But Shadow's story is absolutely atrocious in every way. It's so bad it makes IDW Shadow a better character.
To win, you need to adapt, and to adapt, you need to be able to laugh away all the restraints. Everything holding you back.Aight so, from what I can tell...
In this game, Shadow is working for GUN as per the status quo established by 06 and he's sent on a mission to retrieve the Chaos Emeralds before Sonic or Eggman for undisclosed reasons. This is where it gets trippy...
So Shadow starts having hallucinations of Maria and the main villain of the game, an exiled Metarex (those Gundam ripoffs from the third season of Sonic X), cleverly named "The Exiled", promises he can use the emeralds to stop Shadow's visions. Except durrrr, he was lying and was using GUN's technology to trick Shadow into seeing those visions to get the Chaos Emeralds. Did I mention this metarex guy was also the leader of GUN here cuz of some offscreen fuckery with Chris that is revealed in a clunky ass exposition dump with Sonic, Tails, and Eggman.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.It's like, I can kind of tell what they were going for because the assumption among the fanbase is that Shadow is only ever interesting when he's angsting about his past, so of course using it makes sense....except no, that's not how it works.
Like I get it, Shadow's past is an essential part of his character and Sega have been doing him a disservice by ignoring it. You do not solve that by shoehorning said past to justify his presence at any oppurtunity. And if you're going to do that, at least do it in a way that's less dumb.
Ian Flynn had a better idea about this by bringing back the Black Arms and specifically creating a new Evil Counterpart for Shadow from them. It's an old idea but used in a new way and doesn't feel like it's betraying what the character went through.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Its the same deal with Knuckles; like just because Sega are lazy with utilizing them doesn't mean defaulting back to their old status quos is necessarily better.
So Knuckles does nothing but stay on Angel Islanda nd Shadow broods over Maria...ok, what else is new? A lot of Sonic fans are more concerned with "returning the characters to how they were" as opposed to wondering how they can progress.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.I think 06 did Shadow pretty good. He was kinda civil there. Still kinda moody but no extremes or anything, he kicked Silver in the head and dragged him through time for being an idiot and even though our very own page claims Shadow saved Sonic because I Wanna Be The Vegeta...I lived through that scene and never got that vibe at all? All I got was Shadow telling Silver "I ain't holding back" and that's about it.
Are explosions science?I mean, Shadow in that cutscene read the room quite well: Sonic dying is a bad thing, kid from the future is likely well-meaning and manipulated by Mephiles. Can't complain.
Knuckles keeping tabs on Eggman (and Rouge), rather than waiting for them to come, would work well as an explanation for him getting involved, at the very least. Have Tails giving him a hand with a security system, and Chaos appearing to do his job now that his timeout is over, and, well, you can move the character forwards.
Kinda funny how the character people used to mock hardcore for being overly edgy is the best thing about the game people hate most in the franchise.
One Strip! One Strip!Flynn has gone on record saying that one of his biggest problems writing Shadow is that...well...he's too fucking powerful lol. He kind of breaks the plot. A Shadow that acts normal is virtually unstoppable and so Flynn feels like has has to constantly write him out in order to preserve some level of drama.
Otherwise, you have a character who's every bit as strong as the MC running around and his entire schtick is that he doesn't fuck around.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.I always wondered how Shadow isn't stronger than Sonic. They're supposed to be virtually identical in terms of speed, strength, defense, etc, but Shadow has Chaos powers on top of that. Chaos Spear, Chaos Blast, Chaos Control (both time-slow and teleportation). How do those Chaos abilities not make Shadow just flatly superior to Sonic?
In depends on the medium and writer. But in Sonic X specifically, Shadow kind of regularly kicked the shit out of Sonic, he himself having a severe case of Adaptational Badass in the show.
And in Sonic Adventure 2, the whole basis of their rivalry is that Shadow is the Always Someone Better to Sonic with Chaos Control being the thing that made Shadow superior.
So...with that in mind, you can't really have a character like that run wild.
Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Aug 11th 2022 at 10:54:48 AM
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.

I've been with this series since the mid 2000s, I think I can follow well enough.
Might as well have fun here.
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"