Sonic Forces: Infinite Unmasked (SPOILERS/Speculation)

[SatAMhog]

I don't see a problem with him having a sword but most of the promotional material we've seen Infinite WITHOUT a sword, so it could just be for boss battles or flashback scenes in particular.  Besides, ANYONE can work a sword...it's not exactly a super power nowadays so I don't see the big deal especially if it's part of who he is in the past.  Having the sword as an illustrative clue or indicator to his past self is good for discussion(was he a warrior who believed in a cause and was betrayed? Or is this against his will? Who knows.).  Plus, that drawing would make a good cover fully illustrated.

[Indigo Rush]

Right. I'm sure when the game comes out it'll completely redeem this original character :v

Spoiler

This isn't what I want my life to be about. It's been fun, guys.

 

[Dr. Mechano]

Again, the sword isn't the issue.

The issue is that this is a game where Eggman takes over the world. It should be a climactic struggle between archenemies Sonic and Eggman. This scenario begs for a focus on Eggman as the main enemy, after all. Instead, the main antagonist will likely be some magic floating overpowered rando.

This is the Avatar's and Infinite's story. Sonic, Eggman, and the other actual Sonic the Hedgehog characters are really just here to facilitate that.

[Diogenes]

1 hour ago, Waveshocker Sigma said:

Yes, it's her "thing" but we don't know "why" it's her thing. Same for her Tarot Card thing that hardly ever gets brought up. Also like how Vector can spit fire and can spit out explosive bubblegum at any time, regardless of whether he's actually chewing any or not, and then use it as a balloon right after as well. Or how Chaos powers work for Sonic in general. I mean specifically Sonic on that.

Amy's hammer grew out of the old anime/manga gag of a female character pulling out a paper fan or something out of nowhere and slapping another character with it as a joke. That's why it's a squeaky hammer and not a legitimate weapon, it twists a gag into something that's just enough to defend herself with. The tarot cards don't come up probably because they're not the easiest things to work into a story and because they don't really fit the direction they've taken the character, but even originally I think they were just a way to show her belief in fate/destiny (specifically about her and Sonic getting together) and not an actual "power" she had anyway.

Vector's fire breath and exploding bubblegum are just gameplay mechanics, I don't think we're meant to believe these are actual, serious abilities that he has.

Sonic used Chaos Control because of SA2's hero vs dark setup and his rivalry with Shadow. Shadow challenges Sonic as the fastest thing alive but "cheats" with Chaos Control, so Sonic spends the rest of the game trying to close the gap, eventually figuring out how to CC himself, and challenging Shadow to a final fight with them on equal ground. But because teleporting and manipulating spacetime don't actually fit Sonic's character outside of that specific context, they have wisely decided to ignore it from then on, with the exception of one of the worst games in the series.

And yeah these explanations exist on a meta or narrative level rather than a practical one but that can be enough to justify a thing.

1 hour ago, Waveshocker Sigma said:

Besides, considering that Iizuka himself said that Infinite used to be a normal civilian like the Avatar, that means he didn't have powers like Sonic and the gang before. How do you fight against things like Eggman's robots and all the other junk in Sonic's world when you're just a normal dude with no powers? You either train to get super strong somehow or you use a weapon.

A "normal civilian" doesn't have reason to be fighting Eggman before his takeover, and even once he does, a sword is a pretty antiquated weapon. It's far from the most practical choice when laser weapons and wispons exist, so it still reeks of trying to be cool.

1 hour ago, Waveshocker Sigma said:

And honestly, why not have a sword as well? No logical reason to stick to only the awesome power of glowing geometry when you can also have a sword to fall back on an additional edge in close-quarters combat should all else fail.

It's clutter. In terms of powers/abilities, it's generally better for a character to have a small pool of abilities and apply them in interesting ways than just continually pull out new powers. Look at Sonic, he runs fast, he curls up into a spiky ball, and...that's really the root of most of the stuff he does. It helps keep the characters focused around a few core ideas and helps avoid them being overpowered and having an obvious solution for everything.

1 hour ago, Waveshocker Sigma said:

Especially considering that his powers list is still FAR smaller than the full collective list of Sonic's, Shadow's, Knuckles' and Silver's (especially) if we look at absolutely every game they're in.

Man you're comparing characters that have been around for at least a decade, some of them more than two, to a character who hasn't even had his first official appearance yet. What's surprising isn't that long-running characters have done a lot of things, it's that this complete newbie has done so much in so little time.

Also Shadow and Silver's powersets are pretty dumb actually, I'm certainly not holding them up as the ideal that the series should strive for.

19 minutes ago, SatAMhog said:

Besides, ANYONE can work a sword...it's not exactly a super power nowadays

Let's be honest if the average person got into a swordfight they'd probably be as much a danger to themselves as to their opponent. It's not an outright superpower but to use a sword well takes actual skill and practice.

[Kuzu]

It should noted that Amy's hammer is a gag, you're not meant to take it seriously a lot of the time. Especially since Amy's character is mostly a lighthearted joke about her crush on Sonic.

 

We are supposed to take Infinite completely seriously though with no sense of irony, so you're damn right I'm gonna call out anything that doesn't make sense with him. If Sonic Team wants us to take him seriously, then they should give us a reason to do so.

[Blue Blood]

I would have so much more respect for Infinite as a character of he was a parody. If Eggman, Sonic and Shadow derided him for his edgieness and if his theme tune started playing at the most inappropriate times I would adore the level of self-awareness. But I don't think that we'll get anything like that outside of the dank twitter account.

[Dr. Mechano]

7 minutes ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

We are supposed to take Infinite completely seriously though with no sense of irony, so you're damn right I'm gonna call out anything that doesn't make sense with him. If Sonic Team wants us to take him seriously, then they should give us a reason to do so.

Paradoxical as it may sound, if Sonic Team wants us to take a character seriously, they need to make them less serious - at least a little.

If all Infinite has is his super-serous, edgy shtick, then he's a one-note joke character - albeit an unintentional one. If you want a character like this to be taken seriously, you have to give them some actual personality. Let them have fun, let them smile sometimes (or the closest equivalent to it with that mask, anyway). Let them have some endearing banter with Eggman and his boss squad. Hell, just give him a hobby or something - anything to give him something other than being evil and powerful.

"You cannot expect us to cry with a character that we never got the chance to laugh with," is what I say. Make us like him, humanize him a little, and then maybe we can take his more serious traits at face value rather than mercilessly mock them for trying too hard. It looks like Infinite is going to have largely the same problems that Shadow has - that he's a humorless bore without a shred of levity to humanize him.

[Badnik Mechanic]

4 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

I would have so much more respect for Infinite as a character of he was a parody. If Eggman, Sonic and Shadow derided him for his edgieness and if his theme tune started playing at the most inappropriate times I would adore the level of self-awareness. But I don't think that we'll get anything like that outside of the dank twitter account.

Wait...

Why the isn't he?

Part of the game is about making a character, and from everything we've seen it's the most bland and dull character of all time with no personality or special skills outside of 'uses gadgets' yet that makes him one of the most believable fan characters of all time due to the fact that people joke most Sonic fan characters are stupid in how over-powered they are.

 

Why isn't infinite parodying all that? Well he is, but I don't think ST realise that they're doing it!

[Dr. Mechano]

1 minute ago, Mayor D said:

Wait...

Why the isn't he?

Part of the game is about making a character, and from everything we've seen it's the most bland and dull character of all time with no personality and often people joke that Sonic fan characters are stupid in how over-powered they are.

 

Why isn't infinite parodying all that? Well he is, but I don't think ST realise that they're doing it!

Sonic Team isn't clever enough for that, unfortunately.

As it stands, Infinite is just a straight-up Deviantart OC without a shred of irony.

(and you'd need a ton of irony to make a character like Infinite work)

[Kuzu]

10 hours ago, The Deleter said:

So is your conclusion, though. We don't see the Ruby on Infinite in the art. We don't see him in his typical Infinite attire. We have never seen a sword or any indication of it's existance in the game itself, after his Ruby persona, and we don't even see it in the concept art for his boss battle.

At least our speculation is based off of all the facts and context we know so far. You're just sticking to your guns despite whatever context around the facts we know, and disregarding everything else for the sake of railing against it, now. At least attempt to give solid reasons why we should consider your take on the situation as reasonable, if you want to argue that our takes are lesser due to their speculative nature, while you attempt the same on your own terms. :L

My stance is mostly rooted in how they've been marketing this character. He's less a character and more just a bundle of "cool" traits as a I pointed out before. He's like Shadow back in his own video game.

I can't take this character seriously because everything about him just reeks of a glorified fan-character, which wouldn't be so bad...but Sonic Team are completely insistent that I take this seriously and it just...isnt working

I'm not saying there isn't going to be an explanation or anything surrounding the character, I'm saying that I don't believe what they'll give us will justify the amount of focus and attention they've been giving him and it's just going to come off as ridiculous.

10 hours ago, Whatever the WhoCares said:

So don't judge the character then?

I will how judge how they've been writing this character.

10 hours ago, Crazy_Diamond said:

OK, but that is your pejorative. You don't need to look any deeper, and that is fine. But you are saying that because you aren't bothering to think past a surface level about this, that it is an inherently surface level trait. I don't even need to point out how that is wrong. When we say there might be some meaning to the sword, that is speculation, yes. But what you don't realize is by saying that there is no reason for Infinite have ever used a sword, that is also speculation, and one that has even less backing than our speculation. Our speculation is at least backed by the fact that Infinite's lyrics suggest that he has fought in conflicts before. Your speculation is backed by nothing.

My speculation is backed by, once again, how Infinite has been marketed since his debut. Yes, he might have a backstory that fleshes him out. That's not what I'm criticizing. What I'm criticizing is how the focus of his marketing has been firmly rooted in establishing how "COOL AND BADASS" he is. I feel it just makes him  come off as extremely shallow and try hard. Him using a sword is simply another list to the long list of "COOL AND BADASS" traits they've been going for. 

So yea, you're focused on the in-universe reasons for everything, while I'm mostly concerned about the meta part of it. 

[Wraith]

7 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

I would have so much more respect for Infinite as a character of he was a parody. If Eggman, Sonic and Shadow derided him for his edgieness and if his theme tune started playing at the most inappropriate times I would adore the level of self-awareness. But I don't think that we'll get anything like that outside of the dank twitter account.

I mean, putting work into making bad characters ironically is just wasted effort you could have put into something good. I'd always rather something genuine than some half ironic winking and nudging that isn't even very funny half the time. You see that sort of thing all the time nowadays.

 

[Kuzu]

6 minutes ago, Super Mechanio said:

Paradoxical as it may sound, if Sonic Team wants us to take a character seriously, they need to make them less serious - at least a little.

If all Infinite has is his super-serous, edgy shtick, then he's a one-note joke character - albeit an unintentional one. If you want a character like this to be taken seriously, you have to give them some actual personality. Let them have fun, let them smile sometimes (or the closest equivalent to it with that mask, anyway). Let them have some endearing banter with Eggman and his boss squad. Hell, just give him a hobby or something - anything to give him something other than being evil and powerful.

"You cannot expect us to cry with a character that we never got the chance to laugh with," is what I say. Make us like him, humanize him a little, and then maybe we can take his more serious traits at face value rather than mercilessly mock them for trying too hard. It looks like Infinite is going to have largely the same problems that Shadow has - that he's a humorless bore without a shred of levity to humanize him.

See, I disagree with this because Shadow was way better handled than Infinite.

I know you hate him, but Shadow was nowhere near as serious in SA2 (or even fucking Heroes) as he would go on to be later on. His personality in those games isn't really too different from Sonic's, he's just a bit more dour about it. One of his lines the very first time you fight him is 'I'm the coolest"

 

(Let's embrace my weeb)

Sonic calls out Shadow for being a "fake", but then Shadow just scoffs at him and calls Sonic the fake. It's like, Shadow wasn't as upbeat as Sonic, but he was just as arrogant and cocky. It's a character trait you can appreciate because our main character has to effectively face a mirror image of himself.

I can't change your mind about Shadow if you've decided that he's terrible, but at least acknowledge that he wasn't always the edgy parody that he would go on to be later on in his self-titled game. The character wasn't taken nowhere near as seriously as he would later on, even with his established backstory in SA2. It was actually a good balance for the most part.

[Dr. Mechano]

7 minutes ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

I can't change your mind about Shadow if you've decided that he's terrible, but at least acknowledge that he wasn't always the edgy parody that he would go on to be later on in his self-titled game. The character wasn't taken nowhere near as seriously as he would later on, even with his established backstory in SA2. It was actually a good balance for the most part.

My issue with Shadow, even in SA2, is that we're frontloaded with his tragic backstory from the very beginning and are given very little to actually endear us to him. I was just introduced to this guy, and I'm supposed to care about him seeing his friend get shot? I mean, it sucks, but I don't know him. I'm given no reason to care. It's such an amateurish storytelling technique that sidesteps the natural progression of getting your audience to be invested in a character; Just dump a bunch of sad backstory on them immediately and that'll get people to care, right?

Shadow may have not been an edgelord parody of himself in SA2, but I still found him boring. And here's the sad part: He didn't have to be. A biological experiment created by a mad scientist who saw his only friend gunned down by the government could be an interesting concept, but in my opinion they severely botched the execution by doing too much, too fast. What we're left with is a character we're told to feel sad for, not a character who earns that sympathy by being geuinely likable and endearing to the audience - or, at the very least, not likable or endearing to me and many others.

And sure, his goofy in-battle quotes are amusing, but I would have liked for more stuff like that to actually appear in the story cutscenes proper. As it stands, he just spent most of the game frowning and folding his arms.

[Diogenes]

8 minutes ago, Josh said:

I mean, putting work into making bad characters ironically is just wasted effort you could have put into something good. I'd always rather something genuine than some half ironic winking and nudging that isn't even very funny half the time. You see that sort of thing all the time nowadays.

Problem is I don't see them putting in effort to make Infinite a good character, and the whole vibe they're going for with him largely precludes that as a possibility anyway. I would greatly prefer that Infinite not exist at all, but if they're going to go through with this, I think it'd take some degree of parody and/or self awareness to salvage it.

[Wraith]

2 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Problem is I don't see them putting in effort to make Infinite a good character, and the whole vibe they're going for with him largely precludes that as a possibility anyway. I would greatly prefer that Infinite not exist at all, but if they're going to go through with this, I think it'd take some degree of parody and/or self awareness to salvage it.

That's not salvaging it. The character is as shallow as they were before, except now they're a joke. It only pats people on the back for not liking the trope. It's the type of cynical humor I'm bored of.

What would the point of the "joke" even be anyway? That kids shouldn't create fan cahracters or we'll make fun of them? Lol. That's original territory.

[Dr. Mechano]

1 minute ago, Josh said:

That kids shouldn't create fan cahracters or we'll make fun of them? Lol. That's original territory.

I mean, the point could be that they should create better fan-characters, perhaps, instead of embarrassing tripe like this.

OCs don't have to be awful. It's just that - and this is especially true for Sonic - most of them are.

[Kuzu]

8 minutes ago, Super Mechanio said:

My issue with Shadow, even in SA2, is that we're frontloaded with his tragic backstory from the very beginning and are given very little to actually endear us to him. I was just introduced to this guy, and I'm supposed to care about him seeing his friend get shot? I mean, it sucks, but I don't know him. I'm given no reason to care. It's such an amateurish storytelling technique that sidesteps the natural progression of getting your audience to be invested in a character; Just dump a bunch of sad backstory on them immediately and that'll get people to care, right?

Shadow may have not been an edgelord parody of himself in SA2, but I still found him boring. And here's the sad part: He didn't have to be. A biological experiment created by a mad scientist who saw his only friend gunned down by the government could be an interesting concept, but in my opinion they severely botched the execution by doing too much, too fast. What we're left with is a character we're told to feel sad for, not a character who earns that sympathy by being geuinely likable and endearing to the audience - or, at the very least, not likable or endearing to me and many others.

And sure, his goofy in-battle quotes are amusing, but I would have liked for more stuff like that to actually appear in the story cutscenes proper. As it stands, he just spent most of the game frowning and folding his arms.

I'm not going to act like SA2 is a pinnacle of storytelling, but we didn't actually get that much of his backstory until the Last Story. We got glimpses and pieces, but we didn't get the full story until literally the climax. Now if you still feel like he could have been better, cool. But it's not like every scene with him beat us over the head with his backstory.

In any case, while Shadow isn't an amazing character in any stretch of the word, I'm simply using him a point of reference towards Infinite and how the two were handled.

[Your Vest Friend]

...They're kids. 

[Wraith]

3 minutes ago, Super Mechanio said:

I mean, the point could be that they should create better fan-characters, perhaps, instead of embarrassing tripe like this.

OCs don't have to be awful. It's just that - and this is especially true for Sonic - most of them are.

Or maybe  they should be recognized as ultimately harmless and ignored.(They're ultimately harmless and the scrutiny they get from full grown adults who should have better things to do with their time is actually the weird and sad thing)

[Dr. Mechano]

Just now, VEDJ-F said:

...They're kids. 

Okay.

Sonic Team isn't. 

The fact that people can look at Infinite - a character created by a bunch of grown adults to help sell a video game - and can seriously compare it to the sorts of bad OCs that literal children make speaks volumes about both the character and Sonic Team themselves. They're better than this, or at least, they should be.

[Shadowlax]

6 minutes ago, Super Mechanio said:

I mean, the point could be that they should create better fan-characters, perhaps, instead of embarrassing tripe like this.

OCs don't have to be awful. It's just that - and this is especially true for Sonic - most of them are.

You sound condescending as hell. 

 

[Kuzu]

Just now, Super Mechanio said:

Okay.

Sonic Team isn't. 

The fact that people can look at Infinite - a character created by a bunch of grown adults to help sell a video game - and can seriously compare it to the sorts of bad OCs that literal children make speaks volumes about both the character and Sonic Team themselves. They're better than this, or at least, they should be.

I'm not about to defend Sonic Team's practices, but they did say the entire OC concept in this game revolved around all of the kids who like to make their own fan characters. Whether we like it or not,  this game is more marketted for children than it is for general audiences in how it's utilizing the OC's.

[Dr. Mechano]

Just now, Josh said:

Or maybe  they should be recognized as ultimately harmless and ignored.(They're ultimately harmless and the scrutiny they get from full grown adults who should have better things to do with their time is actually the weird and sad thing)

Laughing at their bad characters is harmless too.

Note that I make a distinction between laughing at the people (who can be kids and full grown adults, mind you) who make these characters and the characters themselves. Being mean to real people isn't okay. Laughing at Darkshade the Catchidna who has psychic powers and a gunsword is totally fine.

[Wraith]

1 minute ago, Super Mechanio said:

Laughing at their bad characters is harmless too.

Note that I make a distinction between laughing at the people (who can be kids and full grown adults, mind you) who make these characters and the characters themselves. Being mean to real people isn't okay. Laughing at Darkshade the Catchidna who has psychic powers and a gunsword is totally fine.

I mean you do you. I personally cannot care about OCs and find the idea of an extended joke taking precedence in a main game really obnoxious. Especially since Sonic games aren't actually funny whenever they're trying to be.

[Your Vest Friend]

5 minutes ago, Super Mechanio said:

Okay.

Sonic Team isn't. 

The fact that people can look at Infinite - a character created by a bunch of grown adults to help sell a video game - and can seriously compare it to the sorts of bad OCs that literal children make speaks volumes about both the character and Sonic Team themselves. They're better than this, or at least, they should be.

That's probably in part due to the fact they're aiming at that very audience. The avatar and Infinite are getting far more love from kids than the likes of the Hard-Boiled Heavies are, so their design strategy obviously has some merit to it.