>>23904
>A. I think you're reading too far into the writer's intent there.
It's clearly intentional. Especially starting in that game, where they confirm Shadow was made for good purposes and not evil.
>B. That works just as well without the whole alien thing, because Shadow was always an artificially created being. Being able to instill a soul into that is an achievement in itself.
Well if you wanted to make a real argument, you could say that Sonic Battle establishes that GUN wanted to use Gerald's work (in that case, Emerl) for war, and Gerald was trying to make sure Emerl had a soul so he couldn't be fully corrupted, and obviously the implication is that a similar thing happened with Shadow, so the aliens aren't needed as an antagonistic force to establish that. Of course, to see the text only cutscenes that establish that, you need to beat Sonic Battle twice, and fuck that. But I still count that. There's no reason you can't think that both GUN and the Black Arms are dangerous forces.
>Hell, one of the main elements of the story is that you don't know who can be trusted.
Exactly, so maybe Black Doom is lying. It's not much of a twist. It's just something you're left wondering about throughout the game.
>But of course, no, can't just leave a perfectly good backstory alone, gotta add a fanfic-tier retcon that Shadow was part alien all along.
I don't mind expanding upon it. And ultimately, the ending of the game is that it doesn't matter anyway. Which is actually quite a fitting end for a character that is literally an attempt to copy Sonic. I mean, maybe not as fitting as him just dying in the game he was meant to die in, but Heroes already fucked that up. And I still enjoy the stories after he came back, so fuck it.
>In Shadow, Gerald was working with fucking objectively evil and bad news aliens,
Maybe they could have just asked what he was up to, to find out he was saving the world. Gerald was actually even more good than they initially thought.
>Adding more words to their backstories isn't automatically more depth.
Not necessarily. In this case I'd say it did. There is more characterization and motivation, even in ways that we can debate the morality of various characters' actions. I'd say that's a form of depth.
>We already new Gerald was a good guy before he went nuts over Maria's death,
I don't think we necessarily did. Again, until Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic Battle, we don't know what he was really up to. Maybe his whole thing was always to take over the world, for all we knew.
>because he was the one to endanger the entire Ark in the first place
Victim blaming. He didn't summon the aliens. He just enacted a plan to save the world from them.
>We didn't need Shadow to be part evil alien, because we already went through that character arc with him starting evil in SA2 but rediscovering his sense of compassion by the end.
Well that isn't the plot of Shadow the Hedgehog, so that's fine. He starts neutral and confused, and his arc isn't about finding compassion, but a sense of self.
>And we didn't need aliens for him to decide to put the past behind him.
No, I'm sure they could have done it many different ways if that was the character arc they wanted to use. But I don't mind that that's the way they chose. They wanted some bad guy that wasn't Eggman or Gun or Sonic, and this works. I suppose they could have went with another god, that would have worked pretty much the same way. But I don't exactly mind what they did use.
>none of this stuff you mention necessitated bringing in bland generically evil aliens with no real character or plot to them beyond "we're evil".
I'm not really mad about characters being somewhat one-dimensional in a Sonic game. That's not to say all or even most characters in the series are. Indeed, this game in particular is about trying to make Shadow more fleshed out than before (and he was already not at all one dimensional), but I don't mind there being evil aliens as a concept.
>Make it commissioned by G.U.N. that they then had to cover up with the raid.
Yeah that's pretty good, actually, but would also pretty much make GUN unquestionably evil, and I don't think they ever intended that, even though they do seem pretty evil in some of the things they do, but that's clearly unintentional.
>And in the end, the whole intrigue from Heroes about Shadow possibly being a clone, an actually interesting narrative, is practically dropped in favor of these dumbass aliens, only existing in a single route in the game.
Considering there are hundreds of routes, you're wrong. It exists in dozens of them by virtue of them sharing levels and scenes. Also, the whole game is Shadow questioning his own identity, so him maybe being a clone (or even a robot) is central to the whole story, with the ending being that he doesn't care and it doesn't matter anyway. I'd say that's a very good way to work with that intrigue and build a story off of it.
And then if you're really autistic and want to know, there actually is an answer in the game, but it's basically a secret easter egg.
>There's a reason the Black Arms and everything concerning them were dropped harder than even Mephiles. Sega realized it was one of the stupidest ideas they ever brought to the franchise.
Well considering they had a comics arc about them and Mephiles hasn't, that's incorrect. Not that I think Sega is particularly aware of what goes on in most of the comics. The main reason both were dropped is because Sonic isn't allowed to have a story anymore after '06 (and sort of Unleashed), so Shadow was basically dropped as well, and Rouge, and even Knuckles. Everyone except Sonic, Tails, Amy, and Eggman only appeared in bit parts for the last 15 years, except for in Forces, which still basically had an ironic excuse plot just disguised as a real plot. Oh, and I guess Knuckles was in Sonic Boom, but that hardly counts, and doesn't discount the fact that the vast majority of the cast stopped appearing and serious stories don't happen anymore.