Epiphany: Why the characters need to return.

[Kuzu]

Cream and Gmerl are having a tea party, when suddenly Gmerl's eyes light up red, as all robots do as they go into evil mode; beware any electronic device with a blinking red light, people. Gmerl dashes off, spilling hot tea all over Cream, and isn't seen again.

A few months later, Tails is underneath the Tornado XXIVD2 working on its engine when he hears the TV mention a fight between two robots in the middle of Generic the City. The two robots are Gmerl and Omega, and they tear apart buildings as they try to take each other down. Tail's radios Sonic, who is currently on the outskirts of the city, fishing with Big. Sonic hates fishing, but he was in the neighborhood, so whatever. He jumps at the opportunity to fight some robots, and leaves Big in the dust wondering what happened.

Then Silver teleports in out of nowhere, missing Sonic by mere moments. He had something really important to tell the hedgehog, but ends up instead talking to the mildly retarded cat. Big takes the chaos emerald Silver has and warns him of the dangers of such power, as it once corrupted a close friend of his. Due to his naivety, Silver mistakes Big's slow nature as a sign of profound intelligence, and asks the cat to take him to Sonic since he won't give him his Emerald back. And so the two pair up.

After breaking up the fighting between Gmerl and Omega, Gmerl disappears once more and Omega refuses to explain anything at all to Sonic, since the only thing he knows about the blue hedgehog he knows because of Shadow's second hand (and not so flattering) account of him. Meanwhile, more robots are starting to run wild all of the continent, unprovoked, and without word from Eggman himself. Sonic and Tail's set off together to destroy all the robots they can, and maybe get down to the bottom of the whole mess.

Throughout the rest of the game, Sonic and Tail's travel from location to location, bashing robots from previous Sonic games, including the bosses from the Gamegear Sonic games. Tail's collects the broken memory cores of the bosses, thinking that if he has enough of the half-working parts, he can put a full one back together, and thereby get some idea as to why the bots have started attacking randomly. Meanwhile, Silver and Big are constantly one or many steps behind Sonic and Tails, and Big keeps leading Silver off into the wrong directions. Throughout the whole ordeal, Silver still trusts Big completely, though he has some doubts about his partner's sage-like wisdom at times.

In the end, Tail's completes a memory core unit, and is able to condense the memories of the various bosses into a single element which they all contain: "new master recognized". That's when Silver and Big teleport in, Silver having convinced the cat that perhaps power itself cannot be destructive, and that it all depends on the user, and thereby getting his emerald back.

Silver explains the rest of the mystery to Sonic and Tails: before being trapped in the inferno with Ifrit, Eggman Nega created a machine which could take over the programming of any robot loyal to Eggman. It went into effect a set time after his death, leading to the current robot riot. Silver knows this because he saw Nega programming the machine long ago, some time before the events of Rivals 2. Nega had then hit him with a gas, causing him to temporarily forget all that he'd seen, but when Silver heard news of the robot uprising, it jogged his memory.

Sonic wonders why Omega was fighting Gmerl in Generic the City, but Tail's knows better; only robots LOYAL to Eggman were affected by Nega's machine. Omega this whole time has been fighting robots, but being attacked by GUN as well, since they think he is just another rampaging robot. Sonic, Tails, Silver, and Big then have to go find Omega and stop his rampage, so they can convince GUN that he isn't like the others. Sonic ends up having to fight Omega since he won't listen to reason, and afterwards, GUN comes to dispose of him. That's when Shadow makes his appearance, and pulls rank over the soldiers who came to take Omega away. Sonic asks where Shadow has been the whole time, and the black hedgehog just scoffs and says he's had bigger things to worry about, but that he was only there to make sure Omega was safe. Shadow take Omega with him and disappears, but not before mentioning that while he was passing through Generic the Wasteland, he encountered a lot of strange static interference on his communicator, and that it might be a clue as to where Nega's signal is broadcasting from.

Silver tells Sonic that its time for him to finish off Nega's plan, and that only the two of them can do it. He teleports himself and Sonic to the wasteland, leaving Tails and Big behind. After exploring the area, they see Gmerl in the distance. Silver latches onto Sonic's arm and Sonic runs after the robot, trailing him to a patch of land which recedes and opens up to reveal an entrance to a secret base.

Inside, they find themselves in what is actually the remains of Scrap Brain Zone, completely run down, but housing plenty of the robots the deceased Nega has under his control. They fight through the base, ending with a battle against a Gmerl, who merges with the machinary of the base to become Scrap Metal Gmerl (best name EVER). After that smoke has settled, Sonic and Silver end up in front of the only new machine in the factory, and one which looks decidedly unlike a signal broadcaster.

Silver convinces Sonic to go along with him, and the two use their chaos emeralds in the machine. They they force the power of the emeralds to come out and into the machine themselves, since it is almost impossible for machinary to activate any kind of chaos control on its own.

This opens up a portal. And out of the portal steps Eggman Nega, looking more haggard and burned than ever before. Sonic is surprised, and momentarily thinks that Silver has betrayed him. Nega explains though that the real reason he'd arranged for Eggman's robots to run wild was as a failsafe, in case he were to be trapped in any zone not of his own with no way out. He'd led Silver to the base so long ago, to make sure at least one person knew of the machine which could bring him back from any point in space-time, as long as the machine's operators were two highly adept users of chaos power.

Silver tells Nega to follow through on his part of the "deal", as it were, and let go of his control over Eggman's machine. Being the honorable gentleman that he is, Nega complies, and with the push of a single button on his overcoat, the robots fall silent. He tears the button off, handing it to the two to prove his honesty. Nega thanks Silver and Sonic, and then says good day to them, and turns his back.

Sonic scoffs; Nega can't really expect them to let him walk free, can he? Not to mention the machine still has his and silver's chaos emeralds! Nega warns Sonic not to be greedy, and to accept his minor victory, unless he wants to meet his end quicker. Sonic takes the challenge, and Nega sighs.

"Surely you don't think I wouldn't have arranged for this elaborate failsafe without anticipating every possibility?"

Nega snaps his fingers, and Silver's head erupts in pain. Nega explains that the "gas" Silver inhaled was actually a cloud of nanites, able to both suppress his memories of certain events, and give Nega control over him as if he were just another of Eggman's robots. Nega tosses one of the two chaos emerald's to his spiky pawn, and then tells Silver to his blue friend from the premesis.

Insert amazing boss battle here, set to orchestrated theme and whatnot. Also, explosions. Lots of them.

At the end of the fight, Silver has succeeded in driving Sonic out of the base, and away from Nega, but Sonic is able to knock him out with the last ounce of his strength. The two collapse almost simultaneously in the wasteland, and the shadow of buzzards circle overhead. So too, hangs the shadow of the Tornado.

The next day, Sonic wakes up in the hospital, immediately embarrassed by the very notion. He has his pride, afterall, and letting the world know that he'd nearly died in a desert wasteland after playing right into Nega's hands wasn't on his list of priorities. Then he remembers Silver, and starts to get up out of the bed. Tail's walks in at that point and Sonic asks where Silver is. Tails tells him that the white hedgehog is over in the room next door, oh, and that Sonic's welcome. Sonic chuckles and thanks Tail's for rescuing him out in the desert, and then jumps up and busts into Silver's room, where Big is already asleep in a chair next to him.

Silver wakes up and doesn't understand how he got where he is. The last thing he remembers is Nega warning Sonic not to push him. Sonic asks Tail's if the doctors performed any brain scans on Silver, and Tail's says they did, to check for concussions and such. Nothing of interest was found. Tails asks why Sonic asked, and the blue hedgehog just looks at the confused Silver before shaking his head and saying "Nevermind". Silver takes this to mean Sonic was just joking about his bad memory, and says maybe he should have taken Shadow with him to stop Nega; at least he'd have taken things more seriously. Sonic laughs nervously, which wakes Big up. The four main characters share some more lines of inconsequential dialogue, and the scene ends with a closeup of Sonic's eyes, first alive with laughter, and slowly turning more serious and introspective.

THE END

Jesus fucking Christ why did I write all this. I... I hate myself right now. Well, I suppose if nothing else, this proves you can make a storyline using any batch of characters chosen at random. Whether it'll be any good, well, I can't even judge if what I wrote is acceptable for me because I'm so dead tired. Probably a bunch of plot holes in that. This isn't a fanfiction topic, fuck, why did I waste all this time. Damn you for encouraging me Chaos Walker, damn yooooouuuu....

zzzzzz....

See, now was that so hard?

[Vertekins]

I thought Shade was a hell of a lot more interesting than Silver ever could have been, so already your theory is taking on water.

I thought Shade was a fancharacter made official. She's so blatantly Bioware's pet. She leeches attention away from Rouge, is extremely overpowered and is little developed outside of being the team's personal Omochao. Bioware were as bold as brass letting their insert punt Rouge sideways in getting her with Knuckles and taking up practically all of his interactions. Considering Bioware's annihilating of established characters personalities including turning Sonic into a spiteful bully and making out Shadow as having something near lust for Omega and them formulating one hell of a continuity snarl and complete disregard for established continuity, I wouldn't give them credibility on the subject of characters they certainly don't deserve. ESPECIALLY regarding Shade. Silver has more depth than she could ever hope to achieve.

I say, it would be extremely awesome if there was a story in a Sonic game that gave priority to individual interactions. Interactions between very different characters is something severely ignored in Sonic games and focusing on making such interactions would make stories all the more elaborative and encompassing. I do sometimes wonder how interactions between Knuckles and Shadow would encompass given their straight-talking, tough demeanors. Or seeing Blaze's introvertedness and seriousness next to Amy's ditzyness and outgoing personality.

[HUNTER297]

I thought Shade was a fancharacter made official. She's so blatantly Bioware's pet. She leeches attention away from Rouge, is extremely overpowered and is little developed outside of being the team's personal Omochao. Bioware were as bold as brass letting their insert punt Rouge sideways in getting her with Knuckles and taking up practically all of his interactions. Considering Bioware's annihilating of established characters personalities including turning Sonic into a spiteful bully and making out Shadow as having something near lust for Omega and them formulating one hell of a continuity snarl and complete disregard for established continuity, I wouldn't give them credibility on the subject of characters they certainly don't deserve. ESPECIALLY regarding Shade. Silver has more depth than she could ever hope to achieve.

I say, it would be extremely awesome if there was a story in a Sonic game that gave priority to individual interactions. Interactions between very different characters is something severely ignored in Sonic games and focusing on making such interactions would make stories all the more elaborative and encompassing. I do sometimes wonder how interactions between Knuckles and Shadow would encompass given their straight-talking, tough demeanors. Or seeing Blaze's introvertedness and seriousness next to Amy's ditzyness and outgoing personality.

Thats what I'm saying. With current story telling method all character interactions are limited to Sonic and *Insert other Character name here*. Characters nowdays dont meet without Sonic being over there. I think they should do game where characters interact with each other when Sonic isnt next to them so we are going back to Adventure multiple story modes formula.

Oh and I would love to see how Shadow and Silver would get along. Its like Cynizm vs. Idealizm like someone on SSMB said. And Knuckles too.

[Tornado]

I thought Shade was a fancharacter made official.

That doesn't surprise me in the least.

[Sparky]

I thought Shade was a fancharacter made official. She's so blatantly Bioware's pet. She leeches attention away from Rouge, is extremely overpowered and is little developed outside of being the team's personal Omochao. Bioware were as bold as brass letting their insert punt Rouge sideways in getting her with Knuckles and taking up practically all of his interactions. Considering Bioware's annihilating of established characters personalities including turning Sonic into a spiteful bully and making out Shadow as having something near lust for Omega and them formulating one hell of a continuity snarl and complete disregard for established continuity, I wouldn't give them credibility on the subject of characters they certainly don't deserve. ESPECIALLY regarding Shade. Silver has more depth than she could ever hope to achieve.

I say, it would be extremely awesome if there was a story in a Sonic game that gave priority to individual interactions. Interactions between very different characters is something severely ignored in Sonic games and focusing on making such interactions would make stories all the more elaborative and encompassing. I do sometimes wonder how interactions between Knuckles and Shadow would encompass given their straight-talking, tough demeanors. Or seeing Blaze's introvertedness and seriousness next to Amy's ditzyness and outgoing personality.

Shade and the whole Nocturnus clan is based off Julie-Su and the Dark legion from the comics.

[Vertekins]

That doesn't surprise me in the least.

Why does it not surprise you? Let me guess...you think I have some kind of downer on Bioware because it ain't Sonic Team? If this is indeed so then please. If there's any criticism I have of Bioware, it doesn't stem down to having some kind of special dislike because it's a third party developer. Namely, it stems from the fact that they can't make a Sonic RPG worth a damn, can't write Sonic worth a damn and certainly couldn't resist shoehorning their creation into absolutely everything such as making her an imperative character whom you didn't have a choice in using in the party (Metropolis Ground Zero, Nocturne) and including scenarios where she pipes up despite not even being in the party i.e Voxai Colony Beta. Bioware seemed so eager to give her precedence over absolutely everybody else that it becomes downright unbelievable when they can't even make use of the limelight to give her a character. In this respect, it just smacks of 'self-insert fancharacter' who steals the limelight and doesn't do anything particularly noteworthy when it came to character development, making her a huge missed opportunity and little more than an incredibly bland character.

Edited September 5, 2011 by Verte

[Tornado]

Why does it not surprise you? Let me guess...you think I have some kind of downer on Bioware because it ain't Sonic Team?

No. Its quite a bit simpler than that. It doesn't surprise me because you shit on everything that wasn't made by Sonic Team.

[Vertekins]

No. Its quite a bit simpler than that. It doesn't surprise me because you shit on everything that wasn't made by Sonic Team.

I don't despise everything that isn't made by Sonic Team And yet provide I provide perfectly good and acceptable reasons why I do hate stuff that coincidentally isn't.

Edited September 5, 2011 by Verte

[Kuzu]

Like I said Shade, has amazing potential as a character, but as of now, she's as flat as cardboard with nothing really noteworthy in terms of personality, she takes up a chunk of the game despite not really doing much.

Saying she has potential as a good character, is different from actually being a good character.

[Legendary Emerald]

I thought Shade was a little bland in Chronicles, but then again, I hardly remember anything about that game besides total boredom. If another Chronicles game is made, yeah, she should be developed more in it. However, I just don't see her having a place in any other Sonic games. Especially since the Chronicles games take place at some indiscriminate time in the future, when the characters have suddenly switched their morals on killing Eggman. God... stop reminding me of that game.

Also, I thank people for putting up with my story writing digression. I really only planned to write three paragraphs at most, but the idea got away from me, and took on a life of its own. Next thing I knew, an hour had passed and I had three pages written. Glad some of you liked it, though.

[#EndyGate]

Also, I thank people for putting up with my story writing digression. I really only planned to write three paragraphs at most, but the idea got away from me, and took on a life of its own. Next thing I knew, an hour had passed and I had three pages written. Glad some of you liked it, though.

You should make moar :V

[Unknownlight]

It doesn't matter how many or how few characters are in a game.

What we need is better writing.

Good writing is what makes stories interesting. These other things are just distractions.

Edited September 6, 2011 by Unknownlight

[thedude2011]

Then Silver teleports in out of nowhere, missing Sonic by mere moments. He had something really important to tell the hedgehog, but ends up instead talking to the mildly retarded cat.

Stopped reading right there.

[Legendary Emerald]

Stopped reading right there.

Edited September 6, 2011 by Legendary Emerald

[thedude2011]

And I care because...?

Edited September 6, 2011 by thedude2011

[Kuzu]

Have I said that you should?

Oh I get it, when you receive good comments for people, you do care, but when someone doesn't like it, you don't care. I see now.

[thedude2011]

Your response was kind of pointless dude, its not like you explained why posted something like that.

[Kuzu]

I apologise. I just find the term "retarded" offensive. That is why I stopped reading.

[Legendary Emerald]

IT was meant as a joke, I'm pretty sure he didn't mean anything by it.

Exactly. And there is a difference between calling someone you dislike a "retard" and describing a person with slow mental facilities as "mildly retarded". Sorry if I didn't feel like looking up whatever euphemism is in vogue today; you all would have known exactly what I meant anyways.

Not to mention, if you'd read the paragraph after my story, you'd realize that even I wasn't happy with what I'd written, because the whole thing was written in a sleep-deprived haze. As such, I can be dismissive of criticisism if I want to be, because I never wanted it to be taken seriously.

And now this thread is going even further off-topic because of me. Sigh...

[Teeks]

There's a lot of anger in this topic. Hoo boy.

Any way, I'm all for using the characters they already have in more games if the story allows it. I love pretty much all the current Sonic cast, the Babylons and Eggman Nega not withstanding, so it's great to see them interact with each other and just be characters. I don't think they need to make any more characters, though. We have enough already. If they really feel the need to make some other personality, they should just go into their backlog with characters like Mighty and the like, but I suppose that ship has long since sailed.

[Unknown User]

Speaking of Shade, I think people like her because she has all these character traits:

Introspective, serious, mature, stoic, independent, pessimistic, strong, and smart.

Notice how most characters like this are usually the most popular in the franchise, like Shadow and Blaze.

To use an other example, like Sasuke from Naruto.

Now let's take someone like Amy..

Optimistic, cheery, free-spirited, eccentric, short-tempered, extroverted, and emotional.

I notice those character traits are commonly used in female anime characters.

Do you see how the introverted character is more popular in anime than the extroverted one but in real life people prefer the extroverted person? I think it's because they can see more into the introvert in the shows while in real life they cannot get inside therefore prefer the other.

Both of those do not interest me much. But if I had to choose I would the optimist.

Now here's a character i would like to see more, an introvert, eccentric, emotional, smart,... you get my point.

Basically a mix of the two.

I might of reviewed the character's personalities wrong, sorry if I did though.

And this probably sucks, doesn't it?

Edited September 7, 2011 by Ishtar

[Kuzu]

Speaking of Shade, I think people like her because she has all these character traits:

Introspective, serious, mature, stoic, independent, pessimistic, strong, and smart.

Notice how most characters like this are usually the most popular in the franchise, like Shadow and Blaze.

To use an other example, like Sasuke from Naruto.

Now let's take someone like Amy..

Optimistic, cheery, free-spirited, eccentric, short-tempered, extroverted, and emotional.

I notice those character traits are commonly used in female anime characters.

Do you see how the introverted character is more popular in anime than the extroverted one but in real life people prefer the extroverted person? I think it's because they can see more into the introvert in the shows while in real life they cannot get inside therefore prefer the other.

Both of those do not interest me much. But if I had to choose I would the optimist.

Now here's a character i would like to see more, an introvert, eccentric, emotional, smart,... you get my point.

Basically a mix of the two.

I might of reviewed the character's personalities wrong, sorry if I did though.

And this probably sucks, doesn't it?

[crush40rocks]

tl;dr beyond the first page, but I'm just gonna chip in with my two cents.

I agree with OP 110% on this. OP is not being a faggot, but he definitely makes a point, one which I was seriously thinking about starting a thread about, but he beat me to it.

I'm glad that Sega's bumped gameplay to the top of their list of priorities. While I sometimes feel as though they could try a little harder in some areas, I do recognize that they do care and that they are trying. I won't delve much further into that because I don't want to venture too far off-topic.

My point being, since Unleased, Sega's stripped all of the "unnecessary" cast members in order to put more focus on Sonic and his gameplay. This was a great move, but of course, they couldn't resist adding that werehog in the mix as an unnecessary gimmick anyway. While the werehog played well for what he was, I didn't like the character period. (it's my opinion, don't shoost me, werehog fans!) It showed that they could make a different and more importantly polished gameplay mechanic for a "different character" (because that's what he played like) on the first try if they wanted to.

I seriously don't think that most people hated the werehog because they hated his gameplay. Not at all! I think it was because the werehog WAS Sonic, and it was Sonic not doing what Sonic should (going fast), which was a heresy. Well, I'll take a portion of that statement back, the werehog levels did get boring at times and drug on for far too long.

Colors came out, and showed us that Sega does consider fan input. The return of power-ups helped this game a great deal. While the speed was severely nerfed for this game (to my great disappointment), that wasn't the focus, the wisps were, and they were implimented wonderfully. Now personally, I felt as though Colors felt a bit bland, even after beating it, putting it down and discussing it, then picking it back up to give it another try. Idunno, maybe it's because I just feel that the Wii itself is an underwhelming system period.

Well, it's been a few years and we've all seen what the hedgehog engine can do, which is wonderful things. So now, based on what we've seen in some recent gameplay footage of Chemical Plant and City Escape, it appears as though Sega is now focusing more on level design. Sure you still have your straightaways in Modern's portions of the stage, but there are so many more sections from what I can see that don't seem nearly as clostrophobic and linear as a lot of the Unleashed stages were (although Modern's Green Hill does look extremely linear).

Gameplay - Check

Level Design - Working on it

And NOW to the point that's actually relevant to OP's post.

I agree that characters SHOULD make a return. I feel as though since Unleashed and Colors, Sonic's world has felt much more lonely and empty without his friends around. Sure you've got all those human NPC's, but really, who cares about... *thinks* See? I can't even remember any of their names! Professor Pickle, there ya go. Who cares about Professor Pickle?

I think they should come back, but in Sega's most recent method for designing Sonic games: Slowly and carefully

Sure, they could just slap them all back in at once, but that may lead to a shallow experience. They should return each character one by one and with just as much care and respect as they've given Sonic himself recently, and they should actually be playable. I support this claim with my aforementioned werehog explanation.

Starting with Knuckles, the obvious choice.

Though I wouldn't want his gameplay tossed into yet another treasure-hunting experience. Toss in some clever level design and give him a goal point to reach, or maybe a boss to beat, something that wasn't as repititious as the treasure-hunting segments. Hell, you could even... *sigh* I can't believe I'm saying this... but you could even take the good elements from the werehog experience and put Knuckles in brawling stages, only nix the stretchy limbs and replace that gimmick with a Knuckles-exclusive moveset, shorten those levels SIGNIFICANTLY in comparison to the werehog levels, and keep Knuckles' gliding and climbing abilities. I could imagine his levels progressing upward in a sense, but I would like some variation.

I would really appreciate it if each character came back slowly and Sega took the time to really find there place in the gameplay department before continuing to add more.

Oh yeah, I skipped Tails, didn't I? Well... I'll let Sega figure that one out. I'm too lazy.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Who cares about Professor Pickle?

A good number of people here, starting with me. Probably one of the best human characters throughout this series aside from Eggman.

I think they should come back, but in Sega's most recent method for designing Sonic games: Slowly and carefully

Sure, they could just slap them all back in at once, but that may lead to a shallow experience. They should return each character one by one and with just as much care and respect as they've given Sonic himself recently, and they should actually be playable. I support this claim with my aforementioned werehog explanation.

Generations is clearly doing the opposite by tossing in just about EVERY character that is currently still active and existing. Not much of a slow method considering in only took 2 games, but considering the writers we may be getting the "careful" part.

Starting with Knuckles, the obvious choice.

That would actually be Tails who is the obvious choice. Knuckles is a candidate for third or fourth in competition with Shadow.

[Legendary Emerald]

I actually hated Professor Pickle. I hated his appearance, I hated his generic voice, I hated his non-jokes about Cucumber sandwiches, and I... I just hated everything about him! Such a useless character, existing only to spout uninteresting exposition in a game with an uninteresting plot. Terrible, terrible character, in my opinion.

Edited September 10, 2011 by Legendary Emerald