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I don’t recall if better meta than me has pointed this out, but Sonic Adventure 2 superficially tells two stories, but is actually only telling one sequence of events. The cutscenes you’re shown imply that whichever character you’re controlling wins in the event of duels between the protagonists and antagonists, but they also carefully don’t contradict each other, so if you look closely you can tell who won each fight.

Sonic vs. Shadow on Prison Island is an implicit stalemate (they both get the same scene up to a point)

Shadow canonically fails to stop Sonic at Final Chase/Final Rush (Sonic damaging the eclipse cannon shows up indirectly in Dark Side Story- you see a flashing error message pops up on Eggman’s screen. this is also kind of intuitive since if Shadow actively caught up with Sonic at the time, there’s no reason he wouldn’t have killed Sonic- he’d just threatened to kill Rouge if she interfered in the eclipse cannon firing)

This makes sense for their character arc- they’re neck and neck at first, but decisively at the end, Sonic pulls ahead. It lines up with what later installments have implied or played to, that Sonic is the decisive faster of the two of them, though it’s very close- Sonic’s still The Fastest Thing Alive, as shown by, in a no-holds-barred struggle, Sonic was able to pull ahead of Shadow and throw Tails’ emerald bomb into the eclipse cannon.

Tails vs. Eggman on Prison Island ends in Eggman’s favor (Tails’ cutscene shows that Eggman is unharmed, but basically decides he’s not going to waste any more time with Tails, suggesting the only thing Tails succeeded at was inconveniencing him, which is in line with Eggman’s dialogue in dark side story), but the rematch on ARK ends dramatically in Tails’ favor!

Eggman’s cutscene for that one only shows that Eggman got away with the yellow chaos emerald- it doesn’t show anything that happened in that room after the fight. In Tails’ cutscene, we see that Tails utterly levels Eggman, leaving him ostensibly unconscious on the floor, and is distracted by realizing Sonic is alive. While he and Amy are preoccupied, looking outside at Sonic’s success, Eggman grabs the yellow emerald from the ground, and implicitly makes a quiet getaway- thus fulfilling what we see on dark side story.

The implications of this for Tails’ arc in this game is pretty straightforward. It was honestly fairly ambitious of the Adventure-era games to position Eggman as more of Tails’ rival than Sonic’s- Tails is in the process of graduating from Sonic’s sidekick to full-fledged hero on his own right, and matching him directly against Eggman is a fascinating meterstick, because Tails, as an inventor, is arguably playing in the same field as Eggman, though much younger and less experienced. Eggman initially blowing Tails off as nothing but an inconvenience he doesn’t have time to play with, only to suffer a very nasty setback for underestimating Tails and focusing only on negating Sonic, makes for a really good arc- even if both times he’s able to scrape away with his objective, the second time basically has Tails send him packing brutally- Eggman has to sneak around to succeed at his objective. And this, of course, comes together nicely in True Story, when Eggman coordinates everybody through the ARK except for his own segment, where he takes orders… only from Tails. And even in the ending cutscene, we get a sense Eggman is actually opening up to Tails a bit- that ‘honorable adversary’ spiel that was initially only reserved for Sonic applies to Tails, too now.

Rouge and Knuckles are the outlier in two senses: they have only one fight (the Mad Space / Meteor Herd brawl) and it ends in a stalemate. To me, I feel like this actually has some pretty juicy implications on its own- it marks them as equals in physical power (Rouge was designed to be Knuckles’ rival, just like Shadow for Sonic! She matches Knuckles at one of his key traits!) and while, yes, it’s used as a staging ground for a shippy little moment, I think it makes that moment work pretty well as a point of mutual fascination.

At the point Rouge falls off the support beam, they’re both exhausted. They’ve fought themselves to a standstill. And while Knuckles does get points in for saving her, he doesn’t demand the emerald pieces back before he lets her up. It’s just a moment of respect- that proves mutual, not just in Rouge returning the Master Emerald, but that the gang’s entire plan in Last Story hinges on Rouge remembering something Knuckles said to her at the very beginning of the game regarding its powers.

It means a lot in the sense that Rouge and Knuckles are characterized as matching each other not just in strength but stubborn pride. They’re both powerhouses that almost never find a true opponent- and matching forces with each other is genuinely exciting. Yes, Rouge is depicted as ‘the sexy one’- but I feel like the temptation she forms to Knuckles is less the temptation of ‘look at that nice body’ and a lot more of the temptation of, being able to really go all-out against someone who can hit just as hard, and take just as much punishment- or traveling with someone who can keep up with you perfectly.

A lot of Knuckles’ characterization is that he’s frankly lonely. He’s the last of his kind as far as he knows; he’s the Guardian and he takes it seriously and that means that his strength all has a job to do, he can’t let himself get too cocky or too curious to see if the traps he sets or the punches he throws hold up, or go looking for opportunities to compete. Sure, you can say Rouge is a love interest to Knuckles, but she’s also- and I think more importantly- a rival to him. She’s a challenge. And while we don’t necessarily get a deep backstory from her the same way his was fleshed out, the implication seems to be she’s definitely a thrillseeker who looks for a challenge- she stakes her pride heavily on the Prison Island operation and when it seems to fail and leave her stranded, she’s fully willing to accept her fate on the basis that her skills weren’t enough. That takes a lot of guts and a lot of intensity.

That Knuckles and Rouge’s big rival showdown ends on a perfect stalemate speaks a lot about the frame of mind they’re left in afterwards, once stubbornness and pride are a bit out of the way… both of them are genuinely interested in having another bout like that, some time when they’re not in mortal peril. The next time we hear Rouge talk about stealing the Master Emerald, she announces the plans to do it to Knuckles’ face in Heroes. That’s absolutely bait for them to compete.

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic adventure 2 #readmore

@ganymedesclock

Sun, 03 Apr 2022 02:07:02

Used romance novels that look basically new? Yes please. I love a good used bookstore. And also a romance novel with a bad title or cover.
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#bookcation #kingsbookstacoma #tacomabookstore #seattlebookstore #usedbooks #ireadromance #romancereader #booklife #readergram #bookstagram #romancecovers #bookcover #usedbookstore #readmore (at King’s Books)
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