aceofsheeps

[aceofsheeps]

Sonic Forces should have been Sonic Frontiers

Alright here's my little mess of an opinion and idea:

As someone who’s only played the video games, I think the two most recent games are lacking compared to past games but could have easily been more interesting had they combined both ideas.

Sonic Forces and Sonic Frontiers had a similar vibe and similar mission layouts. However, Sonic Forces is by far the worst Sonic game I have ever played. Forces was basically an angry overconfident jackal gets mad he got smacked once by Shadow and decides to destroy the world. While Infinites character design is interesting and the voice acting was amazing, I think his motive is lacking greatly. His battle with Shadow could’ve had a little more of something. A second fight maybe. Or perhaps show how devastating of a loss it was for him to lose his team. We have an idea of his background but we see nothing and feel nothing about him other than he looks and sounds cool. What made him the ultimate mercenary? And yes I know there’s a comic, I haven’t read it, but I’m going solely off the games.

Then we have the custom character — Avatar — who serves no real purpose to the story. Alternate sonic also served no purpose to the story and felt completely random. This game could’ve been made better had they replaced these characters with Sonic’s team. Whiles Sonic escapes early on, Tails or Knuckles could have gone to save Sonic and eventually split off for their missions.

The missions themselves were extremely short and easy. Especially the boss fights. I’ve struggled in other Sonic games with at least one or two boss fights but I ran through Forces without a problem. It felt almost like a Mario boss fight to me. Overall the game was fast, easy and short. It could’ve easily been fleshed out more.

Now Sonic Frontiers, while decent, was what Sonic Forces should’ve been without the taking over the world bit. It had a similar vibe, alternate reality with the phantom ruby vs cyberspace. It’s missions were clustered with past Sonic game references much like Forces. However, the storyline brought back the Ancients from Sonic Adventure and a bit of their story before going extinct. I wish it was explored deeper though. A majority of the game was collecting the chaos emeralds 4 times, talking to Sage and Sonic’s friends without getting a whole lot of information, and helping little stone dudes (Koco’s) move on to the afterlife. The game was a little on the tedious side with the collection of hearts, wrenches and medals to talk to your friends. The missions were a little longer than forces but with added sub goals a little like Sonic and the Secret Rings but on easy mode. The boss fights were a step up, but still rather easy once you know what to do. For example, the fight with the second titan, Wyvern, required you to parry and then beat the shit out of it. Same with Knight. The only real way to struggle here is to not level up your attack and defense.

Now here’s what I think should’ve been done…more or less.

Sonic Frontiers could have done away with cyberspace and instead combined the ideas of Forces to it’s plot. Perhaps the Ancients created the Phantom Ruby, or an original one that eggman later replicates. Infinite becomes a deuteragonist with the main antagonist being The End. The End would be a being who can warp time and/or space, would still have been trapped by the Ancients but this time in the Phantom Ruby which grants Infinite the ability to manipulate reality. Infinite could have been sent to find this ancient relic, remove his ego pre-Infinite and show us the despair he felt losing his team so that his search and lust of power can make a little more sense, maybe he hopes to achieve reversing whatever had happened in the past and save his team.

It could play out with Sonic’s friends being imprisoned in a warped reality/time-space much like how they’re trapped between cyberspace and the real world in Frontiers. The titans still seal The End within the Ruby, Sonic can have his very existence warp between realities and non existence as he’ll be jumping through realities to save his friends, instead of cyber corruption which frankly makes little sense. Infinite could use the titans against Sonic, unknowingly breaking the seal upon the phantom ruby. This could either be purely accidental or through quiet manipulations from The End. Sonic Ultimately prevents Infinite from saving his team from their fate so that their current reality doesn’t crumble. However, with the destruction of the Titans The End Breaks free. Throw in Sonic popping into the ancient past to witness the fall of the Ancients every once in a while throughout the game. Lastly, while I liked Sage, I think she played a rather small role in Frontiers as she mostly gave us the run-around for about 80% of the game. I think she could’ve been saved for a future game. But if she would play a part in a Forces x Frontiers fusion, maybe she’s an AI with a physical body — or not — who somehow discovers an anomaly and goes to Sonic for help. She can still be mysterious with her intentions but she’ll play like a support character much like Merlina (Sonic and the Black Knight) and Shahra (Sonic and the Secret Rings).

And bring my boy Shadow in!

[aceofsheeps]

ARCANE: Mel’s End Scene Explained

I originally wrote this for my Medium page, 2 years ago(?) but wanted to start posting here too. I prefer the format over on Medium but it be like that. __________________________________________________________ There are many theories already on whether this end scene is just lighting the scene and dramatizing the horror of the ongoing event caused by Jinx, which it no doubt is. It’s a good transition. A slow fade from black, and then a shine of the gold that indicates something dangerous is going to happen. We’ve seen these kinds of things across different animations, anime and cartoons. For example, the common occurrence of this transition is usually visualized by a black screen followed by another effect, such as a silver sparkle of a blade before it’s shot at a protagonist. Unfortunately, I’ve had a difficult time finding examples and the best I could find is Volke’s Lethality from Fire Emblem, but I’m sure you get the point.

re-watching that specific scene again, I’ve noticed a few things that support the theory of Mel having some sort of magical ability. Personally, I believe it includes something similar to foresight, almost like a Spidey-sense.

Right before the rocket makes contact with the window, we see Mel looking at Jayce. She’s smiling after their successful voting on the peace between Piltover and Zaun. However, we can see her expression abruptly change, while Jayce remains the same. She’s alert. Her head tilts upwards like she’s sensing something and she frowns. Seeing as Jayce doesn’t look too concerned in this shot, we can assume it’s something only Mel is aware of. She knows something’s up.

Now the next shot of Mel starts off with a black screen. Then, the gold decoration slowly glows from left to right. We already know this works as just a transition scene and is most likely a reflection of the light above them. She’s our focal point. However, looking closely — although it’s difficult to see in the above GIF — there’s this distortion and chromatic aberration (seen below). It looks like an alarm. She is sensing this attack. This is what gives me the idea that she has some kind of ability to sense incoming danger. To add to this, if you listen to the scene at first you hear the rocket, but then it grows quiet. And after this brief silence you hear a musical-esque ringing. Something magical is happening here. However, given the first scene, she notices it before she starts to glow. This means this isn’t the source of her ability to sense anything but maybe an effect being activated.

Next up is her attire. You can see that the back of her dress covers a majority of the gold decorative onlay. However, when the scene comes you can see way more than what we should be able to see, assuming the black portion of her dress is transparent. If the purpose of showing the entire design — of whatever you want to call her gold decoration — wasn’t to imply some sort of ability, showing just the portion you��d expect to see off of her would do just fine. Unless of course, they just wanted a reason to show off her design. Given what we know about Arcane so far, it’s unlikely this was the only reasoning.

The three factors that lead me to believe there’s more than just editing tricks going on here are Mel’s expression and reaction, the effects surrounding her, and her attire overall. We also know this is something added on once she became older, as the younger version of her has no gold on her body whatsoever. It’s also likely now a permanent part of her as we never see her without it afterwards, meaning this could be a defensive tool or effect.

On a side note, the design looks similar to Zhonya’s Hourglass. Does anyone else see this or just me?

If Mel was a champion in League, how do you think they would go about fitting in this supposed ability to sense danger? A passive shield that activates upon taking damage perhaps?