Megathread IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog - Megathread

[Diogenes]

That's just Sonic Team's incompetence. They could've just as easily written more in-depth stories for Sonic and given Shadow the filler. Or they could've actually tried to write well and use both properly. And their shared movesets really don't have anything to do with this at all?

[Kuzu]

I dunno, I feel like they've never balanced them particularly well at all. It always feels so lopsided for either of them. I don't even know if I can call it incompetence, because how they're writing Shadow now is definitely deliberate on their part. Which makes me think how they wrote Sonic before was also deliberate. 

[SnooPigu]

On 5/15/2021 at 3:26 PM, DabigRG said:

Not really.

Shadow would've been capable of burning off the Virus just as well as Sonic hadn't he decided continued fighting and jumped right in between a bunch of them--which is what Sega preferred over him simply using the Ring Inhibitors to protect himself, mind.

 

Also, who did he lose to exactly? 

Shadow jobbed something he shouldnt have been effect him as a being called the ultimate lifeform.

Metal Sonic had him on the ropes while managing to escape which caused shadow to fail his objective and and starline easily dispatched him.

[Wraith]

Outside of Sonic x, Shadow has never been significantly stronger than other Sonic characters. In the last book, where he was considered to have been written well, Knuckles had him on the ropes. The same Knuckles that Sonic ran circles around for years.

 

It's also possible to outsmart him, which Starline did at the lodge. Fights don't always come down to raw power.

[SBR2]

2 hours ago, Kuzu said:

You may as well say this about literally every character that's not named Sonic. The cast have lacked direction for a long time now, it's only apparent with Shadow because his whole character was built on having a full story arc. 

 

 

 

Yes he was built on an arc. An arc that had a beginning middle and end in his debut game and they just made it more complicated than it needed to be by going "No actually Shadow was created by Aliens and Gerald built his giant death laser to fight them".

And honestly to me he has literally only been an engaging character in the Archie comics and that's like the only time he ever feels like the character people make him out to be.

[SnooPigu]

5 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

An interesting tidbit about Shadow from the new Bumblecast (timestamped):

In short, SEGA have now stated that Shadow's motivation is only to find strong enemies to fight. That's it. He's no longer proactive about stopping threats, he only cares about if those threats can provide him a fight, and if Eggman is defeated, Shadow will deem that it is no longer worth his time/effort dealing with Eggman, as he's weak.

As a result of this, Ian has also stated he intends to take a break writing Shadow because at this point, there's only so much he can rationalise. 

God, you can hear the defeat in Ian's voice. This should really be the ultimate example that Ian doesn't have a problem with Shadow, and he doesn't really want to write him like this, he likes Shadow, and he's just been handed a very, very raw deal by SEGA, and he has to work with what he's got, but even at that, there's only so much he can take. 

It's frustrating too, given this directly contradicts the narrative arc that kicked off the Metal Virus arc, which was Shadow deciding to be proactive and stopping Eggman there and then before he could attempt to cause more havoc if/when he gets his memory back. 

There are doing this to elevate Sonic as the coolest and more interesting character of the two and basically a all purpose mary sue icon. Ian im sure doesmt care for Shadow as much as he does Sonic, Knuckles and Eggman. So i say while Shadow isnt hated by him, hes not liked by him as he ends up playing second string to Rouge or Sonic most of the time in his own arcs and makes him have no agency in the archie series without playing off characters that Ians develops into leading roles more than him and have more core focus.

[Diogenes]

23 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

I dunno, I feel like they've never balanced them particularly well at all. It always feels so lopsided for either of them. I don't even know if I can call it incompetence, because how they're writing Shadow now is definitely deliberate on their part. Which makes me think how they wrote Sonic before was also deliberate. 

Nothing about incompetence contradicts actions being deliberate, or vice versa. In fact they pair nicely; their deliberately-made choices are bad, because they're incompetent.

The way I see it Shadow's prominence over Sonic in that era's stories is because they tried to have it both ways; they tried to appeal to classic fans by having Sonic do a basic "Sonic vs Eggman" plot and shuffled all the shonenesque drama over to Shadow (and occasionally one or two others). They didn't have the guts to commit to a consistent direction or the writing chops to weave them together believably (or to make them work on their own, really), so it mostly just resulted in shit. It's not anything rooted in either character, just their closer associations to one style over the other led to them being the vehicles for Sonic Team's bad decisions.

[Kuzu]

I can accept that; they're just fucking shit. 

[SnooPigu]

36 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

I can accept that; they're just fucking shit. 

Or like you said, they dont see shadow as important as sonic.

[Kuzu]

52 minutes ago, SnooPigu said:

Or like you said, they dont see shadow as important as sonic.

No, they're just fucking shit. 

[FlameStream]

There is some merit in thinking that there was a shift to try and put Sonic on the pedestal (though at all times at fault), if you want to find reason in all of this.

One recent event that struck me was how Senoue-san seemed to have difficulty saying that his favourite character wasn't Sonic but felt obligated to say it. 

[Razule]

11 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

An interesting tidbit about Shadow from the new Bumblecast (timestamped):

 

Damn.. the comic's not even that old and a mandate's already contradicted something that already happened. The character's broken. Why even bother using him anymore if he can avoid it? 

I just don't understand why Shadow of all characters is the one with so many restrictions. Or maybe he's just the only one who's restrictions contradict his previous portrayals so hard. 

"SEGA Gaslight" should be a more common phrase in the fanbase.

[Soniman]

I guess if our only options are "write a shitty Shadow" and "not use him" then yeah it's kind of a no brainer.

IT just BAFFLES me since Fandom hasn't exactly been quiet about how much they hate this characterization for Shadow and there wasn't really any need for this baffling shift in personality, there wasn't anything wrong with dark age era Shadow that needed drastic changing so to see Sega so insistent on pushing a version of a character so revilved just speaks to the larger issue of how they continue to fail to understand what makes their own franchise so appealing 

[Razule]

They're so embarrassed of how he was in the 2000s and him being the only character with complex motives that they did a 180, but the problem is that the games are still in the exact same universe. Allegedly.

[Kuzu]

Sega are doing their damnest to make people forget about all of the controversial parts of these characters, but are robbing them of any interesting traits as a result. They'd rather get rid of the stuff that people didn't like instead of just accepting it for what it is and embracing it. 

So now we have these two dimensional versions of the characters because nobody is allowed to be a dynamic character anymore. Everyone gotta be static. 

[StaticMania]

5 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

Everyone gotta be static. 

I like this very much...

It's also true...

[Kuzu]

2 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

I like this very much...

It's also true...

I have no idea what you're even talking about here...

 

 

 

In any case yea, if Sega's dictating all of this, then I can agree with Flynn that I simply don't want to see him anymore. I'd rather he just never appear again if he's just gonna be butchered some more. 

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

9 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

15 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

Everyone gotta be static. 

I like this very much...

Heh, I get it. XD

[Razule]

19 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

So now we have these two dimensional versions of the characters because nobody is allowed to be a dynamic character anymore. Everyone gotta be static. 

I think the characters being static is fine. I'm not sure how much more they could develop after 20-30 years of existence. They could probably use some development from how they are now, but I wouldn't even mind if they changed abruptly to something better. I just wish they picked a better point to hit the pause button. Would anyone mind if Shadow was how he was in 06 forever?

[Kuzu]

2 minutes ago, Razule said:

I think the characters being static is fine. I'm not sure how much more they could develop after 20-30 years of existence. They could probably use some development from how they are now, but I wouldn't even mind if they changed abruptly to something better. I just wish they picked a better point to hit the pause button. Would anyone mind if Shadow was how he was in 06 forever?

Characters can't stay static forever, at some point they have to change. Not even just Shadow, but look at how people reacted to Tails. 

It's just more apparent with Shadow because his character is literally built on a multi-work story arc. You can't ignore that without the character just falling apart.  Knuckles is kind of in a similar position when you think about it, he just hasn't shown up all that much yet.

[Kazhnuz]

I'm not too concerned about Shadow. There is a lot of time before his next apparition (he isn't scheduled in Zeti Hunt), and SEGA have the time to change their mind 50 times. The reaction to this will be hard if it attein the twitter part of the fandom, and yet another one that the PR will have to handle. I wouldn't be surprised that they revert hard this whole things, as they tend to react to everything that happens, and that it's pretty recent (IDW6 didn't show trace of that).

They might not recess entirely on him being a bit more of a jerk, but the "motives" are something simple enough to handle as it's just a matter of him wanting to take down big threat instead of fighting strong foes :')

19 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

Characters can't stay static forever, at some point they have to change. Not even just Shadow, but look at how people reacted to Tails. 

To be fair, people didn't react to Tails because he was "static", but because he "regressed". The problem isn't that they are "frozen", it's that they are frozen in a state they don't like because it contradict what he should be. If they frozen all character to the end of their arc, most people wouldn't have even noticed.

And they won't be able to evolve forever, the IP is supposed to be "eternal", and characters can't age up. They should more evolve with the current trends and visions (for instance why Sonic being more attentive to other feeling is prefered now), but they can't really "evolve" as character, as nearly all game have to be an entry point.

[Razule]

15 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

Characters can't stay static forever, at some point they have to change. Not even just Shadow, but look at how people reacted to Tails. 

It's just more apparent with Shadow because his character is literally built on a multi-work story arc. You can't ignore that without the character just falling apart.  Knuckles is kind of in a similar position when you think about it, he just hasn't shown up all that much yet.

I think they should and would change a little over time depending on the setting and the writers, but for a series that's supposed to last forever, I don't think they could progress endlessly. They could develop the character by delving into them further. 

[StaticMania]

24 minutes ago, Razule said:

Would anyone mind if Shadow was how he was in 06 forever?

That's effectively where Shadow's character growth ends...

Doesn't mean he can't develop from there.

[Kuzu]

I'm not saying that they have to fundamentally change who cast are to keep them relevant, but at the same time, you can't just keep them frozen at one point in time. 

[Dejimon11]

*Watches bumblekast* Oh hey Ian answered my question that's cool!

But anyway yeah the Shadow situation sucks but I don't know what new that we can say that hasn't been already been discussed for the past 2 years at this point? It does feel like SEGA has no idea what they want to do with him and arguably most of the cast at this point. My only hope is that they listen to the fan feedback and just stop making him Sonic!Vegeta.