In Defence of Infinite

[Indigo Rush]

I thought this topic was about Infinite. Do we really need to drag Sonic Mania into this? I could use this topic as an opportunity to rub the Deadly Six, the Black Arms or Mephiles through a mud puddle, but I'd rather not. (Okay, I'd love to, but that's not the topic at hand)

Anyway, I don't care for Infinite. The design looks neat, and seeing him get his tail handed to him by Shadow was amusing, but his motivation is... weak. Honestly, it's not even that terrible, just uninteresting. It's so rote. Angsty jackal gets beat up, wants revenge, does bad things, is defeated. They don't go anywhere with it. He kinda just clowns around, gets kicked in the face by Sonic and the Avatar a few times, and disappears. There isn't much of a character there. Infinite has a backstory, yes, but not a true story arc, not that I could tell. He's little more than a bogeyman in a mask for Sonic to beat up. 

Also, they never explained why his name was Infinite. At all. Y'all still have to infer what that means. May as well call him Finite the Edgelord for all the good it'll do ya.

[DabigRG]

3 hours ago, Indigo Rush said:

 

Also, they never explained why his name was Infinite. At all. Y'all still have to infer what that means. May as well call him Finite the Edgelord for all the good it'll do ya.

Because its his real name.

[Rowl]

I'm sorry... nothing against people who like infinite... but... man... that guy was such a big joke. "O, no! A bigger edgelord stole my edginess! Now I have to join forces with the biggest terrorist this world knows and kill millions of people so that I can prove to mankind how edgy I really am!"

Shadow was right about Infinite. He is such a pathetic character.      

[Plasme]

Thing is though that all side villains in Sonic have terrible motivations other than Chaos and Shadow. And the Adventre games were a long time ago now.

I like that Infinite actually has a backstory. I get Diogenes' point that a straightforward world conqueror is easy to follow, but Mephilles, Black Doom, the deadly six, Erazor Djinn...all of them, I just find them so boring that I cant have any interest in them.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I liked Infinite a lot more because at least they put some effort in with him. His backstory is handled terribly, but I think 'mercenary who gets beaten by a protagonist, mocked, and then wants domination to cover his insecurities' is just more interesting than 'character is evil'.

Not a high bar I know, but I think it's at least a step in the right direction.

[Sonic Fan J]

The funny thing about Infinite to me is really that for how much of a broken mess he is (both narratively and personally) he managed to entertain me. When I'm entertained I have this horrible tendency of getting lenient as the whole reason I play games is to be entertained after all. As Infinite managed to pull that off it's kind of a free pas in my book despite how much is wrong with him from design to backstory to execution. Then of course there is the fact that I am horribly guilty of finding enjoyment in a character's concepts (be they the actual concepts or those that I can infer from the final product) as well the potential I see in them as a result of all that I see in them. Infinite to me has a lot going for him in that regard as my imagination is easily stimulated by him and that's another win for him in my book.

So sure, Infinite has a "weak" backstory, his actions don't line up with his backstory; his backstory contradicts Eggman's work in the stor;, he's so over the top corny edgy that you just want to cover your face and hide because it's honestly too much; but despite all of that, he still entertained me and stimulated my imagination. So while I can't and have no reason to convince any else that he deserves to be given a chance, I enjoy him as a piece of entertainment in spite of everything not making sense or being Homer or Shakespeare level's of work and that's all that matters to me in the end.

[Kazhnuz]

I would say that on the contrary, Infinite being just a thermonuclear bully that just wanted big supernatural illusory guns to feel powerfull is what make him more interesting than many other Sonic villian. It create a pretty interesting inverted mirror structure with the Avatar :both were humiliated by a powerhouse character, but whereas Infinite seeked just power for himself and got an illusionnary power (which is the leitmotif of the game : illusions vs reality), the Avatar worked with other toward a goal and got some more real power (well, he also got full american with weapon).  What is more interesitng is why Infinite wasn't revengefull against Shadow : for him, the powerfull humiliating the weak was some kind of "natural order". So he didn't have any real feeling against Shadow, as it was just something normal. And that's why he also repeated the pattern on the Avatar, creating what would eventually be his loss.

Karmic retribution due to hybris, my favourite breakfast. Infinite is pathetic; and that's his patheticness that endangered a whole world. That's what make him way more interesting that a lot of villiain to me, because of how mundane and dowright bad is his motivation. ( I really miss that Sonic didn't gave him some kind of "reason you sucks" speech on the end of the game, it would have been pretty cool. )

 

So, I really like Infinite. Even if he isn't well written in Forces, he have one of the most interesting villiain concept of the franchise (and I loved the "illusion" thematic of Forces. It felt good having again a game with a real theme. Sad that Pontaff and "storywriting hell" ruined a bit the actual writing. At least the japanese writing remove a bit of the nonesense - even if not much, and make the game quite enjoyable for me.)

[Iko]

On 1/18/2019 at 10:15 PM, Ryannumber1gamer said:

changing from a scary psychotic villain, to what might as well be a 10 year old with a bruised ego, and too much power.

That's how I've always seen him.

He's pathetic and childish, but he's also dangerous because he owns a very powerful power. The fact that he's childish makes him hard to deal with, because he can be easily triggered for stupid reasons and such, he's a bit impredictable because of that... you should apply some psychology concepts when you write a story involving him.

To me, that's a very unique concept for a villain, and I like it.

To me he's not an edgelord, he tries hard to be one, but he fails, and he comes out as a pathetic guy who just wants to feel superior at any cost for the sake of his ego.

I think that this can be good if applied to a good plot with good writing, as some people before me already said it. Sonic Forces did a very bad job at writing him, but the character himself is not that bad, and I like his design because he looks like a Sonic character, he's an antro animal like everyone else and has the same proportions and traits as them... unlike the Deadly 6, he doesn't feel unfitting with the series' art direction (at least the modern side), and he's not the monster of the week.

I don't think his backstory is bad at all. It's the backstory you expect from a Sonic character...

Tails: He was bullied for his 2 tails, then he repaired Sonic's airplane, Sonic liked it and they became friends; from that day Sonic became Tails' role model.

Infinite: He was defeated by Shadow and has lost his gang, he was frustrated for the humiliation so he accepted to become a living experiment of Eggman with the promise of getting more power.

I think it's one of those simple backstories that work very well in the universe of Sonic, the problem is how they told it in the game/comic, not the story itself.

Lastly, I think that in Sonic Forces they didn't explore his power well enough. It's a power that works by tricking the minds of the people, and it's definitely a sort of psychic power. There is another character who has psychic powers in the series... they should have explored the strenght/weakness that the Phantom Ruby could have had on a character such as Silver, who has psychic powers and should have been able to interact in a different way with it. The plot could have turned in an interesting way if Silver was the only one able to fight against the Ruby's illusions, and if that was actually used as the purpose to him for coming back from the future (maybe even to him having psychic powers at all... they could have said that he was mutated to have psychic powers in order to fight Infinite in the future).

I'm totally for a return of Infinite as long as they write him well the next time.

[DabigRG]

7 hours ago, Kazhnuz said:

. ( I really miss that Sonic didn't gave him some kind of "reason you sucks" speech on the end of the game, it would have been pretty cool. )

 

He does.

[King Scoopa Koopa]

On 1/18/2019 at 4:44 PM, Wraith said:

Infinite on paper seems like they were going for a subversion of the likes of Mephilies in the past.
 

I love Infinite, and it's because he's such a try-hard. Rather than a subversion of Mephiles and the like, I feel like he's more like a subversion of the Avatar. You have the "good guy" style on the Resistance side, and this is like the Eggman version.

Remember how Boom Eggman was such a fanboy over Shadow in the cartoon? Infinite reads sort of like that mindset of "Original the Character (Donut Steel)." He's like the Shadow the Hedgehog (the game) of fan characters. 

And given the age of the characters, which tends to hover around mid-teens (the exceptions being Vector and old-man Shadow, which barely counts due to Captain America syndrome), Infinite comes off like an angsty, petulant teenager with a chip on his shoulder and something to prove to The Man. He's like a bully, the spoiled, arrogant high school jock who got put in his place one time and couldn't handle it, and now he's lashing out.

It's perfect. 

And regardless of all that, his theme song is awesome.

[Kuzu]

I probably would have liked Infinite a lot more if they actually bothered to show some level of care about his character throughout the game, but they didn't so he's just another bundle of wasted potential this series usually doles out. 

Assuming he did have some level of care all through the...mess that was the game's development, I actually do think he could have been a fairly good character. He comes off as super imposing and intimidating and then Episode Shadow reveals that he's just a thug on a power trip. Had the story done something with that, maybe show him having a breakdown in the face of "power of friendship" then it could have made for a cliche'd but entertaining villain beat-down.

But no, he's played completely straight and then written off without any fanfare and then they kind of tacked on his backstory which has absolutely no bearing on his actions in the main campaign whatsoever. So good on this series for wasting yet another potentially good concept because nobody knows how to do anything.

[ShadowSJG]

He has a cool voice, theme and powers. Backstory has potential

[ShadowSJG]

I agree, his backstory reeks of being inconsistent.

[Adamis]

Infinite has a cool design (but I prefer him without the mask) but... that's it. They wanted to make him the next Shadow but he didn't have the same impact. The potential is there, but the execution is awkward at best.

[Badnik Mechanic]

So I'm currently making a 1 hour 30min long documentary video on Tails in Sonic Forces (don't ask how it got to that length it just did).

But in part of it I talk about Infinite.

Infinite is a pretty stupid character and villain, pretty much what everyone else has said... he's over dramatic, a complete push over in battles, terrible backstory (and really, this is only something the hardcore fans bother with).

 

But in my video analysis of Tails, at one point I started to look at the 6 month war, and wanted to know how devastating it was, I realised that Sonic Forces is really bad at conveying information to the player, key and vital information is given out much later in the game and this information is often undermined by the actions of the characters and events of the game.

In the case of the 6 month war and it's impact on the population, there is a lot the game withholds from the player, we don't even know exactly what kind of resistance Eggman faced after he captured Sonic. For instance, did Eggman just steamroll or was it a long drawn out slowly loosing battle for the Resistance? 

Well... regardless as to what kind of war you think it was, Infinites role in this is quite scary. 

Whilst Eggman is the hammer, he builds giant machines and destroys everything on a physical level. Infinite wrecks havoc with the minds of the resistance. There's tons of small references that people are just loosing the will to fight and how something is causing them to panic and run. 

We later see how Infinite's main tactic against resistance is to wipe out all but one survivor and let them run away and tell the story of what happened, that's quite cruel and a very powerful psychological weapon.

We see how Infinite can warp reality which completely renders trained soldiers useless. Infinite as a weapon is a powerful psychological force for terror, he cripples the will of the resistance as well as being able to just outright destroy them.

 

... ... It's just a shame that this is all under cut by his melodramatic delivery and the fact he throws cubes at people for the majority of the game.

 

[DabigRG]

4 hours ago, Mayor D said:

 

In the case of the 6 month war and it's impact on the population, there is a lot the game withholds from the player, we don't even know exactly what kind of resistance Eggman faced after he captured Sonic. For instance, did Eggman just steamroll or was it a long drawn out slowly loosing battle for the Resistance? 

 

 

That's partly because it's an addition to the English localization. I don't how long it was originally, but it wasn't that long.

4 hours ago, Mayor D said:

 

We later see how Infinite's main tactic against resistance is to wipe out all but one survivor and let them run away and tell the story of what happened, that's quite cruel and a very powerful psychological weapon.

We see how Infinite can warp reality which completely renders trained soldiers useless. Infinite as a weapon is a powerful psychological force for terror, he cripples the will of the resistance as well as being able to just outright destroy them.

 

... ... It's just a shame that this is all under cut by his melodramatic delivery and the fact he throws cubes at people for the majority of the game.

 

Oh wait, is THAT what the implication is supposed to be?

Cause from the way the game frames it, Infinite was just a sadistic dick getting off of how terrified Buddy was.

[Badnik Mechanic]

3 hours ago, DabigRG said:

Oh wait, is THAT what the implication is supposed to be?

Cause from the way the game frames it, Infinite was just a sadistic dick getting off of how terrified Buddy was.

That's the conclusion I get.

Like I say in my video. Forces is a mess, it witholds key information and presents vital information which is contradictory to what the player sees currently in the moment.

For example. We see during buddy's flashback that infinite let's him live, Infinite does say something like 'tell everyone what happened here.'

Now think back to the beginning of the game. One of the characters mentions how something (we realise later it must be infinite) has everyone terrified and their losing their will or something.

A line which is very similar to the one Infinite will give much later in the game. And it would make the 6 month war much easier for Eggman if he has a way to make people run away before he even turns up, with tales of how someone was able to wipe them all out who made all these demonic like illusions.

But also I just think it makes more sense for them to juxtapose Eggmans forces by having Infinite as a psychological weapon.

You have Eggman who is the sledgehammer. Giant robots, smashing stuff, breaking things.

Then you have Infinite. Yeah we see. Some physical stuff, and there's that laser beam on the soldiers.

But the majority of his powers involve warping reality and creating illusions, we later find out that all these illusions are not real, but because their minds believe it's real, the illusions can hurt them as if they were.

 

[Diogenes]

I feel like that's overestimating the game a bit. Infinite's "scary" because he's evil and seemingly limitlessly powerful. He's a psychological weapon as much as the Death Egg Robots stomping through City are, in that you will likely be afraid of the thing that blew up your house and killed your family. Infinite doesn't even really do the "I'll let you live to tell the tale" thing, he's more just a sadist. He gets off on seeing people be afraid of him, I guess inverting how he was afraid of Shadow.

[Red Hot Jack]

In defence of Infinite: the writing in Forces sucks in general. I think he deserved better because there was potential in him, he deserved a better ending as well. At this point I think he died but it's just... unclear, most Sonic games have weird ambigous deaths because it's meant for kids. But it seems like he disappeared. I'm just so confused.