Shadow the Game: What's the canon path?

[MetalSkulkBane]

"There is none. Only first cutscene and Last story are cannon." Well that was a short topic.

But in all seriousness, what I want to ask is what in your opinion SHOULD be cannon story, would that be for clarity sake or if someone wanted to make proper adaptations.

Personally I like to think that

1 every mission with Chaotix was canon, since they appear in the last story.

2 every stage could be considered cannon (maaaybe except few last stages), but most of them didn't had Chaos Emerald

Real question is whenever Eggman told Shadow about being an android or if Shadow helped Black Doom even once.

[ShadowSJG]

Honestly, I don't even know.  The game's story is so messy I don't where to start.

[JezMM]

Ugh years back I made a very concise post on this but heck if I'd be able to find it again now.

 

Essentially, the last story is 100% definitely canon.  So from that, all we can assume is canon is the events from the main story that are REQUIRED for it to play out how it does.  So that would include:

- Central City is heavily damaged and evacuated, with the President being escorted to GUN Headquarters for safety

- Eggman attempts to trick Shadow into thinking he is an Android (Shadow believing him - leading to Eggman's death, however, is non-canon)

- Sonic and friends travel to the Black Comet (so Shadow infiltrating GUN Fortress, Lava Shelter, and assisting Chaotix in FINDING THE COMPOOTER ROOM in Cosmic Fall is non-canon)

- Team Chaotix hacking Eggman's database is canon

- Most of the events and tasks that the NPCs carry out can be assumed as canon, whether Shadow helped them or not, at least in the cases where they did not directly involve combat with another faction (i.e. Charmy can be assumed to have collected the Top Secret Discs with or without Shadow, as they were likely important for the investigation, while Eggman fighting the Black Arms in Sky Troops can go either way on who won, canonicity-wise).

- Whether it happens on the ARK or not doesn't really matter, but the GUN Commander confronted Shadow and revealed his connection to Maria.  This isn't really essential for the main story, but if we believe the character commentary during Shadow's (presumebly VR) training in Expert Mode to come from a canon place, the GUN Commander does sincerely apologise to Shadow and offer his friendship, possibly as a lead-in to Shadow becoming a GUN Agent in 2006.

 

I THINK that's everything.  Of course, the notable thing is here - all events that are required for the Last Story to work are impossible to obtain on a single path through the story.  The truly canon events are floaty and unspecific other than the above points and can never be experienced in-game.  The main game is always just a "what if?" scenario where you can create your own story for Shadow.  Which of course, is what causes so much confusion when people assume there must be one canon path/ending in the main game.

[Tailikku]

Iizuka has confirmed that the Pure Good path is canon.

[JezMM]

39 minutes ago, Tailikku said:

Iizuka has confirmed that the Pure Good path is canon.

Considering Iizuka's response to why Blaze's story is different in Rush and 2006 was "They all had amnesia... or something" we can probably ignore this considering it can't possibly be true without the Last Story following on from events that never happened (Eggman apologises for tricking Shadow into thinking he was an Android... which never happens in the pure good path).

[Nepenthe]

I'm confused. Eggman apologized in the last story during the actual final confrontation. Why does that necessitate it take place beforehand during the actual storyline for it to be canon?

[Blacklightning]

1 hour ago, Tailikku said:

Iizuka has confirmed that the Pure Good path is canon.

Iizuka says so much weird shit when questioned about canon that I'm honestly convinced he just makes crap up on the fly to shut people up. Weird as it is to say about someone so high up in the development chain, unless there's actually anything in the games that corroborates what he says I tend to take little factoids like these with a grain of salt.

That being said I feel like Jez is pretty much spot on with this - the only thing truly definitive about the game is the ending. There are events in the game that seem to build up to that ending, but most of them come from mutually exclusive plotlines that can't be experienced in a single playthrough. Worse still, most of those plotlines communicate with each other very rarely throughout the course of most playthroughs - at the best of times most of the storylines assume you stuck to a very specific alignment for the entire playthrough, and even then most of them are so disjointed and loosely connected that Shadow has a tendency to just inexplicably teleport between scenes with literally no explanation whatsoever. It's a clusterfuck of plotholes and nonsense that makes my head hurt trying to make any sense of it.

Basically what I'm getting at is that there's nothing much about the flow of the story, let alone the quality of it, that's ever properly thought through, just a series of events awkwardly tied together by the fact that a Chaos Emerald happens to be present in every one of them for whatever reason. To say there isn't a definitive path through the game at all wouldn't be an unfair assumption - trying to piece one together would clearly be putting more effort into it than Sonic Team ever did.

[Semi-colon e]

I'm going to assume that most shit that happens actually does happen as Jez said, but in a different way. The Chaotix have to find their stuff, whether Shadow assists them or not, so their levels happen. I'm guessing because Shadow goes for the Black Comet that that level and/or Final Haunt are canon (I always think Final Haunt is more canon in my head because it has Sonic and it's just the better level overall), that Lava Shelter and Iron Jungle probably didn't happen. I would also guess that one of the flashback levels happens, most likely Lost Impact. I also buy that Shadow, in order to figure out his past, would have to play at least one of the ARK levels as that place featured so heavily in his memories.

Westopolis and The Last Way are the only levels we know for certain are canon, sadly. I would be okay with the Pure Hero path to be canon (mostly because it has Lethal Highway and Circus Park, the game's two best levels arguably) if it didn't leave out the stuff with the Chaotix crew. I like the idea that you can mix and match your missions in different combos, but by lord it makes the story a mess.

[Tornado]

3 hours ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

But in all seriousness, what I want to ask is what in your opinion SHOULD be cannon story, would that be for clarity sake or if someone wanted to make proper adaptations..

The one where he blows up the planet, fulfilling Gerald's dying wish. It's very touching.

[Big Panda]

For some reason I like to imagine the path that led Shadow to believe he was a monster (the ending where Vector's with him, and the one that involved the Commander confronting him with a gun) was canon to some extent.

[Drawloverlala]

i always though the path that shows you the CGi cutscenes is the right one.. i mean  from neutral to dark path... besides to relate more to the opening scenes..

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

3 hours ago, JezMM said:

Ugh years back I made a very concise post on this but heck if I'd be able to find it again now.

 

Might it be this

, this

 

and/or  this

 

that you're referring to?

All very nice points, might I add.

[Speeps]

I like to believe that all the stages happened somewhere along the way. In what order I don't know, but likely went along the lines of Earth > ARK > Black Comet.

The bosses at the end of each path definitely aren't canon though considering Eggman dies and Black Doom/Sonic get left to die. The closest to the real ending is the Pure Hero one, but considering Sonic isn't there when Shadow meets Black Doom, I don't think the events of the black comet went quite as simple as it was made out to be in that path.

[Angie]

Shadow the Hedgehog was such a confusing game that was not only that difficult to play, but the storyline had multiple continuity problems and I personally just disregard it. I thought SA2 gave sufficient closure to Shadow's story arc and the continued elaboration felt forced. But Sonic Team says otherwise, so oh well! ^.^;

[MetalSkulkBane]

6 hours ago, JezMM said:

- Whether it happens on the ARK or not doesn't really matter, but the GUN Commander confronted Shadow and revealed his connection to Maria.  This isn't really essential for the main story, but if we believe the character commentary during Shadow's (presumably VR) training in Expert Mode to come from a canon place, the GUN Commander does sincerely apologise to Shadow and offer his friendship, possibly as a lead-in to Shadow becoming a GUN Agent in 2006.

Character commentary? That's new to me. Interesting.

I notice is that no one commented about Shadow's morality (whenever he helped Doom or if he killed anyone). On one hand it's uncomfortable to think that Shadow killed any of GUN soldiers, but isn't that the point? If he was all goodie-goodie through whole game, then questioning his identity seems a little silly. (Man, now I wish I asked what Flynn about that before Bumbleking was shut down.)

[JezMM]

14 minutes ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

Character commentary? That's new to me. Interesting.

At the start of each stage there's a little message from another character to cheer you on.  You can read 'em all here (can't find a video compiling the clips themselves): http://sonic.wikia.com/wiki/Expert_Mode#Hint_Characters

Granted these are likely non-canon as Maria and Gerald also send you messages.  But the ones regarding the GUN Commander likely come from a canon place, judging by Shadow's involvement in GUN come next game.

[WakanoBaka]

5 hours ago, JezMM said:

Considering Iizuka's response to why Blaze's story is different in Rush and 2006 was "They all had amnesia... or something"

You are fucking with me right? Please tell me he didn't say that....No...just no.

[Sparky]

12 minutes ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

Character commentary? That's new to me. Interesting.

I notice is that no one commented about Shadow's morality (whenever he helped Doom or if he killed anyone). On one hand it's uncomfortable to think that Shadow killed any of GUN soldiers, but isn't that the point? If he was all goodie-goodie through whole game, then questioning his identity seems a little silly. (Man, now I wish I asked what Flynn about that before Bumbleking was shut down.)

  Ian answered that question before, somewhere.

[Stardust]

14 hours ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

"There is none. Only first cutscene and Last story are cannon." Well that was a short topic.

But in all seriousness, what I want to ask is what in your opinion SHOULD be cannon story, would that be for clarity sake or if someone wanted to make proper adaptations.

Personally I like to think that

1 every mission with Chaotix was canon, since they appear in the last story.

2 every stage could be considered cannon (maaaybe except few last stages), but most of them didn't had Chaos Emerald

Real question is whenever Eggman told Shadow about being an android or if Shadow helped Black Doom even once.

 

The only ending that seems to be canon is the one where Shadow recovers his memory, the True Hero ending with Sonic and the defeat of Black Doom.

 

The game is about Shadow going in search of his lost memories - involving the death of Maria and the whole Ark episode - in an attempt to recover his true identity. Knowing this premise, we can conclude the game wants you to achieve this single goal, regardless of the path you build as you play the game. So let's look at what happens if Shadow has other endings:

If he obeys Black Doom, he becomes his minion and never learns of his actions aboard the Ark or his promise to Maria. Therefore, he never discovers who he truly is. FAIL.

If he pursues Eggman, he'll be told a lie:that he's an android and not the real hedgehog that fell to Earth while trying to save the world. FAIL.

If he forms a partnership with the Chaotix, he learns that he's a flawed experiment, one that caused too much destruction and concludes that he should've never been created. FAIL.

So no matter the path you choose for Shadow, the ending must be the True Hero with Shadow siding with Sonic against Black Doom. At least that's what I believe to be closest to canon.

 

 

[Hyp3hat]

17 hours ago, JezMM said:

At the start of each stage there's a little message from another character to cheer you on.  You can read 'em all here (can't find a video compiling the clips themselves): http://sonic.wikia.com/wiki/Expert_Mode#Hint_Characters

Granted these are likely non-canon as Maria and Gerald also send you messages.  But the ones regarding the GUN Commander likely come from a canon place, judging by Shadow's involvement in GUN come next game.

You can watch those here 

The whole presence of the Last Story is baffling in Shadow, really shows how uncommitted they were to the whole 'your choices matter' mechanic. Of course, it doesn't help that the entire thing is pretty incoherent. 

There's probably something smart to be written about how the notion of videogame choice has progressed from something like Shadow The Hedgehog to the Telltale or Bioware model, but I'd have to actually play some Telltale games (thank you based Humble Bundle) and probably this again, as I haven't played StH since it came out. 

[JezMM]

9 hours ago, Hyp3hat said:

You can watch those here 

The whole presence of the Last Story is baffling in Shadow, really shows how uncommitted they were to the whole 'your choices matter' mechanic. Of course, it doesn't help that the entire thing is pretty incoherent. 

There's probably something smart to be written about how the notion of videogame choice has progressed from something like Shadow The Hedgehog to the Telltale or Bioware model, but I'd have to actually play some Telltale games (thank you based Humble Bundle) and probably this again, as I haven't played StH since it came out. 

I think Shadow did the best it could considering the game was touted to finally tie up Shadow's story arc (thus something canon needed to happen for future games to build upon) as well as offer multiple story paths.  These are two conflicting goals of course, but considering that's the case, they did okay.  Just okay.

I admit I would have been disappointed if there wasn't a "true" ending with a bigger deal finale than any of the smaller ones, even if the final stage and boss were disappointing gameplay-wise.

To be honest though, I'm sure there are plenty of games that came before Shadow that did Telltale-esque story variation, it was just the case the Telltale popularised the format of doing it with cinematic presentation, rather than older games that used text dialogue etc.  Shadow is very much a tiny blip on the radar of choose-your-own-path games.

[Diogenes]

I still think they should've let you have your choice of Shadow's fate, at least for the length of the game. No Last Story, no "true ending", just have a couple of satisfying endings based on the choices you could make, then pick one afterwards to treat as canon for future games.

Anyway as for what's canon within the game...I figure there's no singular "true" path, most of the events happen in some form whether or not Shadow is involved with them, and Shadow's actions are mostly (though not necessarily exclusively) heroic. I don't think it's possible to pin down a specific course of events beyond that; it's just a permanent blurry smudge.

[caseykz]

I'm pretty sure Shadow would be smart enough to test whether he is an android. He could use chaos spear to injure himself and find out that he isn't made of metal. (Assuming Eggman's robots are not that advanced)

[Phos]

Now I can't help but imagine an alternative shadow the hedgehog game where Shadow doesn't remain after any of the endings, not restricted to dieing, just not remaining, such as leaving the planet or opting to return to stasis. 

[Lord Raptor]

Not entirely sure which one is cannon but I do know its either Pure Hero or Semi-Dark as both end on the black comet which then leads to the last story.