Before I engage the debate, I want to clear up a few facts. DONT bring voice actors into this, dont bring voice actors DIRECTION or QUALITY into this A poor voice indicated a poor actor or direction or recording session, it does not indicate a poor character. Even the whiniest brat can sound good if you get the right person voicing it, but get it wrong and all that hard work goes out the window
No, the debate I want to raise goes far deeper than who is voicing these characters, we all know that those are just Sega of Americas feeble efforts to translate the Japanese original, added on in post production to give the produce a sheen. The debate I want to raise goes deeper than gameplay mechanics, although it does ask some important questions such as; Why did Shadow the Hedgehog involve guns? and Why does Sonic need to ride a board when hes fast enough anyway?
The reason I ask this question is because after Heroes and Shadow I heard a tonne of abuse directed at each games in terms of the engine, graphics, storyline, level design, character models and multiplayer modes. All of those are fair enough, everyone has their opinion. But the one thing that irks me is when people scream; And the characters were all misused.
What I want to know, from the rest of you is, which characters have been misrepresented because with the exception of Knuckles I dont believe any of them have. Which characters were so badly shown in one game that they were almost unrecognisable?
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I dont think any of the characters WERE misused in either game, except possibly Knuckles. Knuckles, who has lost the Master Emerald, the core belief and driving force that lead him through ever game up to Sonic Adventure 2 and become Sonics friendly thug. But, except Knuckles who still seems the same except without the Master Emerald, have any of the characters really changes that much?
In Sonic Heroes, Sonic became team player, but apart from the fact he now trusts Tails a lot more than he obviously did has he changed much? Hes still the confident, optimistic thrill seeker he was before. Apart from the new slant of teawork Sonic just hasnt changed at all, the problem was in weak cut scenes that only showed him yelling Teamwork, power of teamwork, Do you think you have a chance against our teamwork? You can actually get much more characterisation out of the characters in levels when they blurt out mini dialogue than you can in the cutscenes.
In Shadow, the purpose of the game was to present us with the question who is Shadow? Although it has an ensemble cast only Black Doom, Sonic, Eggman and possibly Rouge are shown in any detail at all. The purpose of these characters is to show how they react to Shadow, to show they interact and help build his character from there. Sonic plays as the hero, hes off on his own adventure to save the world. Playfull and arrogant he accompanies Shadow on the little bits when they cross paths, racing Shadow when they have time to play. Those concerned that the series had guns, the answer is presented in the first level as soon as Sonic sees you carrying one when he remarks that he would never use one himself. Carrying any weapon that comes to hand IS Shadows personality, not Sonics who uses his feet and his own strength. Sonic is presented as the worlds champion, someone whos near sainthood annoys Shadow as much as the GUN Commanders death threats. Sonic doesnt care who or what Black Doom is, all he wants is to end the invasion as quickly as possible, to save as many lives as possible and o have some fun on the way. When Shadow turns evil he stands up to stop Shadow, even when hes defeated he cant quite believe that the black hedgehog turned on him.
In each case the voice actors do a wide variety of voices, phrases for Sonic range from annoying to perfectly pitched. In neither is Sonic misrepresented, he is presented in a different light due to different situations but thats just different aspects of the same character.
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Feel free to discuss any character, I want to know what went wrong.
Shadow existed after Sonic Adventure 2.
Thus, he was GROSSLY mishandled.
I think Sonic and Shadow were both DRASTICALLY out of character in Shadow.
Sonic ISN'T a hero. He does things because they're fun, not because he's a hero. "A big water monster is downtown attacking police" "SOUNDS LIKE FUN." "A hedgehog that looks exactly like you is threatening to explode the planet, he's working with Eggman!" "SOUNDS LIKE FUN!" "Eggman is threatening to use a new weapon." "SOUNDS LIKE FUN!" "ALIENS ARE ATTACKING!" "WELL THEN I BETTER HELP OUT THE MILITARY AND STOP THIS HORRIBLE ALIEN MENACE!"
Shadow is also a quiet sweetheart, his only motivation being his platonic love for Maria, his newfound platonic relationship with Rouge. In Shadow, what's he doing? "TRYING TO EXPLODE EVERYTHING AND BE A HERO/VILLAIN/Get the Chaos Emeralds to find out his past." In Heroes he was kinda trying to find out his past, but that was because he had lost his direction.
I thought Rouge was OOC in Shadow/Heroes, too. In Adventure 2 she was a strong calculating jewel thief/secret agent. Sure she was a little bit of a @#%$, but she still cared about things. Over the course of the game she developed, she discovered that maybe there's more to life than Jewel Hunting. She became friends with Shadow, and developed a crush on Knuckles. She's probably one of the many characters in the Sonic Universe to develop. (Shadow, Knuckles, Tails, Amy, Cream, Gamma, Chaos, Tikal, and Eggman being the others. The Babylon rogues, kinda did.)
What was the first thing Rouge was doing in Heroes? Hunting for Jewels. *Sigh*
Everyone else has been pretty OOC since, too. Though I'm too lazy/tired to go into detail.
So instead I'll list the characters who I think were IN-CHARACTER. In Heroes, in Shadow everyone except the Chaotix and Omega were OOC.
Big, he's trying to find his little frog-friend.
Amy.
Sonic. (Too much working as a team for me, but other than that.)
Tails... kinda.
Cream... kinda.
Eggman.
Metal Sonic.
... that's about it. Uh... though that's half the characters.
Metal Sonic really couldn't act In-character or out-of-character in Heroes because he didn't HAVE a character.
He was simply a machine that you occasionally raced/fought.
I don't see how you people can criticize Sonic's character when we basically know nothing about his motives or his past experiences that shaped him into what he is. But if Sonic is how you think of him, a character that has no reason for much of the stuff he does except that he's just carefree, than Sonic has a very shallow personality and is a very 2D character...
He doesn't have much of a motivation. But that's what makes him so fun. He's just carefree and likes being extreme and awesome. He doesn't need to be deep or a have a past, because basically his lack of a backstory... is a backstory. If that makes sense.
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Sonic ISN'T a hero. He does things because they're fun, not because he's a hero. "A big water monster is downtown attacking police" "SOUNDS LIKE FUN." "A hedgehog that looks exactly like you is threatening to explode the planet, he's working with Eggman!" "SOUNDS LIKE FUN!" "Eggman is threatening to use a new weapon." "SOUNDS LIKE FUN!" "ALIENS ARE ATTACKING!" "WELL THEN I BETTER HELP OUT THE MILITARY AND STOP THIS HORRIBLE ALIEN MENACE!"
I don't agree with that, many times in the past games he's played the hero and not to have fun. Back in the early games he was after Eggman because he was a threat and because he had captured his friends, it wasn't mentioned that he did it for the thrill. In SA1 he had several moments where he did things to help rather than have fun, be it simply running up to help a fallen Tikal, help a captive Amy or rush to Tails after crashing. Also in SA1 in the final chapter against Perfect Chaos he made no comment about it being fun, or about doing it for the thrills, he stated that he was a real menace and gives the impression wanted to stop him because he had to be stopped, even arguing about Tikal's plan to just seal Chaos again, Sonic knowing it would simply lead to him returning again.
There weren't as many scenes like that in SA2 that I can remember, although moments where he gave his (at the time) last words and when saying his last good byes to Shadow he showed compassion to those being heroic.
In my opinion, in the Sonic world, Sonic is a hero, he does the right things for the right reasons, he just has no fear of danger and choses to enjoy his adventures rather than be reluctant. I really like how he's portrayed in Sonic Adventure, and I hope the new Sonic the Hedgehog game continues that.
Well, more what I meant was... he's a loner. Not in the same sense that Knuckles and Shadow are loners. But he's still a loner. He seems to keep to himself, he doesn't seem to like to work with alot of other people (he doesn't mind their company, though... just when he's on an adventure). I think I'm thinking more along the lines of Shadow than Sonic Heroes, though. Sonic's like working with the military >__>;. After they LOCKED HIM UP for NO REASON.
I agree with everything that Robo said.
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I think I'm thinking more along the lines of Shadow than Sonic Heroes, though. Sonic's like working with the military >__>;. After they LOCKED HIM UP for NO REASON.
Yet, that is just like Sonic! Because of Sonic's laidbaid and carefree attitude, it would go against his nature to stay mad at GUN; also, I think that Sonic understands that the lock him up because they thought he was Shads and decided to let bygones be bygones. It may have also been that Sonic knew that GUN was the lesser of the two evils and that the GUN soliders were innocent and just following orders.
Let's also remember the recent trend of teaming up with Eggman to take on a common threat and having no problem with this. ^.^
I still don't see Sonic working with them.
I'm curious as to why you couldn't see Sonic working with GUN considering Sonic is a "hold no grudges"-type. He's worked with a bunch of characters that have tried to kill/harm him in the past if the situation calls for it. You also admit that Sonic is more willing to work with others than Knuckles or Shadow. So, I'm not following the reasoning.
I dunno. Generally whoever Sonic is working with atleast has some fun qualities.
Eggman, Shadow, Tails.
GUN always just struck me as heartless. All their robots are stream-lined and realistic.
*Shrug* Just the way I see it.
Plus I hate GUN. And the fact that they stopped calling it "The Military".
I don't think any character, with the exception of Knuckles in both games and Tails in Sonic Heroes, had been OOC or suffered a personality problem. It seems to me Sonic X does that more.
He doesnt become one of their operatives...
He remains strictly independant, right up to the last boss when he realises Shadow is about to effectively destroy the world, so he joins in the fight between the GUN leader and Shadow...
Of course, I would of MUCH prefered it if it had been Sonic vs. Shadow, but i guess they already did that with SA2 so this way worked better.
He doesn't hold a grudge, he doesn't care. He tells you not to bother attacking them, he tells you to save your anger for these black aliens, but he never becomes a GUN agent like you seem to have him pictured as.
I dunno, I just get this whole propaganda feeling from Sonic in Shadow...
"HAY LOOK KIDS, SONIC WORKS WITH THE MILITARY/GUN!" I'm probably wrong, I mean that is a little extreme. Still, considering they were portrayed as pretty villainous characters in SA2. (Though that's partially because they were simply added to give the Dark characters some cannon-fodder that made sense.) I'd always figured that's the tone they'd be set as. (The corrupt military organisation, that is.)
Another thing about GUN while I'm on the subject: Why is the President going to their hold. It always seemed to me like it was a seperate organisation.
Eh, I guess I'm just whining now.
Okay, I thought it was pretty out of character for Rouge to scream "Oh yeah baby, this makes us a team." considering she was moderately subdued and cunning in SA2. Knuckles has been mentioned. Uh... I'm really just going to repeat stuff I've already said so eh.
>Another thing about GUN while I'm on the subject: Why is the President going to their hold. It always seemed to me like it was a seperate organisation.
The Sonic esque version of the White House was destroyed, Central City was overrun so presumably the head of GUN said;" Mr President, come with us, we'll keep you safe."
In fact, that's almost exactly what GUN did. They are a seperate organisation but they did work with the President.
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It is a shift from a faceless entity from SA2 to the Commander in Shadow, but Shadow wouldn't of worked without someone providing a face for the human army, so the GUN Commander was there to make sure no one thought Sonic was working with the military.
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As for Rouge, she did seem a bit louder in heroes, but the line itself wasn't that erroneous the way she shouted it. Up to the voice actor I suppose, I mean look at the changes in Amy from SA1 to 2 for example.
Tails has done a complete turnaround. In SA1 he loses his total dependence on Sonic. Kinda follows that in SA2. - I liked that. Heroes and Shadow? "Soniiiiiiic!!"
Sonic? He's stayed rather IC.
Shadow? He was awesome in SA2. He's done atleast three role reversals so far. Being the anti-hero, being the semivillain, being the random hedgie who'se just...there, not really attending or caring. Then to uberviolent I KEEL U type.
GUN? I prefer SA2's GUN. More faceless, less personal. Jsut like what they're TRYING to accomplish.
I mean the line itself. She's a bit of a loner who manipulates others to help her reach her goals. As she did in SA2. She fooled Eggman and Shadow into helping her get the pieces of the Master Emerald. She intimidated Shadow into leaving her alone, and she was intelligent enough to get Emerl away from Sonic in "Battle".
I dunno, I guess it's a nit-pick. But even attacking Chaotix, three guys who were doing NOTHING. Considering how she SEEMS to like to conserve energy that just seemed OOC. (Attacking STK made sense. 1) Because she knew what they were probably up to. 2) Because she had a pseudo-rivalry with them anyway. Eh.)
In Shadow, too. The only thing she's doing is being a government agent. Which was a very subdued thing in all of her other appearences. I don't even think it was mentioned she worked for the government in Heroes. And like in Battle, it always seemed to me like she'd do a mission, but only if it corresponded with something else she wanted. (Such as wanting Emerl to be her jewel thief, wanting to get the Master Emerald decector Eggman had.)
I though Shadow was pretty out of character in his own game. In SA2 and Heroes he was pretty laid back, pretty quiet. We read his mind a few times. And he'd of course do his whole "MARIA REVENGE" thing. But otherwise he seemed pretty quiet. When he spoke it was something pretty meaningful to him, or it was a question. He wouldn't talk to himself extensively... though I have a pretty poor memory. (Nothing like "Where is that damn fourth emerald!? ARRGG RRAAGGE!")
>Tails has done a complete turnaround. In SA1 he loses his total dependence on Sonic. Kinda follows that in SA2. - I liked that. Heroes and Shadow? "Soniiiiiiic!!"
In Heroes he was standing up as Sonic's second, I agree that that was a step backwards but not a massive one. He'd spent 2 games dignifying himself, making him a hero and then in Heroes he's part of the team. People don't just say Sonic, they say Team Sonic, which includes Tails...
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Shadow, on the other hand I thought Tails was pretty well done. He was out, on his own, doing his own missions without Sonic. On his own he planned to steal all the rings back from Eggman's circus and on his own tried to help the president, or he was on his own till he asked Shadow to help him.
Either way, I thought he was quite IC, out there doing things on his own...
>In Shadow, too. The only thing she's doing is being a government agent. Which was a very subdued thing in all of her other appearences.
In Shadow the world is about to be destroyed. In those circumstances people tend to work together and be a bit less interested in personal gain.
All of her missions in shadow are to retrieve the Chaos Emerald, which is sort of IC...
> When he spoke it was something pretty meaningful to him, or it was a question. He wouldn't talk to himself extensively... though I have a pretty poor memory. (Nothing like "Where is that damn fourth emerald!? ARRGG RRAAGGE!")
Shadow, I would argue is undergoing a progression. A naff one but he is developing, changing slowly, but never simply switching from one to the other.
In SA2 he was surely, arrogant, self confident and sure of himself, althoug we DO know that he had quiestioning thoughts about his past which he never voiced.
In Heroes, his memory gone he did ask quite a lot of questions, but as you can see when he meets Sonic he's still just as arrogant, self confident as ever. He's still Shadow.
In Shadow he has questions about his own past, searching for answers which Black Doom and Eggman are dangling just out of reach from him. The game highlights how he views the world, slightly aloof and uncaring, as if he considers himelf superior (from the start.) In fact, his first thought upon seeing the invasion is, "Pathetic humans," but he doesn't care. He only gets invovled because Black Doom MAKES him involved, dangles the answers he NEEDS in front of him.
The way Shadow develops from then on depends on the route you take, but overall I'd say that he doesn't change much.
And come on, you can't get much better characterisation for him than when he meets Sonic heading up to the Ark. "Oh no, not you again."
He's superior, he doesn't care, he's out for himself and no one else, except Maria. That's been Shadow from the start, no change there.
Oh, an
In Shadow, Shadow wasn't a sweet-heart. Everything he did was for himself. Everything he attempted was for himself. HIS past, HIS life. It used to be about what the people who cared about and loved him requested of him. (I mean the intelligent down-to-Earth Maria and the psycho-Gerald. Not happy-go-lucky girl and her heroic grandpa) I mean trying to fufill a dying girls last wish, no matter how immensely twisted it might be, is not as bad as running around gunning down every human or alien in sight just so he can find a bunch of Emeralds and have a purpose.
> I mean trying to fufill a dying girls last wish, no matter how immensely twisted it might be, is not as bad as running around gunning down every human or alien in sight just so he can find a bunch of Emeralds and have a purpose.
You've forgotten the point, he's FORGOTTEN who Maria and Gerald are.
And, I don't know where you got the idea from that he IS running around gunning everyone in sight, that's up to the player. As far as the story is concerned he's either 1) helping Black Doom in order to get his past back (shooting down the GUN soldiers who get in his way) 2) playing it neutral and just rushing through or 3) Helping GUN and Sonic and co defend the earth.
He only becomes the psycopath you seem to have him twigged as if you follow the dark route and that's because the entire way through the game he has Black Doom urging him "Men are evil," "Kill them," "Kill them all", "They killed Maria, this is your revenge."
In SA2 he was working for Maria and for Gerald BECAUSE he has promised to fulfil her wish. He was working for Gerald BECAUSE Gerald had messed with his mind...
After SA2 he's fulfilled her wish, resolved what Gerald did and got amnesia.
Personally, I never saw him as a sweet heart i nthe first place, just someone tormented trying to resolve a bad memory. Perhaps Amnesia was the best thing for him, then he no longer had to remember Maria's promise.
Well, every conversation he had with a girl had a dramatic flashback to his lost adoptive-sister. When he heard Rouge was trapped in a cell he rushed off to help her. (Well, after a dramatic flashback, but still. The fact that he did it was kinda touching. And then he's too strong to admit he actually did it to save her.) Under his hard shell he's a sweet-heart. Nothing he did in Shadow gave me that feeling. I guess he never had the oppurtunity to do anything particularily touching as all of the cinematics in Shadow were rushed and full of action, and had no continuity.
It's hard to argue about the character of Shadow in Shadow, though. As what he does as you said depends on the player. The plot is just TOO multiple-choice to be credible.
