Are we prepared for an era when SEGA reconciles with the game, Shadow the Hedgehog?

[Scritch the Cat]

Some days, it still seems surreal that Shadow the Hedgehog happened.  It was widely considered the Sonic series' moment of jumping the shark, past which there was no return.  I remember that was the moment the common narrative started to shift, from the Sonic series being a once-great icon of gaming that people wished could be great again, to the Sonic series always being a try-hard attempt at being on the cutting edge of cool that was inevitably pursuing that ideal into a deserved grave.  I was actually a bit surprised to see the series keep going after that, but I'm not surprised that it retreated back from most of the "innovations" in that game.  Fortunately for them, it tied up enough of its loose ends that they were able to mostly ignore its existence from then on, especially when the series' post-06 approach tended to mostly ignore the canon of past games. 

However, one thing that didn't immediately change was that Sonic Team kept scrambling to overhaul their series to be cooler, all the while defying the wishes of people who said they wanted them to revive good ideas from their past instead.  Only with the advent of Sonic 4 (in theory) and Sonic Generations did the series finally start looking back at Classic Sonic as the source of widely acceptable direction for their series, and outside of the Boom spin-off, most subsequent titles continued to do that, up until maybe Team Sonic Racing.

From then on, it feels like the Adventure era has become the new big focus of nostalgia as something to base new things on.  As someone whose favorite era of Sonic was the Adventure era, I'm mostly on board with that.  But there's also that part of me that never really regained trust in Sonic Team and doesn't trust them to avoid the potholes that era fell in the first time.  While Sonic Dream Team has garnered a lot of admiration as a pragmatic revival drawing on the better-received parts of the better-received Adventure-era games, there's always the chance for a worse outcome...and we might be seeing it soon, thanks to The Year of Shadow.

Certainly, the way they've presented Shadow in their new campaign is very different from how they did nearly two decades ago.  But they're still calling back to some elements from that widely-reviled game, like Black Doom and the motorcycle.  That doesn't mean I expect Shadow to start wielding guns and swearing again...yet.  But if Sonic Team's opening the door to their "dark age", then eventually it seems like something will be coming through.  They're pointing people in the direction of that game and signaling to people that they don't fully regret it, in contrast to most of subsequent history when they didn't acknowledge it either way.  So what happens if or when people come out of the woodwork who want to see Shadow shooting and swearing again?  How will we take that?  How should we take that?  Would you like it?  Tolerate it?  Punish the whole series for it?  And ignoring personal likes and dislikes, would you think it worth the risk?

[Lorekitten]

Considering I just came out of a conversation-slash-argument regarding whether Sega should or shouldn't acknowledge another potentially problematic aspect of a Sonic character's past (and I have no wish to be dragged back into that one), I have to say... I'm willing to wait and see what Sega actually does before making any doom-and-gloom predictions. You can plan for tomorrow, but don't borrow trouble from it or you'll have to pay up.

[Cyb3rkn1ght]

Yooo Shadow the hedgehog 2?

[Maple Syrup]

I hope they'll actually make a Gun-like controller for that rebootTime for some Texan Fury, Mr. President! 

[Wraith]

I think this is a healthier mindset for a franchise to be in than trying to desperately pretend it's past didn't happen in the 2010s, so despite mostly disliking Shadow the Hedgehog I'm fine with this revisit on paper. Those games happened. We all saw them. Most of them aren't hard to track down footage of to this day when you search up the characters. There's not much value in trying to pretend they weren't made. I'm not sure if what they do will actually address the flaws of that game head on or make things worse, but I'm as fine with an attempt as I am fine with them attempting to do right by the classics so many times in the 2010s. We had nearly a decade of insufferable Sonic 2 callbacks and had to watch as they learned nothing about what made Sonic 2 great the entire time. It's only fair at this point.

Speaking of, I wonder if any Sonic fans who are angry about the overton window of nostalgia moving the mid 2000s are capable of looking in the mirror. Sonic Team received so much praise for paying lip service to the classic era in the 2010s that it was only natural that their attention would shift once they played that song too much and the well dried up. Sonic 4 got a lot of deserved flack for wearing the skin of Classic Sonic without walking the walk, but it's arguably true about every case of Sonic going back to his roots short of Mania. Titles like Lost World, Colors and even the imo mostly pretty good in it's own right Sonic Generations are also guilty of this, but they received a reception "buff" just for looking the part. When your critique begins and ends at aesthetic, and you're incapable of realizing that the modern games were equally unfocused mechanically or that a character like Zavok is functionally the same as a character like Black Doom or Infinite with a Bowser skin awkwardly slapped over it, that's what you end up with. Lip service that's going to shift focus once the loudest group changes. Not consistent aesthetic or mechanical values to build a franchise around. You can't really blame the fanbase for Sonic Team's tendency for surface level shake ups in lieu of addressing their underlying problems, but hopefully this is a lesson to at least be more intentional with critique as long as they're listening.

13 hours ago, Scritch the Cat said:

Certainly, the way they've presented Shadow in their new campaign is very different from how they did nearly two decades ago.  But they're still calling back to some elements from that widely-reviled game, like Black Doom and the motorcycle.  That doesn't mean I expect Shadow to start wielding guns and swearing again...yet.  But if Sonic Team's opening the door to their "dark age", then eventually it seems like something will be coming through.  They're pointing people in the direction of that game and signaling to people that they don't fully regret it, in contrast to most of subsequent history when they didn't acknowledge it either way.  So what happens if or when people come out of the woodwork who want to see Shadow shooting and swearing again?  How will we take that?  How should we take that?  Would you like it?  Tolerate it?  Punish the whole series for it?  And ignoring personal likes and dislikes, would you think it worth the risk?

The shooting mechanic seems to have been with the chaos spear, which is the obvious change to make on the face of things. In between this and Frontiers it's pretty obvious they're taking a more 'measured' approach to this whole thing. They'll follow rule of cool and hit the spot for the anime obsessed 8 year olds these games are actually aimed at but keep it to things that won't make grandma raise an eyebrow. Shadow shooting ki blasts and doing Sick Kung Fu moves is both what he's known for and tonally in line with the last couple games of the series, a far cry from the shock to the system Shadow was after Heroes. I think the risk factor to the overall franchise is low. It looks more like Sonic Frontiers than any 2000s game and more of that was locked in before they had even decided to make this. At most this will lead to Shadow being playable in the next game since a lot of the work will already have been done.

I don't expect the underlying mechanical issues(is a shooting mechanic in a Sonic game even a remotely interesting idea to begin with?) to be addressed but I think I'm willing to accept at this point that 3D Sonic is never going to be a mechanically driven series like the originals. It's a brand/character driven one first. They're making games to get the characters in more people's hands, not the other way around.

I'm mostly interested in how a new writing team weathers the old, obviously flawed material. If we're to take Frontiers as a reference point there's a chance their contributions either don't move the needle at all or are outright negative, but It's got me curious. Not excited, but curious.

And to let the mask slip a little, a juvenile part of me always thought Shadow was pretty cool, so there's a certain thrill to seeing him fight again. If we're going to get "Character driven Sonic" then I'm at least glad to see a favorite, and one that's not being watered down into nothing at at that. These larger than life battles and angst fueled screes have niche appeal, but they did motivate a younger me through some tough times. This is my bias speaking, but I find Shadow to simply be an impossible character to root against, despite the packages he's in usually letting me down. I want to see him get right, not get gone. If this ends in another crashout for the character I'll take the L, but I'll be happy they tried.

All that being said. Nothing we've seen of Sonic x Shadow Generations jumps out as something I need to play, so maybe I'll take the zoomer Sonic fan approach and just watch the shit on youtube. I made the mistake of giving Frontiers a fair shake despite every red flag in the footage and regretted it. I went with my gut on the obviously busted Superstars, kept my engagement with it at cute Trip fanart and had a better time.

tldr: I like the idea, I'm cynical but I'm mostly proceeding with caution so the risk is low. If watching Shadow do cool shit is all this expansion offers, that will be the extent of my engagement with it. I think the actual risk it presents to the franchise is low but there's a chance I get surprised here. You won't get many more essays from grandpa Wraith about this one. I'm going the Superstars route of least resistance from here.

Edited May 20 by Wraith

[Scritch the Cat]

48 minutes ago, Wraith said:

You can't really blame the fanbase for Sonic Team's tendency for surface level shake ups in lieu of addressing their underlying problems, but hopefully this is a lesson to at least be more intentional with critique as long as they're listening.

Is there any shred of evidence that they are?  The closest I can see that could be interpreted as such is them inviting prominent Sonic influencers to press events and sending them review copies, and for all I know, they're doing that just to make people think they're listening, though obviously that trick wouldn't work for very long before people figure out they're not.

Edited May 20 by Scritch the Cat

[Wraith]

1 hour ago, Scritch the Cat said:

Is there any shred of evidence that they are?  The closest I can see that could be interpreted as such is them inviting prominent Sonic influencers to press events and sending them review copies, and for all I know, they're doing that just to make people think they're listening, though obviously that trick wouldn't work for very long before people figure out they're not.

For all of Final Horizon's flaws it's like 90% a response to complaints about the game from fans online. They're listening. They just usually can't execute.

[Scritch the Cat]

On 5/19/2024 at 6:35 PM, Wraith said:

I don't expect the underlying mechanical issues(is a shooting mechanic in a Sonic game even a remotely interesting idea to begin with?)

I think it could be, but there'd need to be some concessions made due to the fact that most people playing a Sonic game want to go fast and resent things that break that up.  An automatic rapid-fire weapon is viable to use in scenarios like that because the point of those weapons is to reduce need to stop and aim carefully.  Moreover, the lock-on mechanic the first two Adventure games used is well-enough suited to that, something I think many forgot because the slow-moving mech stages in SA2 took up so much more time and were so much harder than Gamma's stages.  Gamma's story in SA1 doesn't qualify as a very good shooter, but it's considerably more "Sonic-y" in that the character is more mobile and the goal of the stages was to get through them quickly.  The arbitrary nature of using hits to add seconds to the timer probably means that won't come back, but it's viable to make a character move even more like Sonic and have that as an attack.  It's an alternative to the homing attack that doesn't put your character in as much danger, and I can envision compelling gameplay being formed by hitting enemies with that while using your speed to keep your distance.

Weapons that have slower rates of fire and/or need more precise-aiming, like bazookas and sniper rifles, don't work well for this style of game, and I really don't see a way they could be made to work well.  You could make them work better if you added an auto-aim feature but that would defeat the purpose of having other weapons whose feature is to lock-on.  So ultimately part of the problem with making these games shooters is that in a shooter, there's a novelty of being able to collect and wield a wide variety of weapons, including slow ones, while in a Sonic game, the intended appeal is going fast.  There are players who enjoy both, sure, but it doesn't seem like you can count on most of an audience being them when the two ideas are so at odds.

Edited May 27 by Scritch the Cat

[Zaysho]

16 hours ago, Scritch the Cat said:

So what happens if or when people come out of the woodwork who want to see Shadow shooting and swearing again?  How will we take that?  How should we take that?  Would you like it?  Tolerate it?  Punish the whole series for it?  And ignoring personal likes and dislikes, would you think it worth the risk?

As someone who likes the old game because it was the right kind of stupid, mindless fun for me when I was 16 and more obsessed with Sonic to tolerate it back in 2005, and felt some validation when the Black Arms appeared in Archie and getting Eclipse out of the deal—who are these people? When the game was new there wasn't a single person who actually liked that sort of presentation for the series or ever felt it was appropriate. It was always a punchline. 99% of the things Shadow said in that game were treated as a punchline and colored perception of the character for years.

The series is in a very different place than it was twenty years ago or even ten years ago. While I don't think Sonic Team totally "gets" a lot of criticism (from what I understand from Frontiers and the updates it got... they tried) I don't think it's something people would have to worry about ever rearing its head again just because Sonic Team is embracing its old failures to pull something good from it, and putting it in a game most people already liked and is the most thematically appropriate place to explore it before moving on. A game like Frontiers suggests to me they know how/when to embrace the goofy, over-the-top action movie and shonen anime inspirations and doing it sincerely enough to try to make it look actually cool instead of juvenile nonsense like Shadow's game ended up being.

They'll probably trip up anyway because that's just how Sonic Team does it, but I think things are different enough now they know where to pull the reins on stuff like that.

[Mangoaxe5]

I'm all for it. Despite what you may hear online, some of us actually like the Shadow the Hedgehog video game. So I'm all for SEGA acknowledging it.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

11 hours ago, Zaysho said:

As someone who likes the old game because it was the right kind of stupid, mindless fun for me when I was 16 and more obsessed with Sonic to tolerate it back in 2005, and felt some validation when the Black Arms appeared in Archie and getting Eclipse out of the deal—who are these people? When the game was new there wasn't a single person who actually liked that sort of presentation for the series or ever felt it was appropriate.
 

…er…me? Sorta?

I’m perhaps one of the few remaining people from a very old era on these forums that supported a number of the things that ShTH shouldn’t have done.

I became more nuanced about it over time, and I didn’t exactly think things like swearing were the best attempts. But I was wanting the franchise to follow along the same path as Jak II did around the same era. But I was 15 when I first joined these forums off the high tail of Heroes when I wanted to see that—I saw Jak and Daxter pull it off, so I wanted to see Sonic do so as well.

Kinda wish the forum wipe didn’t happen, because it would be something to see my old words back at the time.

Mind you, we did have a bad epidemic of Shadow fanboys causing drama and stirring things up at the time as well, so there was that. 

Scritch the Cat may not have any specific people he can bring up, but he’s not lying looking back through memory lane.

Still, seeing Sonic x Shadow Generations has me laughing my ass off at people who thought this would never happen. Not that I expected it either—I mainly treated it as a hypothetical—but it’s hilarious that their somewhat attempt at revisiting that game has them doing mostly what I thought would fix the original game’s perception:

• no guns,
• no swearing,
• less confusing story.

If they focus on Chaos Powers, which I’m not sure is likely, then they basically did what some thought would never happen and essentially did what the need fix the game if they really went to remake it. Only other thing I would have wanted to change would be the Black Arms from being aliens, but they seem to be committed to this, so it’s whatever.

It’s actually kinda surreal how things have actually turned around when I look back at it.

Edited May 20 by CrownSlayers Shadow

[Lorekitten]

17 minutes ago, CrownSlayers Shadow said:

Only other thing I would have wanted to change would be the Black Arms from being aliens, but they seem to be committed to this, so it’s whatever.

Not really sure how they'd manage to retcon that. Even by Sega's current standards for franchise course changes, that'd be hard to pull off.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

3 minutes ago, Lorekitten said:

Not really sure how they'd manage to retcon that. Even by Sega's current standards for franchise course changes, that'd be hard to pull off.

It’s actually easy as hell. Just make them a Rogue GUN splinter group that used Project Shadow’s research on their soldiers and have them want to take the planet for themselves and you can basically tell most of the same story as the original.

Edited May 20 by CrownSlayers Shadow

[Mangoaxe5]

Quote

 

no swearing,

Does hell(then again I'm also an atheist), and damn really count as swears?

Quote

Only other thing I would have wanted to change would be the Black Arms from being aliens

What's wrong with the Black Arms being aliens?

[Scritch the Cat]

I must admit, of all things you could take issue with in that game, the villains being aliens seems really far down the list, to the point it’s probably off of it.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

1 hour ago, Mangoaxe5 said:

Does hell(then again I'm also an atheist), and damn really count as swears?

Sort of. They’re pretty mild, maybe on the very low end of swears, but they’re not something you expect to hear in a franchise for all ages.

That said, I was actually looking forward to ShTH being rated T for Teen back then, so it’s not like I was fully against it at the time.

1 hour ago, Mangoaxe5 said:

What's wrong with the Black Arms being aliens?

At the time they came around, they were random with little reference.

I know we have crazy superscience and mystical magic elements in the franchise, but rather than continue that tradition they instead basically say that the immortal superweapon was a product of alien blood.

That isn’t to say that it couldn’t work—they actually kept things narratively consistent by remembering that it was done 50 years ago, so it not like they fully threw spaghetti at the wall and decided to go with it. But after SA2 had things established as a government secret project that they wanted to stay hidden, why throw aliens into the mix instead of continuing with the government conspiracy angle? Would be more consistent that way if you ask me.

Not a big problem nowadays when we have the Wisps and the Ancients. So this is really only looking back in hindsight.

Edited May 20 by CrownSlayers Shadow

[Cyb3rkn1ght]

Well, now that I've read what the Topic suggest, I think we are PAST ready. 

See, don't get me wrong: the nostalgia hits (Look whose talking), and I'm glad Sonic Team didn't throw EVERYTHING The Adventrue Era Set up: The Character Development, the Characters themselves (like seriously, where is Silver? or Vanilla?), and I think Shadow The Hedgehog was a great Experimental game, and I think we as a fan base is wrong for hating on the game, because they actually had the balls to experiment on reaching on the teen and Young Adult audience with the guns, violence and swearing, and have different characters have different playstyles, just like the classics.

19 hours ago, Wraith said:

(is a shooting mechanic in a Sonic game even a remotely interesting idea to begin with?)

Sure, shooting isn't build for a Sonic game, but this is Shadow. Sonic would NEVER cock a SMG, but now we see that Shadow will. Sonic thinks that swearing is no good, but Shadow doesn't care. this is 2 different people, and I think  if Sonic team did this more, we would probably have more expansive games. Take SA2 for a REAL good example: Wouldn't you like a game that was like Knuckles' Treasure hunting, but with a lil more flair? What about putting that flair and pizzazz into a Sonic Shooting game like The Mechs? (Tails Metrovania would be a DREAM, as well as a Knuckles game, and a Silver Puzzle Platformer.) I think we would have Diverse things for more audiences to pick up than Boomer Sonic Fans, teens and lil kids (No offence to those). I'm not saying it to Copy Mario with it's diverse Genres like Platforming, Role-Playing, Puzzles, Party, racing and SO much more, but you could put your name out there more. I think again, as a fan base, we scared Sega and Sonic Team to thinking we ONLY want Sonic Adventrue and Classic sonic, but I like that they are breaking off the shackles we may or may not had made, and tried something SO out of the Box, And it still feels close to it's roots, it fits right in! (Awfully like Mario Wonder huh?)

I say all this to say: Yes. Let's accept anything they go for, if it makes sense. If it's in touch for Sonic, yeah! Shadow? Yeah!

[Scritch the Cat]

26 minutes ago, Cyb3rkn1ght said:

Sonic thinks that swearing is no good, but Shadow doesn't care.

Actually, Sonic also swears in that game, and Sonic in the Japanese versions of various media swears quite a bit.

 I have a response for the rest of your post, but I’m too busy at the moment.

[GeAr-DX]

Alright, it's time for me to make my polemic opinion. I would actually like a new Shadow game, I liked the guns and vehicles, I also liked a lot the atmosphere of the game. In my opinion it's a good chance for making a new game with a nu-metal atmosphere.

[Cyb3rkn1ght]

1 minute ago, Scritch the Cat said:

Actually, Sonic also swears in that game, and Sonic in the Japanese versions of various media swears quite a bit.

 I have a response for the rest of your post, but I’m too busy at the moment.

Cool, but just a warning: I know Tails has a Mertovania, so please don't seize me over a fire

[GeAr-DX]

1 minute ago, Scritch the Cat said:

Actually, Sonic also swears in that game, and Sonic in the Japanese versions of various media swears quite a bit.

 I have a response for the rest of your post, but I’m too busy at the moment.

In the original dub Sonic is seen swearing way more than Shadow. Most of the swearing in the Shadow game were from the english localization.

[Scritch the Cat]

 

[Cyb3rkn1ght]

47 minutes ago, Scritch the Cat said:

Actually, Sonic also swears in that game, and Sonic in the Japanese versions of various media swears quite a bit.

 I have a response for the rest of your post, but I’m too busy at the moment.

 

44 minutes ago, GeAr-DX said:

In the original dub Sonic is seen swearing way more than Shadow. Most of the swearing in the Shadow game were from the english localization.

 

15 minutes ago, Scritch the Cat said:

 

Okay, i get it: the man swears. you do get what I'm trying to say right?

[Scritch the Cat]

On 5/20/2024 at 3:48 PM, Cyb3rkn1ght said:

Okay, i get it: the man swears. you do get what I'm trying to say right?

Yeah, I do.  I'm not sure I agree, though, and even if I do, I'm cognizant of many people who don't, so many that it often feels like that approach is more trouble than it's worth.

Compared to, say, graphic novels, movies and TV shows, I don't think video games are as inherently well-suited to be sources of expanded universes following many different characters and many different tastes, because the interactive elements are, for many people, a greater barrier for entry.  It's not as hard to observe a character jump-strafing while firing assault weapons or busting out fancy roundhouse kicks or running fast as it is to play those things, at least in a game that gives them enough depth for them to feel rewarding.  In most action/adventure media, someone who enjoys one form of thrills is pretty likely to enjoy another, but in interactive form, every new mechanic presents a new learning curve.  In older forms of media, it's possible for characters like Boba Fett, Harley Quinn and Deadpool to develop enough of a following to make spin-offs starring them, and offering a very distinct sort of content from the original works that spawned them.  In games, not so much.

Of course, while I say this, it still happens, and sometimes it happens even without any signs that the spinoffs will be safe bets.  No less a franchise than Mario started doing it pretty early on, and Sonic followed its lead a fair amount.  But I would argue there's a substantial difference between how the Mario franchise has approached it, and how Sonic had approached it up until then, and how Shadow the Hedgehog approached it.  When Nintendo made the Mario Kart, RPG, Golf, etc. games, they were trying to make those foreign things look cooler by putting Mario things into them.  Shadow the Hedgehog was an attempt to make the Sonic series look cooler by putting foreign things into it. 

As to how well those foreign things do or don't happen to fit, I don't think it's quite what you made it out to be.  I don't see much about Sonic's pre-established character that implies he would dislike using guns, nor much about Shadow's pre-established character to imply that he'd like using guns.  Supporting a dictatorship, littering, or saying that cruelty to animals is no big deal would go against Sonic's character, but not using guns.  Sonic had never used guns before and you'd hardly expect him to, but then again, who expected Mario to wear a magical raccoon costume to let him fly?  Probably nobody, but it's not a betrayal of his personality or motives, the way Mario capturing a woman he had a one-way crush on would be, and to be fair, many game characters have such thin personalities and motives that not many things are at odds with them on a personality level.  What's at stake is a brand's reputation and accessibility, and at least in the modern West (not so much in Japan), realistic firearms will make a series look less child-friendly and warrant a higher rating, but with a character like Shadow, going into detail about his lore probably posed a risk of entering that territory anyway, so if it did, there wasn't a reason not to have Shadow join in the edgy stuff himself. (That said, it is a complete betrayal of Shadow's original story arc for him to want to destroy the world again.  The straight-dark route of the game is inexcusable.)

Still, make no mistake, the reason they put the guns in the game was to make it look cooler than the Sonic series had looked over a decade after its creation, or so they thought.  And regardless of whether guns are a fit for Shadow thematically, the fact remains that Shadow's original gameplay style was not designed to incorporate them.  Lore-wise, he could manifest projectiles, but gameplay-wise, they were only used when he was a boss or a multiplayer character, and had no real gameplay mechanics in the latter case besides "gather rings".  I think if they made an edgy, morally dubious shooter starring Nack/Fang, they'd have a smoother time all-around; not only is using guns an established part of his character, but he's never been associated with gameplay about moving quickly, nor really any sort of gameplay.  That would've given them the opportunity to design a gun-focused gameplay approach from the ground-up, or barring that, just use pre-designed gun-focused gameplay approaches that have proven themselves.  It wouldn't necessarily appeal to every Sonic fan, but it would probably appeal to the sort of Sonic fan who wanted to play as Fang.  But they didn't do that; they chose the character they had who seemed the coolest and most mature, the hottest gameplay trends at the time, and then scrambled to make a gameplay style that reconciled those disparate concepts.  The result was a mess.  The faster-firing weapons work well enough, but others work pretty badly.  A slower approach to gameplay would gel more with those sorts of weapons, but it would betray a big part of Shadow's original gameplay style and annoy a lot of Shadow's original fans.  Go-figure, it did in those dreaded Ark levels, though granted, even if you didn't care about speed, Lost Impact would still be a putrid turd of a level. 

Pretty much every other fad they shoved into the game is implemented even worse than the guns, because again, it seems pretty obvious they committed to having those features and boasting about having them first, and tried implementing them only afterward.  It's much the same mistake Bubi Baka made with Balan Wonderworld long after, throwing an impressive number at people about its costume mechanic, and only afterward trying to come up with them and dumbing down the controls to make them "simple".

Edited June 17 by Scritch the Cat

[Lorekitten]

The idea of Sonic not liking guns probably came from the Archie comics, where there was a... thing... explaining why the Kingdom of Acorn didn't use guns.

The less I say about that particular story the better, but as with much of Archie Sonic back then, it was probably well-intentioned but still very poorly executed, and the overall plot very likely could've worked every bit as well without it.