Why Darker Stories Work: The Early 2000's Sonic Era 

I'm one of the few that prefer the darker edgier tone of the 2000s Sonic games over the current "Saturday-morning-cartoon-tone" ones.

The best kind of stories to me are the ones that are not one note. I always live for stories that establish a feeling of normalcy, then things hit rock bottom, then the story picks up the characters towards a state of ascendence whether through their character growth or literally through gaining power.

My problem with the stories of the 2010s games is that they didn’t take themselves seriously when it felt necessary to do so. Colors, Lost World, and Forces did have darker undertones in them, such as the Wisps being drained of their energy and converted into dark, hollow shells of themselves. Or how the Deadly Six used the doctor’s energy machine to try and drain the Earth of its life force effectively killing everything on it. Or how we hear of Infinite wiping out squadrons of soldiers. There are times where those stories have serious moments. Yet they’re never taken seriously or even addressed more and thus lose their impact. Games like SA1, SA2, and 06 have serious and dark moments and they treat them as such by giving the characters time to react and reflect on those events. Such as Shadow reflecting on the idea that Omega is the one who will seal him away in the future in 06. Or how at the end of SA2, we see the characters reflect on Shadow sacrificing himself to save the world. Or how the doctor reflected on his grandfather’s actions. Not every Sonic story has to be dark or have dark undertones. But when they do, they need to be taken seriously in order to feel sincere and keep your attention. The IDW Comics have done that fairly well. And Frontiers was a step in the right direction for storytelling in the series. Hopefully they will continue that trend with Shadow Generations.

We need dark stories in Sonic games. Frontiers story was definitely a step in the right direction. The previous games before that though like Forces, Colors, Lost World just for an example failing shows that. When you ask someone, what game in the series is your favorite? Most of the time you'll hear SA1 or SA2. A serious story like the games you listed are the reasons why I love this series, Sonic characters work really good in dark and serious stories. I hope that since Frontiers did so good, Sega will only move forward and give us more serious stories afterwards. And Sonic 06 is my personal favorite Sonic game. That game needs a remaster.

I think even the Sonic ova has some subtle dark side undertones by the environment below on their planet where everyone lives in the sky yet the world below feels abandoned as you wonder what happened to the civilization from once before.

Dude, 06 is by far my favorite sonic game of all time. The way you explained why you love sonic 06 is Exactly why I love 06 too. Realistically 06 had one of the best character interactions in the entire series and I really just love overall how everyone of Sonics friends in that entire game was working together and it reminds me of the Z fighterz from dragon ball Z. The path that frontiers is going seems like it’ll be a return to the dark age and I’m all in for it, despite that like what you said in one of your previous videos ( we really need a scary and more threatening eggman again ). I haven’t realized how much of a monster eggman truly is of the stuff he’s done in the past until watching this video.

You really are one of my fav Sonictubers atm hahaha. The way you talk about your interests when it comes to the series, the fact that, HONESTLY it's not even the main course of your channel? It's fantastic. You really hit the nail on the head when it comes to mixing why the Satam/Archie stuff is so good and how well it lends itself to the "edgier" or darker tones the Sonic franchise hit so often back then

Meta rex arc of sonic x proves why dark sonic stories work

15:26 I love it, because it’s true. Give these characters growth and changes like humans do. We aren’t stagnant..why should they

Vídeo Nice job 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

I think there was passion behind the characters and stories regardless of the tone that made them feel real. However, during the 2010's it felt like stories were being made out of fear. Fear of being laughed at, a sort of embarrassment. It felt like the games were ashamed of who they were, and so did their best to distract you with surface level comedy and characterization. Something to keep you from remembering all those "Cringey" stories from the past. I don't know when things changed for sure, my best guess is the Sonic Movie, but things seem to be changing with a passion reignited. We've barely entered this new era, but I have a good feeling about this one.

Nuh, the 06 hate in this comments section is nonsensical and legit painful, glad it's become a dying breed to be an 06 hater and more and more lovers surface. Better times are ahead of us lads.

11:43, it's not a mistranslation they have effetely spilt their audiences from Japanese(east) to USA(West) every since colors

For me, "Sincerity", for lack of a better term, is the most important element in storytelling. You can be silly, sure, but I HAVE to have a sense that the things going on in a story MATTER, that there is a sense of CONSEQUENCE and EFFECT to what is happening. When I tell people this, they immediately interpret/accuse me of wanting only the most extreme counter-examples of incredibly overwrought melodrama, but that's not at all what I'm talking about. It's not just about feeling really sad or angry. What gets me are tales of Heroism, and you need Real Stakes to make that work. Even if some of the characters in the work are comic relief, the overall tone needs to make me feel like I'm genuinely invested in the outcome. Having a Dark Tone is an easier way to mainline that feeling, but it's hardly necessary to achieve that sense of Sincerity. However, combining a Dark Tone with the otherwise poppy colorful vibes of a Cartoony World like Sonic, without overstepping into weird parody, is a tightrope walk, but when it works, it really works. I feel like for a hot minute here, modern pop culture of the past decade has been obsessed with everything needing to be a joke. If an audience isn't laughing, then they are thinking, and thinking equals depression, so we can't let people have a moment to FEEL something, we need to keep them laughing. Ergo, you get stuff like the MCU, where at some point, it seemed like every serious moment was just the set up to a punchline, the punchline being to undercut the serious moment with something silly or non-sequitor. Now, this may have been a pendulum swing from the early 00s being so edgy in tone, and hey, that happens. But personally, I think that tendency to undermine the "sincerity" of a work works against it. Granted, then you get into how various forms of comedy work, and that's its own beast, and that's fine, but the best comedies tend to have a serious thread in the narrative running through them to anchor the humor. I'm sure there's a lot more exceptions than I'm aware of, but that seems to be the order of the day for current pop culture.

The Darker Tone itself wasn't even the problem, it's just how it was handled. The Reason why I think Sonic Adventure's 1 and 2 work (alongside the Storybook Games, Unleashed, and Frontiers) was that they felt more natural with the world and characters. I can't say the same for Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic 06. Shadow because it was trying WAY too hard to appeal to the darker tone to the point where EVERYTHING lacked in execution. The mission structure is awful and it makes the story into a mess. It's clear that nobody at Sonic Team thought this shit through. The constant use of minor swear words honestly makes it laughable. It is the EPITOME of an edgy Middle Schooler. Hell, the console before it was Heroes, which is one of the cheesiest Sonic Games ever made (Talk about whiplash). But even that I can give a little leeway since it is "Shadow's Game" and it is fair to experiment (even if the execution is bad). Sonic '06... DON'T EVEN GET ME FUCKING STARTED! 06 completely misses the mark at almost everything from cohesion, characterization, tone. - Sonic is boring as fuck - Tails is just there for exposition - Knuckles is just there to complete Team Sonic - Shadow is the only character that was done right, but why doesn't he just subdue and arrest Eggman after Radical Train? - Rouge has never looked and sounded so "dead" in any game before or after - Omega lacks the sass and behaves more like a generic robot - Silver is an idiot and annoying as hell - Blaze has more missed potential than Infinite in Forces and is a cardboard cutout (How they handled Blaze is only HALF of the reason why I hate 06's Piece of shit story so damn much) - Amy is selfish - Eggman's plan goes in circles and is hideous - Mephiles is anything BUT intelligent (even for the kind of villain he's supposed to be) - Elise is just Princess Peach 2.0. and has no reason to exist Sonic's Story just goes in circles to the point where story beats repeat themselves. Knuckles and Tails are often side bench in favor of this Self-Insert Princess nobody cared about. It's even more cringe when they put her in a relationship with Sonic, further emphasizing the Self-Insert Human OC vibes from her. The cherry on top of the sundae is that THIS WAS MEANT TO REBOOT THE SERIES AT FIRST!!! For this "Reboot" they intend to have Sonic do the very thing Sega made fun of Mario for (Rescuing a princess) and have Sonic do it 5 TIMES! There's 0 defense for this. Sonic's Story ALONE is the worst to many for what it is. The 2010's at least HAD a story to tell. Silver's Story is just as bad, if not WORSE than Sonic's, in my opinion. If Sonic's Story focused too much on character development, Silver focuses too much on plot. Pariah's 06 Story video goes over this in great detail, but to summarize... - There's a distinct lack of interaction between Silver and Blaze, and when they do... it's JUST about business. Their goal is all they talk about until his final cutscene where they suddenly act like they're best friends, and it falls COMPLETELY flat. - Silver's themes are never explored. He doesn't have that moment where he realizes that killing one to save more isn't the right thing to do, and he takes it as "Oh... I was tricked, guess I'm going home." Which was a detriment to Sonic because Silver doesn't think to piece more things together and be more wary of Mephiles (The guy who sent Silver to kill Sonic IN THE FIRST FUCKING PLACE!!!!!!!). - Sealing Iblis in the future is also one of the worst cutscenes in the whole series. No matter how you interpret 06's Time Travel Logic, it would still make more sense to Seal Iblis in the present day so they won't have to live in the ruined timeline. Amy's line "If I had to choose between the world and Sonic, I would choose Sonic" doesn't work because while it is technically in character for Amy's character at the time, it wasn't a "good" characterization of her. (But that's a whole different debate). The other reason though that it doesn't work in the context of the game's story. Silver's Act 3 from Flame Core, he chooses to save HIS Timeline over Sticking with Sonic (Which was the fate of the whole world). Silver basically left Sonic WIDE OPEN for Mephiles which led to the collapse of all of existence (Fuck Him). "I love you more than anything else" is a common theme among the story as a whole... and It only works in Shadow's Story. Shadow is probably the best of the bunch, but it only shows how incompetent Sonic and Silver's stories were. It balances Story and Characters the best, has some of the only genuinely good moments, and Shadow alone is the best characterization of him. WHY COULDN'T THE OTHER TWO STORIES BE LIKE THIS!? The game isn't called "Shadow the Hedgehog", it's "SONIC THE HEDGEHOG". You know you fucked up bad when the game is titled after the main character in all caps, and SHADOW has the most polish. Also, fuck Mephiles! People only like him for killing Sonic, but his plan was fucking stupid as shit. It only worked because everyone outside of Team Dark was an idiot. I'm not against a more mature tone, but holy shit Sonic 06's Story PARTICULARY didn't work. It is the worst story in the whole series.

I disagree although I understand. I think it shouldn't dark toned but rather be balanced. Sonic has been both fun loving and serious but the problem with today's interpretation of him is that he doesn't show these sides of him when needed. In 06 he was way too serious, in Colors way too jokey. His perfect interpretation was definitely on Unleashed, he was serious and down to earth with Chip but could joke with him, he felt sad when Amy feared him and happy when he met Tails. He acted, you know, normal to the situation