Official Sonic 2006 topic

[123654]

You know, this game was awful and had a terribad story that was filled to the brim with plot holes, but one criticism I don't get is when people complain about the blue Chaos Emerald time loop.

Paradoxes like that are extremely common in stories about time travel and they're really not that hard to understand. Yeah, the loop is rather confusing when you try to think about the actual mechanics of how it works, but that's something common to almost all time travel plots. You're supposed to just think "timey wimey shenanigans" and not examine it beyond that.

I mean there's a lot of truly unexplainable space-time plot hole fuckery in the game's storyline so I don't see why people get so hung up on the blue Chaos Emerald.

[Badnik Mechanic]

*slowly blows air out of lips*

Reposting this here.... Why? Very good question. Nobody seems to know why.

You know, had it not been for the big forum wipe I would have reached that milestone a long time ago, however despite this, in all this time on SSMB. In the 6 years since the game came out, not once have I ever made a topic looking at this game or any specific moment from it. I’ve contributed to discussions on it, even said a small opinion on it. But not once have I made a topic looking at a specific moment from the game and looking at what it did right or wrong.

This is a topic I've wanted to do for a while. Mainly because this moment has always stuck out like a sore thumb for me yet it very rarely gets mentioned in peoples complaints about the game, so I wanted to share why I don't particually like this moment, why I don't think it works, and also what could be done to improve it.

So without further ado, for my 9008^th post on SSMB. Here we go, grab the whisky, it’s time to look at Sonic 06. Specifically, this moment.

SONIC DIES IN SONIC 06!

Sonic 06 has been out for almost 6 years, and a lot of the jokes have already been made and they keep getting made, the usual suspects are Princess Elise, Silver and... That kiss... which isn’t a kiss at all and if people continue TO SAY THAT IT IS WELL I’M GONNA *Please stand by, the minders are administering the happy pills.*

Right... calm... Continue...

If it’s not characters or... that scene at the end... it’s the technical aspects of Sonic 06 which tend to get brought up time and time again. Yet out of them all, one thing almost never gets brought up, yet it’s one of the biggest things to happen in the game and when you look at the wider picture... it’s quite a major decision to have been taken.

That being, Sonic dies. Well... technically, he’s not actually dead but... . . Shut up.

Now you need to remember why this was a big deal. Rumour had it that in Sonic 06 one character was going to die. All bets were on Blaze (which sort of happened but again not really depending on your interpretation) since we knew one plot point was the flames of disaster and had seen lots of footage of Crisis City. So when Sonic 06 came out and day 1 of release came, reports started to come in that Sonic died at one point. Many people couldn’t believe it until that infamous gif appeared which showed the scene in question followed by giant a giant ‘SONIC DIES’ sign that appears.

Yet it gets overshadowed because of how bad the game is as a whole and shortly after comes... that scene...

I hate you.

So let’s take a look at that death again. Fucking shit isn’t it? But... why? Why is it so crap? Well aside from the dodgy animation, just everything about it is wrong. But to understand why it’s so bad, you need to look at various other deaths and its own context in the game to see just why it doesn’t work, as well as what Sonic Team could have done to actually make this scene work.

If you’ve read the Archie comics thread, you might remember I said something similar when a certain French Soldier recently died... but didn’t... anyway.

What happens before this scene? The answer, not a lot, we see Mephiles holding up a chaos emerald... then we cut to Sonic & Elise walking through a field and then... Zap.

.. .. ... that’s it? That’s how Sonic dies? A shot to the back as he’s walking through a field with some girl? PISS OFF! Sonic is a hero who at the time was 15 years old! Who had conquered every continent in terms of popularity! Shown Nintendo it wasn’t immortal and even survived his own company coming out of the console market not to mention have an exceptionally loyal fan base in the millions! AND YOU KILL HIM LIKE THAT!?

No game! No! That is a cheap and pathetic death which effectively slaps every single person in the face whoever played a Sonic game and thought ‘I like this.’ You can’t kill any character like that because it’s cheap and it flies in the fact of everything we’ve seen the character do and experience in his entire history.

Take Mario for example, can you imagine the outcry if he was killed in a game by a koopa trooper popping out of a warp tube behind him and zapping him with a magic spell? How about if Nathan Drake got killed randomly whilst walking through the streets by some mugger? People would be outraged because we’ve seen these characters in more dangerous situations and even when controlling them in game we’ve seen them and caused them to survive more challenging and difficult situations.

You cannot kill any character as iconic as Sonic or who has a large following like that, people have invested too much time and love into them for it to be taken away like that, even if it’s just a trick and they come back later on, if you’re going to kill a character like Sonic or even his friends, you’d better make it one hell of a send off. They’d better go off at the top of their career because then fans can then except it better as they’ll see their hero being the best they could be before they went out.

Now let’s look at some other media to see what I mean. First example the Death of Supergirl!

Supergirl! Hooray!

For some back-story, Supergirl was going to die against an all powerful entity that wanted the destruction of the world/most of reality. Almost the entire DC universes most powerful heroes were brought into the battle, including Superman, Wonder Woman and Supergirl. Supergirl is locked in combat with the entity and is able to destroy it’s physical form, but because of being distracted by another hero she is killed by a lucky shot... however, for the pages leading up to this, she’s kicking ass! She’s effectively fist fighting with a God of destruction and winning, only for her to die because of a lucky shot. Even then, the being she’s beaten up is so weakened he has to retreat in order to heal, thus saving the world. Take a look.

Now let’s look at what’s similar to Sonic’s death in Sonic 06.

• A creature of incredible power wants to destroy the world/most of reality.
  
• Defeats the hero by a cheap/lucky shot.
  
• Friends of the hero are in shock/upset.
  
• Villain then sneaks away.
  
  But there’s one crucial difference. Super girl dies fighting, for several pages prior to this she’s in one of the most intense battles ever and she dies saving the world/most of reality. She dies being the hero fans saw her being. Despite it being a lucky shot, she died fighting and living up to the fans expectations.
  Sonic didn’t do this... he died walking through a field.
  
  Let’s take a look at another death, only this time... one from a video game.
  
  Call of Duty (insert title here).
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  Ok, so this may make your eyes roll a tad but just stick with it. Call of Duty has done this in almost every game, however despite what you may think of the series and even these moments which are almost becoming a joke themselves. They still do them quite well which minimises fan backlash to quite a large degree.
  
  Call of Duty 4: Gaz and... that other guy die. At the end of Call of Duty 4, you are being chased on a highway being shot at, there’s a helicopter chasing you and you’re nearly safe when suddenly, you crash. There’s a slow motion effect and Gaz and... The other guy die. During the majority of the game you fight along with these characters, watching them die is quite the shock, but, they go out fighting, one of them is down to his side arm and even breaks cover to pick up a second weapon and is able to take out a few more enemies before he’s killed. Its one hell of a send-off and one hell of a scene, they die protecting you! You’ve been fighting alongside them for almost the whole game, often protecting them in some way by being in the dangerous areas, now they return the favour and pay for it with their lives. And like Sonic 06, it’s with a cheap and lucky shot.
  
  Modern Warfare 2: Soap and Roach die. Near to the end of MW2, you are playing as one of these characters and you have to infiltrate a house and then fend off against an endless stream of enemies. You then need to escape to the pickup zone. Now at the time, Soap was one of the most popular characters in the COD franchise, you played as him and saw him in some cut scenes, you were him in effect. How do Roach and Soap die? A cheap shot by someone they trusted. It’s a huge WTF moment, you don’t expect it or see it coming, it’s pretty big twist in the story.
  
  Now on normal difficulty, the build up whilst intense isn’t that hard a challenge... but what that difficulty up to veteran, the death becomes all the more shocking and expectable, mainly because you’ve just held off against what feels like an army and ran for your life. You feel that this was their high point, they wouldn’t get a grander stage than this. Even though the death is cheap, it comes right at the top of a high point in the stage and the game in terms of what the player feels and the experience of the characters.
  
  Just think back to films in which either a villain, the hero or both die at the end.
  
  Take Terminator 1 & Terminator 2 for example.
  
  

  
  
  
  Kyle Reese, shot, blown up, car crash, burnt, punched by a cyborg and he's stil ready to fight some terminaotors!

  
  
  
  Reese dies in the first movie... but how? First of all he gets shot and suffers a close range blast from a pipe bomb, because he was hanging out of a car at high speed on the highway throwing pipe bombs at the chasing terminator. The car then crashes and over turns several times, He’s then chased with Sara by a semi truck! He then blows up the truck! He’s then chased through a factory, collapses through exhaustion and his injuries.... BUT STILL he’s able to pick up a steel pipe and take several good shots to the T-800’s head! He then dies from a fall after he rams a pipe bomb into the T-800’s hip joint! FUCK! And they call Arnold the unstoppable one!
  
  
  

  
  
  I know now why you cry Elise... but why you are I just can't compute.

  
  
  
  Terminator 2, this final battle actually begins against the swat team, think about it, it starts with the terminator using the minigun on the swat, he’s then opened fire on by the LAPD and you see rounds hit him. He then goes to secure transport, he’s then opened fire on by a swat team, you see him take damage and even suffer slightly because of it. They then drive away and the T-1000 begins to open fire on them. The van crashes, the terminator is now badly damaged. They hijack a van he then hangs onto the van shooting grenades at the chasing truck. Then he jumps onto the chasing truck, is able to cause it to crash jumps off at high speed and smacks into a steel works! BUT IT’S NOT OVER! He then fights the T-1000, has his arm crushed in an industrial press... rips it off, attacks the T-1000 again! This time he is at critical damage and can’t stand, the T-1000 then puts a steel pipe through the terminator... yet he’s still not down! He pulls the pipe out of him, grabs the grenade launcher and is able to destroy the T-1000 and defeats him with a bit of a cheap shot... only two then say he himself must be destroyed... .. .. I KNOW PEOPLE WHO HAVE CRIED AT THIS SCENE!
  
  Their deaths come at the peak of their prime in the story.
  
  But before I show you the next example, lets go back to Sonic 06 again. Typically, most people play the game like this...

  • Play the Sonic story.
    
  • Play the Shadow story.
    
  • Play the Silver story.
    
  • Play the ‘last story.’
    

  Even if you assume, or if it’s possible, to play Sonic’s story last, how does that end? Like this.

  

  Ha ha ha, lets laugh!

  Sonic and Elise sat in a field laughing... erm... right... Ok maybe before this they escape the Egg Carrier but, that climax is over the moment you get to the laughing scene. The climax itself isn’t even that great, we’ve seen Sonic do that time and time again.

  Furthermore, you don’t go right into the last story, you come out of the game go through several loading screens and then various menus in order to select the last story, yet most people go into Shadow and Silvers story and play that. The build up for Sonic’s Death is, literally Sonic walking through a field.

  Even Blaze, if you want to argue that she dies in that game, has a better climax and build up than what Sonic gets.

  But you know what’s really odd about how Sonic Team got this particular scene so wrong? Because it wasn’t very long ago that they got it right. Some of you might be too young or not even Sonic fans to remember why this was such a big deal at the time, but if you don’t a bit of a history lesson.

  Presenting, what is arguably the first thing to make organised Sonic fandom rage... Shadow!

  

  Erm... no not the 90’s gladiator... this guy.

  

  Yeah... him. Back when Sonic Adventure 2 came out, Shadow had his fans and his critics, but his death at the end of SA2 was seen as being ok. Whilst some people wanted him back, the majority of the arguments were ‘who was better’ not if he should come back. Whilst there were some, the majority was just ‘who was better.’

  The bulk of the arguments about shadow came when Sonic Heroes came out and Shadow was back. The entire ending of SA2 at that point felt a bit of a cop-out at the time. Shadow for all evidence, had died. There was nothing in SA2 to suggest he had not, then when Sonic Heroes actually came out, it did nothing to clear things up.

  So why was there such a backlash to Shadows return? Well... his death in SA2 was quite well handled. No really it was. Just think back to SA 2 for a moment.

  Majority of people play as Sonic’s team first, and then Shadow, so you go into the last story with Shadow being victorious in the events of the game. So how does the Last Story build up, the Biolizard has attached itself to the front of the Arc and is now going to crash it into the Earth killing millions and causing a global catastrophe.

  Whilst a very basic fight, many people to this day still rave about it as being one of the best fights in Sonic history (I’m not sure why this is but people still go ape about it), it’s a pretty epic battle, you’re playing as both Super Sonic and Super Shadow. Heck your enemy’s full title is ‘Final Hazard: The Prototype of The Ultimate Life' But for the sake of length... I'm just gonna stick with 'The Biolizard.’ You’re effectively fighting a mad scientists attempt to create the ultimate life form. This is it, an attempt to create the peak of life and power... and you’re fighting it! But if you fail, it’s not just the end of you! It’s the end of all life on earth!

  The fight ends and instantly you see a cut scene of Shadow and Sonic flying towards the Arc, then Shadow makes a decision to ‘give them a chance to be happy’ which could be argued as being ‘save Sonic and his friends’ as well as the rest of the world. They destroy the biolizard, and stop the arc. But in the process Shadow uses all his power and begins to fall to earth and from the dialogue in the final cut scene, they’re all convinced he’s dead, there’s nothing at all to suggest otherwise. Even after the credits, no after scene suggesting he survived.

  What a way to go out of a videogame though. It was only after the popularity boom he got from this game that he was brought back, and from the SH script, it was clear they didn’t know if he should be a robot/clone/original or not, and it took his own game to explain it.

  But had SA2 been shadows last dance, what a tango to go out on... And then we go back to Sonic 06.... ‘walking through a field... zap.’

  Now... back to Sonic 06. How could Sonic team have made this scene in particular ‘better’ or at the very least, something to be proud of, despite how controversial it would have been.

  DON’T KILL HIM AT ALL!

  Ok yeah, that’s the obvious answer. But for the sake of the plot and getting Elise to cry, let’s assume the idea was ‘Sonic has to die’ what could they have done.

  Well in all the examples I’ve shown, there’s several constants. Either the character is at the peak of awesome, there’s nothing more they could do to reach that moment of grandeur again, or they have to be fighting in an epic battle that can be seen/argued as being the biggest/best moment of the story at that point.

  

  C'mon Elise, lets go for a walk... whats the worst that could happen?

  So obviously, there needed to be a better build up... not the Sunday stroll, Sonic should have actually had a fight with Mephiles, be it a boss fight, or just an awesome cut scene, they should have had a fight. The outcome is that Sonic needs to lose... but how?

  If you excuse how this is obviously going to turn into a little bit of fan fiction, I’d just like to ask you to use your imaginations a tad. Lets say that you start the last story, you see Mephiles laughing with the emerald, then he emerges in front of Sonic and Elise and they fight. Whilst Mephiles has been defeated several times in the game, the game up to this point has already shown that Mephiles is a dangerous creature who has some super powers, but we’ve not seen them fully yet.

  So why not go down the Super Girl road of deaths. Sonic fights Mephiles, and greatly weakens him. But Mephiles starts performing more and more dangerous attacks, Sonic is aware Elise is close by, so he tells her to run. At that point Mephiles delivers the deathblow, Sonic dies and Elise runs over to him.

  Now why is this different to the Sonic 06 original? Because it lets us as fans and as gamers see the hero in action against a dangerous foe, he loses and is presumably killed. Elise’s tears are also more traumatic because it’s no longer a ‘oh dear I’m crying now’ reaction because she realises she’s effectively responsible for distracting Sonic, he gets ‘zapped’ because he tried to tell her to get to safety.

  It gives her more reason to cry and makes her pain more real due to the fact she’s partly responsible instead of being a bystander as Sonic 06 currently makes her out to be. But also... Mephiles himself. If he’s been in a fight with Sonic and it was a grand one in which neither held back, Mephiles’ physical form would probably be damaged, he could then merge with Iblis and... do all that magic stuff he does in the final story.

  Not only does this make sense and gives us a potentially great fight to lead into, it also enhances Mephiles’ as a villain, his plan was always to be defeated as it was the only way he could merge with Iblis instead of simply “let us merge Iblis!” which is what currently happens. It’d make him far more cunning and calculating other than ‘Silver! That blue hedgehog bad! GET HIM!”

  So why have I gone on for so long about this particular point in the game when it obviously has bigger problems... because in terms of what dodgy story is there, this was a major plot point which could have actually worked, or at least been somewhat respectable, yet it was executed so poorly (much like the rest of the game), that it was always doomed to be a terrible scene. That said, it also has sight implications on future characters and plots.

  SA2 showed that Sonic Team were not afraid to kill off a character (who had a major role in the game I might add), but they’re unlikely to do it again or even take risks like they did with that decision to kill off Shadow (yes they brought it back but every sign suggested they originally had no plans to) due to how bad the cocked it up in Sonic 06. They did everything right with Shadows death in SA2, but with Sonic 06, they did almost the exact opposite and it went completely wrong. Even with Shadows build up, you had Crush 40’s Live and Learn at full blast, Sonic 06... there’s nothing, virtually no sound effects at all up until Sonic hits the ground. The whole scene just feels like a throw away... yet they just killed Sonic the Hedgehog!?

  Yes I’m aware it’s one plot point and not the games worst problem. But other than just saying ‘I don’t like that scene’ I wanted to show why I don’t think that scene works and not just simply dismiss it as ‘you can’t kill the main character anyway’ well no you can’t... he has to come back before the end of the game if that character is called Sonic. But I wanted to show why that scene is so bad, yet offer ideas as to how they could have made it work or at best be somewhat respectful to both the character and the fans. It’s not been the first time that the hero has died (even if they are brought back later on), and it won’t be the last, the problem is that in videogames and other media, there’s a method as to how you can do it and I wanted to show you just how whoever scripted Sonic 06 completely messed up this one plot point... however, my intentions were also to offer a solution that attempted to keep the story outcome the same, but also enhance each character in that scene based on their role. Sonic gets to act like a real hero, Elise has a deeper reason to be upset, and Mephiles wouldn’t just be a powerful enemy, but also a cunning and patient one.

  That and I didn’t want to moan about the usual things people moan about with regards to Sonic 06.

  Edit: Just wanted to say thanks for the likes, and a double thanks for those who liked both this and the locked one xxx.

[Kuzu]

Since we're talking about Sonic' death. Yes, it's a completely disgrace to the character and his legacy, there's not only no build up to it, it only holds a purpose as a narrative device to get Elise to cry; when the hero dies, it's meant to be one of the most awesome, heart wrenching things you'll see. Yet, when Sonic died, you hardly see anybody react, at all. Sonic has had an impact in almost every character's life, especially Tails, Knuckles, and Amy, but they honestly couldn't give them any varying emotions at all? I mean Amy's reaction is pretty understandable, but Tails & Knuckles look like they don't even give a fuck, let alone everyone else.

You want to see an awesome death of a hero, I direct to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xYC3P7eoWY

For the sake of spoilers, I'll cover this part:

Kamina's death from the anime "Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann". Ok, so Kamina and his team are fighting against one the enemy's generals and are trying to take over his base; all goes well until Kamina is attacked from behind, and subsequently killed. The death is swift, and just comes out of nowhere adding to the shock value, the characters are just as shocked as the audience. So where's the awesome part you ask? Well as everyone loses moral due to Kamina's apparent death, it shoots over to Kamina's cockpit; he's bloodied, beaten, and everyone is frantic all seems lost, but then Kamina opens his eyes, gets back up, and his only response to having just been killed? "Can't a guy get a little bit of sleep around here" how fucking badass is that, he's effectively dead and he snarks about it. So then he proceeds to pick his mech up, ups the morale of his entire team, and they completely turn the tables. So then Kamina teams up with his protege and figurative blood brother Simon, and they proceed to kick ass, cultivating in a completely new move from nowhere, all while epic music is blaring. After the baddie is beaten, we're then treated to a pencil drawn shot of Kamina, and his words "Later, Buddy" and as Simon marvels and his and bros handy work, he calls his bro only to get no answer, Kamina dies for real this time. Everyone is in tears, the sky is pouring rain, and even the mech is crying. This isn't even a one time thing, the characters spend three whole episodes before they're truly over it, and even then he's never forgotten as the audience is reminded of his deeds, and his inspiration. Now the kicker? He wasn't even the main character, nope SImon is the true protagonist of the show, yet his death was so well done, and he had such an influence on the series that Kamina is by far is the most remembered part of the show, even moreso than Simon himself.

That how is you do a death scene, it has to be emotional, epic, and all around sadness, not just from the audience but from In-universe as well. Sonic's death is just so much shit, that I couldn't believe that Sega would treat it's flagship with so much lack of respect, it's appalling to the fans of the series, the character, and the series as a whole. God, this has probably reignited by hate for this game, an I wanted to forget about it too.

Edited September 6, 2012 by Ragna the Bloodedge

[SonikkuForever]

But for the sake of the plot and getting Elise to cry, let’s assume the idea was ‘Sonic has to die’.

If all that Mephiles had to do was make Elise cry, he could have saved himself all the trouble of killing Sonic just by showing up with an onion.

[sonfan1984]

The reviewers probably won't shut up about 06 until a perfect Sonic game is made. Thus they will probably never shut up.

[Briraka]

Huh, Sonic 06. What can be said that already hasn't?

- Bad controls. In my opinion, better than Secret Rings. Characters move in the direction you want... sometimes... or just stick to the walls...

- HEY LOOK, MOM; NO PHYSICS!

- Nothing looks like they belong together. Uncanny valley humans with cartoony anthros, along with realistic animals? I bet someone 20 cookies that if you show an outsider of the series the intro, the first thing they think is, "Oh cool; a Final Fantasy game! And there's a guy who looks like that Robotnik fellow. Wait? This is a SONIC game? WHAT IS HAPPENING I'M SO CONFUSED?"

- This game has the Adventure series genre roulette at it's most extreme. In SA1, you choose between the different characters stories. In SA2, you switched characters in the two individual stories of the game. Here, you switch in the middle of the goddamn levels! Sometimes as the main characters in the other three stories! Doesn't help that the amigo characters suck more than the main trio, and Blaze.

- Stupid story is stupid. I don't even want to go into detail. It hurts me every time I think about it. If you want an explanation, go see someone else's post.

- The fact that a lot of people want to remake this game or to "bugfix it". Even if you get rid of every single bug in the game, you still have a terrible story, bad level design, alternate characters that don't follow the same gameplay structure as Sonic. And even then, Sonic's is still terrible.

Now, for the sake of positivity, I'll share my thoughts on some good things in the game.

- Stage concepts are kind of cool.

- Eggman's robots are kind of cool.

- The music was awesome.

- The game is consistently shit. It has a bad everything (soundtrack nonwithstanding). With Heroes, Shadow, or Secret Rings, there's always something good in these games. With Heroes or Shadow, there were levels that I liked (Seaside Hill/Ocean Palace, Lethal Highway, Frog Forest, Egg Fleet) that led to levels that I down right can't stand (Casino Park/BINGO Highway, Lost Impact, Rail Canyon/Bullet Station, FINAL FORTRESS GRRRR). With Secret Rings, it had a good everything, EXCEPT GAMEPLAY. Story, atmosphere, THE SOUNDTRACK(one of my favorites! who's gonna rock this place? place place), but I don't like having to play a shitty game just to get to the good parts.

It's just a bad feeling to have your hopes up for the next good thing, just to be disappointed. With 06, I always had a sense of dread for the next thing to come, so I didn't have my hopes up.

- This game was the slap in the face that SEGA and Sonic Team needed. After mediocre game after the next, they got their shit together, and made Unleashed. It wasn't GREAT, but it was at least GOOD. It had the best Sonic gameplay in years, and I'm happy that they took it and made it better in Colours and Generations.

I for one, look forward to the future of the Sonic the Hedgehog series. I'm actually glad 06 exists, because without it, Sonic might not have survived to this day. God speed, Sonic the Hedgehog, God speed...

[Dr. Crusher]

Actually, Sonic's death has always been there at the bottom of my own 2006 barrel.

If nothing else, Sonic could have at least fought him. But no, he never even found out who Mephiles was. The only time he saw him previously was one single scene, and even then he was only spying on him, and didn't know anything about him other than "He looked just like Shadow!"

I'm fairly sure even Black Doom had more of a connection with Sonic.

Edited September 6, 2012 by Dr. Crusher

[Dejablue]

I wasn't sold on the idea of Elise needing to cry. Killing someone in order to release a monster inside them seems much more practical. Also what were the parameters set in place that specifically stated that crying would release Iblis but simply shooting Elise wouldn't?

[Dr. Crusher]

There wasn't. If I remember correctly, Elise's death on the crashing Egg Carrier also released Iblis... I think.

Either way, the Duke won't be winning Father of the Year.

Edited September 7, 2012 by Dr. Crusher

[123654]

It would have made more sense if, like, you had to perform some kind of ritual on Elise to release Iblis. That would justify having to kidnap her and all that shit rather than either kill her or assault her with onions.

[Diogenes]

Well that's the weird thing, Iblis is released when she dies; that's how the timeline originally goes, up to Silver's time.

[Dejablue]

Huh then I was mistaken.

[Phos]

Well that's the weird thing, Iblis is released when she dies; that's how the timeline originally goes, up to Silver's time.

So then what was the king's plan? For a blue hedgehog to get disney deathed and then travel back in time and eliminate the problem from ever happening? Well, I guess it worked, eventually.

[Komodin]

So then what was the king's plan?

To stop the demonic ball of fire from reducing the world to a smoldering ball of rock. Sure, sealing said demon-fireball into his kid was a pretty stupid idea, but hey, the guy was nearly dead...

[123654]

One has to wonder why Shadow didn't prevent Mephiles from escaping the Book of Darkness when he had the chance. He just let it happen even though it would have eliminated the problem.

[GenesisCodeX]

There wasn't. If I remember correctly, Elise's death on the crashing Egg Carrier also released Iblis... I think.

Either way, the Duke won't be winning Father of the Year.

I actually laughed at this, thanks man xD

[Dejablue]

I guess given the fact that he was near death, he had to do something I guess Iblis couldn't be sealed inside an inanimate object? I thought Mephelis was sealed inside a book/scepter or whatever.

[SIXTH-RATE SOMA]

Now this is just pure speculation, but maybe Soleana is located next to a radioactive waste dump. It would sure explain all the brain tumors and hideous mutations.

Edited September 7, 2012 by Soma

[Salamander]

Hold on. If Iblis is released when Elise dies, then... well, wouldn't she die of old age one day? Iblis's release was always inevitable, if that was the case. (Maybe a few tears escaped her while she was burning to death when the Egg Carrier crashed.)

Actually, given the complaint about Sonic characters co-existing with realistic humans and animals... people have asked before what would happen if you tried to make the '06-specific characters more Sonic-y (replacing Elise with Blaze, for example), but what if you got rid of the Sonic characters altogether, had it as a game with nothing to do with Sonic and made it something more like Final Fantasy? It'd still be a bad game, but I feel like that would be a slight improvement.

[123654]

I feel like the game was originally supposed to be a sequel or prequel to Rush, but they scrapped the idea partway through and we got Blaze present in the story for no reason accompanied by loose, meaningless references to the Sol Emeralds.

[Dr. Crusher]

Now this is just pure speculation, but maybe Soleana is located next to a radioactive waste dump. It would sure explain all the brain tumors and hideous mutations.

Soleanna is Modern Scrap Brain.

Holy shit.

[Semi-colon e]

The problem I have with most of 06's levels aside from the level design is that they're so bland. It's like Tropical Jungle is a bland jungle stage trying to be Green Forest or Frog Forest (minus the frogs) and Lost Jungle. Wave Ocean is by far the worst offender (and it's my least favourite level in the game and a terrible way to start), being essentially Emerald Coast but shit, and Flame Core being the shit version of Red Mountain doesn't help.

I therefore hold Crisis City and Kingdom Valley (to some extent Aquatic Base too, aside from it's boring level design) in higher stead because they changed the style to being realistic like the rest of the levels, but they did it in a memorable and unique way. We'd had ruined cities before, but never in such a bleak and tragic way (and Generations improves this as an actual level as well), and while we've had castle levels, we've never had them over expansive lakes with walls of water, jumping off spires, and the "one woman wail" in the music. I think if 06's levels were more original like that, even if they were still on the dark and realistic side, many of them would have been more memorable. It helps that they were some of the better designed levels, as Sonic anyway. Sonic Team clearly knew this, and so these were the flagship levels for 06, as it were.

If Crisis City wasn't the pick for Generations, I'd have hoped Kingdom Valley was.

Edited September 7, 2012 by Semi-colon e

[Dr. Crusher]

Yes, definitely. Despite still being tish in terms of level design, Crisis City/Kingdom Valley/Aquatic Base were probably the least worst of the lot aesthetically.

However, this is yet another reason why even ShtH is higher on my list than 2006. For all it's problems, at least ShtH had some unique levels in there (visuals, I mean, not level design), like Digital Circuit, Lava Shelter and Circus Park. Hell, even the Black Comet levels looked more appealing than the majority of 2006's Diet Adventure levels, and those ones would have been justified (read: it's Doom's crib) to have been bleak and gritty.

Edited September 7, 2012 by Dr. Crusher

[Semi-colon e]

Shadow has a lot more levels though so it's easier to add variety, but personally I felt aside from Circus Park and GUN Fortress most of them were forgettable.

[Dr. Crusher]

Well again, I only meant aesthetics. You will forget them aside from that due to the crap level design, but unlike the aforementioned three for 2006, there's various types in ShtH that I'd like to see be reused in a better way in a future game.