Megathread IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog - Megathread

[Meta77]

After reading the issue it was one of the better

Sonic is tiring out he's fast but finally we sonic has a limit

Shadow honestly thought he was immune so he got reckless then mad that HE could be infected.  The comic sets him up in denial of this but it's most likely cause its mutating so fast. Orginally did it not not mutate trees but now it does. So I'm sure it alters him

Sonic was tight in giving tinker a chance. Starline changed him back

Give Omega limes like this in the games. Such a violent funny robot so so violent

[TeamCinas]

I really dig how IDW's now inserting bits of grey morality with the Eggman situation. 

Sonic and Shadow are both clearly in the right in terms of how they feel. Yeah, the two's viewpoints are generic, but hey, It's effective. Sonic thinks Mr. Tinker should've just been left alone while Shadow wanted to simply take out Dr. Eggman. The two are mutual in thinking that the doctor should be dealt with, but it's their clashing views that ultimately get in the way of anything actually getting done. 

It's an extremely clever way of implementing the mandate that none of the Sega characters are allowed to be killed off. 

 

Also, I like seeing that Sonic is now actually vulnerable again. After years of seeing the perfect little blue shit with non-fans blindly assuming that was how things are supposed to be because "talking cartoon animals lol XDDDDDDD", to see Sonic actively doubt himself, having his mind wandering back to the worst, etc. This legitimately reinforces the idea of how courageous he is while also introducing intrigue into his surprisingly introspective thought-process.

[Meta77]

Cause ian at least gives sonic faults unlike Sega who act as if sonic is a god who never fails or gets down.

[Diogenes]

I know that nobody actually wants to willingly think about Forces but we really shouldn't ignore that the game starts with Sonic getting the shit beaten out of him.

[Meta77]

He gets kicked like twice.  That and the fact it had no effect on him. He's in a prison cracking jokes and all smiles literally almost the entire game. Here at least we see his struggles both in endurance and in his reasons for saving mr tinker. He knows he was right in someway.  He didn't know some guy named starline would bring him back and metal couldn't find him

[DabigRG]

 

7 minutes ago, Meta77 said:

Cause ian at least gives sonic faults unlike Sega who act as if sonic is a god who never fails or gets down.

 

5 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

I know that nobody actually wants to willingly think about Forces but we really shouldn't ignore that the game starts with Sonic getting the shit beaten out of him.

I think Lost World is more appropriate in context.

[SBR2]

2 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

I know that nobody actually wants to willingly think about Forces but we really shouldn't ignore that the game starts with Sonic getting the shit beaten out of him.

That's what I don't get about "Give Sonic faults". Since Lost World all the main canon games have been showing Sonic as not being flawless and even his rushing into situations style as being not a great thing for every situation. 

[Shadowlax]

10 minutes ago, Meta77 said:

Cause ian at least gives sonic faults unlike Sega who act as if sonic is a god who never fails or gets down.

That's true but the faults can only go so far considering how much sega monitors how what Ian writs in regards to that sort. The only folks to get away with that freely were the boom people and that's because it was a comedy. It also had the best version of sonic

[Red Hot Jack]

Just now, Shadowlax said:

That's true but the faults can only go so far considering how much sega monitors how what Ian writs in regards to that sort. The only folks to get away with that freely were the boom people and that's because it was a comedy. It also had the best version of sonic

Yes, definitely agree.

[DabigRG]

4 minutes ago, SBR2 said:

That's what I don't get about "Give Sonic faults". Since Lost World all the main canon games have been showing Sonic as not being flawless and even his rushing into situations style as being not a great thing for every situation. 

Oh, was that a thing in Forces too?

But really, I kinda got the impression some people have just had some sort of umbrage with him for a while. Remember the first few issues?

[Diogenes]

1 minute ago, Meta77 said:

He gets kicked like twice. 

Come the fuck on, man. He takes like a dozen clean hits at least, enough to knock him out, and then he spends months imprisoned on the Death Egg while the world goes to shit. Could they have written the whole series of events better? Yes, sure, fine, a hundred times over. Pretty much everyone agrees that Forces' story is a shitshow, I'm certainly not going to argue otherwise. But if you can actually watch that scene and still say that Sega treats Sonic like "a god who never fails" you're full of shit.

Doubly so if you're going to act like Sonic getting infected with no actual consequences beyond getting a little winded several issues later is some kind of meaningful loss for the character.

[Shadowlax]

7 minutes ago, SBR2 said:

That's what I don't get about "Give Sonic faults". Since Lost World all the main canon games have been showing Sonic as not being flawless and even his rushing into situations style as being not a great thing for every situation. 

None of those faults seem to actually matter  or are predicated on the entire world being screwed or something.

I don't need sonic being wrong about murder.

You could have wrote a simpler version of this entire scenario, I can imagine this in a sonic universe type thing.

Shadow is punching a guy, sonic thinks he's going to far and maybe doesn't trust shadow shadow to do the right thing all the way. Oh turns out the guy was really bad and almost messed up a thing. Oh hey Sonic learns that maybe other people know what they are doing sometimes and to mind his business.

Or other scenario, maybe sonic and knuckles are hanging out and sonic keeps craking jokes , and I dunno maybe knuckles has some insecurities about some stuff and maybe jokes aren't the best all the time. Sonic learns to shut up a little

Oh hey maybe a whole story line about him appreciating how much tails has grown, and maybe he under estimated him a little

I don't need world ending scenarios for him to be wrong, but what I need for sonic for him to learn from those flaws and to do something interesting with that. But he's not allowed learn no one is, and the scenario in the book as of currently does not allow for anyone to learn. Nor is an interesting question in the first place. Because i don't give a shit why no one doesn't kill eggman, its because the story would be messed , this isn't an interesting qeary.

Make sonic's flaws interesting and relevant and make it so the world doesn't have to be littlerally on fire for that shit to matter

[Wraith]

16 minutes ago, SBR2 said:

That's what I don't get about "Give Sonic faults". Since Lost World all the main canon games have been showing Sonic as not being flawless and even his rushing into situations style as being not a great thing for every situation. 

Shit, since Unleashed with Colors being the exception. Ian writes Sonic cleaner in this run than any of the newer games. If there's any mandates to be worried about I doubt He's even ran into trouble with them. 

[Shadowlax]

6 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Come the fuck on, man. He takes like a dozen clean hits at least, enough to knock him out, and then he spends months imprisoned on the Death Egg while the world goes to shit. Could they have written the whole series of events better? Yes, sure, fine, a hundred times over. Pretty much everyone agrees that Forces' story is a shitshow, I'm certainly not going to argue otherwise. But if you can actually watch that scene and still say that Sega treats Sonic like "a god who never fails" you're full of shit.

Doubly so if you're going to act like Sonic getting infected with no actual consequences beyond getting a little winded several issues later is some kind of meaningful loss for the character.

Oh that scene is fine. Well besides tails. The issue is, the scene that happens afterwards, the scene itself is fine. ...Well the issue is everything that happens afterwards. Its a case one of the only good scenes in the game being ruined by the context of the rest of the game. What should be a " Oh my god, the bad guys beat up sonic moment " gets turned into " Oh none of that mattered " and I don't blame anyone for viewing it that way after having experienced that. Because with that context he isn't treated like an infallible god because the rest of the game proved none of that shit mattered

1 minute ago, Wraith said:

 If there's any mandates to be worried about I doubt He's even ran into trouble with them. 

Considering he admits that working with sega is troublesome at times and made it distinctly clear that even in this new book it is infact not easier to work with sega they just happened to ok some of his weirder ideas. I would imagine the answer to that is " Yeah and yeah " but he's trying his best

[Meta77]

2 hours ago, Diogenes said:

Come the fuck on, man. He takes like a dozen clean hits at least, enough to knock him out, and then he spends months imprisoned on the Death Egg while the world goes to shit. Could they have written the whole series of events better? Yes, sure, fine, a hundred times over. Pretty much everyone agrees that Forces' story is a shitshow, I'm certainly not going to argue otherwise. But if you can actually watch that scene and still say that Sega treats Sonic like "a god who never fails" you're full of shit.

Doubly so if you're going to act like Sonic getting infected with no actual consequences beyond getting a little winded several issues later is some kind of meaningful loss for the character.

Someone who fails well first off tone back the full of shit talk. Unless your way younger than me we can discuss this without talking like some young person in a fortnight stream.

But someone who fails suffers with the loss. If sonic truly failed he would have been in prison and feeling bad the world went to hell. Feeling like he could have done more to stop it.  But no he's all smiles and jokes to everyone's favorite zetti even after it hes all cookies and cream through most the entire game.

[Diogenes]

4 minutes ago, Meta77 said:

But someone who fails suffers with the loss. If sonic truly failed he would have been in prison and feeling bad the world went to hell. Feeling like he could have done more to stop it.  But know he's all smiles and jokes to everyone's favorite zetti even after it hes all cookies and cream through most the entire game.

Again I've said that the game could be written better. But that Sonic doesn't mope around doesn't somehow mean he didn't get his ass kicked. You can lose and still keep a positive attitude.

[Multikaris]

1 hour ago, Diogenes said:

I know that nobody actually wants to willingly think about Forces but we really shouldn't ignore that the game starts with Sonic getting the shit beaten out of him.

And even earlier games, including even the light-hearted Pontaff games, have stuff like Sonic being too used to those whom Eggman enslaves being friendly only to find out the hard way they can be just as bad as him.

[Kuzu]

Sonic getting beat up isn't a big deal because the game doesn't treat it like it's a big deal outside that one scene. So unless you want to focus on that scene in a vacuum and ignore the context surrounding it, it's pretty difficult to understand why its significant.

 

Nobody wants Sonic to mope, but it'd be nice if he actually behaved like a person, and not an archetype. I get it, Sonic is an upbeat guy who constantly moves forward and doesn't let shit get him down, but if he's not even allowed some range of emotion, then he's not even a character anymore.

 

[Diogenes]

9 minutes ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

Sonic getting beat up isn't a big deal because the game doesn't treat it like it's a big deal outside that one scene.

I mean it's only the inciting incident of the entire rest of the game...

[DabigRG]

17 minutes ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

Sonic getting beat up isn't a big deal because the game doesn't treat it like it's a big deal outside that one scene. So unless you want to focus on that scene in a vacuum and ignore the context surrounding it, it's pretty difficult to understand why its significant.

 

Him getting beat up itself technically isn't, but him being presumed dead because of it is.

[Shadowlax]

27 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

I mean it's only the inciting incident of the entire rest of the game...

That means nothing if the game treats it like nothing and that's the issue.

Ok , so sonic gets beat up right. Cool , seems major only serious customers are allowed to do stuff like that this guy must be a big deal. So the scene(s) that basically throw this out of the window. Is the scene with silver and subsequently sonic. We aren't even gonna address the text blurb or jail thing because while that's bad , its not as bad as this So silver a character who has the power of telekinesis. It is the thing he is known for, telekinesis is to silver as is punching is to knuckles or chaos control is to shadow. He does not use it, instead he opts to just fly at him. And gets knocked away. Now why is that, lets go to sonic first.

So sonic shows up, just as i'll prepared as he was previously, and is not only able to hit infinite which was shown to be a thing he was not supposed to do earlier, he is able to fight him off whilst he is doing a lot more with his powers. In the beginning he just summoned some clones to knock sonic around, now he's strait up messing with his mind and the environment around him and his perception of it and sonic fights him to a stalemate.

So what's the issue with this? The issue is, "why?". Stories are manufactured, all of them are. Someone has to make them and communicate to you, and the story has to convince you to invest and believe in it. And it does this generally by having a sort of logic or at least a through line you can follow and get invested in. In the first scene it is established that sonic can't even touch this guy. Now sonic can touch this guy  , and sonic has been basically in jail not able to be active for .. 6 months and he can just... touch this guy. But not only that , silver who is established to have powers that would not require touching this guy.. can't touch this guy. Now you can come up with all sorts of excuses as to why silver wouldn't be able to touch this guy, and that's your prerogative. However what matters in this case is what the story actually presents, which is no reason. This character who is synonymous with doing the thing that could solver the plot in... 5 seconds...doesn't.

That sequence of events shows the viewer that " Oh sonic had to beat him and all of this doesn't matter " , the narrative veil is lifted, it is yanked you from the narrative and shown you the script. Is that the script, is that the script on the ground.

Sonic Adventure 2 basically does this in one line. Which is sonic realizing shadow could teleport in the first scene,  and then the audience can go " Well sonic knows what he can do now , now he can try and fight him " not only does this give context to later battles. It also adds something when sonic figures out how to do it himself later.  Now the last part looses meaning because shadow lives and all chaos control stuff gets regulated to him for the most part and the series has largely moved away from anyone but him doing it to the degree in which he can just do it himself, but in that game narrative it makes sense. There is a through line it has not yanked us out of the narrative.

This game did the bare minimum, no scratch that, the bare minimum would have been sonic adventure 2, that games story all and all might not be the best , this game does nothing. It doesn't bother to try and explain to you through its narrative why sonic is troubled or what infinite is supposed to be cool. It is yelling at you off screen that things just have to be and no one is buying it.

It being the inciting incident means nothing if the story does nothing to make us believe that matters.

And I haven't mentioned the rest of that narrative mess, this is just like one sequence.

[Diogenes]

I'm not getting into another big stupid back-and-forth over Forces' writing, especially when that wasn't even the point in the first place.

The game's writing is shit. We already agree with this.

But it doesn't present Sonic as being unbeatable. It very explicitly presents him as being beatable, in the scene where he is beaten. The idea that Sega presents him as godlike and infallible simply doesn't hold up to even basic scrutiny. The end.

[Kuzu]

35 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

I mean it's only the inciting incident of the entire rest of the game...

I meant as something personal to Sonic, are we really being this pedantic 

If the basic idea is that Sonic isn't unbeatable in Forces, fine. 

[SBR2]

1 hour ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

Sonic getting beat up isn't a big deal because the game doesn't treat it like it's a big deal outside that one scene. So unless you want to focus on that scene in a vacuum and ignore the context surrounding it, it's pretty difficult to understand why its significant.

 

I mean except for how Sonic being gone after that scene is what leads to the world going to hell but sure it didn't matter after it happened. 

[Razule]

7 minutes ago, SBR2 said:

I mean except for how Sonic being gone after that scene is what leads to the world going to hell but sure it didn't matter after it happened. 

Wellll, it would essentially have the exact same effect if Sonic was just ambushed without a fight and sent six months into the future.