ProJared reviews Sonic Adventure 2

[Kuzu]

Speaking of, other than giving Shadow his epiphany, Amy didn't really contribute much of anything herself. Really, she could be written out of the plot without it affecting anything major.

[Nepenthe]

Speaking of, other than giving Shadow his epiphany, Amy didn't really contribute much of anything herself. Really, she could be written out of the plot without it affecting anything major.

[Briraka]

Well, she was mostly a Damsel in Distress. Its not a flattering role, but its something at least. If Amy wasn't there, Eggman's scene to outwit Sonic & Tails kinda falls apart.

[Sean]

For being a non-player character I thought Amy's role was fine. Not as memorable as what she did in SA1 for sure though, which I still think is the best she's ever been

[Radiant Hero Ike]

The epiphany part is kind of excessively freaking important though, and I'm not sure who else would've been appropriate to give it

[Nepenthe]

To be fair, she was never really included in any of the plans. She tagged along on her own accord, which I feel speaks more about her own desire to prove useful than anything (and she even relents how much of a burden she is regardless before deciding to confront Shadow). If Sonic and Tails aren't asking her to do anything, what was she supposed to do except try to keep up and hope for a task? Also, search the ARK for what? It's an abandoned space station with information that- even if recoverable- wasn't all that relevant to the business at hand.

[DBZHedgy]

The epiphany part is kind of excessively freaking important though, and I'm not sure who else would've been appropriate to give it, nor do I think it'd be any better for Shadow to have simply reached the conclusion on his own at the last minute. It would be even more contrived.

 

Amy wasn't as active as she probably could've been had the entire story been rewritten or something, but at the same time I don't think that characters have to be all over the main conflict to be useful. She did some nice things throughout, like helped rescue Sonic, provided some levity, and eventually caused Shadow to switch sides. That's fine.

[Nepenthe]

It is contrived in an anime-esque way, but it's not particularly unreasonable when we know Shadow was operating under the assumption that his memories weren't tampered with, meaning he would've had no reason to actively question his bases. I don't personally espouse any of my beliefs under the assumption that they were directly implanted there like a hidden data on a computer while I was sleeping and that I actually have repressed memories or something. Cuz that would be dumb and unlikely, if not impossible.

 

It's also argued by the game that Sonic needed Shadow's combined power to both defeat the Biolizard (that bitch-ass ring count) and actually use a combined Chaos Control to shift that large of an object falling at terminal velocity back into orbit.

[Briraka]

To be fair, she was never really included in any of the plans. She tagged along on her own accord, which I feel speaks more about her own desire to prove useful than anything (and she even relents how much of a burden she is regardless before deciding to confront Shadow). If Sonic and Tails aren't asking her to do anything, what was she supposed to do except try to keep up and hope for a task? Also, search the ARK for what? It's an abandoned space station with information that- even if recoverable- wasn't all that relevant to the business at hand.

[azoo]

I'm gonna say a thing that I'm not sure if many will agree with..

 

I think SA2 was a neat experiment, making Sonic this somewhat darker thing with more depth in areas as well as a more realistic tinge than usual.. I'm getting the feeling that I wish it was just what it was: a 10th anniversary game. 

 

So yeah, it was a cool idea going into a plot and general tone like that for one game. But I feel like Sega attempting to follow that path and trying to up the ante in that direction from there-on kind of ruined them. They kept trying to do it more and more to the point of becoming extremely embarrassing, and in the end their failure to recapture the same sense of tension or scale SA2 had in what kind of story it told just led them to believe that they shouldn't really try with stories anymore at all.

 

If we could've had SA2's whole feel be a one-time-only kind of thing and instead followed a more classic / SA1-ish inspired path for story telling, art style and game design then I think things would've fared much better.

 

But of course, money talks.

[Briraka]

I'm gonna say a thing that I'm not sure if many will agree with..

 

I think SA2 was a neat experiment, making Sonic this somewhat darker thing with more depth in areas as well as a more realistic tinge than usual.. I'm getting the feeling that I wish it was just what it was: a 10th anniversary game. 

 

So yeah, it was a cool idea going into a plot and general tone like that for one game. But I feel like Sega attempting to follow that path and trying to up the ante in that direction from there-on kind of ruined them. They kept trying to do it more and more to the point of becoming extremely embarrassing, and in the end their failure to recapture the same sense of tension or scale SA2 had in what kind of story it told just led them to believe that they shouldn't really try with stories anymore at all.

 

If we could've had SA2's whole feel be a one-time-only kind of thing and instead followed a more classic / SA1-ish inspired path for story telling, art style and game design then I think things would've fared much better.

 

But of course, money talks.

[DBZHedgy]

It is contrived in an anime-esque way, but it's not particularly unreasonable when we know Shadow was operating under the assumption that his memories weren't tampered with, meaning he would've had no reason to actively question his bases. I don't personally espouse any of my beliefs under the assumption that they were directly implanted there like a hidden data on a computer while I was sleeping and that I actually have repressed memories or something. Cuz that would be dumb and unlikely, if not impossible.

[Nepenthe]

I think the 50 Years Ago thing has Shadow's memories and motivations as being directly tampered with by Gerald somehow in the aftermath of the ARK incident.

[Kuzu]

True, but I think she definatley could have contributed more to the team beyond going "WAIT FOR MEEEEEEEEEE (>OAO)>" for half of the game. Like have her search the ARK for something and get captured by Eggman that way instead of moping about being left behind.

 

It's really strange how in SA1 she wanted to prove herself useful, and yet there she is, on the sidelines doing nothing until the plot demands her to convince Shadow into helping.

[Briraka]

Well, its not like she could have really contributed much honestly; Sonic & Tails were pretty much handling everything on their own so there was no reason to include her on anything if they didn't need to.

 

If I could rewrite the story, I would probably give her a more active role, but how she is there isn't exactly that much of an issue.

[Kuzu]

Then if she couldn't contribute much hows about she tries to jump in, but the guys don't want her to because they already have everything under control so they tell her to wait, but then during Sonic and Tails' stages Eggman finds her that way? At least I'd feel her complaining would be justified and the boys wouldn't have just ignored her presence.

[Icee the Hedgehog]

I think having Amy in any role other than the one she had would have been superfluous. In all other games that she's been in, she's basically been a female Sonic, and in Adventure 2 we already had Sonic AND Shadow. 

 

I DO like how she's used as bait for Sonic and Tails during that one cutscene. though. :3

[Briraka]

Like I said, it could have been written better, but I don't find anything offensive about it either.

Eh, I just dislike it when stories treat their characters more like plot devices. But don't get me wrong, I don't think this is a bad version of her character. Heck, I really like that part where she breaks Sonic out of jail, I just wish that she could've kept the same incentive to act throughout the rest of the game.

[Bowbowis]

Back on the topic of Knuckles' usefulness for a second.

 

Eggman's line, "The prototype is still alive. He's become one with the colony and is determined to keep it on it's collision course." implies that Knuckles stopping the Emeralds did stop Gerald's program, and that's why the Biolizard merged with the colony in the first place, to ensure that the ARK still impacted the Earth like it was supposed to. So in short even if Knuckles didn't stop the ARK from falling he did stop the program that caused it to fall in the first place, thereby ensuring that the colony didn't just start falling again after Sonic and Shadow warped it back into orbit.

[JezMM]

I always, always hear people saying this. Is there any written source that says it though? The SA2 E3 trailer only mentions Sonic, Knuckles and Eggman, but nowhere have I seen any suggestion that nobody else would be playable. 

 

Just seems like people got their wires crossed and then everyone took it as gospel. Like when there used to be serious debates over whether it was Super Shadow or Hyper Shadow.

 

If I had to guess, Sonic in Sky Rail was probably the kicker that made people come up with the idea.  But anything could've changed during development I guess.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

With Knuckles, he fared much better here than he has in other games after it due to him actually having some strong involvement and motivation that was unique only to him. 

 

That's probably why we don't give him that much flak in SA2. Where as every other game he's been in just has him tag along for the hell of it, SA2 is where he had his own concerns to worry about that was intertwined with what everyone else was doing. Granted, it could be fleshed out more, but it's just something worth noting. We have yet to get any semblance of this from Knuckles anymore.

 

 

I'm gonna say a thing that I'm not sure if many will agree with..

 

I think SA2 was a neat experiment, making Sonic this somewhat darker thing with more depth in areas as well as a more realistic tinge than usual.. I'm getting the feeling that I wish it was just what it was: a 10th anniversary game. 

 

So yeah, it was a cool idea going into a plot and general tone like that for one game. But I feel like Sega attempting to follow that path and trying to up the ante in that direction from there-on kind of ruined them. They kept trying to do it more and more to the point of becoming extremely embarrassing, and in the end their failure to recapture the same sense of tension or scale SA2 had in what kind of story it told just led them to believe that they shouldn't really try with stories anymore at all.

 

If we could've had SA2's whole feel be a one-time-only kind of thing and instead followed a more classic / SA1-ish inspired path for story telling, art style and game design then I think things would've fared much better.

 

But of course, money talks.

And the reason I definitely don't agree with that is because that completely ignores that it was a matter of quality and handling that screwed it up than it was the number of times they tried following that path.

 

And need I remind you that Heroes came right after this game and was rather incoherent and embarrassing storywise before we got the ilk that was ShTH and Sonic 06. So is not recreating SA2's darker feel that was the problem - it was the fact that they didn't know how to fucking write a decent plot anymore, tone be damned. And we've practically come full circle after arguably Unleashed (YMMV on Colors) which was the last game to have a well made plot while these lighthearted, more classic inspired plots suffer blunders themselves. Like we've been saying that for the longest, dude.

[Blue Blood]

If I had to guess, Sonic in Sky Rail was probably the kicker that made people come up with the idea.  But anything could've changed during development I guess.

 

People have said that before. But it's not difficult to put another character in a another level, and Sonic and Shadow are compatible with each others stages and upgrades even. It doesn't lend an awful lot of credence to the argument.

[100Rings]

Why do we make a fuss over Eggman pulling out some semi-realistic firearm on Amy

 

....yet give Eggman electrocuting Knuckles with who knows how much wattage a free pass?

 

Both were played straight in terms of how "serious" it was to the canon (it wasn't meant to be "silly" in other words)

 

Let's be fair here lol.

[Mauro Fonseca]

I promise I won't reply further, before anyone starts freaking out. Just this one-

 

IRL, when you're eletrocuted you don't become an X-Ray of yourself. Knuckles' electrocution is inherently cartoony.

[Ming Ming Hatsune]

I remember when playing the HD port of this game, I spent 40 minutes on one Knuckles level going around in circles trying to find the pieces.

So help me I'll slap the person who came up with that idea to ditch Adventure 1's treasure hunting by replacing this find one shard at the time thing.

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