Black Doom Set to Return as Shadow's Villain in Sonic X Shadow Generations

To be fair I called Shadow's backstory strange and contradictory. Not necessarily everything is contradictory, but a lot is eyebrow raising. And Shadow had amnesia in SA2 when he forgot what Maria's wish for humanity was and then again in Heroes and Shadow when he forgot if he was Shadow or just an android. Maybe those aren't exactly "amnesia" per se, but forgetting key character traits. And you forgot about the part where somehow after Gerald was arrested that he redesigned the Eclipse Canon to crash the ARK into the Earth and told Shadow to gather the emeralds to do it.

But whatever. I don't really want to quibble over plot details because ultimately they don't matter much. Which was kind of my point in the first place: why dredge all this up instead of making something new? Or at the very least, why not remake SA2 or Shadow the Hedgehog itself to properly retell those stories instead of somehow shoehorning Black Doom of all people into the story of Generations? The answer is likely that this was cheaper, but it just feels like weird.

Black Doom was a pretty interesting character. Maybe a bit generic in his debut, but could be very good with a little fleshing out. Let’s see how Generations handles him.

Never really cared for Black Doom, I think grimdark edgy alien monsters is a terrible pairing for the Sonic series, but if we're having a Shadow Generations game, it'd be odd to leave it out. 

Actually kinda shocked to hear Black Doom has fans, but I suppose that just the new generation coming of age.

Honestly not opposed to aliens, but them being part of Shadow’s backstory is more extra-fluff. I would’ve made the Black Arms a rogue GUN faction instead.

Yes! The devil has come to tell Shadow to commit crimes!

I really hope this game retcons the Black Arms out of the timeline entirely.

We don't need a half assed extraterrestrial metaphor for Middle Eastern Terrorists in this series.

I'm more surprised they bothered with it.

I mean, sure, he's part of Shadow's history... a major part. But I was expecting at most a stage from Shadow's game and then kinda just move on, like 06. You really want to bring the big bad in and remind people more that Shadow the Hedgehog (the game) really happened? It's... eh... it's a choice, I'll say that much.

This has been happening for some time, but it's still quite surprising to see Sega slowly stopping being ashamed of badly received Sonic games in some way or another. I didn't expect to see Black Doom again.

IMO, Ian Flynn wrote some of his best Sonic scripts using Shadow the Hedgehog as material (the Shadow Fall and Total Eclipse arcs in Sonic Universe have wonderful plots and characterization). If Sega lets him cook, I think he can make something wonderful with Shadow's story.