straightforwardly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
straightforwardly) wrote2021-05-23 12:05 pm
straightforwardly) wrote2021-05-23 12:05 pm
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238 | Sonic Adventure DX, aka nostalgia hours
The other week, I started a replay of the first Sonic Adventure (the Steam version). Today, I beat it. I played the GameCube version a lot as a kid—I think the only games that had a bigger emotional impact on me back then were Sonic Adventure 2 and Star Ocean: The Second Story—but I never actually beat it back then (though I did watch my big brother beat it). And, unlike with SA2, I’d never revisited it as an adult, which means this was my first time actually beating the game. And, oh do I have feelings.
I played the routes in this order: Sonic, Amy, Knuckles, Tails, Big, Gamma
As I was replaying, I was thinking about how it’s actually kind of funny that SA2’s my favorite, because that one’s all about OUTER SPACE and GENETIC EXPERIMENTS and ARTIFICIAL BIOLOGICAL LIFEFORMS and just, very sci-fi in a way that I’m not actually into, whereas SA1’s all about TIME TRAVEL and GHOSTS* and WATER DRAGONS and ANCIENT RUINS, which are all things that I go absolutely wild over. I suppose that’s just the power of my love for Shadow, haha. (Though I do also love Chaos and Tikal quite a bit.)
(Originally, I had “mysteries about a past tragedy that you have to piece together” on that above list of SA1 aesthetics, but then it occurred to me that SA2 does also have that, just in a rather different form.)
* at least, I’ve always assumed that Tikal was a spirit! It wasn’t until this replay that I realized that was never explicitly stated in-game, though it’s the only explanation that makes sense, imo.
This game definitely has its flaws, particularly when it comes to some of its gameplay, but it also has so much charm. I did turn to a couple of mods to smooth out some of my biggest issues with it, though, because life’s too short to suffer through bad gameplay when you don’t have.
The first one was a physics swap mod that I used to give Amy her SA2 physics instead. I still think her levels are badly designed, particularly Twinkle Park (the forced camera angles on some of those Zero chase scenes….), but the added speed made it much more tolerable.
Though, me being me, the difference between Amy's SA1 physics and her SA2 physics actually gave me feelings? So much about her SA1 storyline is about her no longer wanting to be a damsel in distress and her determination to become stronger and be the one doing the protecting rather than being the protected; and so that made it feel like her SA2 physics are the results of her post-game efforts in that direction.
On that note, some screenshots of that story arc, because I love her so:
I’m 100% sure that this story-telling via changed physics thing wasn’t intentional (particularly as Amy's only playable in two-player mode in SA2), but I’m still choosing to read it that way anyway, because Amy. ♥
I also installed a mod that flat-out removed Big’s fishing; all I had to do was touch Froggy to beat the level. Honestly, I was actually looking for a mod that improved the fishing, because that was a little too cheat-y for me, but I couldn’t find one, so when faced with a choice between the vanilla gameplay and removing the gameplay entirely… bye bye gameplay.
I don’t have too much to say about Sonic’s story—it’s solid, and the gameplay’s really fun (...other than Sky Deck, because no), but it’s also fairly straightforward. Though Casinopolis is a weird stage—there’s something about wandering through what feels like an adventure stage while an action stage timer is running that throws me off—and Lost World had a great aesthetic, though it felt very Indiana Jones.
Tails’s story is… not great. It basically feels like a rehash of Sonic’s story, and although I like the flying and how it ended, it didn’t add enough for me to feel like it was worth a whole extra route and all those repeated cutscenes. That being said, I do get where they were going with this thematically.
Similar to Amy, Tails’ story is all about him learning how to stand on his own feet. But whereas Amy was a damsel in distress figure, Tails was Sonic’s shadow, and so it makes sense that Tails’ route would mirror Sonic’s until he reaches the point where he finally is able to break out on his own and be a hero in his own right. It does work, thematically! It’s just really boring to play through, and it doesn’t help that, unlike with Amy, I’m not actually particularly fond of Tails and so don’t have a real emotional investment in him either. He’s just… there, for me.
Knuckles’ route, on the other hand, is an absolute DELIGHT. Honestly, I think it’s my favorite of the six. Knuckles himself is so much fun to play as—I love the gliding and wall-climbing—and I am all here for the emerald hunting gameplay. Interestingly, I think the emerald detection radar was actually better in SA1 than it is later in SA2, though emerald hunting is also fun in SA2.
There was one thing about Knuckles’ route that amused me. So, every route has at least one time travel sequence where Tikal pulls the character into the past to show them a piece of the tragedy that occurred back then. When I was a kid, I never put any thought into why Tikal choose these people to show her visions to, but this time around, as I played Amy’s route, I was already musing over how strange some of her choices are. Amy, for instance (as well as Gamma) don’t really interact with Chaos, so why?
Which brings me to Knuckles and his route. He has the most time travel sequences of anyone—three, iirc—which makes perfect sense to me, because he’s the current day guardian of the Master Emerald, and so of course Tikal would turn to him for help with a problem born from a past tragedy relating to the Master Emerald & a being that was sealed within it. (This is also another aspect I really like about his route: how it has the deepest connection with this time travel plotline and Tikal.)
But then I got to the end of his story, and… oh my god, I had to laugh. So his route ends with the Master Emerald restored and with Knuckles back on Angel Island, and basically? Features him going “huh, wow, that time travel stuff was weird… oh well, doesn’t matter! time to relax and while away my days in front of the Master Emerald, doing nothing!”, and just…!
I’m sure this isn’t the actual reason (if nothing else, I’m pretty sure that the timelines of when the time travel happens in the other routes don’t match up), but I can’t help but picture Tikal, putting her full faith in him, as the guardian of the Master Emerald, to help her with Chaos… and then going “oh shit” when he ends up no real curiosity at all about her carefully curated visions and then just frantically throwing time travel / visions / whatever’s actually happening to whoever she can find, haha.
Finally… Gamma’s route. ♥ I saved his for last, as a motivation to get through Big’s story, and it was absolutely worth it—it still had the level of emotional impact as it did on me when I was a kid. I’d forgotten a lot of it before replaying—I’d only remembered that he’d bonded with Amy and that he dies at the end (though not that he was actually a birdy, or that “dying” wasn’t a real death!)—but all those old feelings came rushing back as I rediscovered his story.
I do feel kind of mixed about his “saving” the E-100 series meaning destroying them—on one hand, it does that “artificial life must die at the end” thing that I’m so tired of; on the other hand, those robots are powered by actual animals who get released by those “deaths”, so it’s not exactly the same thing, is it? But then I think about Omega, and how much I would’ve loved to see him meet Gamma, and ahhh, mixed feelings really is the best for for it.
I also have allll the feelings about Eggman referring to Beta as Gamma’s “big brother” (my sibling feelings, activate!), and this scene was just as much of a gut-punch now as it was when I was a kid:
On a lighter note, Gamma’s reaction to time travel is kind of golden:
And I also ended up having feelings about him and Tikal? Which is definitely a new thing for me—kid!me was pretty much hyper-focused on his and Amy’s bond (which, don’t misunderstand, I’m still into now), but this interaction was just so cute?:
It does interest me that he and Tails are the only ones who interact with past!Tikal during the time travel segments—the other characters are more like invisible viewers of the scenes. It also makes me think about Omega time traveling “the long way” in Sonic 2006 and of the potential of Gamma somehow having to do the same here.
Finally, I somehow knocked E-103 Delta off the side of the stage at the end of the boss fight and wanna show off how that looked:
Now, the true ending! God, I love that ending. Perfect Chaos is just… I love him. SUCH a great boss fight. I mean, look at his design! At the aesthetic of the surroundings!
I love the flooded city, the water dragon look, everything. SO GOOD. And the way “Open Your Heart” plays during the first phase of the fight! I found myself singing along to the lyrics under my breath as I played, and it did a great job of adding emotion to the fight.
In general, I just love Chaos and the whole Chaos and Tikal storyline. I love that this terrifying rage-filled water dragon with the power to destroy the world is, at his heart, a gentle creature that just wanted to protect the Chao. And I loved that the story ends with his being pacified, reunited with the Chao—
(so precious!)
—before Tikal’s spirit takes him by the hand and takes him away with her. On that note, I love their friendship! I love that she cares about him, even as she’s determined to stop him from causing more harm!
tl;dr I love this game’s story.
Though, something that I absolutely didn’t notice as a kid was this:
Tails: All’s well that ends well!
*panning shot of Station Square, utterly decimated & flooded*
Okay, to be fair, there were a few lines between the two moments, but, uh, I don’t think a city being completely destroyed and who knows how many lives lost, not to mention the property damage, counts as “all’s well”. True, it’s better than the world ending! But it’s still not great. I know it’s because this game’s ultimately meant for kids, but I still had to laugh a bit at that contrast.
I’m going to end this post by sharing the final shot of the game, because I love it so:
I played the routes in this order: Sonic, Amy, Knuckles, Tails, Big, Gamma
As I was replaying, I was thinking about how it’s actually kind of funny that SA2’s my favorite, because that one’s all about OUTER SPACE and GENETIC EXPERIMENTS and ARTIFICIAL BIOLOGICAL LIFEFORMS and just, very sci-fi in a way that I’m not actually into, whereas SA1’s all about TIME TRAVEL and GHOSTS* and WATER DRAGONS and ANCIENT RUINS, which are all things that I go absolutely wild over. I suppose that’s just the power of my love for Shadow, haha. (Though I do also love Chaos and Tikal quite a bit.)
(Originally, I had “mysteries about a past tragedy that you have to piece together” on that above list of SA1 aesthetics, but then it occurred to me that SA2 does also have that, just in a rather different form.)
* at least, I’ve always assumed that Tikal was a spirit! It wasn’t until this replay that I realized that was never explicitly stated in-game, though it’s the only explanation that makes sense, imo.
This game definitely has its flaws, particularly when it comes to some of its gameplay, but it also has so much charm. I did turn to a couple of mods to smooth out some of my biggest issues with it, though, because life’s too short to suffer through bad gameplay when you don’t have.
The first one was a physics swap mod that I used to give Amy her SA2 physics instead. I still think her levels are badly designed, particularly Twinkle Park (the forced camera angles on some of those Zero chase scenes….), but the added speed made it much more tolerable.
Though, me being me, the difference between Amy's SA1 physics and her SA2 physics actually gave me feelings? So much about her SA1 storyline is about her no longer wanting to be a damsel in distress and her determination to become stronger and be the one doing the protecting rather than being the protected; and so that made it feel like her SA2 physics are the results of her post-game efforts in that direction.
On that note, some screenshots of that story arc, because I love her so:
I’m 100% sure that this story-telling via changed physics thing wasn’t intentional (particularly as Amy's only playable in two-player mode in SA2), but I’m still choosing to read it that way anyway, because Amy. ♥
I also installed a mod that flat-out removed Big’s fishing; all I had to do was touch Froggy to beat the level. Honestly, I was actually looking for a mod that improved the fishing, because that was a little too cheat-y for me, but I couldn’t find one, so when faced with a choice between the vanilla gameplay and removing the gameplay entirely… bye bye gameplay.
I don’t have too much to say about Sonic’s story—it’s solid, and the gameplay’s really fun (...other than Sky Deck, because no), but it’s also fairly straightforward. Though Casinopolis is a weird stage—there’s something about wandering through what feels like an adventure stage while an action stage timer is running that throws me off—and Lost World had a great aesthetic, though it felt very Indiana Jones.
Tails’s story is… not great. It basically feels like a rehash of Sonic’s story, and although I like the flying and how it ended, it didn’t add enough for me to feel like it was worth a whole extra route and all those repeated cutscenes. That being said, I do get where they were going with this thematically.
Similar to Amy, Tails’ story is all about him learning how to stand on his own feet. But whereas Amy was a damsel in distress figure, Tails was Sonic’s shadow, and so it makes sense that Tails’ route would mirror Sonic’s until he reaches the point where he finally is able to break out on his own and be a hero in his own right. It does work, thematically! It’s just really boring to play through, and it doesn’t help that, unlike with Amy, I’m not actually particularly fond of Tails and so don’t have a real emotional investment in him either. He’s just… there, for me.
Knuckles’ route, on the other hand, is an absolute DELIGHT. Honestly, I think it’s my favorite of the six. Knuckles himself is so much fun to play as—I love the gliding and wall-climbing—and I am all here for the emerald hunting gameplay. Interestingly, I think the emerald detection radar was actually better in SA1 than it is later in SA2, though emerald hunting is also fun in SA2.
There was one thing about Knuckles’ route that amused me. So, every route has at least one time travel sequence where Tikal pulls the character into the past to show them a piece of the tragedy that occurred back then. When I was a kid, I never put any thought into why Tikal choose these people to show her visions to, but this time around, as I played Amy’s route, I was already musing over how strange some of her choices are. Amy, for instance (as well as Gamma) don’t really interact with Chaos, so why?
Which brings me to Knuckles and his route. He has the most time travel sequences of anyone—three, iirc—which makes perfect sense to me, because he’s the current day guardian of the Master Emerald, and so of course Tikal would turn to him for help with a problem born from a past tragedy relating to the Master Emerald & a being that was sealed within it. (This is also another aspect I really like about his route: how it has the deepest connection with this time travel plotline and Tikal.)
But then I got to the end of his story, and… oh my god, I had to laugh. So his route ends with the Master Emerald restored and with Knuckles back on Angel Island, and basically? Features him going “huh, wow, that time travel stuff was weird… oh well, doesn’t matter! time to relax and while away my days in front of the Master Emerald, doing nothing!”, and just…!
I’m sure this isn’t the actual reason (if nothing else, I’m pretty sure that the timelines of when the time travel happens in the other routes don’t match up), but I can’t help but picture Tikal, putting her full faith in him, as the guardian of the Master Emerald, to help her with Chaos… and then going “oh shit” when he ends up no real curiosity at all about her carefully curated visions and then just frantically throwing time travel / visions / whatever’s actually happening to whoever she can find, haha.
Finally… Gamma’s route. ♥ I saved his for last, as a motivation to get through Big’s story, and it was absolutely worth it—it still had the level of emotional impact as it did on me when I was a kid. I’d forgotten a lot of it before replaying—I’d only remembered that he’d bonded with Amy and that he dies at the end (though not that he was actually a birdy, or that “dying” wasn’t a real death!)—but all those old feelings came rushing back as I rediscovered his story.
I do feel kind of mixed about his “saving” the E-100 series meaning destroying them—on one hand, it does that “artificial life must die at the end” thing that I’m so tired of; on the other hand, those robots are powered by actual animals who get released by those “deaths”, so it’s not exactly the same thing, is it? But then I think about Omega, and how much I would’ve loved to see him meet Gamma, and ahhh, mixed feelings really is the best for for it.
I also have allll the feelings about Eggman referring to Beta as Gamma’s “big brother” (my sibling feelings, activate!), and this scene was just as much of a gut-punch now as it was when I was a kid:
On a lighter note, Gamma’s reaction to time travel is kind of golden:
And I also ended up having feelings about him and Tikal? Which is definitely a new thing for me—kid!me was pretty much hyper-focused on his and Amy’s bond (which, don’t misunderstand, I’m still into now), but this interaction was just so cute?:
It does interest me that he and Tails are the only ones who interact with past!Tikal during the time travel segments—the other characters are more like invisible viewers of the scenes. It also makes me think about Omega time traveling “the long way” in Sonic 2006 and of the potential of Gamma somehow having to do the same here.
Finally, I somehow knocked E-103 Delta off the side of the stage at the end of the boss fight and wanna show off how that looked:
Now, the true ending! God, I love that ending. Perfect Chaos is just… I love him. SUCH a great boss fight. I mean, look at his design! At the aesthetic of the surroundings!
I love the flooded city, the water dragon look, everything. SO GOOD. And the way “Open Your Heart” plays during the first phase of the fight! I found myself singing along to the lyrics under my breath as I played, and it did a great job of adding emotion to the fight.
In general, I just love Chaos and the whole Chaos and Tikal storyline. I love that this terrifying rage-filled water dragon with the power to destroy the world is, at his heart, a gentle creature that just wanted to protect the Chao. And I loved that the story ends with his being pacified, reunited with the Chao—
(so precious!)
—before Tikal’s spirit takes him by the hand and takes him away with her. On that note, I love their friendship! I love that she cares about him, even as she’s determined to stop him from causing more harm!
tl;dr I love this game’s story.
Though, something that I absolutely didn’t notice as a kid was this:
Tails: All’s well that ends well!
*panning shot of Station Square, utterly decimated & flooded*
Okay, to be fair, there were a few lines between the two moments, but, uh, I don’t think a city being completely destroyed and who knows how many lives lost, not to mention the property damage, counts as “all’s well”. True, it’s better than the world ending! But it’s still not great. I know it’s because this game’s ultimately meant for kids, but I still had to laugh a bit at that contrast.
I’m going to end this post by sharing the final shot of the game, because I love it so: