Sonic X Shadow Generations is a celebration of both characters and their history, though they are missing a crucial aspect of Shadow’s character: his guns. The character will no longer be a gun-wielding hedgehog in his campaign, even though this game heavily references his time with those weapons.
Takashi Iizuka, the head of Sonic Team, spoke with VGC about some of the changes they’re making to this interesting remaster. It seems that Iizuka isn’t particularly proud of Shadow using guns, as many panned the move for being an immature take on maturity. While fans are now in favor of Shadow as a gun user, Iizuka doesn’t want him to use one anytime soon.
“Yeah, in the games Shadow did use a gun. But when we talk about Shadow, he would use whatever he needed in the moment to get the job done. So he would pick up a gun or ride a bike in order to get the job done – he’s that kind of character,” Iizuka said to VGC. “But he’s also extremely powerful on his own and doesn’t really need a gun or anything because he can do it himself – he is a weapon. So as long as there’s no need for Shadow to use a gun, he will probably not use one.”
It is kind of sad seeing Sonic X Shadow Generations ditch the anti-hero’s guns, especially since the campaign references Shadow’s solo game quite a bit. Now that we’re celebrating Shadow’s overall history, it would have been nice to revisit the gunplay with better gameplay.
Fans are fairly excited for this Generations remaster, not just because it’s one of the best Sonic games in recent memory, but also because Shadow has a pseudo open-world campaign. This will be inspired by Sonic Frontiers and we’re interested in seeing how Shadow handles in Generations.
Sonic X Shadow Generations is coming to PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch, and PC on October 25.