Why Shadow isn't playable more often?

[MetalSkulkBane]

Yeah, yeah, fanboy rant. And it's about Shadow again. Just saying, after looking at Forces I see very little reason to not make him playable.

1) He's popular. Simple as that.

2) When Silver is in future, Blaze in her world, Knux on Angel Island and Chaotix aren't exactly 'save the planet' types, Shadow needs no elaborative excuse to show up in any game (unless we're talking racing spin-off or something. And he will be there anyway).

3) Main reason why to pick him over Tails or Amy: he can have the same move set as Sonic. If you want to be more creative, here's idea for free: give him much longer boost meter, but make him drain rings much faster. That way he's a Hard Mode as collecting rings becomes bigger priority. And no need to think about it as you design the game, since boosting isn't needed to beat anything (at worst you need to put more rings here and there). Metal Sonic is easy to put as well, remember Adventure 1 DX, just saying, Metal rules.

Sega doesn't even need to bother with inserting him in a story. Just make him unlockable after you beat the game with Sonic (or collect enough Red Rings, to make them more valuable), with all cutscenes removed. Replay value and some people will appreciate beating Deadly Six without listening to their in-game dialogue.

Granted, that requires making his model and animations. 1 If fanmods can do it, it shouldn't be that hard for Sega. 2 Games like Generations  already had model with most animations ready. And after Forces you have a shiny new model with all needed animation on engine they build for 3 years. Should be enough for at least 2 more games, maybe more.

If answer is "why Sega should waste money" then make him DLC ala Forces, but paid. We'll finally see if he's as popular as people claim. (Just make it longer than 15 minutes. And preferably attached to better game.)

[superman43]

Simple answer. Shadow is not Sonic. And Episode Shadow ? Literally nothing, one 2D stage, one stage being a slight extension of Sonic´s Stage (in terms of level design) and one being almost entirely water slides.

[Lord-Dreamerz]

As much as it pains us fans of the extra cast, the simple answer is SEGA doesn't have enough real interest in any of the cast beyond Sonic & Eggman.

Adding in multiple player characters is not half as hard as some people think when they all use the same base gameplay, it's especially not very hard when they are mostly re-skins like Shadow from episode Shadow or Metal-Sonic from episode Metal. SEGA/Sonic Team simply and sadly often believe Sonic is all we really need.

I agree it's pretty bad when they are willing to give us multiple Sonics... "Werehog/2.5D Classic Sonic" over other characters, some of which are barely more then re-skins with couple added abilities tossed on top... especially there is no good excuse when the multiple Sonics have completely different gameplay from each other.

Lastly unlike what some fans think, SEGA doesn't need any story excuses to include any characters they might want, which should be obvious by now. Blaze is from another Dimension? Sonic Team don't care, they'll make her pop in just for one of her friends birthday parties. Silver is from the future? Doesn't matter, he'll come back to the past whenever for any dumb reason now, he probably just hates living in his own timeline and wants to hangout with the cool kids in the past. Story and canon don't mean any beans to SEGA.

Even if some of the extra cast are popular, it plain don't matter enough to SEGA/Sonic Team beyond randomly rarely tossing them and their fans a bone sometimes.

[Artsy-Aspie]

Another issue is not everyone likes Shadow... Like me. 

I think he's the most overrated character in the series. I am sorry, but I never liked him outside of Adventure 2. 

[MetalSkulkBane]

18 minutes ago, Lord-Dreamerz said:

t some fans think, SEGA doesn't need any story excuses to include any characters they might want, which should be obvious by now. Blaze is from another Dimension? Sonic Team don't care, they'll make her pop in just for one of her friends birthday parties. Silver is from the future? Doesn't matter, he'll come back to the past whenever for any dumb reason now, he probably just hates living in his own timeline and wants to hangout with the cool kids in the past. Story and canon don't mean any beans to SEGA.

Personally I think they did decent job so far. Blaze appears in Generations? Complains. Blaze doesn't appear in Forces? Complains.It hard to satisfy everyone. You could add some throw away lines, but sometimes it's hard to find a good moment. (Granted, they could do better)

Overall I see few insecurities, but none of them are deal breakers. I'm perfectly capable of believing that Blaze found a way to Prime Dimension just for Sonic birthday or even to check a amusement park.

[Lord-Dreamerz]

18 minutes ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

Personally I think they did decent job so far. Blaze appears in Generations? Complains. Blaze doesn't appear in Forces? Complains.It hard to satisfy everyone. You could add some throw away lines, but sometimes it's hard to find a good moment. (Granted, they could do better)

Overall I see few insecurities, but none of them are deal breakers. I'm perfectly capable of believing that Blaze found a way to Prime Dimension just for Sonic birthday or even to check a amusement park.

I too don't need strong story excuses for characters to appear in Sonic. It never truly bothered me to see characters like Knuckles/Blaze/Silver pop up without a big reason, SEGA never outright said they were stuck permanently in one place. In fact they gave the characters the means to freely travel whenever they want... even if it was more a hand-wave instead of story writing, which is still fine by me.

[Blacklightning]

Problem one: playable characters in general haven't been featured often since 06, and Shadow is no exception to that. There's plenty of reasoning and scapegoats that could factor into that, but it's another topic entirely.

Problem two: gameplay wise, almost every incarnation of him is literally just Sonic with jet boots. That's boring. Theoretically you could channel those generic shonen powers of his into some gameplay differences, but a good Sonic moveset prioritizes mobility first and fighting second, and most of Shadow's techniques don't actually do that. As it stands right now you could only really count in some kind of teleport, which is kinda hard to distinguish in practicality from a Homing Attack.

Problem three: Shadow practically had an entire console generation to himself as it is. In that time not only did he chew up the scenery until it was cud, pretty much any character or plot development he had left was completely exhausted, and by that point people were just completely fucking sick of seeing him anyway. Most of his appearances ever since have been a really forced kind of relevance in the series, like they wanted to fanservice at the time and ran out of excuses again, and it's really hard to imagine Sonic Team writing him any better than that without some big overhaul or retcon out of nowhere.

I'd really rather Sega took the time to reintroduce characters that have become neglected or obscure over time rather than falling back to their signature shark jump to be honest. Maybe not Mighty and Ray obscure necessarily, but Rouge could really use a lot more love these days.

[Radiant Hero Ike]

It's mainly because Sega knows he's my favorite character and they want me to be unhappy because they personally dislike me.

I dunno, they've been pretty weird with having anyone other than Sonic playable for a while now. He was playable in some stages of Forces, at least. I wouldn't mind if they kept him as basically an alt costume for Sonic in the next games, if only because I'd like him to be playable regardless of story.

[Diogenes]

For the same reason Luigi isn't playable in every Mario game.

[JezMM]

It's possible that the developers don't WANT him to just be a model swap for Sonic. It kind of devalues him as a character if he's playable in every game but is just a Sonic clone with no unique abilities of his own.  I could respect the developers for feeling it'd cheapen what makes him unique compared to Sonic to just throw him into every game as an unlockable.

 

It might also be the case that they don't want to give any characters special treatment.  Like "isn't it kind of unfair if Shadow/Blaze/Metal Sonic fans get to play as them in every single mainline title just because their favourite character happens to be similar enough to Sonic in abilities that we can just throw them in, while Tails, Silver and Amy fans get nothing?" etc.  Better to treat all of Sonic's friends equally and so on.

Forces was able to justify thanks to Shadow having a major role in his sidestory DLC, as well as the tone of the game suiting Shadow more than a game like say, Colours or Lost World. - That could be seen as an issue too, it's possible that they don't consider it "on-brand" for a character like Shadow to be using whimsical Wisp powers.  There's also the fact that he just plum doesn't appear in those games otherwise. Designers always have to account for a game potentially being someone's first ever title from that franchise, so it'd be kind of weird to unlock Shadow and have a bunch of first-timers be like "who the heck is this guy".

[Osmium]

They already can't get Sonic right, so what chances do you think they have with other characters right now, even one as similar to Sonic as Shadow? 

[Shadowlax]

Tone of the games, I mean that doesn't excuse...generations but yeah. Like, shadow doesn't need to be in lost world or unleashed. Not just jam, i'm ok with that. 

Also It seems pretty clear, even with cut stuff with forces, they wanted to have like... crazy shit. Dude was supposed to have chaos control, they kind of don't want him to be just sonic. 

I do think he should playable more though ( I do think he will be playable more, in the sea of dissapointment that was sonic forces, shadow being playable was this cool thing everyone seemed to have enjoyed. And with classic sonic karted off into his own universe that keep producing content...its no need for sonic to appeal to that audience ) 

22 minutes ago, JezMM said:

That could be seen as an issue too, it's possible that they don't consider it "on-brand" for a character like Shadow to be using whimsical Wisp powers. 

Maybe, though in the comics... eclipse had black arm wisps so he used those, they could give shadow edgy whips. Then again, his powerset kinda negates the need for that

22 minutes ago, JezMM said:

There's also the fact that he just plum doesn't appear in those games otherwise. Designers always have to account for a game potentially being someone's first ever title from that franchise, so it'd be kind of weird to unlock Shadow and have a bunch of first-timers be like "who the heck is this guy".

I don't think this is an actual issue... one shadows popular... folks playing a sonic game probably like " i seen that guy before" . But two, if they haven't actually seen the character....well they will now get introduced to the character

[MetalSkulkBane]

1 hour ago, A crocodile said:

They already can't get Sonic right, so what chances do you think they have with other characters right now, even one as similar to Sonic as Shadow? 

Well, then why don't we jump off the bridge when we're at it?  They can't make Sonic, can't make Shadow, everything sucks, let's just sit in corner and cry.

Yes, being pessimistic with Sonic is mostly right, but we do hope it might be better.

Besides, what I'm asking is hard to mess up. Forces still score some points with me, just for that Shadow skin.

2 hours ago, Blacklightning said:

Problem two: gameplay wise, almost every incarnation of him is literally just Sonic with jet boots. That's boring. Theoretically, you could channel those generic shonen powers of his into some gameplay differences, but a good Sonic moveset prioritizes mobility first and fighting second, and most of Shadow's techniques don't actually do that. As it stands right now you could only really count in some kind of teleport, which is kinda hard to distinguish in practicality from a Homing Attack.

Problem three: Shadow practically had an entire console generation to himself as it is. In that time not only did he chew up the scenery until it was cud, pretty much any character or plot development he had left was completely exhausted, and by that point, people were just completely fucking sick of seeing him anyway. Most of his appearances ever since have been a really forced kind of relevance in the series, like they wanted to fanservice at the time and ran out of excuses again, and it's really hard to imagine Sonic Team writing him any better than that without some big overhaul or retcon out of nowhere.

 

1

2) Tell that to Blaze. I don't see a problem, Protoman from Megaman has zero unique moves in 9 and 10, no one complained. Still, I threw a simple idea for subtle change.

3) Then don't give him a story, just unlockable playable. That way he could be even in Colors without breaking the mood.

[Osmium]

6 minutes ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

Well, then why don't we jump off the bridge when we're at it?  They can't make Sonic, can't make Shadow, everything sucks, let's just sit in corner and cry.

Or maybe we should fixate all our energy on one thing to get the best possible result for it instead of spreading energy over a bunch of shit that will only make things more complicated. Sonic needs to be stabilized and improved one way or another before we should even be worrying about other characters as he's the basic template and the most important of everyone. When you're in a predicament you need to take things one step at a time or else you'll only make things worse. 

[Wraith]

Shadow is practically a skin. It's not worth being dramatic over. 

I think it's a missed opportunity he's not playable in more modern games as a bonus like he is in forces.

[Blueknight V2.0]

I think Sonic Team needs to take the series back to how Unleashed was, but remove Werehog and medal system. Unleashed already had 5 play styles (counting Super Sonic, Gaia Colossus, and the Tails Tornado sections), Generations had 4 play styles counting Super Sonic for both Sonic's. So just include Shadow (with added abilities like double jump, light speed attack, chaos control, blast, spear, teleportation and Super form), Silver (psychic knife, levitate/flight, teleportation, Super Form, telekinesis without stunning enemies first, use the environment to your advantage to create tornadoes or meteor smash), Blaze (fire claw, double jump, Burning Blaze and a couple of others). Unleashed's direction should be the way to go for future games, features that should've been included in games after unleashed, like multiple hit enemies, environmental challenges, and areas requiring all enemies to be beat before moving on from the day stages. Level length. hub worlds, shaders, difficulty and Sonic's true blue color. should've also been included in post Unleashed games.

Bringing Shadow back along with Silver and Blaze, as they are in my top 5 characters, I know Shadow's backstory by reading about it and watching the CG Shadow cutscenes. Yes, his story is the most complex of any character, even carrying over into 2006, but his backstory is what makes him interesting and adds the darker tone to Sonic games when neccasary. He has a dark past, he's immortal and ageless and connected to a main villain (and drove Infinite mad to the point of fusing the Phantom Ruby to himself) , things that other characters don't have in common.

[Lord-Dreamerz]

51 minutes ago, A crocodile said:

Sonic needs to be stabilized and improved one way or another before we should even be worrying about other characters as he's the basic template and the most important of everyone.

So basically the logic here is... never include other characters ever again outside the classic style games? Got it!

Seriously modern style games changes their gameplay style so often that modern Sonic getting a stable line of games is nearly a pipe-dream. I'll take a somewhat messy game with multiple characters any day of the week as long it is still fun over waiting for a blue moon to happen and having to deal with game after game after game of Sonic only BS which likely still are not great games to boot.

[Osmium]

12 minutes ago, Lord-Dreamerz said:

So basically the logic here is... never include other characters ever again outside the classic style games? Got it!

Yeah that's totally what I said man. Getting a style down and then building on it is equivalent to never doing something again. 

12 minutes ago, Lord-Dreamerz said:

I'll take a messy game with multiple characters any day of the week as long it is still fun over waiting for a blue moon to happen and having to deal with game after game after game of Sonic only BS which likely still are not great games to boot.

So basically you'd rather have another '06 than hope for an actual good game at some point? Well, your choice I guess.

[Lord-Dreamerz]

12 minutes ago, A crocodile said:

Yeah that's totally what I said man. Getting a style down and then building on it is equivalent to never doing something again. 

So basically you'd rather have another '06 than hope for an actual good game at some point? Well, you choice I guess.

Because I totally said I wanted a bad game? No I said i'd take a messy game over more Sonic only nonsense, there is a difference. It is more realistic then hoping Sonic Team comes up with a near perfect gameplay style for Modern Sonic out of the blue. I don't want to wait 100 years to play as other characters.

[Osmium]

1 minute ago, Lord-Dreamerz said:

Because I totally said I wanted a bad game? No I said i'd take a messy game over more Sonic only nonsense, there's a difference. it is more realistic then hoping Sonic Team comes up with a near perfect gameplay style for Modern Sonic out of the blue. I don't want to wait for 100 years to play as other characters.

We should just concede either of these results sounds rubbish and it's Sonic Team's fault. 

[Wraith]

58 minutes ago, A crocodile said:

We should just concede either of these results sounds rubbish and it's Sonic Team's fault. 

Or maybe taking in like a quarter of what someone is proposing and drawing out the worst possible  outcome doesn't actually lead to any good discussion.

The idea of stabilizing Sonic is a reasonable one, but I don't  think you need to be paranoid to the degree of bringing up sonic 06 when a character that Was designed from the ground up to play almost exactly like sonic is brought up.

[Osmium]

3 minutes ago, Josh said:

Or maybe taking in like a quarter of what someone is proposing and drawing out the worst possible  outcome doesn't actually lead to any good discussion.

The idea of stabilizing Sonic is a reasonable one, but I don't  think you need to be paranoid to the degree of bringing up sonic 06 when a character that Was designed from the ground up to play almost exactly like sonic is brought up.

I was being humorous with the sentence you quoted as I thought it was a fitting end to a conversation that wasn't going anywhere, but looking back I agree bringing up Sonic 06 was flawed and hypocritical to certain degrees. 

[BlueFlare]

Sega don't want Sonic to live in his shadow. I wholly don't really know why but personally I find him pretty uninteresting, maybe partly because of his previous performances.

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

Because they want to focus mostly on Sonic in terms of gameplay. However if I were to be honest, they had since 06 to get Sonic right so yeah I get the frustration.

[Blacklightning]

8 hours ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

2) Tell that to Blaze.

...okay.

You care to elaborate on that? You can't just say "but this guy" and expect me to work out the context for myself, because as far as I see Blaze has pretty much the same set of flaws minus the "Shadow owned a whole generation" part.

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3) Then don't give him a story, just unlockable playable. That way he could be even in Colors without breaking the mood.

The crux of your argument seems to be that you can impliment a character in such a way that it interferes with neither the narrative nor the consistency of Sonic's moveset, but if you're going to take that approach then why even bother? By that point you're playing a glorified model swap - you gain nothing by playing it and lose nothing by ignoring it. A character shouldn't be introduced just for the simple sake of having more characters.