Review: Season 3, Episode 14 (Finale)

Finally! Finally, Season 3 is done! This was supposed to be shortest season yet, but all told, it took almost two and a half years (Civil War premiered in October of 2021) where the three seasons before it averaged about a year less than that (Crisis of Chaos premiered June of 2016, so a little over 5 years for 3 seasons). This episode alone set a new word count record of almost exactly 20,000, beating out the 18,000 of Arms Race Part 2 just 7 episodes ago, a record I was certain would never be beaten. For this episode which was just meant to be the second half of what was supposed to be The Last Way Part 2. A finale which I was certain I didn’t have enough content for before I started injecting Frontiers plotlines. Length is a hard thing to predict, I continue to learn. A full-length fantasy/sci-fi novel is roughly 100,000 words. Between the 30,000 of both parts of Arms Race, the nearly 50,000 new total of The Last Way, 25,000 for The Final Frontiers, and 40,000 for the 3 premiere episodes of the season that were all necessary to understand the rest, the “Agent Black + Black Arms” arc totals at well over 140,000, almost a novel and a half. And that’s not counting the filler episodes. From that perspective, it’s no wonder it took this long…

You might have sensed it as you were reading the end to this episode, but I had some conflicting thoughts about the future of the series as I was writing, and I think those considerations are a big part of what slowed me down. It has always been my intention that The Chaos Project would last for roughly 7 seasons. But even as I was writing Part 2, this was brought to my attention: everything is coming together here. So many character arcs, so many plot threads. Between Chadis and the Sergeant, it might have almost looked like I was trying to go out of my way to acknowledge the previous 2 season finales, in such a way as to wrap the series up into a neat little bundle. Meanwhile, there are peace talks going to end the war that’s been the core overarching plot for 3 whole seasons. Although it wasn’t technically part of this season, we also had Silver & Zero on the side to acknowledge and resolve Season 0. Basically, what I’m saying is, if ever there were a place to cut things off early, it would have been right here. I really did consider it. I could’ve tweaked things ever so slightly, had things end with peace, and leave out the Season 4 cliffhanger, and it would’ve been an okay series finale. It’s been 8 years, and there’s a big part of me that’s ready to move on to other things. I don’t know if I honestly can continue for another 8. If I can’t, I’ll have wasted this opportunity. But I have a story to tell, and I’m going to keep telling it until the last day I possibly can. And anyways, “everything” was a big exaggeration. I’ve been sewing loose plot threads for a long time, and there are plenty that would’ve been left that way forever if I stopped here. Infinite’s search for the other Phantom Rubies? The fate of Chaos the Hedgehog and the Moonstone left in Eggman’s possession? And what about what Sonic saw in his vision all the way back in the series premiere? Characters who promised to return and never did… Eggman’s titular Chaos Project… The list goes on. As I said, there’s much more to tell.

Speaking of characters who haven’t returned, I certainly planned on the Babylon Rogues popping up here at some point. This is the alien season, after all. But I think I pretty much ditched that plan when Frontiers came into play. Too many subplots. Way too many subplots.

There are plenty of other plans that changed for related reasons. Before Sage was involved, White Genesis might have remained unredeemed, possibly right up until just before the moment of her death. In that context, the whole clone baby thing probably would have made a little more sense, as a sort of redemption via second chance at life. The Dreamnet boarding party was meant to have a little more content surrounding them fighting their way through the ship, and reacting for the first time when all the Black Arms died, but for the most part, that would’ve just been extra action in an episode that already had more than its fair share. And of course, the whole final goodbye scene was heavily abbreviated. Amy, Tails, Knuckles, even Shadow deserved a little bit more of a proper resolution to everything that happened to them in this finale, but by that point I was really rushing to finish this episode as quickly as possible. I almost forgot Sticks entirely…and that wouldn’t be the only time that happened to me this episode. Somehow, she survived the “trimming the fat” purge that the Babylons did not. Probably just because I wrote myself into it with Part 1.

Between this episode and everything I couldn’t spoil in the last 2, I’m pretty sure I had a lot more to say about the creative process…but it’s been so long, I can’t remember any of it now! Oh, well. On to the trivia!

• This Episode’s subtitle, “Final Horizon,” refers to the name of the final Frontiers DLC which was the largest contributing factor to the delay of these last 2 episodes, as well as their absurd length. It concludes the pattern set by the previous 2, “Final Haunt” and “Final Chase,” as “honorable mentions” that can’t quite be used for the primary finale pattern of a final level title from a Sonic game for each. In the case of the first 2, they’re honorable mentions as being final levels of their respective main stories, but still coming before their respective final mode levels. For this third part, “Final Horizon” isn’t the name of a level at all, but you can’t tell me that it doesn’t have the same vibe. Just like Cannon’s Core or End of the World, it still refers to a segment of gameplay where all playable characters come together for a dramatic pre-final-boss task, it just so happens that said segment of gameplay isn’t a “level” in the traditional sense, and therefore doesn’t have a fancy title unless you look to the greater marketing of the DLC. I had half a mind to rename this whole finale to Final Horizon rather than The Last Way, but between the aforementioned oddities and the fact that Part 1 already used the name that I wasn’t eager to fully retcon, I decided against it.
• This episode had all of the exact same returning locations as the last—no more, no less.
• The cold open of this episode, with Sage offering herself to The End, pulls together the secret overarching pattern of the previous 2 parts. Literally, it used the same parallel structure of Morbus, then Genesis, then Sage each trying to barter with The End. “But what will you offer me in return?” But now that we can see the whole pattern, we finally discuss its purpose. The plot of Sonic Frontiers, and particularly the inspiration behind The End’s purple laser moon form, is based on the legend of the Moon Rabbit.
  • .There are surprisingly many variations of this legend across the world, but to summarize the most common East Asian variant, there was once a beggar who asked a group of animals for food. Those who could hunt offered the beggar meat, those who could gather offered fruit, but the rabbit could do neither, and so offered itself as sacrifice. The beggar, who was actually a moon deity in disguise, was pleased with the rabbit’s generosity, and offered it a place on the moon forevermore. When figuring out how best to rightly and appropriately honor Frontiers in this story, I decided I wanted to acknowledge this legend in particular, and maybe go just a bit further with it than the game did. Morbus is the hunter who offered blood to the moon, Genesis is the gatherer who offered resources, and Sage is the rabbit who offered herself. And her bargain was the only one that was truly acknowledged and accepted by The End. As a result, she merged with the moon, and the first form of the Oblivion Sage grew rabbit ears. I think it all worked out quite nicely. Even better than planned, actually, considering that I wasn’t planning on 3 parts. Sage’s conclusion to the pattern might have originally gotten lost in the middle of Part 2.
• The End’s continuing speech throughout the episode was, of course, based on its very similar speech from Frontiers. To the extent that, if you don’t remember the word-for-word content of the original, you might have even thought it was the same speech again. But no, even if a very familiar structure may have been used, what was being said was very much recontextualized for the Chaos Project. (“the avatars and progenitors of gods” is a fancy way of lumping Sonic, the Controller, in with the Ancients, the progenitors of Chaos the God of Destruction.) Most of the changes, however, came not from me, but from Japan. The End’s very same original speech in the Japanese Frontiers script is fascinating, and I mentioned a bit of that in the review for Part 1. In many ways, Japanese The End is presented sort of like the opposite of the English version. English is the All-Consuming Void. Japanese is the Light of Judgment. English sees its actions as irrelevant to morality. Japanese sees its actions as the absolute pinnacle of morality. But two opposites existing together for one purpose…is pretty much the main theme of The Chaos Project, so using both was not only easy, but better than either one alone for the context of the story. Other pieces of lore brought in from the Japanese script are The End’s “atonement” (written as “attunement” in the script provided by Windii, but I’m assuming that’s a typo given the context), implying that it is beholden to some higher power, and in continuation, “something is coming that transcends law and time.” Might be dangerous for me to co-opt that quote, since it suggests that Ian Flynn or whoever might have immediate plans for future games that I could be stepping on, but given that the line wasn’t used in English, it makes me think that it was either made up in translation or meant to be vague and noncommittal. Either way, it’s not like The End would have been wrong to say it again here.
• The White Kaosian tradition of crafting armor as a symbol of love is loosely inspired by the Zora from the Legend of Zelda. No particular reason for that, it just worked well for my purposes.
• The Master Sergeant’s…stuff, for lack of a better word, was confusing. That was intentional. You weren’t supposed to get it. I’m not supposed to get it. It’s supposed to be beyond mortal comprehension. Nonetheless, there’s some inspiration taken from bits and pieces of Doctor Who, which I previously mentioned falls in line with the story of the Postcursors, as well as a bit of Professor Paradox, a character from the Ben 10 series who also has the former as a source of inspiration. The pocket watch, in particular, comes from there.
• In explaining why he created an override code for Agent Black, the Sergeant briefly mentions the events of Silver & Zero, in which the pair was able to use logic and reasoning to briefly turn Agent Black against the Sergeant.
• The “White Angel” is meant to be a White Arms parallel to Devil Doom. Most accurately, it would have been called, “Angel Genesis,” but that didn’t really sound right. To be fair, Eggman’s mechanical replica of Devil Doom in S0E3 was the “BLACKDEVIL,” so the mechanical White Angel could be considered a parallel to that instead—Angel Genesis would be an organic transformation of White Genesis that never appeared.
• The confrontation between Sonic and Agent Black paralleled elements from both of the first two meetings between Sonic and Shadow in SA2. Instead of Shadow being the Sonic-faker, Agent Black is the Shadow-faker.
  • The ensuing fight, a “Chaos  Control everywhere all at once” battle, has been seen once before in The Chaos Project, between Shadow and Blacklight. Sonic reaching that same level of skill is a pretty big deal, showing how far he’s come as the Controller, despite the Sergeant’s taunting to the contrary.
  • After the fight, as Shadow wakes up, the scene parallels the pre-ARK meeting with Sonic in Shadow the Hedgehog, with the famous “nice to see you too,” said with a similarly snarky tone despite being a bit more heartfelt in this context.
• There’s a secret hiding somewhere in the final farewell scene. That’s all I’ll say on that…

And that’s all for now! As per tradition, we’ll next have a pre-Season Premiere special episode, and this is one I’ve been leading up to for quite a while now. Stay tuned!

-And until next time, pray for Silver, who died for our forced cliffhangers.

S3 E14 (Finale): The Last Way Part 3—Final Horizon

The Year of Shadow starts right now! At last, everything has come together for this final part of the Season 3 finale! Read it right here!

The End is here. Black Doom has returned. The mothership of the White Arms is not so friendly as it appeared. Things are looking desperate for the Rebellion as the battle between worlds reaches its climax. Only the prophesized Child of Three can decide the outcome of the battle. But choice demands sacrifices…

Preview: Season 3, Episode 14

Sonic x Shadow Generations isn’t the only place Black Doom is coming back this week! Here’s the preview for long-awaited final piece to the finale of Season 3!

The Black Asteroid — Core

Shadow the Hedgehog stands at the center of the Asteroid’s command room, arms crossed as he observes an array of floating screens depicting many angles of the battle waging outside. Latched around his face and acting in place of the host body’s eyes, Doom’s Eye turns slowly from one screen to the next. On one, Eggman’s army of Sentinel robots intercept the Black Arms bioweapon capsules launched towards the Earth one after another. On the next, Mighty’s Piscean Saucer flies through the wreckage and debris left behind by Seraph’s SG-1000 II. Another shows Sage, the three color-coded Titans, and The End. The fourth screen shows that with Titans occupied, Black Arms forces converge towards the White Dreamnet with little hindrance. The weapons of the mothership appear to have stopped firing, leaving it nearly defenseless. Only the personal ship of White Genesis attempts to fight them off, making little difference on its own.

Shadow-Doom laughs at this. “Such chaos on the battlefield as I’ve never seen before. The White Arms will soon fall. Tonight, our children shall feast upon their bones. Tomorrow, upon the humans of Earth. Soon, the entire galaxy shall come to fear us.”

The Eye of Saturn-Gladius is closed as he gives psychic orders to the Black Arms hivemind. Past him, alien soldiers march through in perfect double file, arming themselves to be deployed. “Your Herald has developed a strong will, Morbus. This added conviction, this strength of presence, will make our soldiers all the more deadly. Consider me impressed.”

Luna-Morbus kneels by a pool of red slime, submerging her hands to draw out the material she uses to craft weapons, some familiar in shape, others far too strange and elaborate to imagine what use they might have. Each one is levitated into the hands of a marching soldier. “Your own child has learned a great deal about the art of killing from you, Gladius. I would never have thought to engineer weapons such as these.”

Shadow-Doom’s face grows stern. “Your little pets are paltry improvements, compared to my own creation.” He looks down at his open hand. “The Ultimate Life Form…the perfect being. At last, that is what I have become.”

“Do not forget, Famis,” Saturn-Gladius growls, “that it is only by our benevolent will that you stand here before us. You, who were the first to fall.”

Luna-Morbus adds, “We could have just as easily eliminated your Herald, and stripped your rule from you, if it so pleased us.”

Shadow-Doom turns on them with a frightening rumble. “Do not forget, lesser monarchs, that it is only by the execution of my perfect plan that the two of you stand at all. As we speak, the greatest of all Black Beasts grows in the depths of this Asteroid. Without me, you could not hope to control it. Without me, you could not hope to defeat the enemies that surround us. We formed this alliance because I am the only one powerful enough to hold it together. Do not forget. Or you will suffer as surely as our foes. None will stand in our way.”

—–—

Never Lake

Sergeant Ayanna Brown pulls the lever on the strange machine in front of her, then dives to the ground before Omega’s first shot can be fired in retaliation. Zed’s weapon arm rotates into a flamethrower that he fires off immediately in a wide arc that forces the group of rebels—Omega, Rouge, Vector, and Espio—to scatter.

The machine generates a thin beam of light that shoots straight up into the sky. It strikes an empty point in space, where the sky begins to ripple, then crack. 

In a sparkling flash, the Little Planet reappears. Its landmasses are filled from end to end with bright neon city lights, and skyscrapers so high that they stand out against the curvature of the planet.

“Just what we needed,” Rouge mutters. “Another planet full of people to drag into this mess.”

“What people?” Espio questions. “Where could they have all come from? The planet was unpopulated when it disappeared.”

“Those would be the Postcursors.”

Everyone turns with a start towards the source of the voice behind them. Ayanna straightens into a salute. “Master Sergeant, sir.”

“At ease, Sergeant Brown.” The Master Sergeant looks up at the sky, where the false purple moon hovers above the Little Planet. “This is how The End comes for all of us. I see, and I have seen.”

What is Black Doom’s so-called perfect plan? How has the Master Sergeant returned? Can The End be stopped? Find out all this and more, next time on The Chaos Project, coming soon!

Review: Season 3, Episode 13

So, elephant in the room. No, this was not originally planned to be a 3-parter. In fact, I made it about 80% of the way through this part before I finally decided to give in and split off an extra part. Besides the obvious issue of length, I was really inspired to make the change by the fact that the number of sub-plots was simply getting to be too much to track for one episode. Removed and transplanted to part 3 were the continued adventures of Chadis on Ouranos Island, and the beginnings of what will become the key to fighting back against Shadow-Doom.

A Part 1 is always hard to talk about in a review, and Part 2 of 3 is apparently even harder, because I don’t want to say too much. I also don’t want to leave anything out that I’ll forget to talk about later. Last episode, I talked about how I outlined my writing plans for basically the first time ever, and then immediately changed those plans when I started writing. Specifically, I said that my planned break between Part 1 and Part 2 would have been a lot later than it where it ended up. As it turns out…that break was right here! As it was originally outlined, the break would have happened after Genesis retrieved the CD bomb from the Black Arms, and revealed that she was working for The End all along. That’s not exactly how it ended up going down, but chronologically, the same moment as what ended up being the break between Parts 2 and 3. In other words, between the longer-than-expected scenes from Part 1 and stuff that’s been added because of Final Horizon, we have almost exactly 1 episode’s worth of additional content. I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me.

There are a few other small changes in plan I can talk about. Shadow getting his body snatched was outlined to take place in the final part, with the Asteroid-side cliffhanger instead looking a little different a little earlier on—I envisioned Gladius taking over Saturn’s body before the fight with Morbus could even begin, and that being the cliffhanger, making for a two-on-two fight for next episode. Black Doom wasn’t even necessarily going to be involved. The original idea was for Gladius to brain-hop from Saturn to Shadow after the fight. There are a few reasons I changed gears. One, I’ve been teasing the influence of Black Doom since the beginning of the season, and while that was meant to be metaphorical at first, it was brought to my attention that a more literal route would be less disappointing. Two, I felt it would add a much needed level of threat to Morbus as a villain for her to take on all three of the Heralds at once, in addition to giving her a chance to make a comeback with Gladius and Doom instead of being fridged halfway through the plot. Three, the Final Horizon inspired a more interesting conflict that will be happening next episode, and now that I’m back on the track of that being its own episode, I no longer need the 2-on-2 as an obligatory action sequence there. Four, knowing all of the above, I felt that all of the Heralds being body-snatched at once made for a better cliffhanger than just Saturn now, and then a questionably boring repeat with Shadow later.

The influence of the Final Horizon update itself is something that deserves its own talk. In my review of the final Frontiers update (not to be confused with The Final Frontiers set of episodes) I talked about how cool it was that they took the pilots of the Titans, people we only got brief glimpses of before, and turned them into characters involved in the narrative of the new game. But my conclusion was that they didn’t do enough. They drew comparisons between the pilots and Sonic’s friends, but those similarities weren’t commented on and meant nothing in the end. It felt like they were doing something they didn’t do. So I did it for them. If Dragon, Snake, and Tiger have what it takes to pilot the Titans, then, by the comparisons Frontiers made, Amy, Knuckles, and Tails should have the same.

I also took advantage of the opportunity to expand on those characters, at least a little bit. Dragon being the kind and caring feminine member of the team was known, but their relationship to Crane resembling that of Amy and Sonic was new. In general, my goal across the board was to suggest more specifically that the pilots were like older, wiser, more experienced versions of their respective members of the Sonic cast. With that came the implication that maybe Dragon and Snake’s relationship was a bit more…developed than Sonic and Amy’s.

Next, Snake was a vessel for exposition on something I’ve explained on this site already—the fact that Earth in the time of the Ancients was filled with lit cities, canonically, and no one ever mentioned it before. I don’t know that my explanation was altogether convincing—that the Ancients didn’t recognize the existence of civilization at first because the technology was so different from their own—but in my defense, the same argument was used the other way around in the game. No one found the technology on the Starfall Islands until Eggman, because it was so different from our own. This lore drop also came with something interesting. A human that Master Snake considered to be a friend, who was fascinated by the culture of the Ancients. Now who could that be…?

For Tiger, I went ahead and addressed that oddity where their story sounds very similar to Tails’ Koco companion from Chaos Island. I described them as sibling students, and put a little more detail into Tiger’s relationship with Crane. The “more mature version” aspect came in particularly strongly here, giving Tails a little glimpse into his future, planting ideas in his head for future character arcs. Does he really want to put his brain towards war for as long as it takes? Maybe the rest of his life? Can he do both?

Crane, of course, was the most unique challenge. Crane is a mirror of Sonic, who already isn’t the most interesting character in the cast, but with the rebellious/snarky/impatient aspect of Sonic’s personality stripped away. Here, I was able to embrace my own canon a little bit more. Going for the “more mature version” idea again, I leaned into what might happen to Sonic as he matures into the Controller role. I envisioned a more developed spiritual side, a complicated relationship with a destiny that was thrust upon him, and, as we saw hints of in Frontiers, the patience to see good within the evil. Then giving Crane someone to talk to who wasn’t just their own mirror image made for a slightly more interesting conversation. A particular side conversation between Sage and Amy in Final Horizon heavily implied that Sage may be the reincarnation of the Ancients’ god or have some relationship to it. I don’t think I’m in the position to confirm or deny that if it isn’t made canon first, but it’s a huge piece of lore that was able to get its due acknowledgment in a vague, roundabout way.

I see this whole segment as something a bit like After the Fight, the post-Forces special from all those years ago. There’s a lot less that I needed to do, but all the same, it’s my idea of “this is what the original game should have done.” Slightly more interesting characters for the pilots, and let their blessing be a true handing of the torch to the new pilots they relate to, so that Sonic can actually “work together with the Titans,” and his friends, to defeat The End. Presumably defeat, anyways. Can’t spoil too much…

This whole experiment is certainly turning out to be pretty interesting. When Forces came out, its similarities to plans for what became the Forces of Chaos arc were indescribably convenient, and integrating the game into those plans was smooth and easy. I can say something sort of similar about Frontiers. The fact that the most important aliens in Sonic history were introduced in the middle of my all-about-aliens season is nothing if not convenient. Integration is a different story. It’s working, and I’m impressed with how well I’ve gotten to work. But there’s some definite tonal whiplash going back and forth from “this is basically Frontiers 2” to “this is basically Shadow the Hedgehog 2 (or 3 or 4 or whatever)” multiple times in one episode. We’ll all see together how it ends.

Suppose I haven’t spoken yet about Shadow’s attempt to negotiate with Morbus. It was sort of fun, planning for this one. The idea was for Shadow to bluff so unbelievably hard that, even when his bluff was called, the assumed truth still looked far more favorable to Shadow than reality. It may not have mattered much to Morbus’ plans in the end, but it opened the door for discussion that allowed Saturn to be swayed. And of course, shoutout to the reviewer dianapinto19041, who predicted a year and a half ago that when the forces of the Black Arms reached Earth, the Virtron room would somehow play a big role. And that Shadow’s mind would succumb to Black Doom, though not in the literal character regression kind of way that you seemed to be afraid of. You have good instincts, dianapinto.

Now, on to the trivia!

• This episode has a new subtitle—Final Chase. With that, the previous episode, The Last Way Part 1, was also retroactively given a subtitle—Final Haunt. Respectively, each of those is a pseudo-final level title from SA2 and Shadow the Hedgehog. I think of them as honorable mentions towards the tradition of finale episodes being named after final levels. Based on this, do you think you can guess the subtitle of Part 3?
• From previous Sonic games, Ouranos Island from Sonic Frontiers was the only location to appear in this episode, as well as the sub-locations of the Towers of the Masters and the virtual temple of trials. However, the Black Comet (Shadow the Hedgehog) was spiritually present through the Black Asteroid and the Virtron-replicated biosphere.
• The cold open of this episode paralleled the structure of part 1, showing White Genesis bargaining with The End in the same way that Black Morbus did.
  • Ordinarily, I would have referred to Genesis in the past as Sage, but I decided after the Frontiers special that it was a good idea to avoid potential confusion in that area.
• Ouranos is referred to as “the hidden island,” another attempt to rectify the oddities created by Eggman’s logs in frontiers claiming that the Ancients’ influence never spread beyond “these three piddly islands.” For similar reasons, I also had to continue avoid referring to Rhea Island as such, because it’s not its own island. Sonic simply said “the next island over,” when it would have been easiest for him to just say Rhea Island. Most reasonably, however, he should have said “Kronos Island,” which would have added a lot of unnecessary confusion. Why did Sonic Team do this to us?
• A brief conversation between Sage and Tails reaffirms the fact that the original ending of Frontiers is considered canon to this story, while the DLC ending is not. I considered leaving it vague, but in the end I realized that it was already asserted quite clearly in earlier episodes that Sage piloted Supreme and sacrificed herself in the past, and it would have been a bit silly to try and imply that both endings could be canon. If future Sonic games make clear that the DLC ending is the canon one…I suppose that will have to be the timeline split that leads to The Chaos Project.
• Seraph’s new ship, the SG-1000 II shares the name of an actual upgrade to the SEGA console SG-1000, continuing a trend that’s probably getting boring by now.
• The Piscean guest stars who made a cameo alongside Mighty are Sonic Boom characters mentioned in a previous review, Hokey and Pokey. Their non-sequitur arguments over ice cream flavors are consistent with their only known character traits from that game.
• In fighting Morbus, Shadow continued the unusual tradition of throwing an all out attack against a hologram/vision/apparition and passing straight through once in each finale arc. Previously, it was Infinite in Doomsday Part 2 and the Master Sergeant in Metallic Madness Part 1.
  • He acknowledged the trend this time, muttering “Every time…”
• The major action sequence in the Black Asteroid likely takes the trophy for the new most gruesome/dark/pushing-the-boundaries-of-K+ rating scene in the entire series, between uncensored (alien) blood and gore, decapitation, depiction of mass necrosis, stabbing through the chest, and an implication that I decided was just a little too much to say outright. The extra large puddle of blood left behind and the comment that she is “not entirely in one piece” was meant to suggest that Genesis had to cut off her own arm to stop the spread of her infection. It’s okay. She can always grow a new body, right?
• In their conversations with the pilots, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy each reference their Frontiers theme songs, “Maybe If…”, “Blood Flow”, and “Another Passage.”

And that’s all for today, folks! Hopefully, Part 3 isn’t all too far out, so stay tuned!

-And until next time, remember to live and learn every day!

S3 E13: The Last Way Part 2—Final Chase

After a much longer secondary break than planned, The Chaos Project is back with a surprise announcement! The epic season finale of Season 3 has been expanded from 2 parts to 3! Read part 2 of 3 right now, right here!

The time for preparation is over. Now, as prophesized long ago, the stars collide in the skies above Earth. As the Rebellion teams up with the Eggman Empire, with friends and foes alike on all sides of the conflict, the line between ally and enemy has never been so unclear. Time marches on. The final choice draws near.

Opinion Piece—Sonic Frontiers: The Final Horizon was Almost the Perfect Hotfix

You might remember my final judgement of the original release of Sonic Frontiers from the title of the opinion piece alone. Sonic Frontiers was almost the best Sonic game. TL;DR? It was on track to be the best, until it tripped and fell over the finish line. Chaos Island was flawed but perfectly fine enough, Rhea Island was the perfect intersection of gameplay, narrative, and thematic shakeups at the ideal time…and then the transition to Ouranos happened, and the whole thing just self-destructed.

Part 3 of the Frontiers DLC, “The Final Horizon,” made big promises before it was even officially announced. It promised to take that long string of flaws from the final act of the game, and make them right. Did it succeed? Let’s go over the details.

Review: Season 3, Episode 12

The first part of a finale is always tricky, but this one presented some extra special problems. As always, the creation process began in a pretty free-form way. I knew I had certain ideas that needed to be executed, but I wanted to let most of the season play out before restricting myself to a particular climax. Compared to the Season 2 finale, Metallic Madness, this one was both more and less pre-planned. I had certain ideas much father in advance—that this would be the episode where the Black Arms return for a second invasion of Earth, that SCOPE somehow knew this ahead of time and believed that Shadow would be vital to stopping it, and that Saturn would end up working against them. All of this has been strongly hinted at going back as far as 26 episodes ago when SCOPE was first introduced (almost a third of the series!), whereas in Season 2, the only part that was really scripted well in advance was the ending scene of Tails defying the vote and killing Cyber Sonic to save Sonic. But as I was writing the second half of Season 2, the direction things were going became pretty clear, and by the time I actually got to the finale, I had a pretty good idea of what the whole thing was going to look like. Here in Season 3, however, it went the other way. Things got muddier as I hastily threw in ties to Sonic Frontiers, then pivoted to two basically unrelated episodes before jumping straight to the finale. I sat down to start writing, and I realized I had no idea what I was about to get into. For basically the first time ever for this story, I had to hit the brakes and write an outline first.

I listed off all of the hanging plot threads that have been set up through the last two seasons, and started breaking them down into scenes that would steadily tie each of them together. My original season-by-season outline for this story had no reference to a moon battle. But after establishing the existence of BABEL at the beginning of the season, then sticking Mighty there with an unsolved mystery and forgetting about him, I had threads that needed to be tied. Of course, I also had to juggle Johnny and Seraph’s developing relationship, White Genesis’ suspicious backstory, Eggman’s discovery of the Sentinels, the purpose behind the creation of Shadow Androids and SCOPE’s foreknowledge, Sage…existing, and Eggman’s offer to negotiate peace. None of that was really stuff that I had pre-written ideas for including in this particular episode, but it was apparent that they had nowhere else to go. In all the juggling, I almost forgot Chadis! Before SCOPE was even a concrete idea, my plan was for Chadis to evolve into a Chaos Chao about 2 years after her regeneration, which would be now. The fact that this ended up being directly relatable to Frontiers and the Ancients is actually a pretty crazy coincidence.

So anyways, after all that work I did for an outline, it still ended up being pretty crazy wrong. I can’t say yet where the original break between part 1 and 2 was supposed to be, because it was well into where Part 2 is now going to be. No spoilers! Following the outline, things went mostly to plan…except that two particular scenes—Sonic and Eggman’s negotiations, and Mighty and Ayanna’s extended roast session—both just ended up going on and on when I expected them to be relatively short. At that point, I decided to double down on the moon battle as the climax of the episode, where it might have originally been a very swift show of power from the Black Arms. That also meant more time to focus on the Mighty and Ray story, which I was glad for. That mystery certainly would have gotten its own episode, had this been a full-length season, but I think it did well enough in here.

Of course, that didn’t solve this episode’s near-identical pacing issues to last season’s finale: a steady back-and-forth between multiple plotlines that is suddenly interrupted for a single focused action sequence that takes up 25% of the episode. But, more like Doomsday Part 1, I think this one worked out much better as a pretty good standalone episode that will only be enhanced by part 2, rather than being an inseparable part of it.

Now, on to the trivia!

• This episode’s title, “The Last Way,” is a reference to the final level of Shadow the Hedgehog, of the same name.
  • This continues the trend set by the previous 2 finales (and Silver & Zero) of being named after final levels from appropriate Sonic games.
• This episode did not feature any specific returning locations from any previous Sonic games.
  • This is the second episode in the story to do so (post-Season 0) after the recent S3 E7 Arms Race Part 2.
  • This episode did briefly include a jungle area which is presumably on Bygone Island. However, this is not confirmed in the episode, and even if we knew it were, it would most likely not be a specifically accessible location from the games.
    • The existence of a hidden SCOPE hideout under the island resembles a concept suggested by the Sonic Boom episode “Into the Wilderness,” in which it is accidentally discovered that various missile silos are concealed in the jungle. Although the missile in question belonged to Eggman, it is possible that he was making use of a location that was already there.
  • This episode also featured the Moon as a location, which is technically a level from Sonic Advance. However, the Moon being a big place, this is not considered any more relevant than “Earth” being a location that appears in most episodes.
• The opening scene of this episode, showing Morbus receiving the CD bomb 6 months ago, was originally intended to appear at the end of S3 E8 Arms Race Part 2, and then again at the beginning of E9 The Final Frontiers Part 1 or the end of E10 The Final Frontiers Part 2, but all of these potential appearances were scrapped for one reason or another. That makes this the first time that the primary antagonist of part 1 of the finale was not introduced halfway through the season for that purpose, even though it was planned to be that way.
• When The End speaks to Morbus, it suggests that its appearance to her is a unique match to her vision of death. This is a concept for the character which has been discussed by the game’s director, Morio Kishimoto, on Twitter. He claims, although this is not really suggested in the game itself, that The End appears to Sage as the moon because the moon’s association with death in Japanese culture.
  • The End also describes itself as “the light of judgement,” among other things. This self-descriptor is taken from the Japanese script of Frontiers, which has some very interesting divergences from the English script in this area, despite being reasonably close in the rest of the game. As is generally the case in this story, where the English and Japanese scripts contradict, English is given precedence, though the greatest possible effort is taken to integrate both.
• The theories made by various characters about how Chadis will evolve are reflective of the actual Chao Garden game mechanics. However, Chadis evolving in the way it did is technically impossible for three reasons:
  • Becoming a Chaos Chao would require her to be given one of every type of Animal Friend, despite her not displaying any animal parts beforehand. This mechanic was addressed by suggesting that the Chaos Chao form happens when the Chao “learns lots of different skills,” effectively saying that learning the behaviors of the animals is what’s important, not interacting with the animals themselves.
  • A Chaos Chao can only evolve if it has regenerated at least twice, but we know that Chadis came from an Egg, meaning that there has only been one regeneration. This was ignored, suggesting that all it takes is a Chao that has regenerated any number of times. It is possible that Chadis’ particularly traumatic regeneration may have accelerated the process somehow.
  • A Chao is supposed to evolve after 2 “Chao Years,” not 2 actual years. However, this doesn’t make a lot of sense, as the only reason to invent such a timescale (i.e. “Dog Years”) would be to compare it to a human lifespan—meaning that “puberty” should happen in the teens, not at age 2. It is being assumed that “Chao Years” was simply meant to be a gamified way of saying “in-Garden hours.” The number 2 was still used as a reference to create the scale of proper in-universe “Chao Years,” just from the other side. Instead of 2 Chao Years equaling 14 human years, we’re saying that 2 human years equals 14 Chao Years.
• Mighty greets Ray by asking him how the Orion Spur is looking. Ray answers by saying “Super. Stars are…” Given that this is the first episode to come out since the announcement of Sonic Superstars, I felt this was a good place to throw in a reference. The reference deepens with the knowledge that “Sonic Orion” is known to be a prototype name for the game.
  • The Orion Spur is the location of the Donpa Motors show floor seen in the last episode, S3 E11 Big’s Big Space Adventure 3. Ray theorizes the existence of some sort of intergalactic trading hub in that direction, and this would seem to be what he is referring to.
• The negotiation between Sonic and Eggman got so much focus and detail because it’s meant to act as a sort of recognizable halfway point in the story. We’ve got just about 4 (counting S0) seasons behind us, and another 4 (albeit shorter) seasons ahead. To represent this, much of the negotiation was over the fate of the 4th Emerald—whoever has it has more than the other, so if Sonic and friends were to get it, it would mark passing the halfway point in the task of collecting all 7. And of course, this event is also marked by Eggman bringing back up the same “deal” he tried to make with Sonic all the way back in Crisis of Chaos, and this time even adding a little bit of long-missing detail about his motivation and intentions. Whether or not he was telling the truth is another question.
• Sage’s conversation with Shadow conveniently avoided the answer of whether or not these characters have met before. That was easy for Sage, who lost her memories, but Shadow’s responses were framed in such away that he could be suggesting they’ve had this conversation before, or he could simply be surprised that this is the first time she’s thinking about their vague familial connection. The characters interacting in this way seems like the very obvious way to go if they ever do meet in canon, I just don’t know how permanent Sage is going to be and if she and Shadow are ever going to both be relevant in the same game.
• The date that this episode takes place on, December 28th, was decided for me by Yuni Oha when he wrote Silver & Zero. In Part 4: The Long Way Home I, it was decided that Valentine’s day, exactly 10 years before the events of Sonic ’06, should fall correctly on the date of February 14th, as it would have in the year 1996, 10 years before 2006. Thus, when I decided that this episode would take place on the day of a full moon in December, 6 years after the events of Sonic 06, that required me, for the sake of consistency, to accurately use the 2012 Lunar calendar date of December 28th. Honestly, I can’t be bothered to figure out if the calendar cycles will repeat in such a way some tens of thousands of years from now, as this series is technically supposed to take place, but eh, whatever.
• Ayanna suggests that Mighty probably thinks she’s throwing him to wolves. Mighty responds by joking that SCOPE is undefeatable. This is a spontaneous reference to the lyrics of the Frontiers boss battle theme of Giganto, “Undefeatable.” I got the references to the game’s other vocal themes out of my system during part 2 of the Frontiers special, but Giganto was fought in part 1 before I knew about the song, so I thought it would be fun to throw something in here.
• Playing off of the SA2 Amy quote, “half the moon is gone,” this episode gave us the absolute gem of a line, “half the moon is guns.”
  • Ray later uses this quote in a different way with “half the moon is gone…again”.
  • Eggman complains about the Black Arms stealing his thunder because he is the one who blew up half the moon last time. This time, we shouldn’t expect it to be magically repaired in the near future.

And that’s all for now! As mentioned earlier, there will be a delay before part 2 arrives. The situation is similar to that of the original Sonic Frontiers special. A little less than one year later, we’re now waiting on DLC part 3, which, according to rumors/leaks I don’t want to look to deeply into, will give us a complete rewrite of the third act of the game, and is coming as soon as next month. Given that this is the grand finale of the Frontiers season, I decided it would be appropriate to wait until I could properly integrate whatever changes this update brings.

In the meantime, take a gander over at the Sonic the Hedgehog Timeline page, which has just undergone some much-needed overhauls, bringing it up-to-date with a number of Sonic games that have been canonized since the page’s creation, as well as a handy visual graphic of the timeline for reference.

-And until next time, remember to live and learn every day!

S3 E12: The Last Way Part 1

With apologies for the delay, part 1 of the Season 3 finale is finally here! Read it right here!

An Ancient prophecy is coming to pass. The galaxy will collide in the skies above Earth. The battle can only be ended when the child of three worlds makes a choice—to save only one of the three. The one who carries the blood of Earth, the Kaosians, and even the Ancients is here. But what can he do to stop the Black Arms from delivering Earth to The End?

Preview: Season 3, Episode 12

Part 1 of the climactic season finale is coming! In the meantime, here’s the preview! In fact, have two previews!

Eggman’s Hidden Base — Location Unknown

In a massive hangar with scaffolded platforms reaching all the way around its circular walls, a towering silver machine sits in the center, with crescent-like horns rising out of its helmet-shaped head. A red glow illuminates the Sentinel’s face. The source of that glow, hardly larger than an insect by comparison, is Sage, her eyes closed, and her hand pressed against the smooth metal.

Far below, Eggman’s voice shouts up, “Sage! Report!”

Sage obediently stops whatever it is that she’s doing, removes her hand, and floats down to Eggman’s level at the Sentinel’s feet. “Unfortunately, I am still unable to take control of the Sentinel’s core systems. However, I have confirmed, as you speculated, that its architecture bears a strong resemblance to that of the Starfall Island Titans. Although it was not constructed by the Ancients, it was most likely built by someone with extensive knowledge of their technology.”

Eggman shakes his head in contemplation. “Humans, playing copycat to the Ancients tens of thousands of years ago, and we never knew… Yet even now, their technology is beyond our reach?”

Sage shows a moment of worry. “No, Father. Not beyond you. It is only a matter of time before I crack the systems.”

“What are the odds that you’ll be finished within twenty-four hours?”

Sage only pauses for a moment. “Approximately thirty-two percent.”

Eggman doesn’t appear to like this answer. His hand moves up to his chin in deep thought.

“Is something wrong, Father?”

Eggman takes another moment to consider his answer. “Sage… My daughter… You’ve hardly had the chance to see our new Empire since I got you back. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t be considering something like this. But there’s still a whole world for you to see. And I’d like to make sure it’s still around for you to see it.”

“I…do not understand.”

“Take a break from this project. There’s something else I’d like you to do for me.”

—–—

The Eggshelter

In the new Virtron hologram room of the rebel base, Shadow, Johnny, and Seraph stand in a re-creation of the White Dreamnet’s throne room, where they investigate a frozen recording that shows Empress White Genesis with her mask torn away, facing off against Saturn.

Seraph is in the middle of explaining, “My investigation included networks connected to Cyber Space, including this planet’s EggNet. I learned a great deal about Cyber Space, including the entity that was trapped inside it for all those thousands of years that the Empress was making use of it. If that entity…influenced her in some way…perhaps led her to create a new identity…to serve a particular purpose…”

Johnny finishes, “It could be a threat to your people. And to the galaxy.”

Shadow frowns. “That shouldn’t be, at least not anymore. The entity was destroyed by Sonic and Sage.”

Seraph raises an eyebrow. “Sage? You don’t mean…?”

Another voice answers, “I believe he is referring to me.”

Seraph, Johnny, and Shadow all jump at the unexpected voice, readying weapons and fists for a fight. Johnny, quickly regaining his composure, demands, “Hands up! How did you get in here?”

Sage looks around at the Virtron room projected around her. The image appears to corrupt and distort near where she floats. “Fascinating. So the Rebellion is operating from a facility equipped with a functioning Virtron system.” She seems unconcerned by the threats against her.

Shadow presses, “What do you want?”

“I have come to deliver a message on behalf of my father, Emperor Eggman. He wishes to take up the offer made by Sonic the Hedgehog last time we all met. He is prepared to negotiate for peace between the Empire and the Rebellion.”

Is it really possible that Eggman wants to make peace with the Rebellion? Will the offer even be considered? What makes this matter so urgent? And what do the Ancients have to do with it? Find out all this and more, in the pivotal next episode of The Chaos Project, coming soon!

Review: Season 3, Episode 9

After feeling out-of-date with Sonic lore for what feels like ages, The Chaos Project is at last all caught up and ready to move forward! I’m a little torn about the outcome of this episode. I definitely resolved a lot of the problems I had with part 1. This was not just regurgitating Frontiers—it was celebrating it from beginning to end, while more properly integrating it with current plots and character arcs. On a greater level, I’m proud of how I was able to explore the game’s same themes of mortality, finality, and moving on, plus love and family, while also adding complexity with discussions of peace and purpose. Still…compared to the equivalent follow-up episode to Forces, After the Fight, this just wasn’t nearly as fun. Of course, a lot of the reason for that was out of my hands. Forces didn’t have a lot of complexity to it, so celebrating it in the most honest possible way was as simple as writing it the ending it deserved. Given how shocked and appalled I was by the ending of Frontiers, I would’ve loved to do the same here. But the context is just…different. I walked out of Frontiers saying “I wanted more,” but I walked out of Forces asking, “Where’s the rest?” Forces was literally missing a final piece, while Frontiers’ final piece was there, it was just lacking in execution. And, as we move farther into the age of expansive DLC, there’s also the issue that Frontiers may rewrite its own ending without my interference within the next year, and I don’t want to dig myself a hole if that turns out to be the case. And even without all of that, Forces was a the sort of game I knew, by the end of it, was going to be a one-and-done. I knew they were going to distance themselves from its plot and characters as quickly as they could. Frontiers, on the other hand, is quite certainly the opposite. I will be honestly quite surprised if the next Sonic game isn’t Frontiers 2, or at least a spiritual successor. I felt safe going wild and doing whatever I wanted with Forces, but I need to be careful with Frontiers, at least until I’m certain that Frontiers mania is over.

So, a lot of this episode was a balancing act, figuring out exactly how far I could go with the elements of Frontiers without the risk of breaking them. Obviously, the first order of business was Sage. It’s an interesting story, actually. One of my pre-conceived notions going into Frontiers was that Sage was obviously a rogue program. Sure, she was made by Eggman, but now, as far as the previews showed us, she seemed to exist for the sole purpose of protecting the Starfall islands from whatever Sonic was unknowingly doing to them by fighting the Titans and rescuing his friends. Given that, I saw Sage as a highly temporary character who would almost certainly be destroyed by the end of the game, or perhaps, as the second most likely option, left to live in Cyber Space or some such final destination where she would no longer be relevant in the Sonic canon. Thus, I was quite certain that her reappearance now, for The Chaos Project, would be her first such appearance since the end of Frontiers. Since I had her pinned as a rogue element that betrayed Eggman, I figured it was quite reasonable to have him greet her for the first time, at the end of part 1, with a strong hint of animosity. That string of assumptions turned out to be more than a little problematic.

Thus, the central focus in crafting the plot for this episode became “What’s wrong with Sage?” Thankfully, I did prepare myself to answer a question along these lines. I suggested from the outset of part 1 that there might be some sort of connection between White Sage and AI Sage. I was prepared to do anything from writing that off as a coincidence, to making one a creation of the other, to making them one and the same person, all depending on how Frontiers turned out. And, unrelated to Frontiers, I also had this idea about White Genesis extending her life indefinitely via cloning. But I wasn’t actually sure if or when I’d be able to use that idea, given that she wasn’t really intended to be a major focus of the season. The Genesis sub-plot keeps getting more and more complicated with last minute changes, because suddenly she’s shaping up to be a main antagonist, I guess. I wasn’t even really planning on her being an antagonist, just a highly suspicious and morally gray third party. But, once we came to understand the nature and purpose of Cyber Space, combined with existing plans and existing needs, the way forward became rather obvious. I wasn’t originally planning on Genesis having any particular obsession with immortality, just a practical desire. But the thought of her finding an even more practical means of attaining it led me to think, yeah, sure, she’d go for it. Turning that desire into an obsession was the only way to keep the plot going against the half dozen people trying to explain to her that what she’s doing is wrong. The source of that obsession being some sort of influence from The End came later, after I had already noticed her naturally tending to quote The End’s philosophy in a few places.

Speaking of that, the society-controlling AI that is the Master System turning out to be evil was basically a given from the beginning, but…I was kind of figuring when I created the Master System that I would probably end up making Sage the cause of that. But, hey, The End works too.

Back on topic, putting White Sage into Sage’s body got slightly complicated for…hopefully obvious reasons. Saturn being the only one who knows both of them, and identifying them by separate titles, definitely helped in that regard. Her having a daughter wasn’t originally part of the plan, but that revelation sort of grew naturally out of the conversations I was taking her through. In fact, this whole episode kind of grew naturally as it was written. The first order of business was to decide what remaining characters would be found on what islands, and who would go after each of them. Only then did I decide, “What would Sonic and Tails have to talk about on Chaos Island?” “What would Shadow and Johnny have to talk about on Ares Island?” Of course, the one-on-one pseudo-therapy sessions between each pair of characters, re-establishing where their relationships are, what their character arcs have been up until now, and taking those arcs one step farther, was an absolutely necessary inclusion to honor Frontiers, which built the majority of its story content around such conversations. Then the next question was “How does this pair of characters on this island beat this Titan, without the Chaos Emeralds or Eggman’s hacking to fall back on?”

Saturn on Ouranos Island was certainly an odd one out here. I certainly had it in mind when I placed Luna on that island that the two of them would have to face Supreme, just like everyone else is doing on their respective islands. But then I realized…given the explanation I gave for the existence of this world, that wouldn’t even make sense. Supreme was definitively in Cyber Space when the backup was made, and if the backup was also making backups of things in Cyber Space, we’d have two Eggmans running around. Could’ve been interesting, but not what I was going for. On top of that, I knew that Saturn had an extra Sage conversation to deal with in addition to saving his friend, plus possible (ignored) extra time needed to find the Black Manta, and that’s after he already got a bit too much focus in part 1. I decided that dialing back and stripping the Titan out of the equation for him was for the best. Plus, that gave me the opportunity to use some of the late-game Guardians instead, which would otherwise likely never be showing up again.

As for the others, things fell into place pretty logically. Johnny’s on the island full of giant guns, and Tails is on the island with a perfectly good giant robot wasting away. I considered for both cases having the character in question hack into/link up with all the other laser cannons on the respective island, but by the time I got to the Titan fights, I found that I was actually starting to get a little low on remaining runtime for the episode, so I decided not to  complicate things with that extra factor. The Wyvern takedown was pretty believable, in my opinion. The Knight was a bit tougher to justify, so I threw in the same excuse used for Eggman punching Giganto. It definitely felt odd, sort of trivializing these Super Sonic bosses after complaining about Frontiers itself doing exactly that, but I think I did enough to justify it. And besides, this is another case of Perfect Chaos and power creep. These bosses may have once taken Super Sonic to beat, but our characters have years’ worth of experience since then, and have grown far stronger. Plus, they double teamed it where Sonic was once on his own. Plus, they cheated, taking advantage of what’s available instead of a head-on fight. I think it’s enough. I feel like I’m trying to convince myself more than anyone else, but whatever.

The biggest last-minute change that happened during writing came after all of that. The episode was almost done by this point, numerically speaking, and despite two hard-fought victories in serious battles, the White Sage plot still wasn’t resolved. It was a natural assumption, going into the episode, that everyone would have to come back together for one big final fight. I wasn’t sure if Sage was going to pull Supreme out of thin air, or if she would perhaps revive the three other Titans and merge them together into some sort of super Titan, or maybe just transform into something more threatening and fight under her own power. I wasn’t sure if the fight would be won through overwhelming numbers, or if the fight would be cut short by Saturn getting through to her, or if Eggman would manage to hack a few Super Forms, or perhaps some sort of Cyber-Corrupted Super Form for Sonic. Combine that last option with the “fused Titan” option, and you’d basically get exactly what I did for Forces—pit a Sonic transformation that was obviously missing from the original game against an obviously-missing culmination of previous boss fights via fusion. As much as I would have liked to make lightning strike twice with that formula, the obvious repetition was enough to get me to step back and ask if it was really what the episode needed. Because Genesis is a complicated character who isn’t supposed to be seen as an absolute evil, I was going through a lot of effort already to make sure she could be redeemed for her transgressions in this episode, leading her towards realizing the value of love and giving up Sage’s body willingly. That wouldn’t have been very convincing if violence was still needed in the end to force her to that decision. And all that after spending the first half of the episode talking circles around the importance of peace and common ground would’ve been more than a little hypocritical. I decided, especially given the length the episode was already reaching, that cutting the final fight altogether was the best option. Funny, that…sounds a lot like what happened during the development of Frontiers itself, now that I think about it. Anyways, I sprang for the emotional climax instead of the actiony type, which was also helpful for establishing a little more competence and importance for the AI Sage before reintroducing her to the main cast. I suppose you can call that an official announcement. Sage is now part of the main cast of The Chaos Project, at least in as much as Eggman is. Although the episode certainly had enough action in general, I wanted to avoid the whole thing fizzling out with a slow ending, given that the Knight fight clearly wasn’t intended to be the climax. So, I came up with the whole, “Eggman is accidentally blowing up this Cyber Space” thing even more last minute, just to make sure it couldn’t be said that there was no excitement left after the Knight. That also served the double purpose of rushing along everyone’s exit, skipping the need for any awkward conversations, but still giving everyone the chance to wrap up their respective stories.

All in all, I suppose I’m pleased with the outcome for this episode. I wouldn’t call it one of my favorites, which is a shame for how special it is, but still, it got the job done effectively. I think my biggest regret is how unimportant Luna ended up being, given that we kicked off this arc by focusing on her. She was supposed to at least participate in the final fight, but that got cut. I wouldn’t think it was a super big deal, given that “Arms Race” was supposed to be her time to shine, while these episodes were more for Saturn. But Saturn ended up being such an interesting character that I was worried about him outshining her in Arms Race, and obviously he did exactly that here. I just wanted it to be a bit more balanced.

Something I forgot to mention earlier was the question of what to do with Sage. Frontiers left me in a very unfortunate position. If she had simply died in Frontiers, I could’ve brought her back here exactly as I did without issue. But Eggman had to go and maybe-kinda-sorta revive her right at the end. Suddenly, I don’t have a frame of reference for what this character is supposed to be like after Frontiers. She could be exactly as she was before. But the way we heard her voice without seeing her could imply that she no longer has a body, and exists only as a sentient computer program instead. I have no idea if she would still consider Sonic a friend, or if Eggman would have programmed that out of her when he was reviving her. I have no idea what sort of traumas or disfigurations might have resulted from her being killed and brought back to life. And, of course, I also have to ask where she’s been during the last 4 years of The Chaos Project. Unfortunately, I determined that my only safe bet was to kill her again. Offscreen. Some time vaguely soon before the first episode. Then bring her back in a way that leaves her with no memory of what happened after Frontiers. Once I have more information, I hope to be able to go back and show a flashback to that, at least. Although, for all we know, they’re just going to kill her off again in the DLC, and I’ll have just predicted the future with this episode. That was probably the single most awkward thing to come out of making this episode work, having people randomly talk about her being dead even though the last thing we all saw of her was her revival. But that was the only safe bet.

Now, on to the trivia!

• This episode’s subtitle, “Allegiance,” along with the retconned subtitle for part 1, “Resurgence,” play off of the same naming structure used for the canon Sonic Frontiers companion content,  the prequel comic “Convergence” and the animation “Divergence.”
• Continuing the trend of space being filled with SEGA references, White Sage’s prototype ship from thousands of years ago was called the “Nomad,” the name of a limited-run portable version of the SEGA Genesis.
• White Sage designates the homeworld of the Ancients as “ZA-91-alpha,” which  was intended to vaguely resemble the general shape of the “ZAP” symbol seen in Frontiers.
• The White Arms knowing the Ancients as “The Ancients” was an obvious oddity to deal with. In the flashback, it’s suggested that they just coincidentally arrived at the same name for a slightly different reason. I could’ve had them not know the name at all, but that would’ve made it very difficult to get through to the audience that I’m talking about this particular civilization. Things would’ve been much easier if they had an actual name.
• Although this is not mentioned directly, it is intended to be implied that White Sage’s horror at seeing the destroyed homeworld of the Ancients is what inspired the White Arms’ genetic sequencing program that we see Seraph performing in her introductory episode.
• In this episode, Genesis transitions from her 31st to her 32nd incarnation. This lines up with the release of the episode during the transition from Sonic’s 31st year to his 32nd.
• Although it was indirectly referenced in the Team Sonic Racing special, Green Light Riders, this episode is the first to definitively mark that game as canon, referencing the Donpa Kingdom among the list of computer networks that Cyber Space is connected to. This of course, was already done in the same way by Frontiers itself in one of the Egg Memos.
• Eggman’s hacking program, which he was using throughout part 1, is revealed to be the same hacking minigame from Sonic Frontiers, upon which the final fight with The End was based.
  • Upon noticing this, Saturn’s repsonse is a reference to a line from the first Avengers movie: “That man is playing Galaga.” In this case, Eggman actually is hacking, and not just goofing off like that poor SHIELD agent.
• Much like the comparison between Kronos and Saturn in the previous episode, Saturn refers to Ouranos Island as “Uranus Island” in this one. It is unclear if this was a misunderstanding on Saturn’s part, or if he knows something that we don’t.
• Throughout the episode, a conscious effort is made to never refer to Rhea Island as an “Island.” Technically speaking, it’s not an island. It’s just the northern territory of Kronos, even though Frontiers identifies it otherwise. Regardless, it is canon from the Egg Memos that Eggman only considers there to be three Starfall Islands. That could mean that he wasn’t counting Ouranos either, since it is presumably still quite close to Kronos geographically, or that he wasn’t counting it for some other reason. Or that he didn’t even know about it at the time of recording.
• When asked about Cyber Space, Seraph mentions the builders of the “Titans of Starfall.” This was originally intended to explain a predictive comment she made back in Impending Doom—a comment that I later decided to retcon out of existence. I decided to keep this part in anyways, mostly because readers who are following along probably wouldn’t even know that the retcon was made, but also simply to add to the idea that bits and pieces of the Ancients are known, but not the whole story.
• In Sonic’s conversation with Tails, the “Civil War” incident is canonically addressed by said name for the first time.
• Sage referring to Tails as “Tails the Fox” was meant to be an intentional hint towards her identity. That hint was originally meant to be brought up in the conversation between Sonic and Tails, but that conversation quickly got too long to throw in an extra topic like that, so I then thought to use it for Shadow and Johnny’s conversation instead. Similar problem. It ended up with Saturn, which was probably for the best, since it’s it’s important to show every now and then that, despite the way he sounds, he’s far more intelligent than the average big dumb oaf. And the fact that he took note of such a minor detail about one of his new friends is also good for showing exactly what kind of friend Saturn is meant to be.
• The scene of the Guardians all firing on Saturn all at once, only for him to be perfectly fine, was vaguely inspired by a scene from one of my least favorite films of all time, Star Wars Episode 8, The Last Jedi, involving Luke Skywalker on a salt planet.
• When Luna is released from her cage, she shows symptoms reminiscent of sensory deprivation as a result of being unexpectedly cut off from the hivemind. This was intended to be…slightly more of a big deal than it ended up being, as it was even led into in part 1, but the concept just…didn’t really mesh with everything else that was going on.
• The Wyvern and Knight fights were both crammed full of quotes to their respective boss battle songs.
  • Similarly, the Crush 40 song “Fight the Knight” was also referenced.
• The gun used by Johnny against the Wyvern is specifically meant to be the same one Sonic used to drain the oasis in Frontiers. Wasn’t sure if that one was clear enough.
• Shadow saves himself from a long fall using the same trick used on the Death Egg in S1 E18, Doomsday Part 2, using Chaos Control to take away momentum rather than actually moving anything anywhere.
• When Luna talks about her father’s death, Tails compares it to his own experiences, even passing along the same advice that was given to him by Captain Fox in S2 E11 Steeled Heart.
• This episode makes quite a bit of use of my own personal Computer Science knowledge, accurately depicting topics such as data remanence, segmentation faults, and stack overflows. It seemed appropriate, given the setting at hand

And that’s all for now! But don’t relax just yet! Next up is the exciting two-part finale of Silver & Zero: Partners in Time! Stay tuned!

-And until then, never stop chasing that one-way dream!