illogical things in sonic games

[Thirsty Pocket]

Maybe it's held in place by that bridge, and could come crashing down at any moment should it snap.

[Frozen Nitrogen]

Maybe it's held in place by that bridge, and could come crashing down at any moment should it snap.

Or maybe there's some sort of lingering antigravity effect particularly confined to the area where the Emerald's been for a long time. I mean, the Island didn't drop from the sky like a stone when Ivo stole the ME in S3&K, which suggests that the AG-field outlasts the Emerald's actual presence at least a little.

[G-Force]

Because the Biolizard failed. It's a massive, bloated, amputee lizard that can't be controlled and requires mechanical life support strapped to its back to keep it alive. It's a failure on pretty much every level, so is it any surprise that they'd back up and take an entirely different route?

No, it's not surprising, but what I'm trying to say is that if they had Black Doom's help from the start, and yet still had to start with their Biolizard prototype, then there should be more "phases" of the project then what we've been shown. There should be a series of experiments, each more successful than the one before it. But what was shown in SA2 was essentially

1] Complete failure.

2] Total success.

3] PROFIT! Tragedy.

When it should more realistically be something like

1] Complete failure

2] Minimal success.

3] Some success.

4] Average success.

5] Great success.

6] Total success.

7] PROFIT! Tragedy.

To say that the first version is perfectly reasonable is just dumb for me.

And another thing, if they had access to Black Doom's DNA from the start, and had the technology to just cook up whatever the hell they wanted with it and still get the desired properties, why would they even bother with the Biolizard in the first place? I mean, if Shadow was created with what Gerald deemed "a more desirable form," why even bother with anything else?

[Thirsty Pocket]

Speaking of Black Doom....

I really don't understand the Black arms growth cycle.

Apparently they start as the little Leever looking worm things... I guess they could build cocoons or something to reach their bipedal state. ( I think the giants were geneticly enhanced or something, and obviously the gia-ant worms, black bull, and the bird thingies were different species... )

But what about Black doom? Is he even a member of the same species? Do all Black arms look that way when they get old enough? ...Why on earth do they lose their legs? And how do they float?

[Frozen Nitrogen]

And another thing, if they had access to Black Doom's DNA from the start, and had the technology to just cook up whatever the hell they wanted with it and still get the desired properties, why would they even bother with the Biolizard in the first place? I mean, if Shadow was created with what Gerald deemed "a more desirable form," why even bother with anything else?

It's MAD SCIENCE, that's why. They didn't really know what they were doing, meddling with crazy gene splicing AND xenobiology AND N.I.D.S. immunology AND Chaos Control all at the same time. Which is probably why Biolizard crapped up.

Then they learn from their mistakes, and it worked the second time. While crazy research is certainly sometimes the seven-step iterative process you described, with Prof. Gerald and his teem of 1337 space scientists on the case, it's not really beyond the realms of possibility that they should have massive breakthrough on merely the second try.

Or maybe all the intermediate stages got killed off while they were still a microscopic blob of cells in a tank of green goo, 'cos now they knew what failure looked like (via Biolizard), they knew when to kill the organisms and start again.

ADDENDUM:

Speaking of Black Doom....

I really don't understand the Black arms growth cycle.

Apparently they start as the little Leever looking worm things... I guess they could build cocoons or something to reach their bipedal state. ( I think the giants were geneticly enhanced or something, and obviously the gia-ant worms, black bull, and the bird thingies were different species... )

But what about Black doom? Is he even a member of the same species? Do all Black arms look that way when they get old enough? ...Why on earth do they lose their legs? And how do they float?

In the Black Comet you walk past loads of cyan / pink egg-chrysalis things, which presumably serve precisely that function. I always thought that maybe the larvae go into coccoons while the comet's moving away from the sun, spend 40 of the 50 years in chrysalis-suspension, and then pop out fully formed when the comet gets near to the sun again.

Black Doom might be just a standard soldier who got really old (hence the horns and the ugly), or he might be a "king" like ant colonies have "queens", or something. I suspect his floating just comes from the fact that he has 1337 Chaos Control ski11z. Which he does, 'cos he's teleports with flashes of green light on occasion.

Edited May 17, 2009 by Frozen Nitrogen

[The Conductor]

I always assumed that Black Doom was the only true Black Arms who has to breed in the traditional bumping hideoses...the thousands of mooks thar you mowed down in Shadow the Hedgehog were merly spawns that all the true Black Arms can do it. They spawn as the larve, then they grow into the foot soldiers, then the huge muscley guys, then the worms. Black Bull, I believe was either a creation of Black Doom or an interly diferent speices that just so happens to look like the Black Aliens.

[Badnik Zero]

Argus would have had to be PRETTY DAMN SPECIFIC to scoop up every last Nocturnus echidna from the whole world, and I'm loath to ascribe that level of functional omnipotence to him while I can possibly avoid it.

The way I saw it, that was what made the Argus event supposed to be creepy. They're all just lab rats in this god-being's maze.

I think the Codex actually SAYS that on some worlds (i.e. Sonic's), one minute of Cage-time might equal a week of outside-time, but it also says that for some the relation is the other way round, and a year of Cage-time might be only a second of outside time.

I considered that also, but it raises so many problems about how Ix could dominate these people, and why they're still alive like you said, that it's just easier to say it was a slip up by the Bioware writing staff.

Maybe Thebes is saying he regrets being away from his homeworld for all the time that must have passed while they were gone.

Edited May 17, 2009 by Badnikz

[Frozen Nitrogen]

I considered that also, but it raises so many problems about how Ix could dominate these people, and why they're still alive like you said, that it's just easier to say it was a slip up by the Bioware writing staff.

I always thought that was a bit iffy as well. Especially the Zoah. They're twelve-foot-tall metal / electric titans with sci-fi lasers and space cruisers. Crappy disorientated echidnas whos best weapons are vaguely steampunk-esque automata with a penchant for mimicry are NOT going to win a war against these folks.

BUT THEN AGAIN, the Nocturnus didn't have to fight the Zoah, did they? Ix secured their allegience by beating Raxos in single combat. My concept of how the Nocturnus managed to claw their way to the top of the food chain in the Cage is essentially all just political genius on Ix's part. He'll have played one race against the other, accruing technology through trade, and carefully, carefully avoiding open warfare until he's got his Kron-made uber-weapons and Zoah-made energy shields and N'ggral-made leech-tech and Voxai-made teleporters.

But even then, if you think about it, Ix really DOSN'T dominate the other races of the Cage apart from the Kron. The Zoah and the N'ggral he keeps busy expending their energies against each other, and the Voxai are very much his allies and not his slaves; as Shade says, Nocturnus who set foot in Sector Charybdis tend to... disappear.