"Sonic Dissected" Dissected: (LEGO) Sonic Dimensions As You Truly Imagined It

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

And since THAT one in  particular is one of the videos that gives me a very negative outlook and how they portrayed folks who don't like SA2's story, I'd rather not end up going into another debate, let alone igniting it with my negativity and discomfort of such.

Okay, maybe this is just the cynical side of me, but I've actually seen people with views against SA2 that are similar to how they portrayed them. Granted, SA2 isn't perfect, and it's not that there aren't any people who have any decent or legitimate criticisms toward it, but I'm seeing it used as a whipping boy like that just as often.

 

Unless you're implying they'd have done better adding a moderate voice against the game, that is.

[Double A]

I think Frobman is a good archetype of a SA2 ranter. Always being a drama queen about how ''overated'' that game is but he's never able to bring something fundamentaly broken about it so he ends up being nitpicky about little things that don't really matter in your overall enjoyement. No wonder why SA2 is so often quoted as an example of how the story should be handled, that's the best game for that in Sonic's history so far. It's not about SA2 being some kind of perfect story, it's about the very basis of entertaining storytelling being respected.

[FriendBot]

I think Frobman is a good archetype of a SA2 ranter. Always being a drama queen about how ''overated'' that game is but he's never able to bring something fundamentaly broken about it so he ends up being nitpicky about little things that don't really matter in your overall enjoyement. No wonder why SA2 is so often quoted as an example of how the story should be handled, that's the best game for that in Sonic's history so far. It's not about SA2 being some kind of perfect story, it's about the very basis of entertaining storytelling being respected.

 

But the game is quite overrated. At its lauch, everybody went and said it's the best 3D Sonic game yet and now, a good majority think it sucks. I think it's a good game but it has its problem. Like the transitions to the action stages to mech-shooting to treasure-hunting wasn't a good idea. But if we come to story, the story didn't truly justify Knuckles' appearance in the game that well except in the Final Story. This is kind of similar to Blaze in 06 except Knuckles did something actually important but at the beginning, Knuckles met Tails and Amy by complete accident. Adventure 2's story was nicely written but there are better written stories in the series like the Storybook series and to an extent, Lost World and Unleashed.

[Briraka]

I think Frobman is a good archetype of a SA2 ranter. Always being a drama queen about how ''overated'' that game is but he's never able to bring something fundamentaly broken about it so he ends up being nitpicky about little things that don't really matter in your overall enjoyement. No wonder why SA2 is so often quoted as an example of how the story should be handled, that's the best game for that in Sonic's history so far.

 

It's not about SA2 being some kind of perfect story, it's about the very basis of entertaining storytelling being respected.

Then why are there so many plot holes in the story? Now I don't object to dark themes or anything, but the way SA2 handled it's plot is just... well.... dumb. It feels like they just wanted to have these cool ideas just for the sake of having these cool ideas and not actually trying to have them go together, like these elements all exist in some sort of void. "OMG corrupt military! OMG dark and brutal past! OMFG references to SA1 even though some of it doesn't make sense here! OW! I think the story just cut me with it's EDGE!"

[Nepenthe]

You know, people say there are tons of plot holes all over the place, yet I can only actually think of one within the scope of SA2's story, that being how Gerald had access to anything in his jail cell (Moon thing is later games' plot hole).

[Komodin]

I think there's also the probable issue of Tails being awarded a Chaos Emerald at Station Square for stopping Eggman from bombing it to smithereens. The last time one sees Station Square in Sonic Adventure, it was nothing more than a flooded wreck of a city after Chaos went Godzilla on it. Where in what's left of the city did he get the award?

[Nepenthe]

I think there's also the probable issue of Tails being awarded a Chaos Emerald at Station Square for stopping Eggman from bombing it to smithereens. The last time one sees Station Square in Sonic Adventure, it was nothing more than a flooded wreck of a city after Chaos went Godzilla on it. Where in what's left of the city did he get the award?

 

Station Square is actually an insanely huge, Tokyo-esque metropolis if you take stages like Speed Highway, Emerald Coast, and Twinkle Park into account and look into the backgrounds to see how vast it is. Even the Casino's sewer system is big as fuck. Given than, it's more than possible that only parts of the city were hit hard by the tidal wave.

[Briraka]

You know, people say there are tons of plot holes all over the place, yet I can only actually think of one within the scope of SA2's story, that being how Gerald had access to anything in his jail cell (Moon thing is later games' plot hole).

Alright, ignoring Gerald's access to all the shit that makes the plot happen, why did he put a Master Emerald shrine on the ARK? Wouldn't that be stupid to have a way for someone to stop your revenge plan by bringing the thingy that can stop the Chaos Emeralds?

[Vertekins]

There's quite a few games in the series that have far better overall narrative structure, a much more non-pretentious sense of darkness and overall far better scripts than SA2.

 

Namely the Storybook games and Unleashed.

 

SA2 brings up things like Maria and never explains her nature or basically anything about her except in supplemental material. Why is this girl so important to Shadow? She serves as a prime motivator for Shadow and is an extremely important plot aspect and yet that's all she's ever treated as and absolutely nothing more in the game's story. It's lazy and arbitrary character-usage.

 

Another thing I always disliked about SA2's story was just how seemingly arbitrary Tails actions were. Which in all likelihood is a result of Tails' purported late inclusion in the game due to fan demand. Tails needs to free Sonic from Prison Island? It's Amy who ultimately succeeds at that and she didn't even need to blast everything up and make everyone aware of her to accomplish it. The military/police are hunting them down? Go on a shooting spree in Mission Street with cops everywhere instead of...actually hiding! The entrance to Hidden Base needs to be found? Surely Sonic and Knuckles (The latter being a treasure hunter of all things) could find it competently enough? The president needs to be tracked-down? Follow his car...even though Sonic tracks it down himself regardless. The power supply to the cannon needs to be shut-off before the fake emerald can be inserted? There's no indication that this even needed to be done.

[Nepenthe]

Alright, ignoring Gerald's access to all the shit that makes the plot happen, why did he put a Master Emerald shrine on the ARK? Wouldn't that be stupid to have a way for someone to stop your revenge plan by bringing the thingy that can stop the Chaos Emeralds?

 

This only assumes he somehow put the Shrine in after getting arrested. It's obvious- both from the plot and from some of the in-game enemies- that he was studying the way the Emeralds work long before any of the modern day events kicked off. So why wouldn't he try to experiment with the Master Emerald? =/

[Roger_van_der_weide]

Hahaha, oh wow.
It's amusing to me how many arguments used against Sonic adventure 2 are exactly my arguments against Sonic lost world.

We could have a nerd pissing contest over this, but you know what, I don't want to win battles here, I'm genuinely interested in how this works.



Corrupt militairy and dark brutal past is certainly a little ridiculous and over the top for a Sonic story, so edgey.
I can make the argument they're central to the story, at least. Those things set all the events in motion and provide motivations for characters and events that will happen later.

Then we have lost world, that also has strangely out of place "Edge". Our classic "I'll eat their black hearts!" "I'll strangle the Zeti with my barehands!!" remarks. Except they have little impact on the story.
The only story purpose those moments have is to build up Eggman's hatred for the Zeti....Which never comes in to play, Eggman's to busy planning his betrayel of Sonic and never interacts with the Zeti again.

BUT! You say. THAT'S why I like/ Don't mind Sonic lost world's edge! It's just a small thing, a little sentence. It doesn't throw it's precense over the entire story. The edge poisons Sonic adventure 2's entire story while the edge in Lost world are just little sprinkles of spice. Alright. Gotcha. Good. Perfectly fine conclusion.
 

 

This ties in with an observation I recently had.

When people who disagree with me have arguments against Sonic adventure 2 for example (not all of them, most), they usually pick individual moments that bother them."Why are they confused between Sonic and Shadow? Why does the exploded moon have no effect? Eggman has a gun!!"

Individual moments that are a off, needed extra explanation or more subtelty.  Usually I can agree on all these points.

When they challenge me on Lost world/ Colors, they again bring up individual points most of the time.
"But I like it that Tails finally does something! Eggman used his jacket button as an actual button! So cool! Eggman threatening the Zeti is so intense!"
Individual moments of awesomeness drives their enjoyment. And yet again, I agree, those moments are great.



However. When I judge a game's story, I judge it as a whole. Within it's context. As a flow. My Sonic adventure 2/ Sonic unleashed story breakdown used the rollercoaster as it's theme. I judge a story on how it flows, how it feels, how we get from point A to point B.
Plotholes are little obstacles. We're in a themepark, of course that haunted mansion is fake and if you look carefully, of course you'll see a staff entrance and the machenics of the electronic puppets. Those are irrelevant to me. I'm carried trough by the flow of the ride.

My person problem with Lost world is the lack of flow. Things happen with very little build up and very little pay off, like every scene has a cool concept, and that's it.
"Awesome, Tails finally comes up for himself!"
Okay, but why? Sonic never showed disrespect or dismissal.
"Eggman hates the ZETI! OMG!!"
And then he never confronts them .
"Tails is a robot! OHH!!"
...And then he isn't anymore. Okay.

Ohh, I know what you're thinking. You're all ready with counter arguments.
"It's not Eggman's fault he never confronts the Zeti, he totally would if he got the chance!" "Tails was just stressed out and couldn't handle the situation!" "What, you want Tails to stay in that robotic suit all the time? Of course he removed it!"
Right, excelent arguments. But again, your minds are working on individual points. I'm NOT talking about plotholes or character motivations here. I'm talking about the overal flow of the story, the point, the moral, the essence. I'm not preaching against the characters, I'm preaching against the writers. It's not about why the Characters do these things, it's about why the Writers put these things in as they don't seem to flow naturally in the narrative.

It disturbs the flow, so it bothers me.
Even pointless things in Sonic adventure 2 have a flow. Knuckles's story is entirely pointless in the first half, but at least it has a beginning, middle and end. Emerald is stolen. he meets Rouge, he discovers Eggman's plot, joins with Sonic.
All the characters Knuckles meet, the object he collects, the discoveries he makes in that first half all become part of the climax.
"Maria is an empty character, she's just there to motivate Shadow!"
Yeah, so? There ya go, she's there to motivate Shadow. The girl as a character is irrelevant, it's the people she affected that are important. She doesn't interupt the flow, she strenghtens it.


Back to us. This is where I see most discussions bang their heads into each other. Individual moments versus story flow.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this is an absolute. There's people """"On my side""""" that love the games I do for individual moments, and no doubt people """""""Ägainst my side"""""""" would enjoy the full experience.

Never the less, this made me thinking.
It's more then just "Right" or "Wrong", it's about how our brains deal with stories. Our priorities.
Whether you follow a story on it's complete context or just on emotions you have for each individual moment.

 

 

(Edit, woa 6 new messages since I've been typing here? Wow.
To defend Tails' pointlessness in Sonic adventure 2, at least everything he does ties in with an activity going on.
Tails and Amy set out to save Sonic from prison island, so boom, here's Tails kicking ass in Prison island. Sure he doesn't save Sonic, but he partook in the activity anyway.
So to me, those moments still feel natural. They belong in the context of what's going on in the story.
I suppose you could say the same things about the Lost world moments that take me out of it.
I suppose it's because in Sonic adventure 2, they feel like "videogame things".
We need to infiltrate the base! Mission one: stop energy flow, mission two: get the layout plans, mission three, save hostages.
You know. Videogame thingies that vaguely have to do with you doing a mission.
While Lost world's dead ends don't serve a videogame purpose. OR a story purpose.
Just "A" cool moment that immediatly evaporates in the sun.
 

Also, good grief, so much fuss about whether people thought Sonic colors was like AOSTH or not. Fine I retroactively change it into "I personally think that Sonic Colors resembles that old cartoon show a tiny bit and I would like to explore the diffrences between the two to see if we discover something interesting." There.
Also, it amuses me no end that after the entire debackle about me making statements of the fandom in general without sources, someone else immediatly throws us a "Well most people say that Sonic adventure 2 sucks nowadays" equally based only on personal experience.

Aww, we're fighting a lot, but we're all not so diffrent after all.
 

[Komodin]

This only assumes he somehow put the Shrine in after getting arrested. It's obvious- both from the plot and from some of the in-game enemies- that he was studying the way the Emeralds work long before any of the modern day events kicked off. So why wouldn't he try to experiment with the Master Emerald? =/

 

Heck, Gerald's knowledge of the Master Emerald shrine -- and, by extension, Angel Island -- could even help why Shadow bears such a relatively noticeable resemblance to Super Sonic, what with that mural in the Hidden Palace and all. At least to me, it does...

[pppp]

SA2 brings up things like Maria and never explains her nature or basically anything about her except in supplemental material. Why is this girl so important to Shadow? She serves as a prime motivator for Shadow and is an extremely important plot aspect and yet that's all she's ever treated as and absolutely nothing more in the game's story. It's lazy and arbitrary character-usage.

 

I see your point, but I still think it was the best way to handle it, and Shth's plot proves it. (I can't believe I actually am saying something positive about SA2's story but here goes) In SA2, we get enough info to know she didn't deserve to die, and as for the rest, I think keeping her presence minimum allowed for some ambiguity. For all we knew before Shth, she could have wanted revenge who knows? Maybe deep down she did but at her very last moment her good nature won. The player's imagination could make her interesting.

 

Now in Shth we finally get some insight into how she was as a person exactly in those Ark levels aaand......She's just a boring generic anime perfect little girl.

 

Sometimes knowing less about a character makes him/her more interesting, since the audience can speculate. Another good example is the Joker in The Dark Knight.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

Or they could give have just done a better job at actually expanding on the character in Shadow the Hedgehog.

[Rusty Spy]

Speaking of, one of the things that realy annoyed me about Shadow's game was how it seems to completely ignore most of the actual backstory to Gerald and Shadow's creation. We had all this supplimentary material that went really indepth into why Gerald was contracted by the goverment, why he wanted to create the 'ultimate lifeform', why Maria was so important to him, etc.

[Roger_van_der_weide]

a much more non-pretentious sense of darkness

Pretentious? I always take Sonic adventure 2's darkness more as a naieve and silly attempt to be "cool" rather then pretentious.

I watched a making of video for House of the Dead 4 recently and the directors of that game pretty much talked like that too, they were just making a list of "Cool" things that people would enjoy.

In fact, 90% of Sega's output in the 90's feel a little naieve and over the top "Cool". Like interactive B-movies.

Only thing I'd really call pretentious is Amy's friendship speech, tough again, that's just typical anime japan stuff.

It's not like they have a huge "The goverment is evil man, the army destroys people!" focus.

The militairy being evil is just an excuse to throw a bunch of giant trucks and Xtreme jets in Sonic's direction.

And I agree, Shadow's game definitly should have cleaned up the story a little more.

Ah well. But hey, at least you could take solace in the fact that IF they'd went more deeply into the why and how of the ARK massacre and everything, the story would have been even darker.

THEN you WOULD get a full blown "Goverment is evil, Armies are corrupt!" plot rather then the more positive "You must believe in friends and forgive your previous enemies to save the day, yay!" story that the current Shadow game has.

Because despite all the guns and explosions on the surface, Shadow's game is pretty much a My Little Pony story at it's core.

...Oh wow, just realized if Shadow indeed went into the corrupt GUN side of the story, Shadow's game would have been pretty much like what Captain America, Winter Soldier is like. Heh. Interesting tought.

[Nepenthe]

To be fair, I still don't see the big fucking deal about the things Sonic Team included in SA2. Pokemon has tackled governmental conspiracy sci-fi stuff. Pokemon. Hell, SA2 and the first Pokemon movie have nearly the same storyline. The inclusion of these things as plot devices is less about some arbitrary list of what's "appropriate" and what isn't (which in turn is based off arbitrary categorization of things into "realistic" or "cartoon," and the inability to see these things as not mutually exclusive), and more about appropriating them to the actual universe. With as much shit that goes down in the Sonic universe- and with the knowledge that people exist in comparable numbers to our planet- I would be questioning why there isn't a fucking military around if GUN never existed. 

[Wittymations]

To be fair, I still don't see the big fucking deal about the things Sonic Team included in SA2. Pokemon has tackled governmental conspiracy sci-fi stuff. Pokemon. Hell, SA2 and the first Pokemon movie have nearly the same storyline.

I've actually said this a lot. Especially with Mewtwo Strikes Back and SA2. Personally, I think it's due to the division of the fanbase by them changing formulas a thousand and one times where people relate, somehow, gameplay and story together -- taking up banners and whatnot.

Say side A faction liked SA2 more than Colors, they'll defend many of its aspects. Side B, say, likes Colors more, they'll defend it more.

Both sides will shame the others, even for reasons not related to why they liked it. Thus creating different aspects, different flags to fly.

Pokemon, on the other hand, hasn't changed its formula up. The only thing it's really changed is new Pokemon and abilities. There's division, sure, but mostly in the Generations of Pokemon, less so story, and even less so gameplay.

[Briraka]

Pretentious? I always take Sonic adventure 2's darkness more as a naieve and silly attempt to be "cool" rather then pretentious.

I watched a making of video for House of the Dead 4 recently and the directors of that game pretty much talked like that too, they were just making a list of "Cool" things that people would enjoy.

In fact, 90% of Sega's output in the 90's feel a little naieve and over the top "Cool". Like interactive B-movies.

And that's why I don't like SA2's plot the way it is. They didn't think through how the story's elements tie together leaving a whole bunch of holes in the plot. Why did GUN shut down the ARK in such a brutal manner? What could have caused them to do so? The game never answers theses questions.

[Roger_van_der_weide]

And that's why I don't like SA2's plot the way it is. They didn't think through how the story's elements tie together leaving a whole bunch of holes in the plot. Why did GUN shut down the ARK in such a brutal manner? What could have caused them to do so? The game never answers theses questions.

I'll give you that one.

If only because it yet again reminds me of a beef I have with lost world, namely that we get no indication what the Deadly Six's lives and motivations are before/beyond their enslavement/ hatred with Eggman.

Besides Zavok's vague desire to destroy the world, but how/why/what/whatever.

Both background information that shouldn't be too relevant to the story, but yeah. The deadly Six's lack of foundation bothered me and I'll take your frustration of the lack of foundation on the Ark tragedy on the same level then.

"Pokemon, on the other hand, hasn't changed its formula up. The only thing it's really changed is new Pokemon and abilities. There's division, sure, but mostly in the Generations of Pokemon, less so story, and even less so gameplay."

Sorry, haven't learned how to multiquote.

Well, i do see an increasing amount of people stepping away from pokemon because of it's increasing obsession with gimmicks and sharing-groups of additional Nintendo services you need to work with in order to get everything out of the game.

And why yes, the "increasing amount of people" is "my girlfriend and this one guy I know", not a scientifically researched debate. So take that statement with a grain of salt or whatever.

Tough that has nothing to do with Mewtwo so I guess this is irrelevant.

 

[Briraka]

I'll give you that one.

If only because it yet again reminds me of a beef I have with lost world, namely that we get no indication what the Deadly Six's lives and motivations are before/beyond their enslavement/ hatred with Eggman.

Besides Zavok's vague desire to destroy the world, but how/why/what/whatever.

Both background information that shouldn't be too relevant to the story, but yeah. The deadly Six's lack of foundation bothered me and I'll take your frustration of the lack of foundation on the Ark tragedy on the same level then.

Eh, I feel that Shadow's past has more relevance to SA2's plot than the Six's in SLW. Shadow's past is entirely why events in the game are transpiring, so some lack of attention to detail really sticks out in my mind. The Deadly Six however, their past or the lore behind them aren't really the focus of LW. LW is more about Sonic, Tails and Eggman and their teaming up. Plus, I don't think that they needed too big of an explanation behind them because of LW's more classic setting. I dunno, like six lizard people living on a planetiod in the middle of the sky is the kind of weird shit you'd see in CD or something...

 

(btw, Zavok didn't want to destroy the world, he wanted to get back at Eggman by sucking the energy out of Earth/Mobius/Freedom/Sonic's World/whogivesashitnow and he and his crew get more power as a bonus.)

 

Now, for some clarification: I don't think SA2 is a completely bad story. I just think that they needed to give more of a reason for why things are happening.

[Wittymations]

Well, that growing trend of "services" you're forced to take for a completed product is a growing problem in all fields.

The point I was getting at is that I feel the division of this fanbase, being sliced up into several different formulas, makes people associate elements of one game and treat it as a whole, because a new game gave them something they like, and causes the person to dislike the other product.

For instance, I see most Adventure fans like the Adventures mostly for the story and characters rather than the gameplay. They may not care about Generations as much because it lacked that item. This will cause them to attack the whole of Generations rather than just pick and choose. And, they will defend the entirety of the Adventures rather than the element they like most, the story.

This is true, too, for Generations. Generation fans may like the gameplay and not care too much about the story. They'll defend it as a whole, mostly for the gameplay, and then attack the Adventures as a whole.

That's an example. People relate all elements of a game as a single product.

And we have more divisions than boost games and Adventures. Far more.

We have the Classics, the Adventures, Heroes, Shadow, 06, Half-Unleashed, the Boost games, Lost World, and we will have Boom soon.

And that list doesn't include all the handheld titles.

I think, since the fact that this series has went up and down over and over again, all around, in gameplay style, tone, nature, story, and atmosphere, people just take different sides.

Pokemon hasn't really done that, at least not for the longest of time. It generally stays the same. Most Nintendo games seem to. There's a few controversial changes, I know. When Wind Waker came out, it was controversial -- but then it was pretty much accepted by some and then there's a split. That's why Toon Link exists as that name. Same reason why we have this idea of Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic.

When franchises change directions, there's a split, and Sonic split about, at least, six times. It's almost frightening for a fan, you have no idea what they'll do next and no idea if what they're doing is rational.

These splits make people like different things and accept products as a whole. And only when they splits happen do they look at the other game and either shame it or praise it.

[Celestia]

Wait, G.U.N's shutting down of the ARK was never explained? I could have sworn there exposition at some point about that, but I guess not...? I guess I just assumed all these years it was because G.U.N wanted to cover up the experiments they had been involved with, because...that's what a corrupt military does, I guess.  

 

Speaking of, one of the things that realy annoyed me about Shadow's game was how it seems to completely ignore most of the actual backstory to Gerald and Shadow's creation. We had all this supplimentary material that went really indepth into why Gerald was contracted by the goverment, why he wanted to create the 'ultimate lifeform', why Maria was so important to him, etc.

Pfft, who cares about any of that when they could instead add aliens to Shadow's backstory, because, uh...because Adventure-era Sonic Team said so.

 

...Suddenly I want to see an AU where Gerald was approached by Wisps instead, and Shadow has access to all their powers instead of Chaos Control.

 

SA2 brings up things like Maria and never explains her nature or basically anything about her except in supplemental material. Why is this girl so important to Shadow? She serves as a prime motivator for Shadow and is an extremely important plot aspect and yet that's all she's ever treated as and absolutely nothing more in the game's story. It's lazy and arbitrary character-usage.

 

Yeah, it's kind of a shame they never really elaborated--in-game--on why she was important to Gerald and Shadow, or even who she was as a person. I suppose the important bits are there: she was on the space station for most of--if not all--her life (which could imply many things), she and Shadow were close, etc. They could have expanded upon who she was in future games, but nnnope.

 

I never really thought about Tails not really being "necessary" in SA2, but you have a point. I still really appreciate his leadership role, and his rivalry with Eggman, but the fact he was added later in development of the game is more and more obvious whenever I think about it...

 

Although--

 

The military/police are hunting them down? Go on a shooting spree in Mission Street with cops everywhere instead of...actually hiding!

 

...wasn't the explicit point of that to distract G.U.N so Sonic and the others could escape? Simply being sneaky might not have worked considering how much presence G.U.N had. He didn't just go around causing that destruction for no reason.

 

At least the fake Emerald wouldn't exist without him. Not sure how the game would have introduced it without Tails--maybe Sonic would have it and he'd mention Tails made it after the events of Adventure, or Tails was going to be in the game regardless but wasn't playable, so they had to give him all those reasons to go through a level that were arguably unnecessary? Hmmm.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

I'll give you that one.

If only because it yet again reminds me of a beef I have with lost world, namely that we get no indication what the Deadly Six's lives and motivations are before/beyond their enslavement/ hatred with Eggman.

Besides Zavok's vague desire to destroy the world, but how/why/what/whatever.

Both background information that shouldn't be too relevant to the story, but yeah. The deadly Six's lack of foundation bothered me.

They're either space circus performers gone mad due to constant failure, and Lost Hex was their mobile home, or mutated wisps who were planning to take over the wisp planets but got sideswiped by Eggman in Colors and now want revenge against him and Sonic, with Lost Hex being a captured wisp planet.

[RustyRick]

I love how Roger's more in-depth post a while ago got ignored almost completely, I feel sad for the poor guy.

But on my end, to post up my own thoughts regarding SA2's plot:

I fully agree with Roger that as a whole SA2's whole 'dark and edgy' premise felt more as a excuse to include a whole bunch of cool stuff, namely that whole entire truck chase sequence after Sonic, space station crashing in the Earth to destroy everything, corrupt army stuff, the wazooks.

Tails' inclusion was pretty much a last-minute job as evident by how little actual importance he has in gameplay to story-based buildup concerning his own stages, but hey at least it was fun to do all those missions if you just go with the flow and act as if Tails was acting like the infantry scout guy or whatever when you control him.

And oh boy, don't get me started on the story plotholes themselves. I could name a ton of them:

- How the hell did Eggman even discover that diary? Was he lazing about on a beach near Prison Island when he stepped on it by mere chance?

- The mere notion that Sonic who if we take Adventure's plot in consideration was pretty much somewhat of a well-renowned hero in human society is suddenly being confused for a escaped military bio-weapon robbing federal reserves banks does sound a little far-fetched to believe.

- Eggman apparently wanting to blow up the entire Earth already if he didn't become supreme ruler of the world. This is justm e being nitpicky at dialogue, but in various points Eggman seemed to imply wanting to blow up the whole Earth, hence he collects all 7 Chaos Emeralds to charge the cannon up to full power. So...why did he exactly seem so eager to help out stopping the ARK from crashing when posthumous-Gerald turns up for the big plot twist reveal when it amounted to the same thing except blow the ARK up as well?  I just assume Eggman just wanted to blow up the city.

- Of course the whole final story plot as a whole, since how in the world did Gerald find the time to even Frankenstein-like modify Shadow's brain to make way for REVENGE! or even install that whole colony crash course-program in the ARK itself when he was imprisoned back on Earth and soon to be executed anyway? I just assume that he convienently modified Shadow's brains to carry out that program.

The whole 'Core of the ARK looks like the Master Emerald Shrine' thing was really just a excuse to pretty much have a huge throwback to SA1's plot elements, since I can't look at it from any other way. The waterslide at the end of Sonic's part of Cannon's Core, and Knuckles reciting Tikal's quote pretty much cements that.

And even if it was pretty much 'subtly' foreshadowed in the news report Rouge was holding, the Biolizard pretty much served as another qucik solution for a 'big epic final battle against time' struggle near the end since why it would actually be bothered to merge with the ARK and keep it on it's collision course when it's assumed to be just a primal beast in it's thought patterns is anyone's guess. I just assume that Shadow was too cool a character to become the final evil boss himself if Amy didn't make him change his mind and go with the whole 'I will carry out revenge at any costs!' thing and merge with the ARK for Super Sonic alone to fight.