ProJared reviews Sonic Adventure 2

[Kuzu]

It's not even a real looking gun...

Like fucking hell, even Bowser tries to off Mario occasionally. Has Eggman seriously lost so much credibility that's he's not even allowed to be competent without being accused of being "boring".

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[Indigo Rush]

Because there are plenty who went with strategic farming as opposed to the levels that are considered great parts. I know I grinded the hell out of Prison Lane because it's easy to get the maximum yield of Chaos Drives that you need, and picking said great levels is meaningless if they don't even contain the animal you want to use for specific animal parts and behaviours.

 

I don't think I put the point across clearly, then. My bad. In fact, I probably said something completely different than what I was actually thinking. Let me rephrase...

 

The main idea is that you replay the levels that you enjoy, which usually end up being the better-designed parts of the game. For me, it was the speed stages, and I got a sufficient amount of both Chaos Drives and Animals from some combination of Shadow and Sonic's levels) 

 

And that's the point. You're doing something you enjoy, and going to play parts of the game that you find to be optimal to accomplish your goal (raising Chao) so you can continue doing what you like to do. Grinding for drives in the Shooting stages or grinding for animals in the Treasure stages or grinding for rings in the Speed stages all fall under the point I was trying to get across. 

 

But generally, it's the speed stages that people tend to enjoy, so those are the most likely to be replayed, hence why I defaulted to that example. It's the part of the game that most resembles the "Sonic" aspect of "Sonic Adventure 2."

[Sami]

He blows up the fucking moon without blinking and tries to bomb an entire city full of millions of people, but pointing a gun at someone is too dark for him?

 

... What?

[Nepenthe]

I don't feel Eggman had any kind of established character before the Adventures to compare it and determine whether or not he was off-character; if anything I think we're all subconsciously aware of his more current characterization and how toned down it is as we talk about this. But during the classic era? What was actually there for an American consumer to make the distinction that "Yeah, he'll set fire to places and electrocute people, but holding someone hostage is just waaaay too far"? We already had media characterizing him as some unflinching incarnate of pure evil, media at the time that was given more credit and actually considered awesome for its darker elements (how times have changed), and the OVA- while funnier- had him taking the president and his daughter hostage anyway. Without this consistency of character beforehand, there was no definition of Eggman to compare later events to.

 

So the Adventures to me actually solidified the cast into the characters I know today and have an idea of. And in those games we had had seen him willing to shoot Sonic and Tails down, to gas them, to dismantle arguably sentient beings, to throw Amy in a dank prison, and to invade and blow up places himself, including the moon. Eggman, at the time, was characterized as a person who would actually resort to underhanded tactics when the going got rough, and it didn't actually matter if people were collateral. To me, to say it's "too practical" to hold Amy at gunpoint is an argument of semantics heralding back to the awful space shuttle argument, which partly implied that things with which can occur in real life are just automatically darker or more mundane without actually being adequately proven as such (which I also felt was SA2's interpretation of the character being judged subconsciously against later and thus irrelevant characterizations. Eggman wasn't always like his Boom incarnate in every piece of media and no amount of drudging up that silly concept art will actually change the end results). That, and it ignores a lot of the context of the scene anyway, both the fact that he probably never intended to shoot her because then how in the world do you actually contain an enraged Sonic, and also the fact that right after Sonic is captured they insert a little facepalm-worthy joke at Tails' expense anyway to add some moment of levity.

 

In short, I think people just have a habit of claiming everything that's even sorta kinda real or relatable is just automatically way too dark and heavy for the franchise without actually considering further context or even taking the time to establish a consistent argument on why that is. I'd much rather we hash out the specifics of this, particularly against other cartoons of similar tone and magnitude where we can directly compare such situations, than making assumptions that seem to drive the implication that the only way to tell an appropriate Sonic story is if we ram the tongue through the cheek.

[Rad Dudesman]

Eggman did have an established character; he was a manchild.

 

[shdowhunt60]

Yes. And so was Hitler, Stalin, many other notable dictators, and my abusive ex-stepfather. It's amazing how many evil men are basically children.

[Nepenthe]

Which as I literally just argued wasn't always accurately reflected in the classic games or the various media anyway. Because you know what I think of when I think of manchildren? Tropical rainforest arsonists.

You also haven't established how being a manchild prevents a person from taking another person hostage.

 

I like how you subverted my saying the concept artwork doesn't matter by drudging up finished artwork. You sassy sue, you.

[Mauro Fonseca]

It's not even a real looking gun...

Like fucking hell, even Bowser tries to off Mario occasionally. Has Eggman seriously lost so much credibility that's he's not even allowed to be competent without being accused of being "boring".

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Does Bowser do so with an outright realistic-esque gun?

 

The point isn't Eggman threatening. The point is he threatens with big cartoony animal robots or bizarre mechs. Even if he had just pointed the Egg Walker's turret at Amy, it'd flow better.

 

Having him suddenly pull a handgun takes it to a sudden level of personal he never does. It's him getting his hands dirty in a way we recognize outside the rules of cartoon world. I've used this example before- Wily has killed millions implicitly, but thematically it's not the same as having him suddenly pull a glock and aim at Light's head. There's a reason why when he does this with a laser gun in Lost World, no-one complained.

[Nepenthe]

A Shadow-colored handgun thingie with the scope twice the size of a barrel is not a realistic gun. Like, not even fucking close.

 

Him taking Amy hostage doesn't also contradict anything he had done before either. Eggman has done some personal things to the cast himself. And once again, we're ignoring the probability that he was doing a power play versus being actually interested in killing her.

 

I'm also not sure why everything Eggman uses has to look like it came from a Chuck E. Cheese to not be problematic. I feel like people operate on the assumption on anything that absolutely cannot be taken seriously at face value automatically needs to be taken seriously, and it needs to be taken seriously to the most ridiculous, Tom Clancy-esque extremes imaginable regardless of anything else surrounding the scene. Like, the moment you include the color black to more than 30%, it's like the "No Fun Allowed" Swatbots have arrived or something.

[Kuzu]

Does Bowser do so with an outright realistic-esque gun?

 

The point isn't Eggman threatening. The point is he threatens with big cartoony animal robots or bizarre mechs. Even if he had just pointed the Egg Walker's turret at Amy, it'd flow better.

 

Having him suddenly pull a handgun takes it to a sudden level of personal he never does. It's him getting his hands dirty in a way we recognize outside the rules of cartoon world. I've used this example before- Wily has killed millions implicitly, but thematically it's not the same as having him suddenly pull a glock and aim at Light's head. There's a reason why when he does this with a laser gun in Lost World, no-one complained.

 

Once again, its not a realistic looking gun, like at all :V

 

Ya know what Eggman has also done? imprison sentient beings inside automatons and has implicitly turned the world into a mechanical hell if we're going by Sonic CD's Bad Future, that's perfectly fine and dandy. But oh, he finally takes the pragmatic approach and just gets down to the nitty gritty, and suddenly its too dark and he's become almost unrecognizable :V

 

Its amazing how skewered his character has become ever since Colors and onward. What was once considered his most threatening and competent role is now considered "too dark and out of character", simply because his modern incarnation has absolved any sort of menace about him, which has made people reconsider how the character was established over a decade ago. I don't know whether I should be amazed by how quickly people change their perceptions on the cast honestly.

[Mauro Fonseca]

Yeah, it's got a huge scope. Everything under it though is textured as a regular gun.

 

 

And Jesus fucking Christ, this is something I felt AT THE TIME, so drop that "this is Colours' fault!" bullshit. Difference being, at the time I was a kid that went "OH WOW SO DARK AND MATURE EGGMAN SHOULD JUST KILL EVERYONE"

 

Yeah, he blew up half the moon. Yeah, he used to trap animals horrifically. He did so with cute animals into cute robots. Let me say that again since you're refusing to read it to instead rail on "oh no he's such a wuss nowadays"-

 

Dr. Wily has killed millions. This is depicted only as explosions in the city, seen far away. Because of this, the character still has levity. If he suddenly pulled a glock and took aim at Light's head close-range, that levity would be gone.

 

This is also why the Shuttle felt so odd. Up until now, Eggman used fantasy sci-fi things in a fantasy sci-fi world. Bug robots. Giant spaceships. A rocket that looked like a mix of a 60's rocket and an X-Wing, to reach a Death Star. When badniks had handguns, they were huge chromed things with armour plating.

 

Now, he's pulling off a comparatively realistic handgun compared to everything else and pointing it to one of the main characters. In the same way as suddenly he has a fucking NASA Shuttle. As someone pointed out, the problem isn't in having a shuttle, but in how unfun it looks.

 

I also didn't say he was fucking unrecognizable. I said it felt a touch out of character. I even offered a quick headcanon to explain it, jokingly but that'd work. And it's not even in the entire game- his communication to the world, the blowing up of the moon, the decoration in the pyramid, these are all very Eggman.

 

But hey. Tell me how if suddenly you had Bowser try to rip Mario's spine out it'd be totally fine, so long as you're exaggerating my point. You don't seem to grasp the concept here of "the problem is that he did an action with a recognizable real-world object that serves only for murder".

 

EDIT: Here, want a comparison point? You're trying to tell me that Alan Moore's Miracleman is just about the same as the old Captain Marvel comics. I'm trying to tell you that if suddenly the energy from his transformation blinds and kills people around, sure it's not contradicting prior events, but it's changed the tone entirely.

[Sami]

realistic-esque gun?

 

 

have you ever even looked at a real gun

[Mauro Fonseca]

I have. It's the thing that's right there under the big scope, with just a dash of red to distinguish it.

 

 

This is how they looked like in the Sonic universe, at least from Eggman's side, until that moment.

 

Again, to see if I can make this as clearly as possible. Eggman is not wildly out of character. I did feel he was a bit out of character. I felt this because the tone went darker enough to be jarring, which at the time I thought was awesome. One of the things that helped this was the fact he pointed a semi-realistic handgun, an object one normally sees in police dramas, action movies, etc as pretty much the most personally lethal thing available, at Amy, combined with dialogue that felt straight out of one of the aforementioned. It's not some irreversible damage or anything, but it DID feel off. It felt like a 13-year-old was suddenly writing the game.

[Sean]

SA2's story isn't executed in an amazing way whatsoever especially if you look at it today, but I thought underneath all that awkward stuff, the actual plot was pretty good. Stakes were higher than past games' and even SA1's and the game made sure to get that across to the player, character motivations were explored well for the most part (Knuckles is an all-around useless contribution unfortunately), and events that led to another made things exciting to watch even if you had to fill in the blanks at some parts. I don't see anything about the story that makes it personally aggravating for me to watch.

[Nepenthe]

I have. It's the thing that's right there under the big scope, with just a dash of red to distinguish it.

 

 

This is how they looked like in the Sonic universe, at least from Eggman's side, until that moment.

............ You do realize that gun has a more realistic-looking trigger and handle section than any single part on Eggman's pistol in SA2, right? Yet that's the example we're supposed to be following for weaponry in this series?

[Kuzu]

Yeah, it's got a huge scope. Everything under it though is textured as a regular gun.

 

 

And Jesus fucking Christ, this is something I felt AT THE TIME, so drop that "this is Colours' fault!" bullshit. Difference being, at the time I was a kid that went "OH WOW SO DARK AND MATURE EGGMAN SHOULD JUST KILL EVERYONE"

 

Yeah, he blew up half the moon. Yeah, he used to trap animals horrifically. He did so with cute animals into cute robots. Let me say that again since you're refusing to read it to instead rail on "oh no he's such a wuss nowadays"-

 

Dr. Wily has killed millions. This is depicted only as explosions in the city, seen far away. Because of this, the character still has levity. If he suddenly pulled a glock and took aim at Light's head close-range, that levity would be gone.

 

This is also why the Shuttle felt so odd. Up until now, Eggman used fantasy sci-fi things in a fantasy sci-fi world. Bug robots. Giant spaceships. A rocket that looked like a mix of a 60's rocket and an X-Wing, to reach a Death Star. When badniks had handguns, they were huge chromed things with armour plating.

 

Now, he's pulling off a comparatively realistic handgun compared to everything else and pointing it to one of the main characters. In the same way as suddenly he has a fucking NASA Shuttle. As someone pointed out, the problem isn't in having a shuttle, but in how unfun it looks.

 

I also didn't say he was fucking unrecognizable. I said it felt a touch out of character. I even offered a quick headcanon to explain it, jokingly but that'd work. And it's not even in the entire game- his communication to the world, the blowing up of the moon, the decoration in the pyramid, these are all very Eggman.

 

But hey. Tell me how if suddenly you had Bowser try to rip Mario's spine out it'd be totally fine, so long as you're exaggerating my point. You don't seem to grasp the concept here of "the problem is that he did an action with a recognizable real-world object that serves only for murder".

 

EDIT: Here, want a comparison point? You're trying to tell me that Alan Moore's Miracleman is just about the same as the old Captain Marvel comics. I'm trying to tell you that if suddenly the energy from his transformation blinds and kills people around, sure it's not contradicting prior events, but it's changed the tone entirely.

 

But this is kinda going back to what Nepenthe said on the last page, we've gotten to the point where any sort of realistic interpretation within the series is suddenly "Out of place". You talk as if Eggman had pulled the trigger and splattered Amy's brains all over the pavement, hell for all that we know he could have been bluffing just to trap Sonic and the gun wasn't even loaded to begin with.  

 

 

Like come on man, are you trying to tell me Eggman isn't allowed to deviate from the "Norm" without being so out of character that he comes off as a different character. And yes, I do think everyone's perception of Eggman is skewered because we're taking the context out of Sonic Adventure 2 and trying to use other games to justify these claims about him. When I played the game, my thought process wasn't "Oh my god, he's using a real gun. My 8 year old brain cannot take this level of dark and edginess. Get it away, get it away" it was "Holy shit, how are the heroes going to get out this predicament. Eggman means business".

[Mauro Fonseca]

............ You do realize that gun has a more realistic-looking trigger and handle section than any single part on Eggman's pistol in SA2, right? Yet that's the example we're supposed to be following for weaponry in this series?

 

The trigger is completely round, the only realistic part there is the handle- beyond that, it's a big sci-fi blaster.

 

Look beyond the big scope on Eggman's. 

 

 

Remove the huge scope, and that's pretty much a gun there. In the part that's actually evocative, you know, the barrel. That's the same colour, the same shape, the same proportional length.

 

And it's not like this is something that can't quite concilliate with Sonic, they work fine with GUN.

 

It is, again, seeing Eggman himself grabbing a handgun, and pointing it at Amy, close range. It's the imagining- hey, one pull of the trigger, and Eggman's covered in blood.

 

It was an abrupt raising of the stakes in a way that I never felt fit with his character entirely. At the time, wishing for more grit and tryhard darkness, I thought "awesome, he should start butchering everyone". Now it just feels bizarre. PURELY ON THE CONTEXT OF GAMES UP TO SONIC ADVENTURE 2.

[Sami]

So even if we go off the assumption that this is a realistic looking gun (I still don't think so at all, but whatever)... so what? Eggman's crazy, has a giant ego, slaps his face on everything, etc. He finds himself in a desperate situation on the Ark and steps it up a notch, taking Amy hostage.

 

For all intents and purposes his plan worked perfectly, too. Pretty much everyone there thought Sonic was a goner. 

 

This is also one game after he tried leveling a bustling metropolis with an atomic bomb last time he got seriously angry and frustrated with Sonic. 

[Sean]

Eggman back then was a tad more ruthless and far less comical than his current incarnation. It's not hard to imagine that the writers envisioned him to be a Dr. Wily-esque antagonist who was willing to murder people to further his own goals, even if he never would have done it as anything but a last resort and is not something he necessarily takes enjoyment from

 

These days Eggman seems to actively go out of his way to avoid casualties, or in the case of Unleashed just plain doesn't think about them. Chalk it up to the series' inconsistent writing quality and direction

[Daisy-Fan]

I find this discussion and debate Spaceship Cutscene to Dr.robotnik beam gun pretty amusing and interested to read. I find what bring me my interest into the game was the Dark Story of the game. i could probably bring more details about it.

[Mauro Fonseca]

This is also one game after he tried leveling a bustling metropolis with an atomic bomb last time he got seriously angry and frustrated with Sonic.

Dr. Wily has killed millions. This is depicted only as explosions in the city, seen far away. Because of this, the character still has levity. If he suddenly pulled a glock and took aim at Light's head close-range, that levity would be gone.

Dr. Wily has killed millions. This is depicted only as explosions in the city, seen far away. Because of this, the character still has levity. If he suddenly pulled a glock and took aim at Light's head close-range, that levity would be gone.

Dr. Wily has killed millions. This is depicted only as explosions in the city, seen far away. Because of this, the character still has levity. If he suddenly pulled a glock and took aim at Light's head close-range, that levity would be gone.

Dr. Wily has killed millions. This is depicted only as explosions in the city, seen far away. Because of this, the character still has levity. If he suddenly pulled a glock and took aim at Light's head close-range, that levity would be gone.

Or do we need to keep comparing cations purely on their "seriousness", not on how they're portrayed in-game? There's a really distasteful comparison I could make here that'd probably, maybe, hopefully, make you understand that the point is tone and how the actions are portrayed, not the actions themselves, but I'll excuse me from that.

I've already said I don't mind the situation itself. Much like I don't mind the shuttle. I feel it odd because in a bunch of sci-fi sorta-cartoon, there's an entirely-except-for-an-extraneous-not-even-integrated-in-the-design-giant-scope-handgun being pointed close range by our villain to Amy.

I keep having to exaggerate the situations in hopes the idea'll go through, so obvious disclaimer that SA2 isn't nearly as discordant, but imagine one of the Teletubbies pulling a butterfly knife and threatening to gut one of the others. Now imagine it not nearly quite as extreme, but still the same feeling of dissonance, and that's this.

 

Eggman back then was a tad more ruthless and far less comical than his current incarnation. It's not hard to imagine that the writers envisioned him to be a Dr. Wily-esque antagonist who was willing to murder people to further his own goals, even if he never would have done it as anything but a last resort and is not something he necessarily takes enjoyment from

 

These days Eggman seems to actively go out of his way to avoid casualties, or in the case of Unleashed just plain doesn't think about them. Chalk it up to the series' inconsistent writing quality and direction

Shauna please, please pleeeease

I've already said I'm going on feelings at the time and how the games evolved up to SA2

I'm not counting games from after it, or hell, we'd have Sonic 06 actually legitimately being able to pull this off due to the overall more realistic art style

[Sean]

I wasn't addressing you or anyone particularly

 

I'm outta here.

[Indigo Rush]

My 2 cents on Eggman's gun: 

 

 

 

That scope looks like a stop sign dispenser. He's about to cap Amy with 8 awesome angles, each with 8 radical points.

 

 

I wasn't addressing you or anyone particularly

 

I'm outta here.

 

[Nepenthe]

The trigger is completely round, the only realistic part there is the handle- beyond that, it's a big sci-fi blaster.

 

Look beyond the big scope on Eggman's. 

 

 

Remove the huge scope, and that's pretty much a gun there. In the part that's actually evocative, you know, the barrel. That's the same colour, the same shape, the same proportional length.

 

And it's not like this is something that can't quite concilliate with Sonic, they work fine with GUN.

 

It is, again, seeing Eggman himself grabbing a handgun, and pointing it at Amy, close range. It's the imagining- hey, one pull of the trigger, and Eggman's covered in blood.

 

It was an abrupt raising of the stakes in a way that I never felt fit with his character entirely. At the time, wishing for more grit and tryhard darkness, I thought "awesome, he should start butchering everyone". Now it just feels bizarre. PURELY ON THE CONTEXT OF GAMES UP TO SONIC ADVENTURE 2.

 

You would have to remove the scope (the biggest part of the gun no less)... and the random side plating, and the unnecessary red bits to actually get a realistic gun, in the same way that you would merely have to tone down the Egg Fighter's barrel without even having to touch the trigger and handle (I'm also not sure how you were able to determine proper proportions either in those screenshots? For one thing, that's still a big-ass handgun). Both are general mix of fantasy and realistic gun elements, and the point at which one is more serious than another, and subsequently the point at which one's supposed seriousness is out of bounds, has not been defined as anything other than wholly and entirely arbitrary.

 

Your randomly graphic imagination isn't an argument regarding the rules that were actually set. For one, we already had someone shot in the game with what was actually a real gun and it was still presented in the most tame, Lion King-esque way possible so as not to upset the kids, so I'm not sure why you're making an exception for Eggman's gun in that particular situation. Second, he never shot it, so even despite knowing that the game already established that anyone shot in SA2's universe wouldn't ever have any blood on them anyway, you cannot make an objective argument for what the heck it actually shot in the first place. Third, the reason he never shot it was because he was never intending to shoot Amy, because there would be no benefit to enraging Sonic and Tails versus supposing enough power over Sonic to simply get him in the capsule in the first place. Replace it with some Duck Dodgers ray gun and it actually makes no difference on the situation's outcome and subsequently its tension, because the look of the gun was never the point. It was the ploy Eggman was creating and Amy's life being in danger regardless that was the point.

 

You and others also keep positing that Eggman taking someone hostage is out of character. What contradiction or assertion from the word of God existed before Sonic Adventure 2 that would make such a maniacal, destructive, near-irredeemable psychopath honorable enough to never do that when the chips ever came down? What exists in Eggman's character to give him that kind of restraint? Heck, he was already insisted to be a manchild, and that is the last person I expect to have any kind of decency.

[Kuzu]

Can we just close this topic, this is honestly depressing...