Review: Season 3, Episode 8

This review was written before the release of Sonic Frontiers, so there will be future tense and speculation.

This episode was bound to be a tricky one right from the outset. Comparing this to Forces, we knew a lot about Forces going into it. We knew that the plot of the game was about Sonic being defeated, then rescued, then taking back the planet from Eggman, and there wasn’t much more to it than that. We knew what Infinite’s purpose was, what his character was generally like, and what powers he had (mostly). Here for Frontiers, we don’t have any of that. We don’t know what the actual climactic threat of the game is going to be—it’s a mystery. We don’t know what Sage’s motives are or what she’s capable of doing—it’s a mystery. We don’t even know whether or not the game takes place in the real world—they’ve left just enough doubt for that. But even with everything we knew about Forces, I was still hesitant to dive too deep for the tie-in special back then. I even said in the review for that special that I gave it a 50% chance on intuition that there would be a big surprise at the end of the game that would complicate the issue of using any of its content—either a memory wipe, or time-travel, or a deus ex machina reset of the universe, or something to that effect. This time…I think I might have to give it even more than that. Maybe 60% confidence that the digital dimension will be erased by the end of the game, hence most likely killing Sage, or some other curveball like Sonic not being the real Sonic, making the whole thing just a computer simulation that Sonic of The Chaos Project never experienced. [Well, I got the killing Sage part right. Sort of.]

So I have all the same problems I had back then, and then some. I got around the problem last time by making a new Infinite and dodging around the question of whether or not Sonic knew who Infinite was to begin with. But I was only able to make a new Infinite because I knew enough about the original Infinite to play off of it. I simply couldn’t do that with Sage, as much as I wanted to. Speaking honestly, even I don’t know, at [the moment of writing this review], who the figure watching our heroes was in this episode. It could be the original Sage. It could be some sort of digital copy of her. It could be a different character entirely. I’m going to have to play Frontiers before I can answer that. [I did. The answer to come.]

So, without being able to use Sage as a focal point for the episode, I had to pivot to something else. And by something else, I mean basically everything else we’ve seen from the game that isn’t Sage. I used practically every bit of information about the game made publicly available, and then some. The setting, the plot, the themes, the bosses, the structure of gameplay progression, everything I could think of a way to include. In that sense this is a much “better” celebration of the game it’s tied to than the Forces special was. But on the other hand, I don’t think I care for the result quite as much. It feels a little…fake. I’m just taking an incomplete picture of the game, chewing it up, and regurgitating it as a “new” story. Of course, the interesting part comes in part 2, when I actually start tying storylines together. But that doesn’t mean as much when I already know the full content of the game.

So, while using the content of the game in as much as possible, there was also a need to carefully dodge around the unanswered questions left by that information we have. Eggman and his tablet were created as a tool for that purpose. Eggman has, theoretically, been through a situation very much like this before. But, by the end of it all, we don’t know what he will or won’t know about. The tablet allows him to know anything I need him to know, and his coy/snarky attitude allows me to conveniently obscure the details around what he already knows versus what he’s learning on the fly. And of course, the tablet served the convenient double purpose of allowing me to skip over what would ordinarily be drawn-out gameplay segments of collecting objects without making story progress. Similarly for Shadow, his relative indifference to the situation combined with his disinterest in holding a conversation with Eggman allowed me to obscure the answer to the question of whether or not he already knows about the events of Frontiers. It’s rather unlikely that he’s going to be in the game, even as DLC, but on that off chance that he is, I’m still taking the leap of faith that he won’t be involved enough in the main plot to have learned the answers to every question he had to ask here.

Then there’s Sonic and Saturn’s convenient memory loss, which, effectively served the opposite purpose. Sonic should (most likely) know everything about what’s going on. He should know that it’s a bad idea to fight the Titan. Memory loss allows me to repeat the important moments of the Frontiers story without contradiction. Saturn’s a bit different, but he and Luna clearly know something about this whole situation, and his memory loss allows me to use him as a character here without actually specifying what that something is. Of course, this is still a little odd in the Frontiers context. It was pretty much assumed from early in the game’s news cycle that the collection of “Memory Tokens” meant that we were actually restoring the memories of the characters, but with everything we know now, that doesn’t seem to be the case. It seems more likely that it’s meant to be referring to computer memory. Regardless, I decided long ago that memory shenanigans would be the best way to go about writing a tie-in episode for Frontiers, so that was still kind of stuck in my head by the time I got to writing. I figure, in the real game, we’re never actually going to be able to tell whether or not the characters have all of their memories while they’re still trapped, since you can only talk to them after you use some memory tokens to free them, so there’s no reason to believe that what I’m writing here wouldn’t be the case, assuming you could somehow free them without the tokens in the game.

Everything else is basically just filler via comedy. It’s hilarious to me that Sonic Frontiers, which is looking to have quite possibly the most straight-played, down-to-earth style of storytelling in Sonic history, is serving as the sole inspiration of one of the most joke-dense non-comedy episodes I’ve ever written. It’s the opposite of how I’m used to working when it comes to Sonic. This wasn’t even planned to be a funny episode. But keeping a constant level of banter between Shadow and Eggman was necessary to keep their interactions from being reduced to nothing but an information dump. I couldn’t just stop doing that once Saturn was brought in. Saturn himself is already a bit of a goofy character, and it seemed to me that that personality trait should be emphasized when his memories are gone. By that point, the comedy was a pattern, and I decided to hold it through to the end.

On to the trivia!

• This Episode’s title, “The Final Frontiers,” references the famous opening line of all Star Trek episodes.
  • In further reference to this, Sonic’s first line of the episode is the lone word sentence, “Space.” In the original line, this would be followed after a pause with “The final frontier.”
• In the opening of the episode, Luna sings “I’m Here,” the main theme of Sonic Frontiers. The lone girl walking through rays of sun, singing her heart out under a tree without context was intended to invoke  the idea of a stereotypical JRPG or anime, which Frontiers definitely takes some inspiration from.
• The remainder of the scene above references the Sonic Frontiers Prologue animation, Divergence. Specifically, it calls back to the version of events seen in the initial teaser for the animation, with the red lightning drawing closer and closer until it strikes the camera.
  • It was assumed, at the time this scene was originally written, that this would be an accurate depiction of how Knuckles ended up on the Starfall Islands. The full release of the animation proved that theory false, as Knuckles ended up taking a standard Cyber Space portal to get there. However, the scene was kept as it was originally written, mostly because I didn’t want to bloat it any longer than it already was, but also because, even if we can no longer say that the lightning itself took Luna somewhere else, it is still there to imply that more things continued to happen after the camera cut. The details of those events may or may not be explored in the next episode.
• Luna’s mention of the “collective unconscious” technically refers to an element of Jungian psychology involving ancestral memories allegedly shared by all human beings. In the case of a hivemind, the concept is a bit more literal, but the meaning is the same.
• In Sonic’s daily log, he mentions the phrase “open zone,” a common marketing descriptor for the Frontiers gameplay style as an alternative to the better known “open world.”
  • Sonic continues to talk about “taking a breath of the wild (air),” the joke being that Sonic Frontiers takes a lot of inspiration from the popular open world Legend of Zelda game, Breath of the Wild.
• In talking about the origin of Saturn’s name, Tails mentions that the ancient god Saturn, after which the planet is named, is equivalent to the Titan Kronos. These refer to real-world Roman and Greek myths, respectively.
  • If there is any actual connection between the character Saturn and Kronos Island, it is, as of yet, unknown.
• Johnny’s meager knowledge of Earth’s gestural language is accurate to real-world American Sign Language, and is based on my personal experience with the subject (not the girl part). The Skenouan language is entirely fictional, and is differentiated from ASL in its strong focus on the opening, closing, and movement of the fist as its primary handshape. Given that Skenouans have fewer fingers than humans, it makes sense that a majority of their signs would involve the entire hand, rather than the more specialized handshapes of ASL. The emphasis on namesigns, and the importance of the fact that the namesign be given only by a native of the language, is something that this language shares in common with ASL.
  • Saturn’s namesign is a representation of the logo for the SEGA Saturn, with an S-shape wrapping around a planet in such a way as to resemble a planet’s ring.
    • Even without Luna’s comparison to the planet, Saturn’s name would therefore still, literally, be Saturn. Or, at least, it would be “SEGA Saturn.” This fact was planned even upon Saturn’s introduction in Arms Race Part 1.
    • This was the initial inspiration for basing the language around closed fists.
• Saturn’s failed attempt at an Earth saying was intended to be “The best laid schemes of mice and men go oft awry,” originating from a Robert Burns poem.
• The scene in which the Black Manta is sucked into a Cyber Space portal, leaving Shadow separated from the rest, mirrors the same scene from the beginning of Frontiers separating Sonic from the Tornado. Admittedly, I cheated on that one, and watched leaked footage of the cutscene before the game came out to ensure accuracy.
• The Cyber Space stage that Shadow ends up in uses the ARK level theme, but the stage layout of GUN Fortress. The room in which he wakes up visually resembles the ARK research lab, but is shaped like the hangar bay where the President’s Escape Pod lands, the first room of the level in question. The Kronos Island portal connected to the stage is the same one that leads to Sonic’s stage 1-1, Green Hill with Windmill Isle Act 1 layout.
  • Technically speaking, the statement that the Cyber Space stages are made from the person’s memories was an assumption that had no official confirmation—until Sonic Speed Simulator confirmed it the day before the Frontiers release.
• Explaining the situation to Shadow, Eggman notes that Shadow should already be familiar with the concept of a digital dimension. This refers back to the Shadow the Hedgehog level Mad Matrix, in which Shadow infiltrates Eggman’s computer.
  • Eggman goes on to note that this one is significantly more something before cutting himself off. This references a scene from Frontiers, where Eggman, getting a look at a Cyber Space stage for the first time, comments that it is “markedly more advanced” than his own attempts, before reminding himself not to admit that to anyone. This would also seem to call back to Mad Matrix in the same way. This is another scene I cheated on and watched a leaked version of.
• Further explaining the situation, Eggman says that “Someone—or something—is going through a lot of trouble to replicate a very particular set of circumstances.” On a meta level, that would be me, going through too much trouble to replicate the exact circumstances of Frontiers.
• Shadow and Eggman encounter the Ninja Guardian in the same location that Sonic does in Frontiers.
  • Smaller enemies go ignored in this episode, mostly to save time and effort. The implication is meant to be that there are plenty of encounters with Soldiers, Bubbles, Bangers, etc. that just happen offscreen.
• Big appears in this episode for the first time since he disappeared mysteriously in Season 2, though it remains unclear whether this was the real Big or just a digital replica of him.
  • Big’s location and role is the same as what is seen in Frontiers, though unlike Sonic, Shadow outright refuses to fish with him.
    (Of all the things I was afraid of Frontiers contradicting in The Chaos Project, Big having already taught Sonic how to fish prior to the events of S1 E7 The Bigger They Come was not one of them.)
• Although there was not much effort put into describing it, the location of Saturn’s cybersphere prison is intended to be the same as that of Amy’s.
  • Sonic’s prison is located where a Chaos Emerald would normally be.
• The cyber energy that would normally be absorbed into Sonic’s arm [and cause Cyber Corruption] is absorbed into Eggman’s tablet instead. Eggman using this energy to induce a pseudo-Super Form was a prediction about how the game’s plot would turn out. [That prediction didn’t pan out.]
• In camp, Shadow and Eggman eat Blue Seeds of Defense and Red Seeds of Power, respectively. They also meet Koco. From Sonic Frontiers. Pretty sure this still counts as trivia, boring though it may be.
• Eggman tries to pull the same trick on Shadow he did on Tails in Sonic Adventure 2—fishing for information by judging the reaction when he pretends to know something he actually doesn’t.
• In order to take control of the Squid Guardian,  Shadow utilizes the same expert hacking technique used to enter Eggman’s Mad Matrix computer in Shadow the Hedgehog—a karate chop to the mainframe. On a slightly more realistic level, Shadow later mentions that he can feel the creature’s heart, implying that he may be able to assert mind control over it in the same way he does to subservient Black Arms creatures.
  • [The use of a conveniently placed Squid turned out to be an unintentional prophecy of an actual event that happened on Chaos Island in Frontiers.]
• Sonic attempts, and fails, to attack Giganto in the same way that he does in Frontiers. He only remembers this failure after it’s too late.
• In explaining to Saturn that he wants to make a big gun, Shadow “mimes the action of pumping an assault rifle.” This references the opening movie of Shadow the Hedgehog, joking about the fact that Shadow pumps a weapon which is not actually meant to be pumped in that way.
• When attacking Giganto, Eggman quotes a much-repeated boss fight line from Sonic Adventure in the form of “Get a load of this!”
  • This same quote is used in the prequel comic, Convergence, in a different context.
• Sonic splats face-first into the dirt, a recurring Sonic gag that began in Sonic Adventure when he fell out of the Tornado. The Black Knight version of the gag will always be the most memorable to me.
• EDIT: Following the release of this episode, a subtitle was later retconned into place—”Resurgence”. This is for the purpose of matching part 2, which will also have a similar subtitle.

And that’s it for now! It’ll still be some time before the Chaos Project story can continue, but believe me when I say that I am currently neck-deep in multi-page internal documents, trying to map out exactly how to integrate the immense amount of new content this game has given us. In the meantime, look forward to my full review of the game, and some other general announcements.

-And until next time, reach far across your next frontier!