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…
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!
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!
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!
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?
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!
And so ends Season 3’s obligatory pre-finale comedy episode. This was certainly an interesting one. The last two seasons’ equivalent episodes were carried by a constant flow of jokes taking place in ridiculous situations, but this one focused much more on the latter half of that. Not to say there weren’t any good jokes, just that the comedy was supposed to come primarily from the wackiness of Big going on a space odyssey and somehow never getting any closer to his relatively simple goal. The biggest source of inspiration here was Big’s role in Sonic and the Secret Rings, which we’ll talk about later. But, much like S1 E16 “Hate That Hedgehog,” the base idea for this episode also took inspiration from stand-out comedic episodes of other shows from the past. In this case, that would be the episode “Mondo Coco” from an old Cartoon Network show, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends (and, perhaps to some extent, the episode “World-Wide Wobbuffet” from Yuni Oha’s Pokémon Cosmic Quest, which began from similar inspiration). Much like this episode, that one features a particularly silly character being swept up on a long journey featuring progressively more ridiculous situations.
Of course, like previous comedy episodes, I also wanted to make sure that this one was here for a reason. Of course, the space theme made it obvious that this episode had to go in this season and nowhere else, but that’s sort of the opposite direction of logic from what I need. Of course, given that Big went missing a full season ago, and that he mysteriously appeared in the Frontiers special, this episode was automatically necessary and “story-important,” but that still didn’t really resolve my problem. I want the reader to walk away from the episode feeling glad that they didn’t skip it. So, as I was mapping out all the different parts of the journey, knowing that Big would have to end up in Cyber Space somehow, I decided to put the destroyed homeworld of the Ancients as one leg of that journey, and use Seraph’s expertise to lead into that. Just like with last episode, (S3 E10 War of the Lost World) having direct relevance to the lore of Frontiers is what made this one work.
But how was I to establish that relevance? What could Seraph help us learn about the Ancients that Big and Froggy could spur her to say? Well, what association do they have already? Big, not much. But Froggy. Froggy swallowed Chaos, and had a reaction to that which still hasn’t been explained—and Chaos is an Ancient. I took that and rolled with it. Although it was not definitively confirmed in the end, the implication is that Froggy is not an Earth frog at all, but perhaps instead an Ancient frog, or descended therefrom.
And then there’s the whole Paradox thing. Planning for this episode, I was not expecting it to end with Froggy acquiring the powers of an elder god, but somehow, that’s the way it went. The train of thought started simply because, in the long line of crazy ways for Big to get from one place to the next, my ideas ran dry on the Lost Hex. I mean, obviously I had the option to actually send him home the “planned” way of reaching the portal before Espio closed it, or simply finding the unclosed one, but that would make for a pretty anticlimactic end to the recurring dramatic irony that drove the episode. There are also Wisps on the Lost Hex he could’ve made friends with as was the plan on Planet Wisp, or he could’ve simply found the portal back to Planet Wisp, but going back to Plan E after Plan F failed would have been, again, anticlimactic. I think, if I didn’t have the Paradox route to go down, I probably could’ve salvaged something out of an idea like “all the failed plans come together to work in the end.” So maybe he finds the portal back to Planet Wisp, and discovers there that Seraph, Barry, and Dodon Pa have all been gathering Wisps to his cause. Obviously that wouldn’t make sense as-is, but something to that effect. But, ah, I’m rambling again.
So anyways, I wanted an ending that doubled down on what was supposed to make the episode funny in the first place, and to me, that meant finding the most ridiculously unlikely way home that can possibly be imagined. I was already considering how this episode would be highlighting Big’s incredible luck at making it out of so many situations alive when he really doesn’t have the skills to. That kind of thinking tends to get the concepts of branching timelines and alternate realities on the brain, which is probably what got me thinking about the preparations I’m making for the currently-delayed Sonic Prime special. And I decided from there how interesting it would be if Big’s luck was more than just an accident—then I decided to take it all the way. I thought that the ultimate culmination of this episode would be the suggestion that it is literally impossible for Big to get home. But he’s so lucky that he defies the balance of the multiverse in order to continue his journey, effectively rewriting reality to his will. Reminder that we’re still talking about Big the Cat.
So anyways, I decided that luring in the character formerly known as Yin-Yang Shadow would be the climax of the episode, but the details remained hazy as I began writing. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that sending Big home might not even be the best option. We already knew from Sonic Movie Special 2: Next Level Nexus that Yin-Yang Shadow and his mystery companion have been trying to build a team of “Prime Candidates,” and I had my ideas in mind for what that team would be. But I hadn’t considered the fact that the delay of the Prime Special would make one of my intended characters, who was available in this season but won’t be for the next, unusable. That character needed a replacement, and, while Big certainly isn’t an obvious choice to fill that role, I had just gotten through coming up with all the reasons that Big should be able to attract the attention of these multiversal protectors. And if he’s unique enough to get their attention, why wouldn’t he be unique enough to join the team?
The changes I needed to make from there were minor. I’d already decided on the idea of Froggy helping Big find this Paradox crystal to set the events in motion. And now, if Froggy simply does as Froggy does, and eats the dangerous magic gem, we would not only have a little extra excitement for the climax, but we would also end up with an unquestionably valid power for the team of Big and Froggy to have that they can use in their coming multiversal quest.
Of course, there’s also Yin-Yang Shadow himself to talk about. Or, should I say, Paradox the Hedgehog. And I suppose I should discuss Sonic Prime in general here. Last time we saw this character was in the Sonic Movie 2 Special, in April of last year. That was more than half a year before the airdate of Sonic Prime, but at the time I don’t believe the date was announced yet, and I wanted to be prepared early on in case the show was premiered without much warning. I teased the coming Sonic Prime Special in a mostly subtle way, by using shattering effects for his multiverse powers and making that one brief hint at the end of looking for a “Prime Candidate.” At that time, I figured that what I was leading into was a Special Episode that would have been written some time last year. I hadn’t yet decided if it would be my standard best-guess-at-the-details release-day celebration, or a more relaxed but fully informed follow-up to the show, or a two-parter that tries to accomplish both. As the date got closer and we still knew so little about the details of the show, I decided, given that Netflix (for some reason) likes to drop whole seasons at once instead of progressively airing episodes like a normal show, I would have the opportunity to binge the whole show in one weekend, then crack down on the Special quickly while the general audience is still watching the show.
Then the show aired. Or at least, one-third of the show aired. We already knew from the announcement that this show was written as a single 24-episode season, and then Netflix goes and releases a whole whopping 8 of them, with the audacity to call it “Season 1”. And now we know for sure that they’re calling the next incomplete batch, “Season 2”. It’s a scummy marketing tactic, taking one complete story and pretending like it’s 3 so you can “release” it 3 times. But, my distaste with Netflix aside, the result is that I don’t have enough of a show to make an episode out of. So, with regret, I chose to delay the Sonic Prime Special until, apparently, “Season 3” comes out, and we actually understand what the show is supposed to be about. That’s why I was rather pleased at the chance of bringing these hints back up in this episode, and expanding on them a bit. I wanted to remind readers that this is still coming, and confirm that it hasn’t been cancelled, while also making it look like I was actually just planning really far ahead. (I wasn’t.) Now, because of these multiple lead-ins, this is shaping up to be one of the most important over-arching stories of the series, which was definitely not part of the original plan.
Yin-Yang Shadow’s new name was a curious situation. This character has consistently been at the whim of last-minute ideas, and now is no exception. Basically, I got tired of that weird “Yin-Yang Shadow” name. It’s cumbersome to write, confusing for the readers, and especially awkward seeing as the in-universe characters would never refer to him as such (besides Movie Sonic, who never actually learned that his name was Shadow). But, after I already, over a year ago, decided to tie him closely in with the concepts of Sonic Prime, and given that his character is, in the most literal sense, a walking contradiction, giving him the new name of Paradox just felt obvious. It’s funny, because when I decided to make him important to Prime, we knew nothing about the “Paradox Prism” or any such use of the word.
Of course, there’s lots of other fun references and ideas to talk about in this episode. Barry and the space train, for example. For those who haven’t played yet, this was all one big reference to “The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog,” the free PC game the social media team put out for April Fools this year (and which Blacklight played and left some voiced commentary on). Barry is the name given to the character in the reveal trailer, and like with Hero, I decided that was the best route to take for choosing a canon name. I went through some debate over whether this weird piece of Sonic history should be considered canon, but in the end, I decided that the ridiculous factor was exactly what this episode needed. The concept of a “space train” probably felt pretty far out from left field, but to be fair, among the branching options for how the story ends, some of the options for what Barry can say they did after the story includes, in one breath, going to space and getting promoted to conductor. The implication was that these were exaggerations, but it’s not like any other parts of the story were really any less weird. To a very small extent, the concept was also vaguely inspired by the DC character “Space Cabbie.” It is what it sounds like. A decision also had to be made about Barry’s gender. They’re referred to exclusively by they/them in the original story, yet they’re clearly designed as a male animoid. Also appears to be more clearly attracted to females than males, not that that necessarily means anything (as Blacklight was quick to point out). It’s a question of whether the character was actually meant to be non-binary, or if the developers just wanted to save some money by not writing differing dialogue options for a user-selected gender. The developers have declined to respond to such questions, or so I’ve heard. So I’m inclined to assume the latter, but, in the end, I figured a bit of enbie representation wouldn’t hurt.
There’s also the debut appearance of Dodon Pa and the canonization of Team Sonic Racing. The game has already been loosely referenced, and of course, the Donpa Kingdom was mentioned explicitly in Frontiers (and equivalently in the Frontiers special), but there was still technically the option of low-tier “it didn’t happen quite the way you remember it” canon, which has now been removed in favor of pretty much complete acceptance. I’m always hesitant to embrace the weirder aspects of Sonic canon—the plot of that game really didn’t make any sense at all, there were some pretty significant out-of-character issues, and, excepting the existence of the Donpa Kingdom, it didn’t really contribute anything valuable to the canon. But that’s a very big exception, and, this being the alien season, the Donpa Kingdom was one aspect of the greater Sonic universe that I figured I shouldn’t ignore. While I was at it, I figured I should capitalize on the chance to showcase some of the uniquely weird aspects of the Donpa Kingdom that TSR talked about but never showed. I mean, an intergalactic motor company run by the ruling monarch of a planet of mythical creatures? That idea is nothing if not unique, but TSR just didn’t feel like elaborating on that. Technically, we don’t know that the Donpa Kingdom is inhabited by mythical creatures, but I think it’s a reasonable extrapolation. Dodon Pa himself explicitly is one. It could be that it’s an entire planet of Tanuki, but that raises an awful lot of questions. If what we know on Earth as a mythical creature is actually an alien from this other planet, what does that mean about our other myths? It would suggest that they all come from a similar source. Plus, if Earth, Planet Wisp, and Kaos are all multi-species planets, it stands to reason that the Donpa Kingdom is as well. And anyways, I think it’s more interesting that way.
Dodon Pa himself was actually a surprising challenge to write. His character in TSR is…a bit confusing. He spends 90% of the game with every word out of his mouth sounding intentionally over-the-top suspicious, but then we learn the full truth about him, and suddenly he doesn’t appear to have a malicious bone in his body—his goal is universal peace and clean, renewable energy. It’s really incongruous, and it was unclear if he was okay sharing all of his secrets with Eggman in the end because he thought Eggman incapable of causing any real harm, or because he simply didn’t care. Given his lack of concern over anyone’s safety, I’m inclined to think the latter. I decided it would be most practical to focus in on this aspect of his character, which meant downplaying his “universal peace” side a little bit. I’m sure this is still his stated goal, but I’m framing that more as a marketing slogan for his business. He’s a businessman first, a world leader second, and a “philanthropist” third, only because it makes him look good in those first two aspects. So, he’s happy to help Big get home. But only if Big does something for him in return. And when Big suggests an alternate option, Dodon Pa simply won’t have it, because that would ruin his business opportunity. That also means that he is perfectly okay with his products being used for illegal activities, as long as it isn’t made to be his problem, which is pretty much what happened with Eggman.
And lastly, we have the originators of this episode’s plot, the Pisceans. Funny story…I wrote this episode thinking that I made them up. I was quite convinced that I was building an alien species out of the vacuum, so I was free to design their appearance, architecture, and culture in whatever ridiculous ways I wanted. I’m not sure exactly how it is that I forgot, but somehow, the fact that this was originally meant to be an existing species in Sonic just completely vanished from my mind somewhere along the way. Here’s what I forgot.
These characters, Hokey and Pokey, are NPCs from the Crater Lake hub world of Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric. Even if you’re one of the few who played the game, I get the strange impression that you probably forgot about them too. Now, to be clear, I still have absolutely no memory of making any sort of decision to take inspiration from these characters. But Hokey (left) pretty much exactly matches the generic design I envisioned for all Pisceans, perhaps just a bit too short and hunched over. And, you know, the humanoid faces. So, what I assume happened is this. It was roughly February of 2021. Ahead of my upcoming episode, S2 E13 Non-Zero Chance, I was doing a quick re-watch of the full story content of Rise of Lyric. Roughly 6 months earlier, I had just completed my first full playthrough of Sonic and the Secret Rings, the very last 3D Sonic game missing from my list at the time. One of my biggest takeaways from that game was, unexpectedly, Big’s role, which was a total shock to me when I first learned about it. The fact that he had all these cameos akin to those of SA2, but with an actual background story put to it, was crazy to me as a Sonic fan. In his second to last journal entry from the game, he talks about being able to find Pisces in the Milky Way, and wanting to “meet him.” I had that simmering in the back of the brain as something I could use for a space/alien themed episode for Season 3. That same source of inspiration created the general backbone for this episode—Big is whisked to away to a strange place because someone mistakes him for a blue hedgehog, goes on a ridiculous and perilous journey where he keeps showing up in the background of important things, and somehow manages to survive through all the escalating danger. So that’s all relatively recent on the brain, and then I get to watching Rise of Lyric, and I see these two strange robot-alien-jellyfish characters who are completely out of place among the rest of the game’s NPC cast, and something makes me think, “That’s it. Those are my Pisceans.” Given that I was pseudo-canonizing RoL anyways, and that I was planning on addressing as many of its mysteries as possible, I suppose this one just felt like a no-brainer to explore in the Alien Season, and the Big episode felt like the easy place to put these aquatic aliens. It was such a quick and easy thought process that I made no effort plot it out, or take notes, or anything that would help the moment stick in my memory. So, two years later, any memory of the moment of inspiration was gone, and all I had left was a vague image of a species design.
So anyways, even though I wasn’t thinking about it when writing it, I will state plainly for the canon here that, yes, Hokey and Pokey are Pisceans, or at least are some related species using Piscean exoskeletons. Why they look different and how they ended up on Earth are another question entirely. Perhaps some other time.
Now it’s on to the trivia, I suppose.
And that is all for now! The Season Finale is in the works, so stay tuned!
-And until then, remember to live and learn every day!
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!
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!
With the release of Sonic Frontiers, we’ve suddenly taken the deepest official dive into the world and history of Sonic since 2008. It was pretty much inevitable that the game would end up stepping on the toes of this story here or there. Can’t say that I expected it to be quite this much, but hey, it’s a small price to pay for some great new story content.
Frontiers will be vital to the canon of The Chaos Project moving forward. As such, it falls on me to adapt The Chaos Project as much as necessary to get the new information from Frontiers to fit in suitably. The timeline page on this website has now been updated to reflect these adaptations. There’s only one major change, but it’s a biggie. The timeframe of Zero the Hedgehog’s life, which was previously shown as “10,000 years BE,” has now been adjusted to “Tens of Thousands of Years BE.” Discussions of the early interactions the Lords of Chaos had with the planet Earth have similarly been adjusted. In accordance with this change, the following episodes have been retconned to the correct new number:
A bunch of typos in those episodes were also corrected, which is a nice bonus. It is, of course, important to talk about why. The “tens of thousands” number is obviously taken straight from Frontiers. It’s the timeframe in which the Ancients arrived on Earth. According to both Eggman and Sage, there was no fully developed civilization on the planet at the time. So why, then, would I go out of my way to force a thriving and futuristic human civilization into existence during that exact timeframe? The truth is, it’s not the Ancients that I’m worried about. It’s the Chaos Emeralds. Without completely overhauling the entire history of The Chaos Project, I saw that I had three options.
Do you see it? Let me zoom in for you.
There it is. In this flashback, we see the Ancients piloting the Titans in one last effort to stop The End. And there, down on the surface of the planet, are lights. Manmade lights, spread across the continent, clear as day. There is no doubt there is an advanced, living civilization shown on that planet in this screenshot. Canonically speaking, this is the truth. What Sage and Eggman say elsewhere is simply their interpretation of apparently-incomplete data. They know how long ago the Ancients were here, and they don’t know of any civilizations that existed at the time, so the Ancients must have predated all of them. They simply don’t know about the human society that was already there, getting ready to wipe themselves out. (Quite unfortunately, I have already chosen to name these humans “the Ancients.” More on that later.)
Of course, there’s probably a simple explanation for all of this. They had a very pretty-looking model/texture made for Earth for the final boss fight, and they decided to use the same one for this earlier cutscene without actually considering the consequences. That would be a very “Sonic Team” thing to do. In any other context, I’d be happy enough to ignore this oddity for that reason. But since it works unbelievably well in my favor to use it as it’s presented, I’ve decided to do exactly that. And so, our good friends Gregor Robotnik and Nagashi Song are likely somewhere down on that planet at the very moment of that screenshot, waiting to make the discovery of their lives. So technically, they’ve now sort of appeared in an official Sonic game. Not something I was expecting to happen to any of my characters (who aren’t Johnny), but hey, it’s cool.
While this was the most relevant retcon made, there were a few other minor alterations that had to be dealt with. As mentioned earlier, there’s a slight issue with the fact that “the Ancients” is a concept which has already been mentioned in The Chaos Project in a way that is completely irreconcilable with Frontiers. This, of course, is technically the fault of Sonic Boom, since I was just using the concept they introduced, and Frontiers apparently had no issue with walking all over that concept. Regardless, in order to address this issue, the following change was made.
The rest of that episode, and all other references to the human Ancients, have been left unchanged. As much as I was hoping to reconcile the two different concepts of Ancients into one, that just wasn’t quite possible. Thus, there are now canonically two different civilizations which share that name. Those who don’t know about the Starfall Island Ancients, such as Lyric and the inhabitants of Bygone Island, will continue to refer to the humans as such. Those who do know about both (pretty much just Sonic, Tails, and Eggman right now) will probably refer to the ancient humans in a more specific way.
Also of note here is the existence of Sticks herself. As of Sonic Frontiers, she is, apparently, a canon character—one whom Amy knows personally and identifies as a friend she apparently hangs out with regularly. I am very frustrated by this decision. You don’t just pluck a character out of a dead universe and pretend like she’s always been here, that’s not how storytelling is supposed to work. You’re supposed to do what I did. Reintroduce the character. Let the audience know who the character is in this world, play off of their expectations a bit, maybe explain the differences in how this character met the main cast. Knowing Ian Flynn, the answer is probably, “Sticks appeared in Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, so obviously everyone already knows her, because everything is canon.” Ugh. If we’re saying that this actually is the same Sticks from the Boom world, meaning that everyone knows about the existence of the Boom world, and that Sticks somehow freely has the power to travel to and from it, that’s a whole different can of worms that’s been opened, let alone the “Mario is canon” issue. Regardless, I don’t have enough information to make a proper judgement at this time, so, for now, I’ve chosen not retcon this particular aspect of the episode. If the Sticks mentioned in Frontiers is indeed Boom!Sticks, then it makes perfect sense for this new Prime Sticks to introduce herself to Sonic as if they had never met, and they can talk about the fact that he already knows a different version of her offscreen in the days they spend together. No retcon necessary. On the other hand, if Amy was referring to some Prime version of Sticks that we haven’t met yet, it is absolutely possible that this is just an Amy thing, and Sonic has no idea who she’s talking about. Again, no retcon necessary. In fact, for all we know, this could be a completely unrelated character who happens to be named “Sticks.” Until the day that Sticks actually physically appears in some definitively canon material, this episode will be left the way it is. Same thing effectively goes for Tangle. A mention of the character does not canonize the entirety of the comic series, so the comics will remain on the non-canon list until proven otherwise.
One other change was made, which was simply the result of a bad prediction.
I’m vindicated in the fact that I predicted all that time ago that the inhabitants of the Starfall Islands were aliens, but, unfortunately, it didn’t end up making sense that the Titans themselves would be listed among things that make space travel dangerous. The End, on the other hand, fits the list quite nicely. How exactly Seraph would know about such things is a topic to be addressed in the upcoming episode.
That’s it. Those were the only changes made. Relatively few, all things considered. But there are still questions remaining. How do we explain the connection between the Gaias and the Emeralds? What’s the connection between the human Ancients and the Starfall Ancients? What does any of this have to do with Zero? The answers to come in future episodes of The Chaos Project.
On the topic of continuity, there is one other issue I’ve been avoiding, which I might as well come clean about here. As prepared as I was for a game like Sonic Frontiers to rip my canon to shreds, what I was not prepared for was Sonic Origins. It’s just a compilation of ports, games I’ve played at least a few dozen times each. How much damage could it do? Well, as it turns out, unlike Frontiers, which forced me to make just a few single-sentence edits here and there, Origins is asking me erase roughly half of Season 2, and rewrite it from scratch. If I were to do that, it would be about a year before I could make any more forward progress on the story, and the Season would be left far worse off for it. That is not even remotely close to worth my time.
The issue comes in the timeline placement of Sonic CD. Originally, it came out between Sonic 2 and Sonic 3. But the Sonic 2 story proceeds pretty contiguously from Sonic 2 all the way to Sonic & Knuckles, so there isn’t really any room to squeeze CD in the middle there. It’s always been a pretty binary choice, that CD either comes before 2 or after & Knuckles. Given the presence in CD of Metal Sonic, the model of Sonic robot that Eggman chose to stick with for the entire rest of the franchise, next to Silver/Mecha/Robo/whatever-you-want-to-call it, the bulky prototype model from Sonic 2, the choice seems obvious enough. You build the bulky prototype first, and then you slowly refine it into the highly specialized Sonic-like model that you keep. 2 comes first, CD comes last. It honestly surprised me to learn there was ever any real debate about that. But then Origins comes around, and aggressively insists that CD comes immediately after Sonic the Hedgehog 1—yes, “Sonic the Hedgehog 1“. I don’t get it. But this time around, there’s no dodging the issue in a way that still respects the newly-established canon.
The entire plotline of Season 2 depends heavily on the notion that CD comes after 2. The whole “Metal Sonic is actually Sonic” thing has no real impact without the added revelation that Metal Sonic met Tails before his transformation. This connection opens the dialogue between them. It gets Tails to see his point of view, and leads him down the rebellious path that it still affecting the story up to this very moment. It explains why Metal Sonic cared so much about Tails, why he saved his life, hence why Sonic saved Metal’s life, thus creating Cyber Sonic, whose dynamic with Tails once again depended entirely the ways his past lives knew Tails before his transformation. The Season completely falls apart without that one crucial detail. And so, even though I would have been happy to accept Origins as the definitive version of those Classic stories in any other circumstance, I was instead forced to demote Origins to a lower tier of canon—”it might have happened, just not exactly as you remember it/not in the same chronological order you remember it happening.”
And I think that’s everything! All appropriate pages and posts on this website have been updated to reflect the retcons and changes to canon made. With this, we’re ready to move on with the story! Part 2 of the Frontiers Celebration is just a few days away, so stay tuned!
-And until then, keep fightin’ the pain away! (The canon’s not quite in ruins)
Here we have what will quite probably be the longest episode of The Chaos Project. Ever. I thought the same thing about the Silver & Zero prequel, Zero Hour, which I decided didn’t need a strict maximum length due to its special nature. But then here I go making a regular episode almost 2500 words longer. It’s definitely not something I anticipated going into it. I wasn’t necessarily worried going into it that it would be too short, per se, just that I knew pretty well what was going to happen the second half, but was going in almost completely blind to the first half, so I had no idea how long or short it was going to end up. I had a pretty clear vision in mind for what White Arms society looks like, but I had no idea what parts of it would be relevant to show or explain, or how detailed those explanations would be. On the other side, while I did have a vision in mind for the scene of Luna training Shadow with his mental powers, I wasn’t sure how exactly I would lead into Shadow accepting that offer, or what exactly Luna’s argument would be for convincing him. So I just wrote, and wrote, and wrote, and suddenly I realized that I was 9500 words in (long enough to qualify as its own episode already) and the inciting incident hadn’t even happened yet. So from there, I rushed through everything that was left. The fight between Genesis and Saturn was shortened drastically, as was the fight between the Heralds and Gladius. A planned scene with Tails trying to talk to the Master System was cut out entirely. Sonic fighting his way out of the Dreamnet and across the battlefield was skipped over to get straight to him encountering the Manta. And even with all that, I still ended up at over 18,000 words. If I’d known going into this arc that it would end up this long, I would’ve absorbed a bit of material from part 1 and turned this whole thing into a 3-parter. But it’s too late for that now. I think it goes without saying that this extra length is also reason why this episode ended up being delayed by a week. I really wanted it out by the week of the anniversary/the release of Origins, but that proved simply impossible.
Length aside, I can also say that this might be one of my favorite episodes. Ever. Obviously there’s a lot of great episodes to choose from, and there’s going to be a lot more, but writing this one just brought me back to the good old days of Season 0, where I was telling more complete, well-rounded stories. In fact, these two episodes together were almost exactly the same length as a typical shorter Season 0 arc, about 30,000 words total. Significantly longer than my entire novelization of SA2, for a different comparison. Luna and Saturn may still feel like new characters after only two episodes, but technically, we’ve been on just as long of a journey with them as we were with Blacklight and Chaos in their respective introductions. Although, I suppose that’s technically not entirely true, given that our attention here was split between a lot more new characters than was typical back then. But back on topic, the things liked about this episode. I think my favorite part was the complex interplay between the character arcs of Shadow and Luna. Sure, maybe it’s a little on-the-nose for her secret backstory to be so similar to Shadow’s, but that similarity accomplished a lot. Throughout these episodes, despite their seeming friendliness, Luna and Saturn have been shown with all the typical indicators of firm villains. They spout plenty of talk about why their way is the right way, perhaps making a “good point,” but refusing to acknowledge the harm that’s done as a result, all combined with the seemingly undying love and support for their own kind, and disregard of others. Yet all this turns out to inspired by a backstory we’ve already seen before—one that was supposed to inspire a hero. This is as significant a realization to Shadow as it is to us. We’ve spent this time wondering how she can be defeated, but suddenly, there’s another way. And suddenly, that job is already done. Because all she needs to see to change her ways is that Shadow has done the same. Meanwhile, a sort of inverse is happening with Shadow. Over the course of these episodes, Shadow has been pushed down a darker path—doing whatever is necessary to return home — and all the while finding his interests aligned more and more closely to the villains’. It’s the reminder of what it is that he’s fighting for that puts him back on in the place he needed to be to support Luna in bringing her to that same place. I’m not sure how well the precariousness of that situation came across. When Luna was broken to her absolute core, a few wrong words from Shadow might have pushed her in the opposite direction—convincing her that he will never turn, and must be destroyed. But instead, he supported her. He reached out his hand, and she chose to take it. And the end result, I hope, is one of the strongest formations of a friendship I’ve ever been able to write.
Saturn, of course, is his own beast. I knew going into this episode that Luna would be getting the focus over Saturn, but given that, I’m still impressed with how Saturn was able to stand out on his own. In fact, in many ways, he probably ended up being the more interesting character of the two. The questionable conspiracy around Genesis’ identity is something I was thinking about going into the episode, but I wasn’t necessarily sure that it had a place in this particular episode. It turned out to be very helpful both for her and for Saturn. Doesn’t really help the fact that he was just sitting behind a door and making snarky comments for the whole first half of the episode, but that was also sort of a good thing. It showed who he is apart from the more stereotypical musclehead-wants-to-fight personality.
Black Rex, being a last-minute addition to the last episode, obviously wasn’t planned to exist in this one, but I think I squeezed it in well enough in spite of that. What proved a little more difficult was continuing Johnny and Seraph’s relationship, despite theoretically being planned a lot farther in advance. It simply needed to take a back seat to everything else that was happening, which made it difficult to progress in any meaningful way from where it was left off after their last episode. That lack of progress is going to make things more difficult next time, but it’s what I had to do.
Other than that, I don’t think I have much to say. The episode speaks for itself, I should hope. So, on to the trivia!
That’s all for trivia, but speaking of Frontiers, now is the time to talk about some news that was footnoted at the end of this episode. As of this day, as was the case almost exactly 6 years ago for Forces, The Chaos Project is officially on Sonic Frontiers break. Simply put, I’ve decided that right here is the optimal place to freeze the plot in order to have the best chance at integrating Frontiers into the future of the story in a meaningful way. As you may remember, doing this last time resulted in what we now know as the Forces of Chaos arc in Season 0. Imagine if I was halfway through that arc when Forces came out, and it had gone without the Forces-related content for all that time. It wouldn’t have made sense to squeeze it randomly into the second half while ignoring it in the first. It would have been a much duller story, wouldn’t you say? It was the right decision then, and I know that the same is true now. Thus, this will be the last numbered episode of The Chaos Project to come out until, at the soonest, the as-yet unannounced release date of Frontiers (most likely late November or early December). But until then, we still have plenty to look forward to, starting with part 2 of my discussion with Blacklight about the recent stream of Sonic news. From there, we have the continuation (possibly the entire remainder and conclusion) of Silver & Zero, as well as a potential tie-in special to Sonic Prime. With the extra time I’ll have instead of writing, we may see some other bonus content popping up as well, so stay tuned!
-And until next time, remember to live and learn every day!
Happy early Empire Day to you all! Celebrate with this new massive Eggman-free episode of The Chaos Project! Read it right here!
The three Black Heralds have been united. And their combined power could spell disaster for the White Arms. Enlisting the help of Sonic and friends, the hope of ever getting Shadow back seems to grow ever more slim. The Arms Race has reached the point of war. And there are Hedgehogs on both sides.
The Chaos Project: Sonic the Hedgehog 