History VideoGame / SonicChronicles

''Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood'' (2008) is a RPG SpinOff of the ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'' franchise for the UsefulNotes/NintendoDS, developed by none other than Creator/BioWare.

* LooseCanon: The ideas expanded on the game--particularly that the Fourth Great Civilization from ''VideoGame/SonicBattle'' is the rival of the Knuckles clan in the past of ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure''--doesn't have anything in the series that could contradict it. Ian Flynn, chief writer of the Archie Sonic comics, [[http://www.tssznews.com/2014/02/17/flynn-updates-readers-on-new-sonic-comic-continuity/ suggested]] that ''Sonic Chronicles'' rather [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture occurs late in the chronology]] and thus is the reason why the comics never covered it, and Aaron Webber, who is a social media coordinator at Sega of America, [[https://youtu.be/axAvQSg1mM0?t=529 stated]] that "[[RetCanon everything is canon]]". The current word seems to be that everything is canon '''except''' ''Sonic Chronicles''.

A sequel was announced, [[VaporWare but nothing's been heard since]]. The game took heavy inspiration from the [[ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics Archie Comics canon]], [[ScrewedByTheLawyers causing a legal situation]] with writer Creator/KenPenders[[note]]who claimed to hold ownership over vast swaths of the Sonic multiverse. While he lost all cases against Sega and other parties aside from Archie, Archie's incompetent record-keeping caused the courts to rule in Penders' favor over characters he explicitly created during his time as a writer, leading to Archie and Sega forcing a SoftReboot on the comic in 2013, before Sega finally cancelled the Archie run in favor of [[ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogIDW a wholly new continuity]] a few years later[[/note]], though Sega ultimately won the case, but [=BioWare=] itself had been bought by Creator/ElectronicArts during the game's development, making it unlikely they would've ever developed the sequel to begin with even if the legal problems hadn't arisen, and Sega never announced who else would be developing the sequel either. The only references are Ferox, one of the unique Chao appearing twice in brief cameos in ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogIDW'' and Knuckles's tribe being referred to as the Knuckles Clan in different games such as ''VideoGame/SonicRunners'' and ''VideoGame/TeamSonicRacing''.

A sequel was announced, [[VaporWare but nothing's been heard since]]. The game took heavy inspiration from the [[ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics Archie Comics canon]], [[ScrewedByTheLawyers causing a legal situation]] with writer Creator/KenPenders in 2011[[note]]who claimed to hold ownership over vast swaths of the Sonic multiverse. While he lost all cases against Sega and other parties aside from Archie, Archie's incompetent record-keeping caused the courts to rule in Penders' favor over characters he explicitly created during his time as a writer, leading to Archie and Sega forcing a SoftReboot on the comic in 2013, before Sega finally cancelled the Archie run in favor of [[ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogIDW a wholly new continuity]] a few years later[[/note]], though Sega ultimately won the case in October 2013, but [=BioWare=] itself had been bought by Creator/ElectronicArts during the game's development, making it unlikely they would've ever developed the sequel to begin with even if the legal problems hadn't arisen, and Sega never announced who else would be developing the sequel either. The only references are Ferox, one of the unique Chao appearing twice in brief cameos in ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogIDW'' and Knuckles's tribe being referred to as the Knuckles Clan in different games such as ''VideoGame/SonicRunners'' and ''VideoGame/TeamSonicRacing''.

A sequel was announced, [[VaporWare but nothing's been heard since]]. The game took heavy inspiration from the [[ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics Archie Comics canon]], [[ScrewedByTheLawyers causing a legal situation]] with writer Creator/KenPenders[[note]]who claimed to hold ownership over vast swaths of the Sonic multiverse. While he lost all cases against Sega and other parties aside from Archie, Archie's incompetent record-keeping caused the courts to rule in Penders' favor over characters he explicitly created during his time as a writer, leading to Archie and Sega forcing a SoftReboot on the comic in 2013, before Sega finally cancelled the Archie run in favor of [[ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogIDW a wholly new continuity]] a few years later[[/note]], though Sega ultimately won the case, but [=BioWare=] itself had been bought by Creator/ElectronicArts during the game's development, making it unlikely they would've ever developed the sequel to begin with even if the legal problems hadn't arisen, and Sega never announced who else would be developing the sequel either. The only references are Ferox, one of the unique Chao appearing twice in brief cameos in ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogIDW'' and Knuckles's tribe being referred to as the Knuckles Clan in different games such as ''VideoGame/SonicRunners'' and ''VideoGame/TeamSonicRacing''.

* {{Expy}}: Shade is pretty clearly an expy of [[ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics Julie-Su]], and the Nocturnus are expies of the Dark Legion. There's even an expied area with the Twilight Cage. [=BioWare=] mostly took Archie's echidna history and adapted it to the games, which got everyone involved with the game in trouble when Ken Penders filed a lawsuit in response. It came full-circle later in Archie's run, when the "Twilight Zone" to which the Dark Legion was banished was {{retcon}}ned to be ''Chronicles''' Twilight Cage.

A sequel was announced, [[VaporWare but nothing's been heard since]]. The game took heavy inspiration from the [[ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics Archie Comics canon]], [[ScrewedByTheLawyers causing a legal situation]] with writer Creator/KenPenders[[note]]who claimed to hold ownership over vast swaths of the Sonic multiverse. While he lost all cases against Sega and other parties aside from Archie, Archie's incompetent record-keeping caused the courts to rule in Penders' favor over characters he explicitly created during his time as a writer, leading to Archie and Sega forcing a SoftReboot on the comic in 2013, before Sega finally cancelled the Archie run in favor of [[ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogIDW a wholly new continuity]] a few years later[[/note]], though Sega ultimately won the case, but [=BioWare=] itself had been bought by Creator/ElectronicArts during the game's development, making it unlikely they would've ever developed the sequel to begin with even if the legal problems hadn't arisen, and Sega never announced who else would be developing the sequel either. The only references are Ferox, one of the unique Chaos appearing twice in brief cameos in ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogIDW'' and Knuckles's tribe being referred to as the Knuckles Clan in different games such as ''VideoGame/SonicRunners'' and ''VideoGame/TeamSonicRacing''.

* OffModel:
** The hearts on Rouge's boots are in the wrong location: they're supposed to be on the very end of her feet, but her ''Chronicles'' model puts them much further up.
** Shade has much smaller eyes during the final cutscene that make her look noticeably off.

* MascotRPG: The first RPG outing for the Blue Blur, and one by an industry veteran of the genre in Creator/BioWare -- similar to how Nintendo brought in [[Creator/SquareEnix Square]] for VideoGame/SuperMarioRPG.

* CrutchCharacter: Ferox is a Crutch Chao. Its effect is to make all of your POW moves automatically succeed, which can be very helpful for characters with more complex POW moves like Cream and [[spoiler:Eggman]]. However, if you're good or dedicated enough to learn the patterns then Ferox becomes effectively useless, with other Chao granting more tangible combat effects.

* ObviousBeta: SEGA's contract with [=BioWare=] expired during development and they shifted their efforts to ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins''. As such, the game was released in a late beta stage, resulting in a bare-bones RPG with essentially no real sidequests. One of the most noticeable problems is the music and sound effects; most areas use placeholder MIDI-format music of very low quality, and pretty much all sound effects in battle are placeholder noises.

* AbsurdlyHighLevelCap: The level cap is 30. You can easily complete the main story and all of the sidequests at around level 20, and reaching the cap takes multiple playthroughs due to the diminishing returns on experience - for context, by the time Sonic is level 22 or so the only enemies to give more than the minimum 10 experience per encounter are the last six boss fights in the entire game (Scylla, Charyb, and the four-stage Ix fight).

* CanonDiscontinuity: [[invoked]] Kevin Eva, who was the community manager of Sega Europe in the mid-2000s, [[https://board.sonicstadium.org/topic/19847-segas-secret-sonic-bible-that-well-probably-never-see-to-mars/?page=10#comment-964735 insisted]] that ''Sonic Chronicles'' is non-canon and should be considered "Alternate Universe"; the implication is that the Creator/KenPenders lawsuit with Archie and Sega, which involved using substitutes of his own characters from the Archie Sonic comics, makes it very unlikely that elements from the spin-off will [[ExiledFromContinuity ever pop up again]]. However, he has also said in the same breath that the series' canon is in constant "[[DependingOnTheWriter flux]]" and can change at any given moment. While there were indications that the position was shifting (see LooseCanon below), the current stance as of 2021's ''[[AllThereInTheManual Sonic the Hedgehog Encyclo-speed-ia]]'' is that it is outright "[[https://www.reddit.com/r/SonicTheHedgehog/comments/rlsv7z/the_fact_its_confirmed_makes_it_hurt_more/ noncanon]]"). Ultimately, the elements created for ''Chronicles'' cannot be used in later games, so the expansion of any previous game canon is considered apocryphal.

A sequel was announced, [[VaporWare but nothing's been heard since]]. The game took heavy inspiration from the [[ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics Archie Comics canon]], [[ScrewedByTheLawyers causing a legal situation]] with writer Creator/KenPenders[[note]]who claimed to hold ownership over vast swaths of the Sonic multiverse. While he lost all cases against Sega and other parties aside from Archie, Archie's incompetent record-keeping caused the courts to rule in Penders' favor over characters he explicitly created during his time as a writer, leading to Archie and Sega forcing a SoftReboot on the comic in 2013, before Sega finally cancelled the Archie run in favor of [[ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogIDW a wholly new continuity]] a few years later[[/note]], though Sega ultimately won the case, but [=BioWare=] itself had been bought by Creator/ElectronicArts during the game's development, making it unlikely they would've ever developed the sequel to begin with even if the legal problems hadn't arisen, and Sega never announced who else would be developing the sequel either. The only reference is Ferox, one of the unique Chaos appearing twice in brief cameos in ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogIDW''.

A sequel was announced, [[VaporWare but nothing's been heard since]]. The game took heavy inspiration from the [[ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics Archie Comics canon]], [[ScrewedByTheLawyers causing a legal situation]] with writer Creator/KenPenders[[note]]who claimed to hold ownership over vast swaths of the Sonic multiverse. While he lost all cases against Sega and other parties aside from Archie, Archie's incompetent record-keeping caused the courts to rule in Penders' favor over characters he explicitly created during his time as a writer, leading to Archie and Sega forcing a SoftReboot on the comic in 2013, before Sega finally cancelled the Archie run in favor of [[ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogIDW a wholly new continuity]] a few years later[[/note]], though Sega ultimately won the case, but [=BioWare=] itself had been bought by Creator/ElectronicArts during the game's development, making it unlikely they would've ever developed the sequel to begin with even if the legal problems hadn't arisen, and Sega never announced who else would be developing the sequel either.

* CanonDiscontinuity: Kevin Eva, who was the community manager of Sega Europe in the mid-2000s, [[https://board.sonicstadium.org/topic/19847-segas-secret-sonic-bible-that-well-probably-never-see-to-mars/?page=10#comment-964735 insisted]] that ''Sonic Chronicles'' is non-canon and should be considered "Alternate Universe"; the implication is that the Creator/KenPenders lawsuit with Archie and Sega, which involved using substitutes of his own characters from the Archie Sonic comics, makes it very unlikely that elements from the spin-off will [[ExiledFromContinuity ever pop up again]]. However, he has also said in the same breath that the series' canon is in constant "[[DependingOnTheWriter flux]]" and can change at any given moment. While there were indications that the position was shifting (see LooseCanon below), the current stance as of 2021's ''[[AllThereInTheManual Sonic the Hedgehog Encyclo-speed-ia]]'' is that it is outright "[[https://www.reddit.com/r/SonicTheHedgehog/comments/rlsv7z/the_fact_its_confirmed_makes_it_hurt_more/ noncanon]]"). Ultimately, the elements created for ''Chronicles'' cannot be used in later games, so the expansion of any previous game canon is considered apocryphal.

* UnwinnableByMistake: Towards the end of the game, Sonic and Knuckles split up into two groups, with the player first controlling Knuckles's team before going back to Sonic, and not regaining control of Knuckles until you're thrown into the middle of a boss fight. Even though experience points can be earned by characters not currently in your party, it won't do you much good if you can't allocate your newly earned stats, not to mention you obviously can't reconfigure your party. If you're unable to defeat the boss, you'll either have to hope you saved a long while back or restart the entire game.

* TheBadGuyWins: [[spoiler: The game ends with Eggman having successfully taken over the world. It is likely future games would have changed this, but legal problems and a middling reception resulted in future installments of this series being a cancelled which forced ''Sonic Chronicles'' to end on this note.]]

* AbsurdlyHighLevelCap: The level cap is 30. You can easily complete the main story and all of the sidequests at around level 20, and reaching the cap takes multiple playthroughs due to the diminishing returns on experience.

* EquipmentSpoiler: All items show every potential party member that can wield them, with those who haven't joined yet shadowed out. Despite this, [[spoiler:Eggman]]'s head is still recognizable and another icon is recognizable as [[spoiler:Shade]].