Megathread IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog - Megathread

[dbzfan7]

The friends are utilized here much better than in the games, and I don't even think that's much of an argument. They're definitely not 1 to 1 to the games events or the comics would play out vastly differently, if we applied modern logic to it.

[DabigRG]

23 minutes ago, knuckles20 said:

The fact that they haven’t seen much action is one reason why I’m hesitant on the comics being “more like the games”. 

Very understandable.

 

19 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

If you haven't noticed, there's no "player character" in a comic. Different mediums shape stories in different ways.

That should make things easier.

[Shadowlax]

2 hours ago, Fire-N-Space said:

I never understood why Shadow couldn't save the world when Sonic was absent in Sonic Forces he's done it before thats something I would like to see a back story about.

Shadow went on vacation.

2 hours ago, StaticMania said:

Because for some reason, he forgot that scaling is a thing even among stuff like that.

Apparently the villains' competency can't rise to counter the heroes' competence.

There's no scaling with infinite really. He actually becomes weaker as the story goes on because you actually engage with him and he's nothing. The characters didn't act because the plot dictated it, that's it.

8 hours ago, DabigRG said:

The comic aren't based on the games--they take inspiration from them.

That's neat , but untill they show why its different and mattered, its kind of meaningless. As I explain below.

2 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Yeah I remember all those times Tails, Amy, Knuckles, Rouge, Omega, Espio, Charmy, and Vector took out final boss-level threats on their own and totally didn't rely on Sonic to stop the main bad guy.

The issue is infinite isn't a final boss level threat.... he isn't even the final boss. And is dispatched with relative ease every time he's fought. To answer your question earlier, and this is part of of it, infinite never showed why he's a threat. All sonic does is run up to him and punch him in the face, infact when you actually engage with infinite he becomes less of a threat. He seems like he has to litterally stop moving to do his powers for the most part, which lessons the threat... a lot. Along with that, plenty of other characters could have just ran up and hit him in the face.

In fact the people making the story know that. Its why all the characters are relegated to vuage notions of talking about how bad infinite is instead of actually facing him. Its why silver doesn't use telekensis , its why shadow vanishes. Its why sonic gets put in jail for 6 months, they built a big bad who isn't big... or bad... he's just kinda pathetic really. And not in a story way , where that has relevance. He just occurs... then leaves then its back to eggman.

When shadow can casually just fucking brush through your illusions or just kick one and it dissolves, and sonic can just run up to him and just hit him once and all his fucking illusions go away and you can see that is what they are, illusions .

This shows that none of the characters before that point actually bothered to engage with infinite in any meaningful way, because that would have been discovered like the second someone bothered to hit one of them. They were in a room doing nothing because the plot demanded such

7 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

They're still able to "handle themselves". We just don't see them taking major action much because they haven't been playable characters. That doesn't mean they're incompetent or that they contribute nothing.

 

3 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

 

Pretty much. Not sure why this is so incomprehensible lately.

Because i'm old enough to remember when sonic games had visual story telling.

Let me tell you two bout a game that came in the magical year of 2005. Called shadow the hedgehog. It was edgy, kinda meh, but it had cool levels. And guess what happened in damn near every level in that game?

You meet a character. And guess what they are doing when you meet them, FIGHTING. Its called visual story telling you see them, doing things. Heck if you plug in the 2nd controller, you even play as em. Fun fact for all ya'll who didn't know that. They are showing me what's going on.

Forces does not do that, along with what I mention above... which is indicate that none of the characters could have left that room... because... infinite powers being mysterious requires them to not engage.

Its not incomprehensible, its not being shown. And the comic, and the game is a visual medium. Show , don't tell . And if they aren't  showing me anything, i'm inclined to believe the bullshit stories they are trying to tell. You gotta show me this thing mattered to people and had lasting effects, or something, but you get none of that. All the towns people have moved on, infnite is nowhere to be found, the resistance is basically non existent. So what is it showing me? This shit didn't matter, and all its doing is refencing a game where everyone sucked.

 

[Diogenes]

1 minute ago, knuckles20 said:

That’s not what I meant. I feel that if they were to emulate the games they would be so dependent on Sonic for everything. Like how Tails became inactive when Sonic was captured in Forces until  Sonic #2 showed up. Despite when he watched Sonic “die” in Adventure 2 he steps up to the plate and faces Eggman head on.

Again: the other characters don't do as much as Sonic in the games because Sonic is the player character and they are not, not because they're deliberately being written to be incompetent or useless. A comic doesn't work like a game, it doesn't have the kind of structure that biases it towards focusing on just one or a few characters. We've already seen IDW giving more attention to other characters and showing them as competent fighters even though it's more closely based on the games than Archie ever was.

And the deal with Tails in Forces has nothing to do with them making Sonic the only competent character. They tried to tell a different kind of story, one that showed him as having very understandable, very human weaknesses to cope with. That story ultimately fell apart, sure, but it shouldn't be seen as some kind of attack on his character.

[Shadowlax]

Just now, Diogenes said:

Again: the other characters don't do as much as Sonic in the games because Sonic is the player character and they are not, not because they're deliberately being written to be incompetent or useless

They were deliberately being written that way to make infinite threatening.

Yo shadow just vanishes for no reason dude. A character, just leaves, with no explanation, who's entire existence could solve the plot is minutes... for months. They wrote that story, realized their villain was shit and made everyone shit to accommodate their shitty villain. That's it.

 

[Slashy]

Very little in this comic is well explained. I think the comic's world is exactly like the games except when it explicitly isn't.

[Diogenes]

1 minute ago, Shadowlax said:

The issue is infinite isn't a final boss level threat....

He tries to drop the sun on everyone. While simultaneously fielding an army of villain clones.

1 minute ago, Shadowlax said:

To answer your question earlier, and this is part of of it, infinite never showed why he's a threat. All sonic does is run up to him and punch him in the face, infact when you actually engage with infinite he becomes less of a threat. He seems like he has to litterally stop moving to do his powers for the most part, which lessons the threat... a lot. Along with that, plenty of other characters could have just ran up and hit him in the face.

Where in the hell are you getting this from? Two of the three fights with Infinite are running battles and he DBZ's the shit out of Silver, there's no reason at all to think he needs to stop to use his powers. And all Sonic does in any fight is run up and punch a dude, he has literally fought gods with ramming attacks, so why is this any kind of slight against Infinite's abilities?

1 minute ago, Shadowlax said:

Because i'm old enough to remember when sonic games had visual story telling.

Let me tell you two bout a game that came in the magical year of 2005. Called shadow the hedgehog. It was edgy, kinda meh, but it had cool levels. And guess what happened in damn near every level in that game?

You meet a character. And guess what they are doing when you meet them, FIGHTING.

Actually, what they are doing is literally fucking nothing. Shadow shows up, they hang onto his ass, maybe attacking an enemy once if you're lucky, while Shadow (meaning you, the player) does whatever he wants. Having random characters hang onto Sonic's ass as he ran through levels wouldn't have made Forces any better.

[DabigRG]

It's almost like Forces shouldn't have happened.

[StaticMania]

17 minutes ago, Shadowlax said:

There's no scaling with infinite really. He actually becomes weaker as the story goes on because you actually engage with him and he's nothing. The characters didn't act because the plot dictated it, that's it.

The scaling would be...if the heroes become more competent, then he also does to justify the threat...or this other thing I already said.

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Maybe it's mostly because the heroes aren't used to his powers...

Should've put familiar or something. But I think it still works.

[Slashy]

4 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

It's almost like Forces shouldn't have happened.

It could have happened, it just didn't need to be the status quo.

[Shadowlax]

1 minute ago, Diogenes said:

He tries to drop the sun on everyone. While simultaneously fielding an army of villain clones.

Here's the thing. When he does that , everyone is surprised at him doing that. Like he's never done that before. Like the authos pull it out of their rear because they needed a final big threat pop that showed why your protagonist mattered.

Here's the thing though, if the game actually showed him nuking cities and shit, that solves that problem. The game shows none of that prior to that point. Which is my point, they show nothing. And then the thing they do show, gets taken out by a tiny rock.

This is our villian.

1 minute ago, Diogenes said:

Where in the hell are you getting this from? Two of the three fights with Infinite are running battles and he DBZ's the shit out of Silver, there's no reason at all to think he needs to stop to use his powers. And all Sonic does in any fight is run up and punch a dude, he has literally fought gods with ramming attacks, so why is this any kind of slight against Infinite's abilities?

IIRC infinite slows down when he's doing stuff, and even during the avatar battle he stopps. And when he's summoning the sun he's still it seems as though if the construction can't operate on its own, or he needs to conjure it , he has to concentrate.

1 minute ago, Diogenes said:

Actually, what they are doing is literally fucking nothing. Shadow shows up, they hang onto his ass, maybe attacking an enemy once if you're lucky, while Shadow (meaning you, the player) does whatever he wants. Having random characters hang onto Sonic's ass as he ran through levels wouldn't have made Forces any better.

Showing them fighting an alien threat through out the story and investigating it and having them literally hanging out with you the entire time is the same thing is as sitting in a room doing nothing and only having story told though time skip text blurbs.

Not only you like wrong, on like a factual story telling level. You are wrong in the context of that story, they are all doing shit when shadow shows up and asks him to help. When shadow shows up the objective , turns into their thing. They aren't hanging on to your ass, you show up. They ask if you could help them do the thing they were already doing ussually. And then you help them

VISUAL STORY TELLING. STORY TELLING THROUGH GAMEPLAY.

[knuckles20]

Or it could have been handled better than what we got.

So on another subject; I’m looking forward to when we get an antagonist that’s independent from Eggman with the occasional collaborations. My favorites from the Archie days were the Iron Queen and Breezie.

[Shadowlax]

1 minute ago, StaticMania said:

The scaling would be...if the heroes become more competent, then he also does to justify the threat...or this other thing I already said.

 

Infinite being competent is a different story. A competently written infinite isn't some big bad, he's a guy behind the scenes manipulating people with illusions to hate each other and then eggman takes over the world. Oh and hey a game where you need to get the gang back together because infinite has sowed seeds of doubt between friends, actually plays into the friendship theme in the entire game. More than the lack of narrative that exists now.

Its almost as if the story is just bad.

[StaticMania]

Who said the story wasn't bad?

The story isn't bad.

But no, who was saying that?

[Diogenes]

4 minutes ago, Shadowlax said:

Here's the thing. When he does that , everyone is surprised at him doing that. Like he's never done that before.

Yeah because the final boss doesn't pull out his ultimate attack until the climax of the story. That doesn't mean he was actually weak all along or that him blasting groups of civilians or beating Sonic the fucking Hedgehog means nothing.

4 minutes ago, Shadowlax said:

Here's the thing though, if the game actually showed him nuking cities and shit, that solves that problem.

Problem fucking solved, then  Can we stop this stupid game of pretending that Infinite wasn't a threat, now?

4 minutes ago, Shadowlax said:

And then the thing they do show, gets taken out by a tiny rock.

I guess every final boss you used a Super form against is utterly harmless too, since they were beaten by forest creatures with 7 tiny rocks.

4 minutes ago, Shadowlax said:

IIRC infinite slows down when he's doing stuff, and even during the avatar battle he stopps.

Hey welcome to boss fights you do in fact need to allow the boss to be vulnerable from time to time so people can actually play the game.

And even if you can't understand that you should at least understand that the times when he stops don't invalidate the times when he doesn't.

4 minutes ago, Shadowlax said:

Showing them fighting an alien threat through out the story and investigating it and having them literally hanging out with you the entire time is the same thing is as sitting in a room doing nothing and only having story told though time skip text blurbs.

May as fucking well be when their "fighting" amounts to jack and shit. If you're so dead set on only counting the things you see happen I don't know why you put so much value on the characters merely existing near the action.

4 minutes ago, Shadowlax said:

Not only you like wrong, on like a factual story telling level. You are wrong in the context of that story, they are all doing shit when shadow shows up and asks him to help.

Gee what do you think is the whole point of the Resistance? Why are you going to pretend the offscreen bullshit the characters are implied to do in ShtH matters but the offscreen bullshit the characters are implied to do in Forces doesn't?

4 minutes ago, Shadowlax said:

When shadow shows up the objective , turns into their thing. They aren't hanging on to your ass, you show up. They ask if you could help them do the thing they were already doing ussually. And then you help them

By "help" you mean "do literally the whole thing". And this is somehow meant to be different from getting your missions from the Resistance?

[DabigRG]

17 minutes ago, Slashy said:

It could have happened, it just didn't need to be the status quo.

I was talking about the game itself.

[Shadowlax]

14 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Yeah because the final boss doesn't pull out his ultimate attack until the climax of the story. That doesn't mean he was actually weak all along or that him blasting groups of civilians or beating Sonic the fucking Hedgehog means nothing.

Given the context of the entire narrative and its failures up to this point up and include " removing characters that make their bad story worse "  " revealing the characters powers to be a thing they could have figured out in a single fight " and " having characters not do the one thing they are known for to make the villain threatening "  , yes I do believe they pulled out of their ass, just like infinite did that sun.

There's no reason for me to take that shit at face value , because the story never convinces me I should. Stories need to convince you to do that.

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Problem fucking solved, then  Can we stop this stupid game of pretending that Infinite wasn't a threat, now?

All he did was create illusions.

The Eggbots and eggman stuff were the things destroying things. So i'm not gonna stop playing this " game " because you have yet to provide proof of infinite not being stopped by simply bieng punched in the face. And you actually showed a pretty shitty example, because at the end of that level, the avatar... just punches him in the face.

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I guess every final boss you used a Super form against is utterly harmless too, since they were beaten by forest creatures with 7 tiny rocks.

Context is key.

For example: Those 7 tiny rocks let a person do cool things, and you get to see that person after and entire story of struggling against a foe worthy of it.. uses them to do cool things.

As opposed to an entire game of avoidance and disappointment, holding a rock to the sky and rendering the only threatening thing the villain did in the entire game, nul .

Context is key.

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Hey welcome to boss fights you do in fact need to allow the boss to be vulnerable from time to time so people can actually play the game.

But you still beat the boss at the end, yeah? Which means he has to do that.

Infinite isn't a character who has been introduced prior so you know its a boss fight thing. His entire context is this game.

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And even if you can't understand that you should at least understand that the times when he stops don't invalidate the times when he doesn't.

Sure

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May as fucking well be when their "fighting" amounts to jack and shit. If you're so dead set on only counting the things you see happen I don't know why you put so much value on the characters merely existing near the action.

They help fight off the aliens and are able to make it back on their ship and keep it contained to a single city. They didn't do  as much as shadow, but they did a something of tangible value to the narrative. And you see them doing it.

As opposed to the resistance that does fuck all, and you see them do nothing.

Quote

Gee what do you think is the whole point of the Resistance? Why are you going to pretend the offscreen bullshit the characters are implied to do in ShtH matters but the offscreen bullshit the characters are implied to do in Forces doesn't?

That off screen bullshit matters because its accompanied by onscreen bullshit. Show don't tell remember.

Quote

By "help" you mean "do literally the whole thing". And this is somehow meant to be different from getting your missions from the Resistance?

Remember that thing you mentioned above

"Hey welcome to boss fights you do in fact need to allow the boss to be vulnerable from time to time so people can actually play the game." that applies to this , except unlike infinite these characters have prior contexts so you can believe they are helping you but it can't be enacted in gameplay. Along with that, they can actually help and fight and kill things and they do. Heck if you plug in a 2nd controller, you can make em do it.

 

 

[Diogenes]

Honestly there's nothing more I can say. You've decided that what the game actually says and does doesn't matter, and instead are criticizing the imaginary version of it that you've made up. Feel free to imagine a version of me that wants to waste his time further on this.

I don't even know why I bother with this shit in the first place.

[Meta77]

See the thing with infinite some do not understand. As usual Sega created a character who on paper sounded neat but if they truly wrote him as they described and presented him should have been broken op. he took out sonic as if it was noting when they first met. He could create illusions of nearly anything and some that actually could kill you. He was able to fight All of sonics friends and created a sun just to get rid of them. But just cause suddenly a random nameless character holds hands with sonic ( i mean they do) they are able to be him. No real power ups just friendship power and this god like character loses. Now had sonic gone super or even hype it be easier to understand but no just regular sonic. just like regular sonic being perfect choas in generations. Sega forgets their characters powers sometimes.

[Sega DogTagz]

8 minutes ago, Meta77 said:

 No real power ups just friendship power and this god like character loses.

To be fair Rookie had a plot magguffin specifically capable of countering the god powers for the entire time up until that very last fight with Infinite with Sonic.

[Meta77]

Ah yes.........I forgot the Magguffin

[Shadowlax]

Don't worry the plot will change and be dedicated to the sonic movie.

The thing everyone wants

[Meta77]

36 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

To be fair Rookie had a plot magguffin specifically capable of countering the god powers for the entire time up until that very last fight with Infinite with Sonic.

Plot device. But even so the fact infinite forgot it was just outstanding and later when he couldnt understand how hero was avoiding his stuff.

[Red Hot Jack]

I'll say it again: I'm really afraid to go back to the Archie formula of a long status quo/huge arc that takes forever, with tons of filler. I'll take the 12 issue storylines or shorter, thanks Ian. I really like when the plot moves fast, like Sonic.

[MadmanRB]

5 hours ago, Jack the Shadow said:

I'll say it again: I'm really afraid to go back to the Archie formula of a long status quo/huge arc that takes forever, with tons of filler. I'll take the 12 issue storylines or shorter, thanks Ian. I really like when the plot moves fast, like Sonic.

Well long arcs can be done right if in the right hands.

Even Ian can do it if hes got the incentive