Revenge of the nerds

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Bo
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Re: Revenge of the nerds

Post by Bo »

I just want to say that I finally read through this thread and endorse every aspect of it.

Good work; I expect some conclusions to be reached.

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Dr. BUGMAN
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Re: Revenge of the nerds

Post by Dr. BUGMAN »

Did that damned tanuki build an engine that's powered by the power of team work, or am I nuts. Seems pretty blatant emotions are a fuel source in Sonic's reality, question mark??

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Yami CJMErl
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Re: Revenge of the nerds

Post by Yami CJMErl »

Maybe it's following the same premise about how the Chaos Emeralds can be powered/re-powered by positive or negative emotions, a la Sonic Adventure?

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Re: Revenge of the nerds

Post by Frieza2000 »

Image
Image

IT'S THE PILLAR!!!

MERCIFUL TIKAL, IT'S THE PILLAR!!!

Random thoughts from a conversation with Chris:
  • SA1 was right on the heels of Chaotix, so it'd make sense that they were considering using it.
  • The concept artist was probably given some vague direction like "draw some ideas for Emerald shrines and Echidna ruins." So any one of these pictures is probably not a fully-fleshed out and finalized concept. There are similarities to what we saw in the final product of Sonic Adventure, but there are also similarities to what is described in Sonic 3 and perhaps Chaotix.
  • #3 could be an early version of the emerald shrine from the past, given the large Chaos/Super Emeralds surrounding it. However, it has echidna icons carved in the base, so either this is before they decided to retcon the legend (shifting possession of the shrine to the Chao), or this is actually on Angel Island in the present, in which case it could be an early version of the new altar that the Master Emerald was transported to between S&K and Chaotix (makes a lot more sense than the cheap one floating over the side of the island), or it could be a new area specific to the Pillar (probably directly beneath Hidden Palace, since Eggman was [almost certainly] transported to Hidden Palace in Chaotix and witnessed Pillar energy crystallize right there).
  • The bottom two pictures both have elements of the Chao shrine. The 4th one definitely appears underground similar to the description of the Pillar in Sonic 3. It's hard to tell if the 3rd one is also underground or just glowing at night (perhaps the night that the elders tried to direct the Emerald's power for themselves and caused an explosion).
  • It's possible that all or some of these are one building. 1 is the outside of the structure (doorway between its feet), 2 is a hallway leading to 4, which is the outer shell of the structure containing 3.
  • 4 definitely looks like...the most important thing we've ever seen. Very raw looking giant emerald floating over it, surrounded by floating emerald shards. From memory, the only time we've seen unpolished emerald pieces like that was the small bits of emerald that appeared to be growing around the Master Emerald in S&K.
    Image
    Maybe that chunk on top of the dome is still growing. Maybe that's crystallized Pillar energy. Food for my pet theory from page 8 about it being a horizontally oriented mono-directional portal.
  • It's clearly a nexus at the center of something. Those tubes could be anything, but given that it's Sonic I bet they're entrances that you roll in through.
  • There appear to be flowers growing on top of the dome, just outside the circle. And there are hourglasses with different amounts of sand carved around the sides.
  • The Pillar is described as sleeping in Sonic 3 and being controlled by the Chaos Emeralds, but in Chaotix it is active (Pillar energy is released, crystallizing into Chaos Rings) despite there being no Chaos Emeralds present. Did Sonic unknowingly reawaken the Pillar in S&K? Is this what transformed the Chaos Emeralds into Super Emeralds?
  • Was the idea that, in the past, the Chaos Emeralds were brought to what would become Angel Island and they caused the Pillar to release it's energy, which crystallized into the Master Emerald and lifted the island? Like how that same energy caused Neutrogic High Zone to raise out of the ocean?
This is a HUGE BREAKTHROUGH. It's almost certainly not the Master Emerald because it looks nothing like it, but it's at the center of an emerald shrine so it's obviously important. The Pillar is the only pre-existing thing that fits the bill.

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Re: Revenge of the nerds

Post by Locit »

Am I the only one who can't see the pillar images and has no idea what the hell Frieza is talking about?

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Re: Revenge of the nerds

Post by j-man »

Frieza2000 wrote:
Sun Nov 15, 2020 1:55 am
Image
Take a look at the bottom left image in particular - definitely seems to be a crystal pillar, rather than an Emerald on a stone plinth like the final game.

It's all very exciting! I like perving over concept art at the best of times, especially Sonic stuff as it seems a lot harder to come by, but the story ramifications are quite significant. I'm not particularly enamoured with the idea of a Sonic Adventure remake, unlike most of these Discord fandom goblins, but I'd certainly love to see a new game with similar storytelling and visual style - maybe even something that fleshes out the world-building and Echidna/Emerald lore, although I realise that's probably pushing it at this point.

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Re: Revenge of the nerds

Post by Frieza2000 »

Higher-res versions now available: https://twitter.com/sonic_hedgehog/stat ... 7049459713

It would've been great if Sonic games had continued to have ongoing storytelling, whether they'd picked up where SA1 left off or continued the new thread SA2 started, or both at once. But whoever was interested in developing that continuity seems to have died with the Dreamcast. Now Sonic Team appears to be actively disinterested in having any kind of connection between one game and the next. The last exception was ShtH, which was a fairly nonsensical conclusion to SA2. Every game since has been self contained, limited to references like using wisps as weapons in Forces (and wasn't the whole point of Colors to stop Eggman from using them to power machines? Why are we doing it ourselves now?). At this point I'm kind of glad they don't, though. They'd just cock it up. But I would like to know who wrote the old manuals and ask them what they were thinking.

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Re: Revenge of the nerds

Post by big_smile »

https://twitter.com/CFWhitehead/status/ ... 0770981888

Christian Whitehead gives his thoughts on Hyper Sonic/Super Emeralds. Basically, he mentions they weren't written out of the story and the Chaos Emeralds did change shape into the Super Emeralds. But Sonic Team didn’t want to have multiple power levels, so they just kept the naming moving forwards.
Frieza2000 wrote:
Sat Dec 05, 2020 12:00 am
Higher-res versions now available: https://twitter.com/sonic_hedgehog/stat ... 7049459713

It would've been great if Sonic games had continued to have ongoing storytelling, whether they'd picked up where SA1 left off or continued the new thread SA2 started, or both at once. But whoever was interested in developing that continuity seems to have died with the Dreamcast. Now Sonic Team appears to be actively disinterested in having any kind of connection between one game and the next. The last exception was ShtH, which was a fairly nonsensical conclusion to SA2. Every game since has been self contained, limited to references like using wisps as weapons in Forces (and wasn't the whole point of Colors to stop Eggman from using them to power machines? Why are we doing it ourselves now?). At this point I'm kind of glad they don't, though. They'd just cock it up. But I would like to know who wrote the old manuals and ask them what they were thinking.
Storytelling in Sonic games has always been... 'ropey'. But I loved the ongoing nature of it. I didn’t like the direction the series took with SA1 onwards, but I did appreciate how the games still followed lines from each other (even if many of these lines were badly written and focused too much on Shadow).

Sonic Team have said that they wanted the games to be self-contained, and the American writers they have been using since Colors Wii have said they aren't familiar with past games. However, interestingly, Sonic Runners and Sonic Colours DS weaved in threads of previous games and these were both written by Sonic Team Japan. And recently, Sonic Channel posted artwork of Blaze in her palace (that had a hidden portrait of Big the Cat). So I think there probably is a part of Sonic Team probably would want to do more continuity, it's just not the direction that the higher-ups are big on.

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Re: Revenge of the nerds

Post by Wombatwarlord777 »

As someone who actually enjoys aspects of Colors and Lost World's stories, I do have to admit that the interconnected plots of past games were way more engaging. It used to feel like Sonic had a world with an ongoing history that had some really interesting elements. Now we just kind of have a series of generic settings.

I'll give the IDW comics credit for doing the best they can to create a coherent world with a basis in most of the post-Adventure games. They still can't touch the Classic games for some reason (even though they're planning on doing a separate miniseries based on the Classic characters later next year), but fortunately Angel Island and the Master Emerald fall under the purview of Sonic Adventure, so that's present and accounted for. Still, I wonder if they'd ever do anything interesting with a distinct South Island, Hidden Palace, or Newtrogic High Zone if they were allowed to.

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Re: Revenge of the nerds

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j-man wrote:
Tue Nov 24, 2020 10:57 am
Frieza2000 wrote:
Sun Nov 15, 2020 1:55 am
Image
Take a look at the bottom left image in particular - definitely seems to be a crystal pillar, rather than an Emerald on a stone plinth like the final game.
I wonder if they were using the Sonic 3 manual as a point of reference when they designed that. It's underground (like Hidden Palace), so maybe? Hidden Palace essentially being dropped from the lore was a jarring change at the time, but I can see why they went in the direction they did, to accommodate Sonic Adventure's plot. A water god and little water babies living in a crystal cave beneath a volcano might have felt incongruous.
j-man wrote:
Tue Nov 24, 2020 10:57 am
It's all very exciting! I like perving over concept art at the best of times, especially Sonic stuff as it seems a lot harder to come by, but the story ramifications are quite significant. I'm not particularly enamoured with the idea of a Sonic Adventure remake, unlike most of these Discord fandom goblins, but I'd certainly love to see a new game with similar storytelling and visual style - maybe even something that fleshes out the world-building and Echidna/Emerald lore, although I realise that's probably pushing it at this point.
I really liked how Sonic Adventure simply went the route of "the echidnas tried to steal the Chaos Emeralds and failed". They've guarded the Master Emerald ever since, but the Chaos Emeralds were never under their control.

In the concept art above, the emerald altar has echidna markings, but in the final Sonic Adventure game it's a complete mystery who constructed the altar and who gathered all eight emeralds. It wasn't the Knuckles Tribe and it wasn't the Chao, so who was it?

It's been a long time since I last touched Sonic Unleashed, but the Gaia Temples were implied to be even older than that weren't they? (And the Master Emerald didn't seen to figure into those. Another mystery!)

I think it would be a mistake to ever give the emeralds a definitive origin, but it's so wide open how many people have wielded the Chaos Emeralds over the millennia that they could give them multiple backstories and have them all be true.

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Re: Revenge of the nerds

Post by j-man »

It's a shame the Chaos Emeralds seem to have been dropped entirely from the recent entries - a bit of game-spanning lore would do wonders to unify the series right now. I appreciate the desire to try new things, but I think it's fair to say that hasn't really worked in their favour for a while now.

Thematically I think it makes sense to get into a bit of ancient history. Sonic vs. Eggman is already a classic story of nature vs. technology, sure, but you could also introduce a starker contrast between old ruins/artifacts and new machinery/cityscapes - Sonic appreciates the power and importance of what came before, Eggman wants to tear it down and recreate it, etc. It's not exactly unfamiliar ground in terms of fiction, but there's still good story potential and it works well with what the characters represent.

Basically, just sit the team down with a boxset of Ghibli and say "Do this, but with robot insects and televisions that have shoes inside them".

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