How Does Sonic's World Work? TailsTube's First Episode Finally Gives an Answer

9 minutes ago, light-gaia said:

Chaos from Sonic Adventure was previously mentioned in the Sonic 3&K's Japanese manual. So, Sonic Adventure is a direct sequel to the classic trilogy

Source on that ? Because it seems to be a pretty bold statement. Especially as Chaos isn't mentionned in the translation i've seen in Sonic Retro, it just have that a group of elder wanted the power of the "power stone" for themselves and that the civilisation was wipped out in an instant, and put in the sky. It's NOT the same as saying that Chaos was mentionned (and I would say that we already see that they have transformed the story compared to S3&K, which is normal, here it looks way more like they accentally zapped themselves with the Master Emerald power).

Especially as honestly, most of references to past game in Sonic where just "reuse this stuff because it's usefull to our story". I mean, yeah, GHZ in the world of human in several game… But there is a plot hole on its exact location in nearly every game. South Island isn't mentionned again post-Classic whereas it was every game gear game location.

It doesn't mean that they couldn't do better - not having huge discrepency would be a plus - but Sonic isn't really an IP with a strong lore and canon. It's vague, change depending of what they want. And honestly, as long as they bring now some bases that stay (like now the "human in continent, mobian in islands"), I'm okay with that.

Just now, GX Echidna said:

A reference isn't directly saying the plot follows a direct path, especially when you're dealing with multiple directors that have multiple visions of how the world works. Mario makes reference to past games all the time, but it falls short of saying "These events actually happened" in favor of a much looser philosophy of "This is a production, and if you get the references, you get them, and if you don't, you don't."

Yes, there are some games that do actually rely on certain other events happening to explain certain other events. Sonic Adventure 2 does come after Sonic Adventure 1. Bioware had an absolute comic-book-style hard-on for trying to unify a bunch of Sonic Team games with a bunch of DIMPS games. And Ian Flynn has forever taken on the Sisyphean task of trying to glue the events of Sonic Riders to Tails Adventure, and bless him for it, he does an entertaining job, but none of us should be under the impression that anything in the games is built on a plan that looks beyond "get the current project done and shipped."

When you look at Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Unleashed doesn't care that Sonic Adventure happened. Sonic Lost World doesn't care that Sonic once hung out with a robot and beat up Chaos and Gamma on the GBA. It isn't building a consistent throughline. It's a big bucket of ideas that they can sometimes reach in and pull something out of to say "Hey, remember this?" or "We think this might make for an interesting gameplay or story element." And sometimes they reach in and pull out Chaos. "Hey, remember that Chaos exists? What if Chaos was in our game?" And sometimes they need something to be a magical powerup, so let's fish out the Wisps again, they're useful. What if they went inside the guns and hammers?

Yeah, but this kind of approach to the games' continuity started with Sonic Unleashed, before Unleashed the games used to have a very clear direction. Shadow the Hedgehog doesn't make a "small reference" like Mario games do. It directly references events from Adventure 2 and Heroes that are relevant to the plot, including characters. When it comes to 2006, Shadow is working with GUN in the game, following the canon ending of his solo game. This kind of reference is not even comparable to series like Mario that doesn't even try to have a compelling storytelling.

2 minutes ago, light-gaia said:

Yeah, but this kind of approach to the games' continuity started with Sonic Unleashed, before Unleashed the games used to have a very clear direction. Shadow the Hedgehog doesn't make a "small reference" like Mario games do. It directly references events from Adventure 2 and Heroes that are relevant to the plot, including characters. When it comes to 2006, Shadow is working with GUN in the game, following the canon ending of his solo game. This kind of reference is not even comparable to series like Mario that doesn't even try to have a compelling storytelling.

Aren't the ultimate thesis of both Shadow and Sonic 06 "Don't worry about these stories, Shadow stopped caring about his own backstory, and we wrote 06's story out of existence."

Like, all of this is EXTREMELY non-committal.

8 minutes ago, Kazhnuz said:

Source on that ? Because it seems to be a pretty bold statement. Especially as Chaos isn't mentionned in the translation i've seen in Sonic Retro, it just have that a group of elder wanted the power of the "power stone" for themselves and that the civilisation was wipped out in an instant, and put in the sky. It's NOT the same as saying that Chaos was mentionned (and I would say that we already see that they have transformed the story compared to S3&K, which is normal, here it looks way more like they accentally zapped themselves with the Master Emerald power).

Especially as honestly, most of references to past game in Sonic where just "reuse this stuff because it's usefull to our story". I mean, yeah, GHZ in the world of human in several game… But there is a plot hole on its exact location in nearly every game. South Island isn't mentionned again post-Classic whereas it was every game gear game location.

It doesn't mean that they couldn't do better - not having huge discrepency would be a plus - but Sonic isn't really an IP with a strong lore and canon. It's vague, change depending of what they want. And honestly, as long as they bring now some bases that stay (like now the "human in continent, mobian in islands"), I'm okay with that.

It doesn't mention the name "Chaos" specifically, it mentions a "legendary dragon" that was clearly the inspiration for Chaos.

5 minutes ago, GX Echidna said:

Aren't the ultimate thesis of both Shadow and Sonic 06 "Don't worry about these stories, Shadow stopped caring about his own backstory, and we wrote 06's story out of existence."

Like, all of this is EXTREMELY non-committal.

Both stories are poorly written and have other plot holes, but that doesn't mean they didn't try to have any kind of continuity there. Again, the series started not caring about continuity with Sonic Unleashed. And started to care way less about storytelling and characterization from Sonic Colors onwards.

I think the gist of Sonic continuity is "everything is canon, except the ones no one* liked. Or weren't made by Sonic Team / Dimps."

That said, two worlds being out of the picture is just a good decision regardless. It was needlessly complicated. Even if the games didn't reference it, fans had to struggle with the fact that it was probably canon when talking about basically ANYTHING about the post-classic stories on a grander scale (let alone when making and indulging on fan-content), which I'm sure led to people either outright denying it or saying "well this is stupid" and stopped caring about any of it altogether.

It just.. wasn't a good idea, I think. Good riddance to bad rubbish. 

* - outside of the fanbase. sorry little jimmy who loves sonic 06's plot

15 minutes ago, light-gaia said:

It doesn't mention the name "Chaos" specifically, it mentions a "legendary dragon" that was clearly the inspiration for Chaos.

Having something that is "clearly" (citation needed) an inspiration for something (especially as if you don't know that, generally an egg is something that isn't born yet.) doesn't really remove that the rest of the story is different. At most, it's a reference. They reused a previous element, and build their own story. They reused the destruction of the civilisation and having a "legendary beast", and build a different story than what was insinuated in the manual backstory. The "elder wanting the power of the Master Emerald and accidentally releasing the energy" for their own become "Pachacamac trying to steal the chaos and make Chaos angry and get wiped out".

This is reusing some previous element and building a new story. Sonic Adventure doesn't really (it don't even says that Angel Island started floading after the Pachacamac incident, in a way, and the "big civilisation" seems kinda reduced, especially as they call it a "clan") continue the story of S3&K, it build a new story with that.

And that's fine, and they didn't make any big consistency with what was important. I would even says that for me, Sonic Adventure is a good exemple of reusing some past stuff while building your own story, something that both the Adventure are really good at. They manage to reference a bit of the past, while creating their own story, while not being afraid of having stuff that don't totally mesh well, changing the whole style of a civilisation, etc.

I feel that it's actually the self containement of the Adventure games that makes them really nice : they manage to create a good story where everything needed is part of the story itself, while having lore and nice storywriting.

That's the difference i'm trying to make here : there isn't any big plan about Sonic being episodic. Even the biggest "direct sequel" like Shadow only reuse concept of the previous game, bits of story and build their own things. Shadow even show that because of Battle : If Sonic was strongly about building a story with several games, Shadow wouldn't have ignored most of Sonic Battle. It's not plot hole here, it's that they created a story to "reveal Shadow's past", but only reused bits of SA2 instead of using the whole "Shadow canon" that they had at that moment. Thus no reference of Gizoid, and using "aliens" to make Shadow dangerous and justify GUN's intervention instead.

For me it kinda shows that even Sonic's most "direct sequel" does that, and that's why Sonic operate IMO in term of "fluid canon". Note that there isn't strong "facts" inconsistency between Sonic Battle and Shadow isn't here important, as it's more a question of "spirit" (we don't reuse Shadow being a "weapon with a soul", and stuff like that). It create two "sequel" to SA2 that narrate different stories (I would say tho that Battle kinda continue SA2's story, but mostly because it have the same thematics)

Now, it doesn't change that they could be better by having stronger "bases", with some rules that doesn't change. They seems to be doing that for the last few years, so I'm curious to see what'll happens with that.

6 hours ago, Johnny Boy said:

Good to know two worlds is dead. But that just leaves one question, if the humans live on continents then where the hell was GUN during forces? Oh yeah that’s right, bad writing.

Eggman beat them.

Without Sonic around, I think it stands to reason that Eggman's army is tougher than the normal military. And that's before you even factor in the Phantom Ruby.

20 minutes ago, light-gaia said:

It doesn't mention the name "Chaos" specifically, it mentions a "legendary dragon" that was clearly the inspiration for Chaos.

Both stories are poorly written and have other plot holes, but that doesn't mean they didn't try to have any kind of continuity there. Again, the series started not caring about continuity with Sonic Unleashed. And started to care way less about storytelling and characterization from Sonic Colors onwards.

XD I might argue the series hasn't cared about characterization from Sonic 2 onward, but that's neither here nor there.

Yes. Under Yuji Naka, for whatever reason, Sonic Team was obsessed with telling the story where Sonic was in a fish-eye lens version of the real world where certain events led to other events, except for whatever was going on when they made Sonic Heroes. And when he left, the interest in making the "real world" styled game immediately evaporated.

But a single eight year span does not define the entire breadth of the series. Heck, at this point, Iizuka has led Sonic Team even longer than when Naka returned to the franchise during the Dreamcast through his departure. Continuity between certain games exist, because there was a time when it was enough of a priority to give the concept of continuity some lip service, but continuity just doesn't define the series on the whole and hasn't for more than a decade. Right now, and for a long while, Sonic is a collection of... generally defined ideas that aren't always important to what's going on right now. Sometimes those ideas hope you remember why Omega is the way he is, but most of the time, they're pretty okay just reminding you "Oh, hey, that's Silver. He's from the future and does future stuff. No, we're not going to the future, he's just here because we felt like it."

1 hour ago, Diogenes said:

We don't know where the emeralds come from, and they're often found in some bizarre extradimensional void. Why couldn't they have appeared on Earth just as easily and just as often as on Sonic's world?

It's possible, but it still very strange how Sonic and his friends were supposedly in a different planet without any kind of explanation, the 7 chaos emeralds were there, and then they are related to that planet. The two-world concept is just... weird and brings a lot of problems that don't need to exist. As @azoosaid, it's a better decision.

2 minutes ago, Kazhnuz said:

Having something that is "clearly" (citation needed) an inspiration for something (especially as if you don't know that, generally an egg is something that isn't born yet.) doesn't really remove that the rest of the story is different. At most, it's a reference. They reused a previous element, and build their own story. They reused the destruction of the civilisation and having a "legendary beast", and build a different story than what was insinuated in the manual backstory. The "elder wanting the power of the Master Emerald and accidentally releasing the energy" for their own become "Pachacamac trying to steal the chaos and make Chaos angry and get wiped out".

This is reusing some previous element and building a new story. Sonic Adventure doesn't really (it don't even says that Angel Island started floading after the Pachacamac incident, in a way, and the "big civilisation" is kinda reduced to a clan) continue the story of S3&K, it build a new story with that.

 

That's the difference i'm trying to make here : there isn't any big plan about Sonic being episodic. Even the biggest "direct sequel" like Shadow only reuse concept of the previous game, bits of story and build their own things. Shadow even show that because of Battle : If Sonic was strongly about building a story with several games, Shadow wouldn't have ignored most of Sonic Battle. It's not plot hole here, it's that they created a story to "reveal Shadow's past", but only reused bits of SA2 instead of using the whole "Shadow canon" that they had at that moment. Thus no reference of Gizoid, and using "aliens" to make Shadow dangerous and justify GUN's intervention instead.

For me it kinda shows that even Sonic's most "direct sequel" does that, and that's why Sonic operate IMO in term of "fluid canon". Note that there isn't strong "facts" inconsistency between Sonic Battle and Shadow isn't here important, as it's more a question of "spirit" (we don't reuse Shadow being a "weapon with a soul", and stuff like that). It create two "sequel" to SA2 that narrate different stories (I would say tho that Battle kinda continue SA2's story, but mostly because it have the same thematics)

 

Now, it doesn't change that they could be better by having stronger "bases", with some rules that doesn't change. They seems to be doing that for the last few years, so I'm curious to see what'll happens with that.

Shadow the hedgehog directly mentions events, and characters, that happen in Sonic Adventure 2. It's not just a "reference". Also, a game doesn't need to be a direct sequel to have some kind of continuity, it only needs to be set in the same universe.

"Some kind of continuity" is what i'm talking about XD Fluid canon. Not full continuity, not zero continuity. It have "some" continuity, but will contradict things when it want. They are writing their own story with each new game, and sometimes reference and/or reuse past event and stuff. Now for the rest, I already explained why I think that it's mostly superficial in Shadow, and that it is in fact more "reference" than a continuation of the story told in previous game (especially as it ignore Battle, which did the task to reuse element of SA2).

And it's certainly what will happens with the next games. Some reference to past event/character/stuff, but they won't create a strong continuity and try too much to link things. And they're certainly will be stuff that makes angry hardcore wiki-fans.

20 minutes ago, Kazhnuz said:

"Some kind of continuity" is what i'm talking about XD Fluid canon. Not full continuity, not zero continuity. It have "some" continuity, but will contradict things when it want. They are writing their own story with each new game, and sometimes reference and/or reuse past event and stuff.

Yeah. That's a more elegant phrase than my analogy of them having a "Bucket of ideas."

Tell the story you want to tell now, and figure out how to justify it later (if at all).

34 minutes ago, light-gaia said:

It's possible, but it still very strange how Sonic and his friends were supposedly in a different planet without any kind of explanation, the 7 chaos emeralds were there, and then they are related to that planet.

Getting there is the weird part, sure, but by the time we knew two worlds was a thing we already had plenty of games in the human world with the chaos emeralds, so there's no surprise or contradiction in the gaia temples existing.

Oh my god let the conversation die. The theory is dead, stupid Sonic plotholes be damded 

The Tails Tube explanation - I think - still gives both camps what they want in a way.

We're on one single planet again, so people like me who disliked the two-worlds thing (largely because I thought it was overcomplicated and unnecessary) got what we wanted.

But people who liked the two-worlds idea still get two separate societies; A mostly-animal society on the islands, and a mostly-human society in the bigger countries. They're just separated by oceans instead of dimensions. It's still essentially "Two Worlds Lite."

4 minutes ago, Zoomzeta said:

Oh my god let the conversation die. The theory is dead, stupid Sonic plotholes be damded 

Never! This conversation takes place on Two Worlds!!

23 minutes ago, Dr. Mechano said:

The Tails Tube explanation - I think - still gives both camps what they want in a way.

We're on one single planet again, so people like me who disliked the two-worlds thing (largely because I thought it was overcomplicated and unnecessary) got what we wanted.

But people who liked the two-worlds idea still get two separate societies; A mostly-animal society on the islands, and a mostly-human society in the bigger countries. They're just separated by oceans instead of dimensions. It's still essentially "Two Worlds Lite."

They fixed it by making it the way it was before, and everyone assumed it was until 2016. Bravo.

34 minutes ago, Zoomzeta said:

Oh my god let the conversation die. The theory is dead, stupid Sonic plotholes be damded 

You know what, you've done this multiple times in other threads since you joined and usually I just hide your posts and move on. You obviously have never gotten the message to knock it off with this bullshit so this time I'm telling you to stop. 

36 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Getting there is the weird part, sure, but by the time we knew two worlds was a thing we already had plenty of games in the human world with the chaos emeralds, so there's no surprise or contradiction in the gaia temples existing.

The weirdest part in my opinion is that if the two-worlds were, in fact, a thing, it was supposed to be an important aspect of how the Sonic world works, but that was never mentioned in any of the +200 games. So it felt forced.

If it was never mentioned then maybe it actually wasn't that important.

1 minute ago, Diogenes said:

If it was never mentioned then maybe it actually wasn't that important.

I think it was never mentioned because when they were developing the games, they didn't think about two worlds. It simply wasn't a smart retcon to make. It felt like JK Rowling retcons. Well... now it's gone. It's only one planet with anthropomorphic animals and humans.

I'm hoping this little "Two Worlds" fiasco means they start keeping notes on continuity form now on.

Or at least use a better excuse to put humans on a a bus next time. One that doesn't fuck over supplemental media.

25 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

If it was never mentioned then maybe it actually wasn't that important.

They're probably bringing it up now because they plan to reintroduce non-Eggman humans to the series, and don't want to have to justify it every time they appear in a "Sonic's world"-styled location like Green Hill Zone or whatever. Eggman's a mad scientist and can hop between dimensions easily, and Sonic and pals can just use Chaos Control or special ring portals or whatever.

But the pink-haired woman from Frontiers(?) - and presumably any other humans in that game - are probably just normal people, and it's easier to say "they took a boat" than "they went through an interdimensional portal" for how they got to the game's setting on the Starfall Islands, which would likely have been categorized as a "Sonic's world"-type location under the two-worlds lens.

To slowly turn this barreling semi-truck around...

I thought the whole presentation was cute. It definitely aimed at a younger audience, but I didn't find it too saccharine or painfully meme-y. Smith and O'Shaugnessey know the right tone for these characters. It was dopey, but it was a fun dopey.

13 minutes ago, Dr. Mechano said:

They're probably bringing it up now because they plan to reintroduce non-Eggman humans to the series, and don't want to have to justify it every time they appear in a "Sonic's world"-styled location like Green Hill Zone or whatever. Eggman's a mad scientist and can hop between dimensions easily, and Sonic and pals can just use Chaos Control or special ring portals or whatever.

But the pink-haired woman from Frontiers(?) - and presumably any other humans in that game - are probably just normal people, and it's easier to say "they took a boat" than "they went through an interdimensional portal" for how they got to the game's setting on the Starfall Islands, which would likely have been categorized as a "Sonic's world"-type location under the two-worlds lens.

Ironically, going from the Lost World/Forces with animal people to Frontiers' realistic style and reintroducing humans would have fit Two Worlds. Starfall Islands is just on the human world. And at the same time there's a movie franchise where Sonic is an alien that can use rings to go between his world and Earth, introducing kids to the franchise through that idea.