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Anyone else bored of Eggman being the villain? Also the series should go back to basics!


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3 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

I'm not trying to "protect" anyone. Different elements are better or worse for different kinds of stories and I don't think "tragic sick girl gets shot by the military" is a good fit for these colorful super-animal adventures. I'm not even saying no important characters can die, I don't have a problem with Shadow's apparent death at the end of SA2, "villain-turned-hero dies ambiguously after saving the world" fits the series better than Maria's death in my eyes.

 

Sonic Adventure 2 is a different kind of story than Sonic 3. 

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Let's have Eggman shoot Tails in the face next game. It will be Very Mature, and therefore good. And it's a different kind of story, so nobody can complain.

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To be a little fair here, I do like how ya'll arguing about how Maria being shot isn't as bad as it was made out to be when the last three games involved machines sucking the life out of little creatures and a masked psycho zapping several among hundreds of Mobians to death onscreen.

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1 hour ago, Kuzu said:

So being Eggman automatically  makes it better huh; guess execution doesn't mean shit anymore. 

You bring up a good point, I really am comparing mediocrity to just plain shit at that point. However, my original intent was to state that having Eggman, the main antagonist who hunts us down from stage 1, back as the final boss is certainly better than a random creature that shows up outta nowhere, or that has such insufficient buildup compared to Eggman's involvement in the game that it felt shoe-horned in. It's better, but not by much unless there is sufficient buildup and, like you said, proper execution. In games like Lost World and Forces, it really doesn't make much of a difference if the entire story is just poorly written or flat-out bad. It just so happens that, in most of the previous Sonic games where we've had a random monster at the end instead of Eggman for the final boss, most of those monsters just weren't well properly incorporated into the story compared to Eggman himself. Either that or the games just sucked so bad (Shadow, 06) that I don't care what happens anymore. Games like Lost World are kind of a weird exception to this rule, considering how uniquely integrated into the story Eggman was and that he didn't have any bosses save the last one. But that game's story was blegh, so...

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23 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Let's have Eggman shoot Tails in the face next game. It will be Very Mature, and therefore good. And it's a different kind of story, so nobody can complain.

Shadow the hedgehog is a game for babies. I'm arguing for the basic ups and downs of any action story to be preserved, not maturity. 


But keep putting words in my mouth. Keep wondering why everyone leaves  frustrated when they talk to you about this IP.

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9 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Shadow the hedgehog is a game for babies. I'm arguing for the basic ups and downs of any action story to be preserved, not maturity. 

Okay so is it possible, maybe, to do this without things like shooting children? Or is an action story only valid if there's a certain amount of death in it?

9 minutes ago, Wraith said:

But keep putting words in my mouth.

Don't pretend like you've done it any less.

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Why is that really such a taboo to you?

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2 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Okay so is it possible, maybe, to do this without things like shooting children? Or is an action story only valid if there's a certain amount of death in it?

I've never said the problem with Sonic Lost World was that they didn't kill enough children. I've only ever been on the defense here. You're the one saying that they shouldn't have done this without being able to specify why besides it making you specifically squeamish. 

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6 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Why is that really such a taboo to you?

Why is this conversation still going is the better question. It's been getting more mocking and snippier since about 5, I wanna say.

And I suspected you were one for taking things a tad personally--I apologize.

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51 minutes ago, McGroose said:

You bring up a good point, I really am comparing mediocrity to just plain shit at that point. However, my original intent was to state that having Eggman, the main antagonist who hunts us down from stage 1, back as the final boss is certainly better than a random creature that shows up outta nowhere, or that has such insufficient buildup compared to Eggman's involvement in the game that it felt shoe-horned in. It's better, but not by much unless there is sufficient buildup and, like you said, proper execution. In games like Lost World and Forces, it really doesn't make much of a difference if the entire story is just poorly written or flat-out bad. It just so happens that, in most of the previous Sonic games where we've had a random monster at the end instead of Eggman for the final boss, most of those monsters just weren't well properly incorporated into the story compared to Eggman himself. Either that or the games just sucked so bad (Shadow, 06) that I don't care what happens anymore. Games like Lost World are kind of a weird exception to this rule, considering how uniquely integrated into the story Eggman was and that he didn't have any bosses save the last one. But that game's story was blegh, so...

I don't get this type of complaint; out of all of the endgame bosses from the 2000's, the only ones I can accuse of lacking proper buildup were the Biolizard, Metal Madness/Overlord, and Solaris. That's three out of six games with those types of endgame bosses. Chaos, Black Doom, and Dark Gaia all had proper buildup to their confrontations with them. If the complaint is about their lack of personality then that's fair, but I feel like not having a personality is the point. They're meant to contrast Eggman, who wants to take over the world, and are more forces of nature that need to be stopped. Was it overplayed? Certainly. But I don't think the idea in of itself is inherently bad, nor do I think simply having Eggman as the final boss should be hailed as some marked achievement. Even when he was upstaged  by a more dangerous entity, Eggman usually still has a large presence through the game, so I don't get what's the big deal if he's not always the final boss. Especially when he is still the most recurring final boss to date even if you discount all of the newer games. 

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6 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Why is that really such a taboo to you?

Is it really that hard to make an educated guess as to why someone might not be terribly fond of it? Even I'm not so cynical as to think the shooting death of a child is trivial.

6 minutes ago, Wraith said:

I've never said the problem with Sonic Lost World was that they didn't kill enough children. I've only ever been on the defense here. You're the one saying that they shouldn't have done this without being able to specify why besides it making you specifically squeamish. 

Look, I'm not making these arguments because I'm squeamish or prudish, or that I have some absolutist moral issue with fictional children being fictionally harmed. Case in point, my favorite currently-airing anime has a 13 year old girl's face get ripped off, and I consider it rad as hell. But I think we can all agree that that wouldn't be appropriate in Sonic the Hedgehog, a series where magic rings protect the hero from any real injury and where the bad guy's lair can explode around him doing him no more damage than some cracked glasses and scuff marks. It's not a series where severe physical injuries "exist", even when characters get beaten up, even when they get killed.

Likewise, different series handle deaths and killing in different ways. Sometimes it's realistic and dignified, sometimes it's a bloody slaughterfest, sometimes it's abstracted and sanitized. Sonic falls into the last category; most games don't involve any deaths (aside from robots and monsters we can easily not care about), and when there is a significant death, it's usually offscreen, always bloodless, occurs in some "unreal" manner, and is occasionally reversed by the end of the story. Sonic characters don't die realistically in the same way they don't get injured realistically. When they killed Sonic in '06, it was from a monster shooting a magic laser that basically just knocked him out for an hour before he got kissed back to life.

Maria gets shot by a soldier. Yes, it's offscreen, there's no blood, and she's helping her bioengineered half-hedgehog half-alien adopted brother(?) escape a space station at the time; it's still sterilized and unreal to some extent. But it's a lot more real and a lot more grounded than any death in the series before or any death after. It sticks out from the tone and setting of the rest of the series (even as inconsistent as they've been). There's any number of stories that could be written, and any number of ways to write this kind of story, without feeling like a plot point from an entirely different series wandered in. I don't want kids getting shot by soldiers in my colorful superpowered animal action series any more than I want magic lasers that do no identifiable damage in my dark gory horror/comedy series. It's the wrong tool for the job, it pushes me out rather than drawing me in.

In conclusion, watch Dorohedoro. It's sure as shit a better story than any Sonic game.

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1 minute ago, Kuzu said:

I don't get this type of complaint; out of all of the endgame bosses from the 2000's, the only ones I can accuse of lacking proper buildup were the Biolizard, Metal Madness/Overlord, and Solaris. That's three out of six games with those types of endgame bosses. Chaos, Black Doom, and Dark Gaia all had proper buildup to their confrontations with them. If the complaint is about their lack of personality then that's fair, but I feel like not having a personality is the point. They're meant to contrast Eggman, who wants to take over the world, and are more forces of nature that need to be stopped. Was it overplayed? Certainly. But I don't think the idea in of itself is inherently bad, nor do I think simply having Eggman as the final boss should be hailed as some marked achievement. Even when he was upstaged  by a more dangerous entity, Eggman usually still has a large presence through the game, so I don't get what's the big deal if he's not always the final boss. Especially when he is still the most recurring final boss to date even if you discount all of the newer games. 

Yes, they were technically built up, but the buildup itself was just so lame compared to Eggman's involvement in the entire story that I could care less, that's part of what I'm trying to say. That and the lack of personality too, forgot to mention that. But I'm not sure personality is the word I'm looking for when Chaos has it's "personality". There might be a more fitting term here that I'm not thinking of at the moment.

We both agree that Chaos was a good final boss, I'm guessing.

Black Doom was just such a terrible character from an equally terrible story in the Sonic franchise that his buildup was inconsequential to me. This is what I was referring to when I said that if the game is so bad in both story and character development, than I won't care whatsoever.

In this specific case, I think a good twist would have been if Eggman was somehow able to get the upperhand above Black Doom, now that would've been cool! I think what I hated about Eggman in general for a bit was because of these monsters - that he gets his ass kicked by them so often at the last second. I believe a good buildup would be the monster initially rebelling against Eggman, maybe with some initial success, but with Eggman being able to "put it in it's place" and resulting in the final fight being the creature under Control of Eggman. That would make Eggman intimidating and would make the player actually feel impressed by what he's accomplished, rather than just the usual case of him screwing himself over what become predictable at that point (Prior to Sonic Colors). It would make the final fight a lot more enjoyable to know that you're facing the threat of a savage beast that's under the control of a genius mind.  Even Generations, as frustrating as the final boss was, did something really cool by basically doing what I just said. Eggman saw monster - Eggman finally conquered the monster for good. There is certainly some appeal to be found in the of the ultimate evil or whatever monster it is being able to defeat the ultimate intellect from sheer brawn alone, but I've never cared for it. I think my above proposal would've been better.

Maybe I just want Eggman's supposed genius to be reflected at the end of the games for once. I think this may actually be part of the reason why people disliked all these MOTW back in the day, not because of the creature itself, but because it made Eggman looked like an absolute idiot for screwing up in the most predictable ways. The monster continues to usurp the glory from Eggman via a last-second bitchslap that pushed Eggman out of the arena, been there, done that. You made the argument of contrasting Eggman, which may have been what the story writers intended, but I think the contrast just makes Eggman come off more as a dumb character that fails to reflect his 300 IQ. The contrast is there, they succeeded at showing that, at the expense of making the main villain look like a fool time and time again, even despite the initial successes he had shortly ago in the games, like building Eggmanland. 

I mentioned in an earlier post the Dark Gaia was kinda like a 2nd place to Chaos for me, because he does do a few things right. He is mentioned from the start, his presence is technically everywhere and their is a decent connection with it to the Chaos Emeralds and the other characters. I still think Chaos does this a little better. You may be wondering why I like Dark Gaia more than Black Doom in this regard if both characters technically did the same things I just credited Dark Gaia with having. It's because, yet again, when I find a story to be garbage, the characters and their character buildup come off as garbage. If someone happened to like Shadow's story but not the story of Unleashed, then maybe they could apply my argument as vice-versa with Dark Gaia and Black Doom, I guess. To each their own in this regard.

I guess another thing I don't like about these monster designs is that I don't think their designs mesh well with the Sonic universe, but that is entirely subjective at that point.

 

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11 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Is it really that hard to make an educated guess as to why someone might not be terribly fond of it? Even I'm not so cynical as to think the shooting death of a child is trivial.

That that was the main source of this argument convinced me that someone was missing a point.

11 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Look, I'm not making these arguments because I'm squeamish or prudish, or that I have some absolutist moral issue with fictional children being fictionally harmed. Case in point, my favorite currently-airing anime has a 13 year old girl's face get ripped off, and I consider it rad as hell. But I think we can all agree that that wouldn't be appropriate in Sonic the Hedgehog, a series where magic rings protect the hero from any real injury and where the bad guy's lair can explode around him doing him no more damage than some cracked glasses and scuff marks. It's not a series where severe physical injuries "exist", even when characters get beaten up, even when they get killed.

 

Cheese and Rice...

totally something I needed to see before going to sleep

, lol?

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21 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Maria gets shot by a soldier. Yes, it's offscreen, there's no blood, and she's helping her bioengineered half-hedgehog half-alien adopted brother(?) escape a space station at the time; it's still sterilized and unreal to some extent. But it's a lot more real and a lot more grounded than any death in the series before or any death after. It sticks out from the tone and setting of the rest of the series (even as inconsistent as they've been). There's any number of stories that could be written, and any number of ways to write this kind of story, without feeling like a plot point from an entirely different series wandered in. I don't want kids getting shot by soldiers in my colorful superpowered animal action series any more than I want magic lasers that do no identifiable damage in my dark gory horror/comedy series. It's the wrong tool for the job, it pushes me out rather than drawing me in.

 

I still read Maria's death as fairly abstract and bloodless because it's  essentially framed like a disney death, but the details are more gruesome than usual and later games decided to be more detailed in their depiction regardless. I'm only really defending SA2 here but Shadow the Hedgehog is as much a part of the character's story as that game and I don't think that game gained a whole lot from replaying the sequence with more detail twice. You could argue it's more permissible under the darker context but I really mean it when I say Shadow is overall a game for babies: You can spray entire hordes of soldiers with bullets and have them all be left in a state where you can revive them. The game is even less consistent with how injuries are treated than before.

I didn't consider the part about the context of injuries series wide. Sonic has been seriously harmed before in cutscenes and comics but since it's a lighthearted video game the vast majority of your time spent with him is gonna be watching him shake off insane shit like a cartoon character. He's literally been shot with bullets before and walked it off when you consider this context. I tend to seperate the logic of gameplay from cutscenes entirely so that's probably why I don't ever make the connection, but it's not like everyone is going to do that, and when you consider the immersive factor games that don't require this separation have then it's probably worth considering putting the whole experience in lockstep with eachother.

And it's not like Sonic games would be fun if he could like, fall and break his leg and not be able to move so it's obvious which way they should lean toward.

The story still would have worked had Maria's death been framed in a more abstract light anyway so I don't really have any points to argue with. 

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52 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Is it really that hard to make an educated guess as to why someone might not be terribly fond of it? Even I'm not so cynical as to think the shooting death of a child is trivial.

Considering the many things that have gone further than that even in family works, yes.

There are and have been tasteful ways of portraying the death of minors or people in general without going full Warhammer about it. No ones saying it should look like something R-rated, and you know it.

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14 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Considering the many things that have gone further than that even in family works, yes.

There are and have been tasteful ways of portraying the death of minors or people in general without going full Warhammer about it. No ones saying it should look like something R-rated, and you know it.

Ok? I'm aware it doesn't have to be gory or entirely tasteless, I've seen the scene in question. That was never actually the point.

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11 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Ok? I'm aware it doesn't have to be gory or entirely tasteless, I've seen the scene in question. That was never actually the point.

Dude, when I read something that mocks what people are actually saying like this:

3 hours ago, Diogenes said:

Let's have Eggman shoot Tails in the face next game. It will be Very Mature, and therefore good. And it's a different kind of story, so nobody can complain.

My first thought is thinking how tasteless your making it actually sound every time the subject comes up, so I’m really having a hard time understanding what the point was then.

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7 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Dude, when I read something that mocks what people are actually saying like this:

My first thought is thinking how tasteless your making it actually sound every time the subject comes up, 

It was deliberately hyperbolic to emphasize how different ways of handling death and killing carry different weights and have different tones and that not every option is appropriate for every series (and admittedly because I was getting a bit pissed off)

7 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

so I’m really having a hard time understanding what the point was then.

I mean, I made a whole effortpost up there trying to explain why I feel Maria's death is out of place in the series. I'm not sure what more I can say to explain my position.

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4 hours ago, Kuzu said:

 

Maybe I'm just the weird one because I grew up in the time when this was considered "normal" 

tumblr_inline_onyl5jXkPR1qdawwj_640.png

 

Which also exists in the same movie as this...

image.jpg?w=1920&h=1080

 

 

But no, I don't see a difference; what I'm seeing though is some of you have probably never really been exposed to early Disney films, which are arguably darker than anything Sonic has put out ever. But oh, guess Sonic isn't allowed to do any of that. Has to be implied or never shown (even though it was already doing that) because we'll damage the fragile little minds of the children and the adults who have built up certain expectations about the series.

Woot, looking forward to more of the Deadly Six, the best Sonic characters around; simple enough that kids don't have to use their brains to process complex characterization. Can't have that now can we, things need to be simple after all. 

This isn't a "you millenials are too soft" argument or wherever you think this is going.

This is a "these two things are so inherently seperated there's no comparison" argument.

A human girl getting shot by the military is realistic. Something that could physically happen. We can't get drowned by water gods, we won't die and a bird pops out, the sun won't fall from us, and our planet's life force can't get drained. 

You tried to call people hypocrites for liking one thing and not the other when there's a clear disconnect between the two.

Also guns and Sonic have a very negative history in general and that's a huge turnoff. 

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1 hour ago, McGroose said:

In this specific case, I think a good twist would have been if Eggman was somehow able to get the upperhand above Black Doom...

Segmented<<<

Why would this have been good? That wouldn't have worked even if the story in Shadow the Hedgehog was coherent.

The story's not about him.

Eggman has nothing to do with Shadow trying to get his memories back and since Eggman isn't exactly the Catalyst of events in that game, it's fine that he doesn't do that.

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4 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

Eggman has nothing to do with Shadow trying to get his memories back

He probably should've, though, given that he was the one who saved Shadow.

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1 minute ago, Diogenes said:

He probably should've, though, given that he was the one who saved Shadow.

If the subplot of Eggman tricking Shadow into being an android minion was played up more...

Since Eggman actually reveals that little tidbit, and he has a legit reason not to tell him, that may actually matter.

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7 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

Segmented<<<

Why would this have been good? That wouldn't have worked even if the story in Shadow the Hedgehog was coherent.

The story's not about him.

Eggman has nothing to do with Shadow trying to get his memories back and since Eggman isn't exactly the Catalyst of events in that game, it's fine that he doesn't do that.

Here is the cherry on top of the shit sunday that is shadow the hedgehogs story - eggman tells shadow that he was the original shadow all along... like 10 or so minutes into the final boss fight of that game and you probably wont see it. At least, that's what I remember. 

This story sucks so bad that eggman was the only person who gave shadow the answer he wanted, but dont forget that the whole shadow memory thing was a big plot point in sonic heroes. Shadow was pursuing eggman for the truth, wasnt that a big part of the team dark story? Eggman was a crucial part of shadow learning about his past. We were given an entire extra game just so eggman could say that one line most players probably didnt hear that could've easily just been sais in sonic heroes instead.

 

Didnt somecallmejohnny also say that in his review of one of those games or something? 

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6 hours ago, McGroose said:

Maybe I just want Eggman's supposed genius to be reflected at the end of the games for once. I think this may actually be part of the reason why people disliked all these MOTW back in the day, not because of the creature itself, but because it made Eggman looked like an absolute idiot for screwing up in the most predictable ways. The monster continues to usurp the glory from Eggman via a last-second bitchslap that pushed Eggman out of the arena, been there, done that. You made the argument of contrasting Eggman, which may have been what the story writers intended, but I think the contrast just makes Eggman come off more as a dumb character that fails to reflect his 300 IQ. The contrast is there, they succeeded at showing that, at the expense of making the main villain look like a fool time and time again, even despite the initial successes he had shortly ago in the games, like building Eggmanland. 

I often see people praising Eggman in Adventure. Yeah with Chaos it comes off as kind of goofy when he gets blasted away, but in SA2 he had no idea of Gerald's plans and couldn't realistically prepare for that. But I think people tend to focus on what he did before those points.

In SA1 we see him gathering the emeralds one by one, sometimes even stealing it directly from Sonic. He even uses sleeping gas at one point, can't run off if you can't run. We do get to see him build a version of Eggmanland, and even some nods to Classic inside there. I do wish we got that as a level but his final base is still cool in it's own way. We also have the Egg Carrier which is pretty much a floating base filled with all kinds of things, including a pool and a secret Chao garden.

In SA2 he gathers Shadow and Rouge to help him on a mission he needs multiple people for. This is probably one of his more complicated plans, and he comes very close to winning due to the game's double story. He and his team get into G.U.N.'s island base (which they actually blow up from Shadow planting a bomb while Eggman breaks in), steal several Chaos emeralds (and in a side guide book find out Rouge also stole info about Project Shadow from here too), and generally get what they came for despite it not going as planned and Sonic getting in the way. We see Eggman now has a pyramid base, possibly to keep low (for Eggman standards) from G.U.N.'s own robots (although he has to get rid of some by force). Of course we get the now famous scene of Eggman giving an announcement about how if the President doesn't give him what he wants, he'll do so by force within 24 hours, and the canon blowing up half the moon. He also has a giant Egg golem in his base (which is a smaller example of the turning on Eggman trope).

Eggman realizes Sonic and friends are on the Ark. He has the upper hand at this point as he knows Tails has the last emerald he needs, and since Sonic leaves Amy alone it actually has consequences for once and Eggman kidnaps her. He then uses her to get to Sonic with Amy at gun point and have him hand over the last emerald. He knows that Tails has created a fake emerald due to the monitor showing two readings when there should only be one. He bluffs to confirm this is true, which Tails gives away. He traps Sonic in a pod and shoots him out to space to explode. (seemingly to his death in Dark, before we learn he can use Chaos control too in Hero) Eggman tells Shadow to stop whoever is heading to the Canon (it's Sonic). Eggman puts in the last emerald, and would have normally won here. (and then in Last story we learn of Gerald's plan, which is triggered when all of the emeralds are put in. This also makes that part of Dark the "canon" one, as Sonic stopping the Ark would prevent the Last story plan.)

6 hours ago, Wraith said:

I still read Maria's death as fairly abstract and bloodless because it's  essentially framed like a disney death, but the details are more gruesome than usual and later games decided to be more detailed in their depiction regardless. I'm only really defending SA2 here but Shadow the Hedgehog is as much a part of the character's story as that game and I don't think that game gained a whole lot from replaying the sequence with more detail twice. You could argue it's more permissible under the darker context but I really mean it when I say Shadow is overall a game for babies: You can spray entire hordes of soldiers with bullets and have them all be left in a state where you can revive them. The game is even less consistent with how injuries are treated than before.

The funny thing is that even in the edgier Shadow game, it still got censored from the original intention too, possibly to avoid an outright T rating.

 

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32 minutes ago, DryLagoon said:

...since Sonic leaves Amy alone it actually has consequences for once...

Apparently it never had consequences before...like the game right before that one where leaving her alone got her kidnapped.

Words...

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