There's something I wish to know. Can Sonic use Chaos Control without a Chaos Emerald? Seriously, every single time (aka 2 games and Sonic X) where I've seen him use it he had an emerald with him. Meanwhile, Shadow is capable of using it without one as demonstrated in Shadow the Hedgehog, 06, Boom (though to be fair the emeralds don't exist in the Boom universe), and Forces.
Edited by mstorzil on Aug 12th 2022 at 11:33:55 AM
No rain could douse the flames that burn within me!I still wonder if there's going to be a point when the movies will end up making Sega ease off on some of their more annoying mandates, mainly the ones regarding guys like Shadow.
Like, if the movies already broke some mandates like giving Knuckles a dad and there's like 95.9% chance we're getting Maria in the Sonic 3 movie if Gerald Robotnik appeared in the concept art for Sonic 2's post-credits scene.
If the dynamic between Shadow and Maria is pitch perfect and "OMG shadow was totes perfect in sonic 3 XD!!!" is what everyone ends up saying, then...
EDIT: P.S. I still get that the mandates are so that no one pulls a K*n P*nd*rs, but as we have discussed, there comes a point when it gets frustrating.
Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Aug 12th 2022 at 2:40:27 PM
They're catch all terms for any writer to prevent another Penders, and all of the crazy shit from the 90's happening again.
Flynn has said that Sega are pretty lenient all things considered. Like he was surprised the Metal Virus was able to happen
Shadow is the exception not the rule and I'm assuming its because Sega wants to use him as a more all purpose character as opposed to him tied to his backstory exclusively.
Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Aug 12th 2022 at 2:59:45 PM
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.I disagree. Knuckles and Shadow have both been better/more significant rivald for Sonic. Jet the Hawk was a better rival for Sonic. That green dude from Sonic Boom was too.
And Shadow isn't overly complicated. Heroes, Battle, and 06 both wrote him fine. Even the Sonic comics gave him a bit with Gamma that gave him decent characterization.
Edited by FOFD on Aug 12th 2022 at 9:31:09 AM
IIRC Ian decided to stop writing for Shadow in IDW Sonic due to the mandates about him, which would probably be for the best.
The Protomen enhanced my life.I think I may have figured out the true canon path for Shadow The Hedgehog.
Some groundwork: The most likely canon path is the one that gives the most clues regarding Shadow’s memories. It must set up the pieces for the finale to happen.
1. I’m assuming ALL flashback stages are canon.
2. Shadow must hear the lie. Meaning Iron Jungle is nessecary. 3 out of 5 routes involve Iron Jungle, which is important for the next point.
3. I assume multiple acts for levels that take place in the same area (Cryptic Castle and Mad Matrix would be multiple acts for the same area). Flashbacks can be considered Acts as well.
4. The outcome for Westopolis and Digital Circuit are the same regardless of route (Lethal Highway is technically act 2 for this place).
Westopolis (normal) -> Glyphic Canyon (normal, Sky Troops is act 2, Eggman wins this battle) -> Prison Island (hero, the discs are a potential lead, giving Shadow a logical motive to go hero) -> The Doom (Act 2 for Prison Island) -> Cryptic Castle (hero, which is canon according to expert mode) -> Mad Matrix (hero, act 2 for Crytptic Castle, the files are a lead thus logical motive, lie is set up here) -> Iron Jungle (hears lie) -> Lost Impact (Act 2) -> Space Gadget (hero, Act 3) -> Final Haunt -> Finale.
Closest Route to this theory: 184.
Edited by magnum12 on Aug 13th 2022 at 3:03:33 AM
So, some pretty awful stuff is coming out regarding the development team behind Sonic Omens as seen in this video. These include:
- We have the voice actor for Omens Eggman trying to play the game and failing due to poor design, which leads to the team mocking him.
- Some of the music is also stolen.
- The team apparently spent quite a lot of time harassing other people rather than working on their fan game.
- And most damning of all; the files contain a fully textured underside of Maria with the words "bad girl" written on it.
- Hiding Omens beta builds behind pay walls and basically using Patreon and Boosty pages to support Omens' development.
More can be found in a google doc here
.
Now I don't wanna joke about Omens anymore since the whole story is just disgusting. Especially that last one. If Sega actually do decide to take action it'll set a bad precedent and cause Sega to become far less forgiving towards fan projects than they usually are...okay well thare was an exception once.
Are explosions science?According to someone in Omens' Discord server
, the devs thought Eggman's VA was faking his anger for the stream as a joke, decided to play along, and they're still friends. I suspect it's an attempt at "Just Joking" Justification, but since I'm not a member of that Discord and haven't paid attention to the game until now, I can't make an informed judgement either way.
Edited by Negacube on Aug 13th 2022 at 9:40:05 AM
Yeah the pay walls has always been questionable, starting fights with people on Twitter isn't a good thing. Though they got it done at least.
The two things I'm questioning are the Eggman voice actor and the Maria thing. I agree it's really hard to tell because they put up an update back in June or July talking about them planning to polish and refine the game after the criticism they got towards the gameplay. If they legitimately didn't think he was joking, I can see that, but I saw that they said after a while, he went from trashing the game to enjoying it when he joined up. People struggle with difficult games all the time, how many times do people make fun of those that struggle to beat hard games like Elden Ring, Dark Souls, Bloodborne. It's not nice but it's hardly unreasonable to think the crew and the people who they worked on act like this. They aren't a professional group. You wouldn't normally see Roger Craig Smith playing Sonic Forces and trashing it would you.
As for the Maria thing, yeah I checked the gameplay for the boss last night before I went to sleep, and considering she's a boss battle...villain, bad, I find it a bit of a stretch to think "bad girl" was meant to be "yeah we're into l**li/p*do shit", she's literally playing a bad guy/girl in the story. On the other hand, why was there an underwear texture to begin with? I need to see the rest of the textures and I'm not a game designer, but the pic is a bunch of weird hands...I'm not sure if those are feet on the straps. Whatever it is, I can't judge other than ask how that got in there and what was it for?
It would be best if Shadow went back to his 06 depiction.
I for one really liked his development into a sort of Batman style anti hero. (Unambiguously heroic morally, socially unheroic). Him going borderline Type 2/3 anti hero in that game was a nice culmination of his arc.
Battle to me (especially the Shadow chapter) makes a lot more sense if it takes place after Shadow The Hedgehog. The start of the transistion from Heroes to 06 in terms of character development where he’s in that “protect the innocent via the most effective means at my disposal” style anti hero (think post 2018 depictions of Venom or Injustice Jason Todd).
Well you're not wrong there Yakuzu. This is the fanbase that gets upset over idle renders and crap on someone if they admit they like Forces. But that's just me.
As for the game itself, I can't play it because my hardware is still stuck in 2008 at best, so judging from the Blue Vivacity gameplay, I'm just gonna keep it in the background and just write out my thoughts, cuz I have a lot of thoughts judging the the product on it's own.
Also, Blue Vivacity unlisted the gameplay after hearing about the controversy. Makes sense, but if you want to watch him play it, here's the link.
- The idea of the shooting stages to give Tails more to do ain't a bad one, but everyone I've heard who's played this game hates it. This had to be based off Unleashed 360's shooters with them thinking it was a cool idea they should polish. Should Sega try this again? I'd be fine with it they make it more fun.
- Oh Knuckles and Big get cameos.
- GUN being used again as a neutral party who's tech forces are taking over by the Big Bad. Gives me Lyric vibes, but if you want to make a new threat that has to prove they're stronger than Sonic, but actually does more than what Lyric, then yeah, that's a good idea.
- I've always wanted to see an Adventure+Boost hybrid. It's Nick For Short's critique on this kinda makes me see why people don't like this. I think my issue is that while it's fun to use the Boost in a wide open space, there needs to be more obstacles for the opponent to deal with for it to work. From what I remember it gets better as the game goes, but not in those two forest levels.
- Having the Enerbeam is such a fun idea. This game feels like a response to Sonic Forces making the Wispon too automated, and I feel like if Sega gave the players more control like this, sort of like how they did with the Werehog but with Modern Sonic: the higher his body is, the better platforming he can achievement with the grappling hook.
- Oh god they had Shadow actually find Vector in the computer room, that's funny.
- Speaking of Shadow, I know Antdude and Matthosa...I forget the name critized Forces for poorly having multiple characters, even though I kinda disagree in that the Avatar was sort of a right step of direction, Shadow played a bit too similar to Sonic. Matt suggested for future playable characters, they should work like the partner system in 06 so that they don't have to make a gameplay style, just use the characters enough in different moments while still sharing a similar moveset. However:
- I like what they did with Shadow in Omens. While it seems clunky in some areas, him being able to access Chaos Control to teleport for platforming is really cool, as well as giving him a Chaos Blast while Sonic can only do the homing attack. Even using the Chaos Spear for quick puzzles, that's genuinely a good way to retain Sonic's gameplay while giving Shadow his own unique gimmicks.
- Again, Forces bosses were seen as too easy and lame, so I guess they tried to compensating by making the bosses more challenging. On one hand, I think that's a good idea. On the other hand, based on what I've seen from other playthroughs, they made the bosses a bit too hard. Like the first one with Sonic is fine. But with the Shadow one, they probably should've put a ? thing to explain how to beat it because that second swing is hard to avoid unless you know how to dodge well. Even Blue Vivacity got hit multiple times with that attack.
- This game needs an easy and hard mode. Shadow having to dodge billboards while riding on top of a moving train is a cool set piece, but wouldn't be so hard to do if they didn't have quick step.
- Nice to have a three way race between Sonic, Eggman, and the villains for the Emeralds.
- This Sonic vs Eggman's Metal Ember fight is nice visually, but there's little ability to tell when the attacks are coming and how to dodge it. The ice is easy to dodge, the laser is hard to tell if you should duck or jump.
- It is really hard to tell if Shadow's being brainwashed or going through subtle manipulation.
- I like the neon ambience of the lighting for the small level where Sonic meets up with...wait, Chris?! Oh, reddit wasn't joking about that.
- Okay okay, so ignoring that two worlds debate, okay, having Chris in this storyline makes some sense. Him going to GUN to use the power of Chaos for peaceful means and focusing the corporation on less destructive means after the events of Shadow is a solid idea. I just wanna know what the heck was going through his mind when he agreed to work with a Meterax. Granted we don't know if the situation was more beneficial and then turned into a Black Doom=Gerald Situation. I'm torm on this one.
- Oh cool, the Master Emerald cracking. Wait was that the cameo of an Avatar duck?
- Okay, I get it, Chris died before the events of Sonic Unleashed and they're justifying the temples since those existed to stop Dark Gaia. Making this plot the side effect of what happened there as these rifts opening upis a cool idea but it needs a bit more clarity.
- The final shooting stage doesn't look too bad.
- The Maria boss battle, this can of worms. Okay, a villain taking advantage of the mental state of Shadow to make it seem like Maria's attack him feels like something Infinite would it. I like how Chaos Control is used to freeze everything so the player has to dodge the drones, though it's weird the drones drop her life points and not sure.
- Oh, it was Exiled disguised as Maria. And used Gun's technology to do it. Okay, take back what I said about Shadow being possessed, he got Knuckles'd.
- "You're just a false life form." 6/10. Should've been "You're the ultimate failure," that would've hit harder
- Okay the Big Bad's original monsters are really cool.
- There are some sections of this game they really need the quick step.
- So the Exiled is an Anti-Villain who defied Dark Oak and just wants to get back home to his people. Well that's not a bad motivation.
- But the Chaos Emeralds getting destroyed and causing the end of the world? I'm not sure how to feel about that.
- "Going home, what a great motivation for genocide." Okay, that was clever. Someone should've said that in Zack Synder's Justice League.
- As for the final boss. Wolvie quit the first phase baseus he didn't know how to beat it. If the game explained that you're supposed to smack the orbs to weaken him first, then go into Super Form to punish him when he's down is actually solid. Also,it's just really cool to be able to go to super form in the middle of a boss battle. That's something I'd be down to implement.
- Okay so the end credits with Tails having two tickets for Colors, that was a nice touch.
- Not sure how to feel about Chris dying either. It's a sweet thing they took his character seriously and Sonic going to put flowers at his funeral, but I don't know
Overall, this is so weird. Like there was a crap ton of work put into this project, but all the controversies are gonna hurt it in the long run. I don't know if they really needed the money for this project, I can't tell. On it's own, I can definitely see why this is a mixed bag. This really is ambitious, and I respect the work had to go into it from an observant lens. If they took like two more months, I don't think the backlash on the gaming side wouldn't be so bad.
Cool that it exists, wish the behind the scenes circumstances were better, and some stuff I wouldn't mind if it was implemented into official Sonic games.
But that's just me.
Its pretty much designed like most Sonic games, a bunch of cool ideas thrown together but not much connecting them together.
Nothing presented here is inherently bad, but executed in a very questionable way.
I really wish Sonic Team and Fan games would just sit down and just ask themselves "how does this fit into the game" or what is the game trying to achieve.
I find that the people who design these games are more focused on it looking cool as opposed to it being functional. Style over substance essentially.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.

According to Ian Flynn, yes.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.