Diogenes

The most sensible theory I've heard is that not bringing up money means people are less likely to wonder how all these jobless, seemingly-parentless children get food, shelter, and shiny new sneakers. Which would be a reasonable thing to address, but "money doesn't exist" is kind of the nuclear option of solutions to it.

I mean he is still a clone of Sonic in some aspects. Pushing the doppelganger angle harder wouldn't require losing "everything" unique about him. That said they absolutely made the right choice as far as designs that we've seen, even if it makes the whole mistaken identity thing harder to buy into.

The only problem I have with how Shadow's been handled so far is that they haven't really taken the time to get us into Shadow's head. Shadow, more than any other character, plays things close to his chest; most of the rest of the cast is incredibly straightforward, or if they're shifty, it's obvious to the point of being a joke, but Shadow is just walled off. And there's probably multiple reasons for that, but I feel that part of it is that they're still trying to throw together everything all at once. Even this "small" arc has like 10 major characters juggling 2-3 separate stories; it can never slow down and tease out the motivations of the character least likely to offer them willingly.

Honestly I think Mania beats Generations in every way. Actual classic Sonic gameplay, more playable characters who are all actually fun, some new levels rather than being entirely retreads, a final boss that is only mostly bad...

I mean. We exist in the world where Sega did fuck things up with the series for 2 decades. We don't get to choose to live in one where they didn't, where some kind of shift in how the series is handled wouldn't have been necessary. I'm not going to say this specific change was the only way to do things but something had to be done and on paper it was a reasonable enough way to approach it. Pondering how things might've been in a completely different hypothetical situation doesn't seem very productive.

In an ideal world, everyone. Fans of classic Sonic can have classic Sonic stuff without modern Sonic stuff involved. Fans of modern Sonic can have modern Sonic stuff continue its own course without needing to appeal to classic fans. Fans of both get both. Of course Sega and Sonic Team are incompetent so it isn't actually working but it's not a completely untenable idea.

The series' inconsistent identity was a problem for years before the two worlds thing came about. I'm not going to claim they've solved it by any stretch, but it's at least an attempt to set some boundaries.

If it was just a matter of not wanting to use the characters they could just continue not using them, as they have for years. They made the split because they wanted the two different versions of "Sonic" to have more clearly defined identities and boundaries instead of being vague mush.

You get 11 minute episodes when you decide to make a series with 11 minute episodes. It's not like they wrote a bunch of scripts first and suddenly realized they were all 11 minutes long.

Didn't.

Perhaps that is bad. Good ones most of the time though.

I wouldn't say "main series", but the line between spinoff and side game can be a blurry one, at least.

I mean the jail scene in SA2 isn't exactly dead serious. He's impatient due to being penned in and pissed at Shadow for framing him, but it's not like he's brooding or depressed or desperate to get out. And in Forces, of course he's not going to let his captor think they're breaking him, he's going to play it off regardless of how he's actually feeling. I just feel like these "Sonic jokes too much" criticisms threaten to strip anything interesting from the character. If he can't laugh in the face of danger, he's not Sonic.

I'm pretty sure that one's from Fighters (R couldn't afford half that many polygons), but yeah, that's what I consider to be the "correct" classic-style Super Sonic. In the other direction there's... Eugh. '06 Super Sonic looks almost bald, like his spikes are attached to the back of his head, not the top. Fighters Super Sonic looks like his spikes are rising from a more natural hairline.

The biggest factor in whether a Super Sonic design looks good is whether the top spike goes up and then back (good) or if it goes back and then up (very bad). The "Shadow" style Super Sonics are acceptable because they follow the good pattern but they could use more up.

It's a bit late for that; like Blacklightning pointed out he likely was based on concepts for an unrelated game, but they went and put it in Sonic and now he's all entangled with that, and it'd be hard to find the freedom to build something that felt genuinely independent from Sonic, if he even had the popularity to justify a spinoff in the first place. And honestly, if they were willing to genuinely go back to the drawing board with how they play, there's probably not many Sonic characters that couldn't work within some kind of standardized "Sonic" gameplay without abandoning their unique abilities. Telekinesis is a pretty flexible ability, it doesn't have to be just plodding around and waiting for something to throw, there's any number of ways they could use it to support faster, more fluid movement and attacks that aren't a complete bore.

Not when you consider that '06 is a dumpster fire in basically every way, and a lot of the series' writing elsewhere isn't much better. The idea that '06 Blaze became Rush (and onwards) Blaze has some pretty serious holes in it. There's been no sign of any raging fire demon trying to burst out of her in anything outside '06, despite the threat of it escaping being the whole reason for sealing her away. While she doesn't really interact with Sonic in '06, she is with him in one scene, yet shows no indication of recognizing him in Rush. And it's a bit of a stretch to believe that some random girl who appeared out of nowhere would get adopted into the royal family, become a princess, and take on the role of guarding some of the world's most powerful objects within a relatively short timeframe. It's a theory that only works if you don't really think about it. And regardless of what Maekawa may have been trying to imply, I'm pretty sure the official position at this point is that Blaze is and always has been from the world seen in Rush Adventure.

Yeah I'm left feeling a bit mixed on the story. That all said I can't say I'm disappointed with the game as a whole; mechanically it's a hell of a lot of fun and I still enjoy diving further into this version of Hyrule. I just wish they had been a bit more gutsy and a bit more clever about certain things.

I think it feels kind of fitting. Starline and Eggman ultimately aren't so different, and that's why Starline was so enamored with him in the first place. He believed in Eggman's flawless genius because he believed in his own flawless judgement, and he's struggling to accept that both of them are self-sabotaging and not quite as clever or in control as they think they are. That said this particular series of events may be pushing it a bit further than they should've.

A lot of people want to see everyone get a happy ending, no matter how implausible. Alternatively, a lot of people want to be able to twist the knife a second time.

Demo's up, also, new trailer:

Sounds fine to me. I mean I don't exactly like the voice, but Hestu was always going to be obnoxiously squeaky, and comparing side by side I'd say they're in the same ballpark.