Just like Sonic Generations before it, given the second word in the title, it’s no surprise that the new Shadow Generations campaign celebrates the history of the series. But, where the blue blur’s side of the game featured a very light story that was more of an excuse to blast through a sequence of levels inspired by previous Sonic games, Shadow Generations features some genuine character growth for the black and red rival ‘hog that pays off on story elements since his introduction in Sonic Adventure 2 back in 2001.
The story kicks off with Shadow blowing off Sonic’s birthday party (the original Sonic Generations was a 20th anniversary title after all) to investigate a strange signal emanating from the Space Colony ARK – the place where he was created. What he first finds sets the stage for the attention to detail that’s to follow, as he uncovers the replica yellow chaos emerald created by Tails that ended up pivotal to Sonic Adventure 2’s conclusion.
Though this is technically a version of Shadow The Hedgehog from the canon as it stood in 2011 – Shadow Generations is firmly concurrent with Sonic Generations – in truth he’s barely moved on since that period anyway, with a relatively minor appearance in 2017’s Sonic Forces, and being entirely absent from 2022’s Sonic Frontiers which stripped back the cast of characters.
Which makes it all the more refreshing to see Shadow take center stage once again for the first time since 2005’s Shadow The Hedgehog, and most importantly to have his characterization taken seriously. Aided in his travel to the Space Colony ARK by Rouge The Bat, and immediately meeting up with robot rebel Omega when the Time Eater thrusts him into the out-of-time White Space dimension, it even reunites the Team Dark dynamic from the off. They’re a trio fans have loved to see evolve from Sonic Heroes onward, even sticking together in the maligned Sonic The Hedgehog from 2006 and in plenty of spin-off media. From there, Shadow realizes Black Doom, the villain from his self-titled game, is also caught up in the situation; as are Gerald and Maria Robotnik – essentially his father and sister – who both died before his revival from cryosleep in Sonic Adventure 2.
Chaos control
It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to those familiar with the work of Shadow Generation’s writer, Ian Flynn. He is the Lore Wrangler manifest. Before beginning to work on the games with Sonic Frontiers, he’s best known for his lengthy Sonic comic career. He still works on the current run of IDW-published books, but got his start on the Archie comics in his early 20s, transitioning from a fan to its lead writer.
Kicking off from Sonic The Hedgehog #160, deep into a comic’s run, would be a challenge on any book, but the Archie Sonic series was notoriously lore dense thanks to a slew of spin-off titles and original characters. Early in his run, Flynn’s task was to take many disparate threads and weave them together. And he succeeded, making some questionable plot elements feel much better by recontextualizing them (the cringe greaser Anti-Sonic became the fan favorite green-tinged Scourge, for example). The approach has come to characterize Flynn’s work with the blue blur, which has often drawn on deep references to wider Sonic lore, but in ways that go beyond navel-gazing fan worship. Moreover, he’s got a keen eye for seeing potential in characters and story threads that would otherwise be left hanging.
A later moment where Shadow is zapped back into the main Sonic Generations plot is a perfect example of how Flynn often works. (And minor spoilers for this scene here.) Shadow appeared in the original game as a brief rival fight, referencing his role as the final boss in Sonic Adventure 2’s hero story. Here, you don’t play through the defeat, but it instead becomes a crucial moment in Shadow’s arc. Briefly tempted to utilize his new Doom powers to defeat Sonic, he recoils at the thought of using these strange new dark arts to defeat Sonic unfairly – leaving just enough time for Sonic to strike and make off with his chaos emerald.
Except, we also discover that Shadow is able to use this moment to swap the real emerald with the fake emerald from Shadow Generation’s opening – which he can then swap back to Sonic later on in the speedster’s simultaneous story. Old plot threads elegantly come together, all while interrogating what makes Shadow tick. It all pays off further down the line when Shadow finally clashes with the revived Black Doom and has to grapple with how far he’ll allow embracing the Doom powers to take him.
Shadow Generations is filled with moments like these. It’s got more story threads than the original Sonic Generations, but still isn’t excessive – they’re just expertly deployed. Beyond finally giving Shadow more closure to the events of his own game through bringing back Black Doom as a threat, there’s plenty to massage Shadow’s growth from his other prior experiences that are dredged up and re-examined through the timey wimey theming.
In a new clash with the Biolizard, one of the final bosses of Sonic Adventure 2, a creature created using the same methods that were used to craft Shadow himself, he displays real empathy towards its “tortured” existence. Even Mephiles The Dark, one of the 2006 Sonic The Hedgehog’s ultimate villains, who looks like a dark and twisted Shadow from a ruined future timeline, gets a brief spotlight – and finally some acknowledgement that he mirrors Shadow as he attempts to restore himself to the timeline. Though there’s only so much you can do to rehabilitate that particular entry, it’s still great to see it more elegantly folded into Shadow’s journey. After all, he’s been around for over 20 years – there’s more than enough Shadow-specific history to pull from. And, following on from the success of Shadow Generations, hopefully plenty more.
Who can blame me for loving this game when Shadow the Hedgehog is peak Sonic, he’s always been peak Sonic, and Shadow Generations features some of the best levels in Sonic’s 3D history?