Sonic Adventure’s: Connective Gameplay and Narrative
When it comes to active storytelling and the medium of video games, it would depend on the rank of importance when it comes to certain genres. There are some games that are easier to differentiate than others because it depends on the developer and their intentions, but it can be easier when certain games have significant differences. For example, one of the earliest and most notable platformers, Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System, has a barebones premise: you are a man who has to save a princess from the clutches of an evil turtle monster. There is not really anything more to it other than the simple motivation to give the player to platform their way to the end of the level. Whereas with a role-playing game, like Final Fantasy VII, it has a cast of characters to talk to and fight with, creating a world for the player to traverse on the journey to defeat the evil.
Let’s stick to the classic platformer stories, and look at a particular mascot and his games: Sonic The Hedgehog. From the surface, it’s also barebones: you play as a blue hedgehog who can run fast through levels and fight against a sphere-shaped villain in a hovercraft. But look a little further, you find themes of environmentalism and anti-industrialization in what it represents, both in the environments and gameplay, such as in the enemies and the motives of Eggman. This is not necessarily obvious in these games, in part due to the power of consoles at this time and the relatively small screen dimensions.
As video games became more popular and more powerful throughout the 90s, it was time to explore a new (at the time) dimension- one that was then-unknown, but full of possibilities for the medium of video games. So surely, all video games would have expanded stories, right?
Well, not all of them- it was still a risky thing to take, because even then, computers and storage can only manage so much at the time- comparatively, it was bigger than the Genesis, NES, or the SNES, but by itself, it’s not that powerful to today’s computers. So the expansion of stories would have to still be mostly limited to text and transparently polygonal 3d models of characters. Even so, I would assume companies did not want to alienate their audience too much from what they were used to, so it became mostly a transition of the games that they were used to into 3-D. Crash Bandicoot on the PlayStation was a translation of the linear platformers found on an earlier console into a corridor-like style, and Super Mario 64 was expanded it into a more objective-based open-world style, but still simplistic to the core. These aren’t perfect representations, but they mostly stand for how simple stories aren’t as expanded as well early on into 3-D.
Getting into 3-D, however, wasn’t the simplest for the blue hedgehog, however. As Sony and Nintendo were ramping up their forays into 3-D, Sega were struggling to keep up, as their consoles began to start failing commercially, and Sonic 3D Blast, appeared to be a half-step, being isometric and simple in its gameplay, but still, it did not really expand the story. And from what it appears, the cancelled Sonic Xtreme was not to be the one with the expanded story. To make this clear, the story does not need to have a lot of lore expanded, but rather something more to attach itself to, with the ability for new virtual environments.
That’s when in 1998, for their final console that fully took advantage of 3D with the Dreamcast, they released their “killer app”: Sonic Adventure, which actually started development after Xtreme’s cancellation, meaning that Sega took the time to develop something new for characters to traverse in. The game has their main mascot, but also the familiar and new characters with fully voiced dialogue and cutscenes, both in-game and separate. But how exactly is the gameplay translated into the new dimension successfully? Well, by both being simple and just expanded enough to make the storytelling more unique from what came before (with spoilers for each of the characters).
The very first thing you see after the logos is a cutscene of a normal city going about its daily business, when suddenly water explodes out like a geyser and chaos occurs. You also see a large metallic ship hovering over the sky, and what follows are characters, new to this dimension at the time, seeing the terror with hard rock music to boot, and then the title appears. If you were a kid that kept up with Sonic at the time and booted up your Dreamcast to see this, you would have been ecstatic. You don’t completely understand, but it will all reveal itself the more you play. And after pressing that save file, pressing on “Adventure,” you are faced with more possibilities- you get to play as multiple characters each with their own levels for the first time.
So, you press the button on our main protagonist, and nighttime is present in the location known as Station Square in the game. You see from the perspective of the titular medium-polygonal blue hedgehog on top of the building, seeing police cars race toward a disturbance, joining in to see what’s happening. As the player, you bear witness to a blue slimy creature with rounded spikes on top of his translucent eyes. Sonic comes in straight to the middle, facing the threat (which will appear later in the future) as the first boss battle and appearance of this new gameplay. After striking three times, it disappears, and you wake up from the slumber on a peaceful daytime rest, slightly puzzled at what occurred. After seeing Tails crash his plane somewhere, you set out to retrieve him.
Concerning the level design, you travel out on a mostly narrow forward path, showing the goal and destination at hand in the story, as a mostly fast-talking character who cares for his friends and does good by his own terms. In the story, Sonic and Tails race against Eggman for the search of Chaos Emeralds and freeing trapped animals out of consoles, defeating Eggman and the various versions of Chaos along the way. It has the most levels out of all the characters, to which a majority of the locations and aspects of the story are introduced to the player, such as the temple of Chao, and the Egg Carrier. These levels are presented in a more linear narrative, where it logically goes from one place and objective to another. And as you play as Sonic, throughout these destinations and encounters with Knuckles, the player therefore discovers the world and characters around them. Sonic is the most stable one in character here, to which his levels are more focused on setting up the lore and main story that concludes in the very end, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
The young aeronautic fox sidekick Tails has his story up next, where we witness him on a flight to his new Chaos emerald-powered airplane, to which we viewed from afar as Sonic before. The interesting thing about this game in playing other characters are the pieces of narratives seen from other perspectives showing up in others’ narratives. The player views and pieces them together into one narrative altogether. However, this can only work when breaking up into separate narratives, serving the purpose of slightly different gameplay so as to not feel cluttered and whiplash in its switching views.
This story follows along the same path as Sonic up until a certain point- and that’s the idea. Tails has to catch up to Sonic and match in his own platformer game, to where the first few levels are those of Sonic’s, realigned as a race to the endpoint. This is even proven in an in-game cutscene, where in the forest, he tries to chase after and match him to no avail, later saying that he owes up to Sonic.
A noticeable shift happens however, after he realizes that he needs to finish his prototype, searching for the next location, to which at this point it magically opens up to him, where the first solo level, is a sub-game of racing down on a large slope, similar to the same second half of Sonic’s Icecap level. But it’s at this point, he starts to realize his own independence and ingenuity as valuable, fighting against a robot henchman, flying Amy and himself down to ground, and facing Eggman. A particularly interesting choice is the restructuring of the Speed Highway level in its sequencing and level objective. You have to successfully beat and be farther from Eggman to the end, but also in a stage initially just for Sonic, it means that Tails can hold his own power. And after defeating the Egg Walker on foot, and saving the people successfully, his cheers and joyous theme music lifts him up, overcoming his fears and becoming strong, to which you become a bit stronger as a result.
Up next is the red echidna Knuckles, to which he was initially a cameo in both the previous two characters’ stories as a short squabbling figure. We actually start off independently with a separate island and Knuckles sitting near a large green emerald, to which the location you can actually run to in previous perspectives. We see him sitting and wondering about nothing when Chaos strikes, and steals a portion of the emerald. Knuckles, not knowing how or why this happens, is determined to find out on a mission to restore the Master Emerald.
Self-dependency is the word here, as we play as Knuckles in his main objective to restore the emerald, piece by piece. There is a major transformation in the gameplay, being more of an open-world environment platformer, where pieces of the emerald are scattered throughout the levels. This gives more expansion in the world with a wider camera, and with the abilities of climbing up, digging and gliding from place to place, he bears no reason to have a companion. The most interesting part of this connection is how the same squabble between Sonic and Knuckles is played from two different perspective, showing that connection while ending the same way. His story is also where another new piece of the narrative enters, where we see how Eggman manipulates Knuckles into a finding an emerald, believing that he’s looking for a similar emerald as well. Like Sonic, his character does not have a noticeable shift, regarding the events that occurred as too confusing to him. Whenever something comes that disrupts his being, however, he is always ready to leap into action.
Let’s jump outside into a different story based on powerful independence, that of Amy Rose. The audience sees Amy Rose going about her day in the city, longing to see her hero Sonic again and going on an adventure. Little did she know that she would be placed on a journey on her own- she sees a bird with a magical talon around its neck flying in her direction. Her kind nature instinctively tells her to protect the bird- for it is being chased by one of Eggman’s hench-robots. And so starts her adventure, in the same area that Sonic takes her to in his story.
Her levels are structured identically to those of Sonic and Tails- that being linear levels with an endpoint in mind. Only this time, it’s to catch a balloon, whilst being chased by the hench-robot, who acts more of an encroaching obstacle than an enemy that you can stall with your hammer. Amy is stuck in the middle of the chase, as the typical damsel in distress who just so happens to have a weapon. But as the story progresses, she learns to become stronger on her own and to not depend on Sonic solely to help her in times of need. Her kind nature convinces a certain robot that which is to be discussed later to free her, a true example of her personality saving the day. In understanding this independence, she then chases the hench-robot as the final boss battle, to which the bird is now free, and her musical theme is then recontextualized as that of strength.
Big the Cat is a new character, heavily disconnected from the rest of the central narrative and characters, where he hangs out lazily with his pet frog, who swallows a Chaos emerald and hops away, leading to another chase. It is also the character that we saw for a brief moment of intersection in Tails’ story. If the general look of this character feels out of place so far, that connects very well to his gameplay.
His gameplay consists of a fishing mini-game placed somewhere in the level, throwing the bait to catch his frog successfully without breaking the line. The experience can be comparable to the act of fishing in real life- relaxing and patience driven, save for the brief moment of tension of roping in the perfect catch that requires little strategy or speed. In learning this, the player will be able to interact with the boss with ease. It is a short but summery deviation from all the other characters, especially compared to the next one.
E-102 Gamma is one of Eggman’s robots, programmed to do his bidding with a gun and conveyor motion- and the sole glimpse of the other side of the battle. From the get-go, Eggman thinks very little of him beyond his purpose, controlling him to kill the good characters swiftly and efficiently- which explains the reason of the newly placed time limit in each of the levels that the player can breeze through quickly. Now the player might think that he is on the evil side, and so to make sure that he is the protagonist, Gamma is more so limited to his purpose and is genuinely naïve to the actions of Eggman. But as we see through the cutscenes, that his brothers whom he trained to fight have been destroyed, and through little dialogue beyond the commands of his programming, experiences trauma.
The player starts to witness something inside of Gamma that is not realized before- a sense of humanity and empathy. We witness the stare at the bird that was with Amy in the jail cell, realizing that it was something else, something pure. He then leaves and recollects on what has happened, coming to the realization that he must free himself and his brothers from the shackles of Eggman. In the next levels, he races (as he is still controlled by his programming) to destroy his brothers for freedom of the souls of animals trapped beneath them. At the end, he succumbs to the explosion as the mature ending, which shows that good always overcomes evil, and that anyone can redeem themselves for the better of humanity.
That good overcoming evil and chaos is brought to the forefront at the end of the story, where it demonstrates that chaos can never be controlled, and the wars will happen between those with power and a lack of common sense, but the goodwill and unity of those who care will bring peace once more. This idea is summoned through the Chaos Emeralds uniting with the souls holding them, to create the version of Sonic as a complete entity known as Super Sonic. And as the final battle between Chaos’ ultimate form and Super Sonic, whose power decreases with each subtracted ring, the hardest challenge is reflected in being able to tilt the scale to the good side.
After Chaos returns to normal, the player feels as though they completed an adventure of their own, filled with many battles and locations- but the completion of its simple narrative with the threading of individual and broad themes which is effectively translated in its gameplay tailored to each of the characters, makes it feel fulfilling for those who play it for the first or hundredth time. It leaves the player with a complete package that is awe-inspiring to those that love the blue hedgehog from the very beginning to today, expanding an experience that can be stemmed from 8-bit graphics as the foundation of it all.