the disaster currently on deck. You have to ask why he didn't go back and find the Phantom Ruby before Eggman. One mundane line of dialogue could kick a hornets nest that would have been otherwise just out of reach. By ignoring the logistics of how Silver moves through time, those questions sit on the sidelines rather than hovering over the narrative. Blaze, being in a different dimension is admittedly less dire, but similar in scope. By not telling us how she manages to casually and repeatedly cross the dimensional barrier, we can't 100% depend on her or her SOL powers to save the day. The second you establish that she can use Sol Control to jump between dimensions - is the second Burning Blaze becomes the solution to every problem Sonic can't handle right off the bat. Sonic Team ignoring the problem is actually probably their best play. In the comics, where you have more real estate to explain things and can better define specific conditions, you might be able to craft some kind of system that works... but I can't fathom the games having the time or space to explain something that would get super complicated super quickly.

I'd actually love to see something with Infinite. Maybe clean up the remnants of Jackal squad who cant be doing too well with their leader ditching them after a nasty beatdown. It would be a good introduction into how some of the disenfranchised populous scrapped by during the months Eggy was in charge. I'd also like to see a return of the Jackal man himself, perhaps with a prototype phantom ruby to his name so he can be something of a minor villain / enforcer under Eggman. It could make for a good script to see how he holds up all that Ego minus the overwhelming power of the Phantom Ruby.