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Shadow the Hedgehog: More Tragic than Edgy

Sonic the Hedgehog is one of my favorite franchises. Not because of its fast momentum based platforming or rockin’ soundtrack across all its games, but because of its large cast of iconic and recognizable characters and the stories they tell. Whether it’s the classic squad of Tails, Knuckles, Amy Rose, or the comic characters like Bunny Rabbot from Archie or Whisper and Tangle from IDW, or even the mad scientist Dr. Eggman and his humorously dark schemes, the cast of Sonic is what helps make the franchise so iconic. However, one character of the cast holds a strong and special place in my heart. A character that has a lot of strong tragedy attached to him, yet still remains strong of heart and soul. A character that so many writers have failed to understand despite him being pretty easy to figure out. That character (which you already know since it’s in the title of this blog) is Shadow the Hedgehog.

Shadow was created on the Space Colony ARK, a secret government science and research station in space, as part of Project Shadow. The purpose of Project Shadow was to act as the first step in achieving immortality, by creating a creature that could be immune to any disease and act as a base for cures to be created from. The project was led by Gerald Robotnik, the grandfather of Dr. Eggman. His purpose for running this project was to create a cure for his granddaughter Maria, who was sick with Neuro-Immune Deficiency Syndrome (basically AIDS). The project required Gerald to research into the Chaos Emeralds, seven powerful gems which when combined can give its user immense speed and strength. Researching the power of the Emeralds led to Gerald creating Chaos Drives, little artificial shards of Chaos Energy that would be used as a battery by the Guardian Unit of Nations, aka GUN, for their robotic drone technology. It also led Gerald to discover the ruins of Angel Island where the Emeralds were located, along with an old mural depicting a powerful being of gold fighting against an evil force. This mural would become the blueprint that Gerald would use for Project Shadow, but all efforts to follow it failed. That is, until he gained assistance from an unlikely source. A powerful empire known as the Black Arms had traveled past Earth, and during their time near the planet they struck a deal with Gerald. Black Doom, leader of the Black Arms, would offer the genetic material that would help Gerald create The Ultimate Lifeform, in exchange for the Chaos Emeralds 50 years after completion of the project. Gerald agreed, and with the blood of Black Doom, he began creating what would become the Bio-Lizard, and Shadow the Hedgehog.

After Shadow’s creation, he was placed in the same area of the Space Colony ARK that Maria was quarantined since Shadow was created to be completely immune to all diseases. The two grew very close during their time together, growing into what would become a sort of brother/sister relationship. Maria would become the closest to family and love that Shadow would ever feel. However, when the United Federation caught word of Shadow’s creation and the deal that Gerald had made with the Black Arms, they immediately demanded that the project be shut down and all those involved would be either detained or executed for attempted treason. Gerald was immediately arrested, and Maria was shot dead after launching Shadow in an escape pod headed towards Earth. However, Shadow was found and put into cryogenic stasis and Gerald was imprisoned on Prison Island. Since the government still required his research for their experimental drone tech, they kept Gerald locked away and forced to create enough Chaos Drives for GUN to make effective use of and reverse engineer. This period of time had Gerald spiral into contempt and hatred for his captors, resulting in him reprogramming Shadow while he was in stasis with artificial memories to have the same contempt and hatred for humanity that he had. After Gerald was executed, Shadow was locked deep within Prison Island and would be almost forgotten by those that imprisoned him. That is, until the events of Sonic Adventure 2, where Gerald’s grandson Dr. Eggman found Shadow and intended to use him to conquer the world. However, Shadow’s own goal wasn’t to conquer the world, but to destroy it as an act of revenge for Maria. As a cruel act of forcing hatred onto his creation, Gerald had reprogrammed Shadow to destroy the world that took Maria from them both. However, this wouldn’t be what Maria wanted. What Maria really wanted was for Shadow to not let the tragedy on the ARK lead him to destroying all of humanity. So many more people existed on that planet than those that raided the ARK, and even a child like Maria knew that it wasn’t all of them that killed her. However, her grandfather gave in to his rage and spite as it stew away in a prison cell. He let his pain of losing his granddaughter lead him down a road of bloody revenge against the whole world, when the whole world wasn’t responsible for it. This was the ultimate theme of SA2, that even though humans can be cruel and terrible people, they all shouldn’t be judged for the mistakes and sins of isolated groups and individuals in it. This lesson would cost Shadow his own life, as he sacrificed himself to protect the world from being destroyed by the Space Colony ARK as it was crashing towards Earth like a giant meteor.

However, Sonic Heroes would reveal that Shadow was saved at the last minute by Eggman, as he intended to copy his grandfather’s work to make multiple copies of Shadow for his Eggman Empire. Shadow wasn’t on board with that, and reluctantly teamed up with GUN agent Rouge the Bat and a neglected robot named E-123 Omega who wanted to destroy Eggman for locking him away for too long. After they went through the events of Sonic Heroes, Shadow was left wandering the world, as he had lost his memories when he was found and resurrected from the dead. This would lead to Shadow’s own game, where Black Doom and his army of The Black Arms returned 50 years later to fulfill the end of the bargain that Gerald had made. Shadow doesn’t even know what Doom is talking about, but he reluctantly goes along with it in the hopes that he’ll be given proper answers on why he was created and what his purpose for existing is. Once he collects all seven of the Chaos Emeralds, Shadow is told that he was created to act as a sleeper agent for the Black Arms. To assist them, in conquering and enslaving Earth for their empire. Shadow, remembering the dying wish of his closest family Maria, rejected this plan and used the Chaos Emeralds to become Super Shadow. Using this power, he destroyed Black Doom and the Black Arms vessel The Black Comet with the Eclipse Cannon, a weapon that Gerald created as a means of stopping the Black Arms when they returned. With his memories back to him and having destroyed almost every remaining reminder of his past, Shadow leaves the ARK behind him and enlists in GUN. While this may seem like an odd decision since GUN was responsible for the ARK raid that killed Maria, Shadow was more focused on using them to assist in protecting the world that Maria could only ever see from the cold vacuum of space.

So what can be gleamed from all this? Well, Shadow’s backstory when you look into all the details is rather tragic. He was created with good intentions being put upon him, that his existence will lead to a greater future for humanity. However, that was thrown right out the window when one of his creators lost everything that mattered to him and reprogrammed him to be a weapon against the world, while his other creator always intended to use him as a weapon to destroy and control. He was forced into being a weapon of rage and revenge by his creators, with the only person who genuinely loved him for who he was dying right in front of him, and having lost so much in his life. Shadow lost everything to him, and he wasn’t even really sure of what he was meant to do. He knew that he was The Ultimate Lifeform, but that title is the only thing he really had to him. There was, however, one person that showed him that he wasn’t so strong: Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic was someone who was equal in speed and power to Shadow, even surviving an escape pod that was rigged to explode using an artificial Chaos Emerald created by Tails to teleport out of the explosion. Sonic is a carefree, relaxed, and strong of heart hero that Shadow as created in the image of. Remember that mural I mentioned Gerald finding when researching the Chaos Emeralds? That was the mural in the Knuckles boss fight in Sonic 3 & Knuckles. It depicted the final fight of that game with Super Sonic destroying Eggman’s Death Egg. Shadow was intended to be the Ultimate Lifeform, but he comes to find that he was really just created in the image of Sonic, the real Ultimate Lifeform. This discovery would lead to Shadow having grown to respect Sonic as an equal, but still wanting to prove himself as the stronger hedgehog with the playful rivalry they’d develop.

With all this said, you’d think Shadow would be seen as a really cool dude. Someone who is really strong but not keen on taking the spotlight as much. Kinda like the Black and White Rangers from the Power Rangers franchise. You’d be wrong, unfortunately. Shadow has not really been given the kind of respect that he deserves as many harsh critics of the franchise see Shadow as an “edgy tryhard”. This label is mostly attributed to Shadow’s game and the English localization that had Shadow saying damn, as well as the whole concept of Shadow using realistic looking firearms being an extremely ridiculous idea for a franchise that was mostly seen as a child’s game franchise. This criticism has stuck with Shadow for about 15 years now, with people still mocking and joking about Shadow being “edgy”, as if that’s an automatic bad thing.

The whole criticism of a character or franchise being edgy doesn’t really make sense to me. So something is edgy. So what? Why is it a bad thing if something wants to be darker than what you expect? People always throw edgy around at things to the point where even I don’t know what it means anymore. Regardless, with all that I’ve said about Shadow as a character and his backstory, I’m hopeful that I’ve shown some of you why this hedgehog is the coolest of them all. And perhaps in the future, I can go a bit further talking about what I see in him and what he means to me.

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Breath of the Wild VS Twilight Princess: Open World or Guided Goals?

Open World Action Adventure games. They’re all over the market and there’s likely no chance of them going away. It’s pretty easy to think that these games take no effort, but designing a gigantic map with different landscapes, biomes, towns, and proper enemy spawn locations takes a lot of time, money and manpower to create. And The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is one of those games that certainly took a lot of time to make. Originally planned for Nintendo’s best dust collecting device, the Wii U, the game was met with a multitude of delays from 2014 to 2017, and even being released onto their newest console, the Nintendo Switch, with Shigeru Miyamoto famously saying “A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is forever bad”. While this quote would later be mocked with the heavily delayed release of Mighty No. 9 later in 2017, Miyamoto was right. Breath of the Wild, despite its delays, was met with universal critical acclaim, winning Game of the Year at the annual Game Awards 2017, and even having a direct sequel announced and in development at E3 2019. But as time went on, as it always does, opinions towards Breath of the Wild started to sour. With people presenting complaints for its barren open world, brittle weapon durability, and complete lack of character from our main protagonist, that people were starting to cast doubt upon whether it was even good in the first place. Now this is nothing new. Game franchises that have been around for decades are likely to have people question the quality of some installments. Just ask Sonic the Hedgehog fans today what they think of Colors compared to Black Knight then when those games came out. But Zelda fans are a bit different. The Zelda franchise has had a set formula for almost about a decade since Ocarina of Time was released in 1998. A simple dungeon full of puzzles to solve, some monsters to deal with, and a special weapon that helps with defeating the boss of said dungeon. It’s a formula that worked for a long time, and only was Breath of the Wild released itself from that cycle its forefathers created. However, while some cycles should be broken, the one that Zelda was in wasn’t really in need of a change. People will say that you often have to change up a series’ gameplay to keep it fresh, but I don’t think that’s true. Call of Duty has been keeping people invested in its games for decades, and it doesn’t change much outside of minor additions, for better and for worse. But the core of the gameplay stays the same. Twilight Princess, in my own humble opinion, was the game that took the most advantages it could with the set Zelda gameplay formula. With the best dungeons in the series, and a story that had a lot more depth than most other entries before and after it. Meanwhile, Breath of the Wild went so far away from the set formula you’d be mistaken for thinking it was a completely different game. So between a massive open world and a set structure of events, which of the two is a better direction for the Hero of Hyrule to go down?

Breath of the Wild has itself set on breaking its formula from the very start. You aren’t a village child or a farmhand; you’re a random dude in his undies waking up from a century long slumber in a water bed, and being given an alien looking smartphone. Complete with a map, camera, and telescope to help you explore this massive world. Even as you enter into the open world, you’re situated atop a plateau, complete with everything you’ll need to learn about how this world works. From weather climate, to resource gathering, to even cooking meals and sneaking past fights you can’t win. It’s quite the departure from what we’ve come to expect. That is, if you’ve only played major Zelda games after 1998. In interviews, the developers said they wanted to go back to the roots of how this series started. With a big world that you don’t really know how it works, but steadily guide you towards what you can do, what you need to do, and how to do things. It certainly has that feel, with the entire intro of the game setting up everything that you’ll be doing in the game. From dealing with enemy camps that hold helpful resources, to climbing towers on loan from one of Ubisoft’s old open world games, to going through Shiekah Shrines to learn the basic abilities your smartphone can use. Such as freezing objects in place, picking up metal boxes, and blowing stuff up with two types of bombs. It’s a lot of stuff to learn that’s steadily leading to you learning more about the state of this version of Hyrule. In this version, Ganon has technically won. The world is in ruins, the people are isolated, there’s monsters running around everywhere, and Zelda is keeping Ganon locked away inside the castle as best she can. It creates a serene, but almost horrifying apocalypse where giant spider bots are roaming the world and blasting people to ashes. It’s quite a daunting adventure ahead, and the gameplay reflects this. Weapons are incredibly brittle, almost as if they haven’t been maintained for a century. Even the most legendary of Royal Guard armaments break after constant use despite looking so expertly constructed. From a narrative perspective, it makes sense. The world is in ruins and you have to find what you can to get an edge against the monsters that roam the world. But from a gameplay perspective, it creates the unfortunate result of collecting a lot of powerful weapons that you will never use because you wanna save them for when you need them. Except you never really will need them because you can run past most enemies in the game and they’ll give up chasing you, especially when fighting enemies into the mid-game doesn’t give you rewards that feel worth it. Oh wow, a shiny rock. I’m glad I used up my Soldier’s Greatsword on those Bokoblins to get it. I’m sure that’ll be worth something to someone. Turns out, it might be, but only to upgrade your armor with pieces of junk you collect from the open world to make yourself tankier. Combat in open world games often has to exist to give the player something to easily do when they start up the game, or create some kind of challenge. But when you can literally go anywhere, even to the final boss right away and fight them with only the weapons you can carry and whatever you found in the castle, it makes the combat in Breath of the Wild not all that worth it. Even when many high skilled players discover new ways of breaking the games physics and mechanics to get themselves some massive combat advantages, it doesn’t really feel satisfying when the rewards aren’t worth it. While its certainly worthy of praise that Nintendo have made an extremely open world with all kinds of directions you can go, it’s not nearly as satisfying to beat a game when the challenge keeps going down and down, and there’s not enough story motivation to get character invested players to keep going. Combat has to have enough of a satisfying reward for players to seek it out. It can be anything from a sense of character progression, to just the satisfying feeling of combat itself. Breath of the Wild struggles with these two things so often simply because combat has no direct changes outside of dodge, flurry attack, repeat, that all those special methods of combat feel like too much effort. Dominant Strategy dictates that players will always use the most effective method of overcoming obstacles in a game, and Breath of the Wild’s Dominant Strategy is basically playing Dark Souls for little kiddies. Stat buff meals and potions don’t mean anything if the combat doesn’t have a satisfying feel to it that makes it worth seeking out, or rewards that encourage facing greater threats.

By contrast, Twilight Princess is so much of a Zelda game it’s dripping with Ocarina of Time’s Happy Ending massage aftermath. The game starts out with Link living in a small rural forest village with his horse, working as a farmhand who herds goats, and even enjoys spending time with the village children, indulging in their praise of his super cool sword and slingshot skills. Twilight Princess does a good job of setting up a status quo. Almost too good of a job. A common criticism of the game is the entire intro before the first dungeon. It goes to great lengths to establish what your home was like before the twilight began to spread, and it even has a few dumb story moments. Like your village crush Ilia taking your horse away because of a minor injury it took from jumping over a fence. Despite Epona not even being her horse. Then there’s Link giving his training sword to a child just to get your horse back. Would’ve been helpful to fight back against those invading Bulbins if I had that glorified stick. Thanks, Talo, you little twerp. All that ends up happening to you and your friends is entirely your fault. The giant wall of Twilight that cuts off the forest? Well, I can’t blame a child for encroaching darkness. That would be too far. However, that same darkness is also where another criticism of this game comes up. “Oh no! Link’s been turned into a furry! Guess this game is responsible for my diaperfur fetish.” Obvious joke against a community that the internet has yet to accept as just another part of itself aside, Wolf Link’s gameplay is not really all that well utilized. It’s fairly simply exploration in an animal form that will be responsible for a number of young folk’s sexual discovery. It has you exploring the segments you’ll later explore as your normal form so that you can get some idea of the state of that region. After getting the Master Sword, the wolf form becomes something that you can use for easy fast travel through the portals you’ve unlocked, and going through areas that would be too difficult for your normal form to travel through. There is, however, one big thing that Wolf Link helps you unlock. Before you enter the first dungeon, you have a run-in with a golden wolf that lunges at you and sends into a foggy void where a Stalfos named Shade teaches you a number of combat abilities. While they appear to be situational to some extent, they do a lot to spice up the combat and give you more available options when fighting monsters. And the only way to get these special combat moves is to find special Triforce Wind Stones around the map where you howl along to old classic songs from the previous Zelda games. With these moves, you’ll have much more combat options when fighting enemies like the Darknut, who acts as the mini-boss of the Temple of Time dungeon, but becomes a common enemy in the final dungeon where they appear in almost every room one after another. It’s a great escalation of challenge while giving the player the skills that they have to find for themselves without making the fights easier, as the Darknuts are tanky fights that you can’t so easily cheese like the toughest of enemies in Breath of the Wild.

Which reminds me. I haven’t actually talked about the dungeons in Breath of the Wild. Though honestly, the dungeons themselves don’t have a lot to talk about. It’s basically running around a giant mech and activating four panels before fighting the boss of it which can be easily cheesed with enough bomb arrows and rushdown attacks. As well as making use of the dungeon’s special environment controls to change one thing about the environment. While it’s likely they made the dungeons all follow the same rhythm to give players the option to explore each dungeon in a different order of their choice, it doesn’t really help these dungeons not feel like a bit of an afterthought compared to the real meat and potatoes of BotW. The Shrines. These suckers are all over Hyrule and each reward you with a Spirit Orb. Said Orb can be used to get either Heart Containers or Stamina Boosts when you give four of them to any Goddess Shrine in the world. These Shrines can have you solving a physics puzzle, going through an obstacle course, solving a memory puzzle, or just straight up fighting an enemy of specific difficulty. While these can be fun little challenges, the major reward you get from them can become extremely predictable and somewhat tiresome. Early game, I was finding shrines to help level up my health so I can better face the enemy, but about halfway through the game I grew tired of doing the shrines because they just weren’t worth it when I already had a lot of health and stamina. Yet if you want to get the classic iconic tunic that Link has always worn without having to search through amiibo scalpers for Legend of Zelda amiibos that give you Links tunic, you have to go through all 120 Shrines to get it. So while you will be jacked as all get out when you get all the shrines and you’ll have a classic tunic for when you fight Calamity Ganon, the final boss fight itself ends up being way easier than most other challenges you’ve faced up to that point, so the effort of leveling yourself up and getting all these big upgrades doesn’t feel like it’s being used against a foe that really deserves the kind of punishment you can dish out.

Despite all my negativities surrounding Breath of the Wild, I do think it’s a good game and an admirable product. The scale of the world is impressive, with so many moments when I just stopped moving and took in all the beautiful scenery. It’s a good game and a good Zelda game. I just feel that the difficulty balance, the lack of protagonist characterization, and very basic dungeon design keep it from being my favorite of the series. As for Twilight Princess, it will always be my personal favorite of the franchise. From its characters, to its dungeons, to its sword combat, to just the whole experience as a whole, it’s what I immediately think of when I think of Legend of Zelda. And if you feel the same way about Breath of the Wild, I think that’s great. I just wanted to share what personal issues I had with BotW now that it’s been three years since it came out.

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Welcome

This blog acts as a way for me to express my thoughts and opinions on whatever happens to be on my mind with anyone who’s interested. It could be music, video games, comics, or anything else in the entertainment world. Most of the things I will be reviewing and talking about will primarily be stuff labeled as “edgy” as I feel that title has caused people to believe that if anything is considered that, it’s automatically bad. My efforts on this blog are to help show people that edgy stuff isn’t automatically bad, and can actually be quite beautiful in the stories they tell.