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Do you think Sonic Frontiers will change how fanservice is regarded/written?


Scritch the Cat

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Ya know its pretty funny to me how Forces regularly gets accused for shallowly using past material to pander to the audiences, yet Frontiers does the same thing to an arguably even more obnoxious extent, but was praised to high heaven for it. 

All it really does is just confirm to me what I kind suspected for years; the complaints were never about shallow pandering in itself, but who's nostalgia was being pandered to. Adventure fans have been bitching and moaning for years and demanding Sega to cater to them and they finally got it with Frontiers. 

 

I can sit here and criticize Frontiers' writing and references all I want, but the fact is that the vocal amount of praise the game has gotten is basically telling Sega that they can placate a significant portion of Sonic fans by just mining their nostalgia. And look, I'm not immune to this either ok. I mentally regressed to a fourteen year old when a comic book referenced a line from a fanfic sprite animation from 2007. I'm just as bad as the rest of you, I'm just more willing to acknowledge it and call it out when its not done in a particularly good place. 

 

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2 hours ago, Wraith said:

To me, 'shadow gets manipulated and lead down a dark road by a cloudy past and third parties manipulating his emotions' is a road already traveled by SA2. Getting the chance to do another Shadow story and doing the same thing, but more is a tad redundant to me without even getting into the execution of it(the execution was very bad).

If you told me to write a Shadow story post SA2 there are a lot of better roads to travel. Shadow reached self actualization at the end of SA2. "Give them a chance...to be happy." He already has his mission. What now? Shadow may be unequivocally good now after everything that's happened to him, but he was just public enemy number one and tried to destroy the world right before that. Even if he wants to be good, does the world trust him to? If they don't, how far would he have to go to earn it?

This isn't to say that fleshing out his past entirely is off the table, but they need to be new addition that actually service him and the other characters that took place there. There are like four different takes about Shadow's past across different mediums and not once have I learned anything of substance about Maria. I had to wait for Sonic Channel to touch on that, and she's the reason he's doing all of this shit. Priorities?

Spoilering since it's divorced from the topic as of right now:

Spoiler

 

Redundancy is fair, but that's not the purpose of retreading it imo. Your thought as to how Shadow should progress past that point is legitimately how I would approach it as well, as development for him as a character past that point naturally is all I want out of him beyond SA2. It's part of why I feel like ShTH works though, because imo the point is arguably that he didn't reach self actualization by the end of SA2, and Shadow retreading the ground is to open it back up to address it.

This is why I argue that it does SA2 the most justice, because it actually examines the character in his entirety from the game, and builds the sequel around it:

  • Shadow's scene aboard the ARK in SA2, one of the few glimpses we have of the character before the incident, establishes him as a character that is already troubled over who he is, over his creation, and whether the answers will be reassuring to himself.
     
    This disposition is further expanded on in the Sonic channel art, where he's consistently shown to be contemplative, in line with that past. It alludes to his uncertainty of purpose for the game itself, but also asks a question beyond who he is to other people, as Gerald already gave him a purpose in creation that he was not apparently satisfied with to begin with. By the end of the game, Shadow has done right by Maria, but this thread of his character has never been explicitly answered.
     
  • Gerald manipulated Shadow's memories in SA2 by either removing or scrambling what memories he had, and technically is the reason for Shadow's route down the path of evil. It's never explicitly stated by how much he manipulated Shadow to that goal, however, and when given how heavily Shadow identifies with his decisions, to the degree he laughs at a collogue about to die, Shadow has internalized the trauma to the degree that he gladly identifies with the jaded cynicism. While this is never given lip service by people who do play SA2, it's actually a much larger part of his character than people give it credit for, as the story directly calls out in the next point.
     
  • Rather than leaving Shadow's character in a constant state of "he's fully evil in service of Maria" until Maria's full memory resurfaces, Shadow suddenly finds himself in conflict with himself, due to his own internal morality, in spite of his promise
     
    The story suddenly swerves into who Shadow is as a character, outside of all manipulation, and he finds himself torn. Maria's memory drives him away from helping others, but is also reminding himself of what he actually values. What could be summed up as "haha she reminds him of Maria" can actually be established as Shadow choosing for himself what he values, based off of his own beliefs, in spite of and without someone telling him what to do. Here, he is self-actualizing himself, and making a decision based on who he is as a person. And that ends up pulling him away from the goal he thought he was seeking to begin with. His past with Maria is what ties him to his empathy for others, but also is driving him away from others. It's a part of who he really is, at his core.
     
  • By the end of the game, Shadow is finally reminded of what Maria really wanted, after so many years projecting his own wish in the absence of her memory. He's finally making an effort to fulfill her wish, which he obviously feels guilty over not realizing soon enough, tears and all. Beyond that, though, his decisions and beliefs earlier in life are not actually addressed, as he's essentially running from them as a past mistake he needs to fix above all else. If this were Shadow's actual self-actualization, it would essentially be him burying who he was, and now is, as a person to make right by Maria, and living his life for her wish alone. A lot of people are fine with that, with how noble and redemptive of an action it is, but a mission and promise to live his life by is not necessarily an answer to who he is as a person, either. If he were to fully self-actualize, he would have to address his feelings and decide what they mean to him, beyond his friend's wish to protect the earth rather than destroy it. "Who am I" is left unanswered.
     

Shadow the Hedgehog as a game does not have him ask those follow up questions, due to the amnesia route taken, which is definitely a decision... but it does re-establish these scenarios verbatim, exploring all the routes Shadow can take in service of a purpose, a wish, a promise, or his own desire. The problem is that each of those routes do not represent who Shadow is in totality, due to the limited memories he uncovers route-by-route. This is in line with his direct response to Rouge in SA2:

image.thumb.png.4db0e0586ee3e1e9a3e7583c5d18a40a.png

It speaks to the individual ways that Shadow can end up, as a hero, as a villain, as a neutral party, self loathing or arrogant, but it's never representative of who he is in totality. They're all fractions of a greater whole, which beyond those points Shadow would otherwise slowly come to realize and have to deal with on his own. "Who I am" is not answered in any of those routes, because they're all Shadow being pulled in separate directions by these third parties, away from who Shadow is in his totality. Maria is technically one of them, even if he values what she wants the most out of everyone, to the degree he will throw his life away for her.


Then you get the ending of Shadow the Hedgehog. It's short, it's rushed, it's in a weird limbo where people aren't sure whether there is canon story that takes place before it in some of the routes or not. It's not... good lmao. But at the same time, the intention behind it actually works as an answer to all of this.

Shadow is forced to acknowledge his full past, courtesy of Black Doom unleashing a wave of memories into his brain. Being led along by the pretense of a more-complete-than-ever "purpose" that he was created for, paired with the trauma he's re-experiencing, Black Doom expects Shadow to naturally fall in line. But instead, Shadow chooses to embrace his past, while focusing on a singular memory of Maria in the swirling vortex he's experiencing, and subsequently rejects all previous purpose he now knows and remembers. He's a paradox of both living for and moving past the past, but more importantly is now living for himself, choosing to live "by my will", and defining his own purpose in life.

It's not a direct follow up to SA2 in a way that have been far less convoluted if amnesia hadn't been involved, no, but it ultimately does afford him the opportunity to self-actualize beyond what his sudden realization of Maria's wish allowed him to. Could it be handled better? Absolutely 100%. Expanding on that finale alone with more thorough exploration of all of those storybeats would only improve it, even if the intention is "there" as of now. But it also explores threads that existed in SA2 in ways that a majority of people tend to discount, at the cost of SA2 Shadow's depth to begin with. That's ultimately why I feel like the ending, and resulting context from the entire game, does a better job justifying it than the idea of amnesia on it's own.

I know other routes can be taken, and honestly they would be easier to explore, but again, I don't see very many people actually dive into it in full depth, which is lame as a massive fan of both SA2 and Shadow from that game. I'd like to know the merit of that in its own right, since Shadow the Hedgehog as a game has absolutely abysmal execution, and could be improved by leagues if someone knew what they were doing when adapting or reimagining it, using the same building blocks.

 

 

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If SEGA has a penchant for callbacks and references to previous games, then why not expand on the vague elements that have been barely explored and underdeveloped, such as Silver's future and the Sol Dimension Blaze comes from? They could be of good use for standalone spin-off games.

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22 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

I'm just as bad as the rest of you, I'm just more willing to acknowledge it and call it out when its not done in a particularly good place.

That comes off as a bit pretentious,  I won't lie.

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1 hour ago, Kuzu said:

Ya know its pretty funny to me how Forces regularly gets accused for shallowly using past material to pander to the audiences, yet Frontiers does the same thing to an arguably even more obnoxious extent, but was praised to high heaven for it. 

All it really does is just confirm to me what I kind suspected for years; the complaints were never about shallow pandering in itself, but who's nostalgia was being pandered to. Adventure fans have been bitching and moaning for years and demanding Sega to cater to them and they finally got it with Frontiers. 

I can sit here and criticize Frontiers' writing and references all I want, but the fact is that the vocal amount of praise the game has gotten is basically telling Sega that they can placate a significant portion of Sonic fans by just mining their nostalgia. And look, I'm not immune to this either ok. I mentally regressed to a fourteen year old when a comic book referenced a line from a fanfic sprite animation from 2007. I'm just as bad as the rest of you, I'm just more willing to acknowledge it and call it out when its not done in a particularly good place. 

I think part of the difference is forces' callbacks happened within a very middle-of-the-road game, so it was more salt in the wound-y.

Frontiers had a decent to good game behind it, so it wasn't as much of an annoyance or blatantly obvious like with forces.

 

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55 minutes ago, Michael Takagawa said:

...such as Silver's future and the Sol Dimension Blaze comes from?

Blaze's dimension was already explored in Sonic Rush Adventure, I have no real confidence that a revisit will build upon what was already there...since Sonic's world can't even be consistent from game to game.

Silver's future on the other hand cannot be expanded on because Sega has made the wise decision of making the current plot of every game he's in be the cause of said future.

I suppose it would be funny for a potential game to reveal that time travel in Sonic's world really does work on Dragon Ball logic and you can't actually change the past. Silver "finally" realizing that would then bring everyone with him to help save the future.

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22 minutes ago, LegoFedora said:

I think part of the difference is forces' callbacks happened within a very middle-of-the-road game, so it was more salt in the wound-y.

Frontiers had a decent to good game behind it, so it wasn't as much of an annoyance or blatantly obvious like with forces.

I honestly feel like both games were fine with their references.

Aside from Frontiers just being massively better game in quality, its references moreso felt like they also were helping re-establish the links of the franchise. Stuff that went well with the overall canon synergy.

Probably also helps that it confirmed some fan favorites canon too in the long run as well.

Forces' references weren't necessarily bad either. They just didn't really do much for things in the grand scheme of things.

Frontiers, at least at present was part of showing them actually putting their money where their mouths were.

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2 hours ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

That comes off as a bit pretentious,  I won't lie.

And yet, you're not denying it either. 

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6 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

And yet, you're not denying it either. 

I mean, it is relatively inaccurate to claim that most are just blinded by the nostalgia. I figured if I pointed that out, it would just turn into a back and forth bout.

I just find the endeavor needlessly cynical, and you have my condolences for that state of being.

Honestly, I just find the references fine and fun. They're not something people need to spend time justifying their reasons for enjoying.

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3 hours ago, Kuzu said:

Ya know its pretty funny to me how Forces regularly gets accused for shallowly using past material to pander to the audiences, yet Frontiers does the same thing to an arguably even more obnoxious extent, but was praised to high heaven for it. 

All it really does is just confirm to me what I kind suspected for years; the complaints were never about shallow pandering in itself, but who's nostalgia was being pandered to. Adventure fans have been bitching and moaning for years and demanding Sega to cater to them and they finally got it with Frontiers. 

I can sit here and criticize Frontiers' writing and references all I want, but the fact is that the vocal amount of praise the game has gotten is basically telling Sega that they can placate a significant portion of Sonic fans by just mining their nostalgia. And look, I'm not immune to this either ok. I mentally regressed to a fourteen year old when a comic book referenced a line from a fanfic sprite animation from 2007. I'm just as bad as the rest of you, I'm just more willing to acknowledge it and call it out when its not done in a particularly good place. 

If that's true, I'm assuming at least it won't last too long.  Of course Adventure fans will enjoy it if the games continue catering to their tastes, but if it doesn't ever progress past simple name-drops, soon enough it'll be deemed as dumb as shoving Green Hill Zone motifs into every game.  As to Forces, its callbacks being worse-received likely has less to do with how bad they are overall than the sheer hate that the fakeout villain coalition got.  People simply don't want to cheer for a game whose marketing intentionally deceived them, while with Frontiers the fact that they got rid of Pontaff and hired Ian Flynn made many fans want to buy it out of principle. 

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1 hour ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

I mean, it is relatively inaccurate to claim that most are just blinded by the nostalgia. I figured if I pointed that out, it would just turn into a back and forth bout.

I just find the endeavor needlessly cynical, and you have my condolences for that state of being.

Honestly, I just find the references fine and fun. They're not something people need to spend time justifying their reasons for enjoying.

I think it's mostly because people expected something a little more...energetic from the nostalgia than anything.

That and they just existed mostly to show long time fans "okay, we know there's history and lore. We'll keep that in mind."

It works, and it's pretty inoffensive, but...I don't know, just could be better. I kinda lost the words for it, but at least it doesn't get any low marks on that front. That said, it has great potential for worldbuilding.

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Interesting how so much of Frontiers' reputation seems contingent on what comes next, and again, a big part of this are the historical cockslaps such as rushing out 06 and straight-up lying about the Forces villains.  Only time will tell how much they progress beyond telling us this world exists and into showing us.

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6 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

I think it's mostly because people expected something a little more...energetic from the nostalgia than anything.

That and they just existed mostly to show long time fans "okay, we know there's history and lore. We'll keep that in mind."

It works, and it's pretty inoffensive, but...I don't know, just could be better. I kinda lost the words for it, but at least it doesn't get any low marks on that front. That said, it has great potential for worldbuilding.

That bout of reasoning is fine. But pretending that people who are taken with it are just blinded by nostalgia is overdoing it really.

2 minutes ago, Scritch the Cat said:

Interesting how so much of Frontiers' reputation seems contingent on what comes next, and again, a big part of this are the historical cockslaps such as rushing out 06 and straight-up lying about the Forces villains.  Only time will tell how much they progress beyond telling us this world exists and into showing us.

Frontiers has the potential to be the "Sonic 1" of whatever new era is to come. Unlike say, Unleashed, it didn't have any one thing dragging it down massively to the point of being like, only half good. It has a good structure on its base and delivered for the most part.

Now, with the room for improvement, comes a crossroads of sorts. Will things continue to get better or will 2022 have turned out to just have been a fluke, given how grand a year that was for Sonic? At least in regards to the game, Frontiers.

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2 hours ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

That bout of reasoning is fine. But pretending that people who are taken with it are just blinded by nostalgia is overdoing it really.

Well, we do have to be fair in that Sega have been using nostalgia as a hook whenever possible. Whether it works or not is the question, and it tends to go either or more often than I'd like. You can blame that on the constant years of "Sonic should go back to his roots" but we're still on shaky ground that Frontiers is only beginning to harden for the forseeable future.

We've seen this play out enough to be wary.

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12 hours ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

I mean, it is relatively inaccurate to claim that most are just blinded by the nostalgia. I figured if I pointed that out, it would just turn into a back and forth bout.

I just find the endeavor needlessly cynical, and you have my condolences for that state of being.

Honestly, I just find the references fine and fun. They're not something people need to spend time justifying their reasons for enjoying.

I didn't say anyone was blinded by nostalgia.

I said y'all are willing to excuse the same problems you levied at another game because its specifically your nostalgia being catered to.

That's  not being cynical, it's stating a fact that once again, you haven't actually addressed or refuted. 

If you like them for specific reason then just own up to it.

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I think the over-reliance on past games and ideas is generally agreed upon to one of the biggest problems with Frontiers as a whole, much less the constant references to past games the script drops. I think the reason some people give it a pass when compared to Forces, although they still shouldn't, is that past regrets is at least a regular theme brought up throughout the game. The Ancients' whole deal ties into a lot of old series lore and answers a longstanding question, Tails' arc relates to his past, and so does Knuckles'. It could be argued that Sage brings up the past a lot because that's how her analysis is informed, which makes some sense, at least. Even despite the old villains being brought back in Forces, the past is never brought up in any meaningful capacity. A major and generally well-liked villain like Chaos getting hyped up and advertised, only to be one-shot in one of the series' most reviled cutscenes, is a pill that's much harder to swallow compared to whatever Frontiers does.

I do want the next game to focus more on the present happenings, with characters acting and observing things in the 'now'. No more "hey this reminds me of [x]". It's cute the first time but not the 50th. But Frontiers' narrative is at least one I can care about and enjoy, Forces by comparison is completely vapid. I'm not outright offended by it but there isn't a single part of it that does anything for me--save for some of Sonic's dialogue.

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30 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

I said y'all are willing to excuse the same problems you levied at another game because its specifically your nostalgia being catered to.

Except I very much don't, because I never raised those as a problem at Forces in the first place. Hence the inaccuracy of your generalization.

And like I said, unless it's just another bad joke, it's needlessly pretentious to act like you're supposedly the only one willing to call it like it is, just because you see it that way. Are there some people who might think like that? Maybe. But not to the extent that you think.

9 hours ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Well, we do have to be fair in that Sega have been using nostalgia as a hook whenever possible. Whether it works or not is the question, and it tends to go either or more often than I'd like. You can blame that on the constant years of "Sonic should go back to his roots" but we're still on shaky ground that Frontiers is only beginning to harden for the forseeable future.

We've seen this play out enough to be wary.

See now, that's an actual good point you've raised. if people are wary of things being the way they are, based off the past, wherein they may not have been used as well or with as much of a purpose, that's understandable.

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