Sonic x Shadow Generations Director and Producer Cite Shadow’s Rising Popularity As Main Reason For Making Him Playable

Recently, we had an opportunity to interview Sonic x Shadow Generations’ director Shigihara Katsuyuki and producer Nakamura Shun, as they talk about all the new content that will be coming with this release.

Sonic is back once again, and this time, he brought along Shadow to join in on the fun. Once again, the game blends both classic and modern era depictions of Sonic and combines them into a neat, high-speed package. While it is a re-release of Sonic Generations, Sonic x Shadow Generations adds a new spin to the game by improving upon the original while adding new features onto it.

(Interview has been slightly edited for clarity)

Shadow and The Chaos Emer-, I Mean, Powers.

To kick things off, we naturally had to talk about the new star of the upcoming game, Shadow and his complementary campaign, Shadow Generations. This time, he gains access to an impressive array of abilities collectively known as Chaos powers. We inquired about the insights behind the creation of these new moves and fights, and if they were based on feedback from the community and fans.

“The Chaos Control and Chaos powers are moves that Shadow has historically been able to do in his past appearances,” they began. “However, while we’re not at a liberty to say much about the full extent of Shadow’s Doom powers, one of the things that you guys got to see were the wings that shadow sprouts on his back. Let’s just say that. What’s coming next, what you’ll see in the full game is that they’re somewhat more animalistic designs.”

“So one of the interesting things is that like the powers themselves, they aren’t necessarily inspired by what’s been brought up by fans. Rather, what we’ve internally focused on, was what would make the most fun experience for the players. And well, talking about the experience would include a couple of spoilers. But what I will say is we tested it on a very limited basis between a select number of people until we came up with what would make the most fun game products.”

But why Shadow, you may ask? Why not any other character from the Sonic universe? It seems that the developers intend to capitalize on his rapidly rising popularity, noting that “One of the really big things was the fact that Shadow is going to be appearing in the Sonic movies, as you saw at the end of Sonic 2. We thought it’d be a really good opportunity if both Shadow’s next film appearance and Shadow’s next game were out around the same time.”

About their opinions towards his popularity, they commented, “One thing that we can say is that his popularity is what made him put in the lead role of Shadow Generations. And when he first debuted, well, we thought that he was just for Sonic Adventure 2, but we felt there could be more opportunities after just one game. He is really popular after all. So some of you might remember that shadow got his own game in the past. And going forward, we’ve incorporated him more. We’ve brought him into the film universe. We are creating this title and it’d be wonderful, actually. We’d love if more people knew about what makes shadow so cool, and we’d love it if shadow had more opportunities to stand out in the future.”

Distinct Character, Distinct Gameplay

With the introduction of Shadow as a playable character, players are expecting to experience an all new gameplay style unique to him, while still retaining the essence of a Sonic game character. We asked the developers about how they managed to pull off this balance between gameplay coherence while making him different from Sonic.

“So the key to what makes Sonic is his high speed movement. Shadow in particular, well, what makes Shadow’s experience distinct is the full extent of his power. So the Chaos spear, the Chaos Control, and finally the new Doom powers. In that sense, it is more action and move oriented.”

“We can’t talk about much at the moment, but the one that we can confirm for right now is the moment in the trailer where Shadow sprouts a set of wings.

As you learn more and more Doom powers, the extent of your actions increases. For example, the areas that you can access in the game. And of course, at first you might encounter enemies that are more difficult to take on. But as you unlock more Doom powers, you’ll be able to pull off more flashy, incredibly cool attacks as you level them up further.”

Shadow Generations

We also asked for more details about the setting of the new campaign, Shadow Generations, especially about the timeline of Shadow Generations compared to Sonic Generations, as Shadow appears as a boss fight in the latter. To this the developers replied that, “When it comes to Sonic Generations, the story is as is when the game first debuted in 2011. However, Shadow Generations’ story is happening parallel in the timeline with when Sonic Generations is occurring.”

We also wondered about the reasoning to make a whole new campaign exclusive to Shadow, instead of integrating it into the Sonic Generations campaign. “On one hand,” said the developers, “with respect to Shadow’s appearance in Sonic Generations, well, the contents of Shadow Generations’ story kind of fills you in on what’s happening a little bit before and a little bit after his appearance in the Generation Story.”

“And in addition, one of the most important things behind the game experience is just creating a completely new style of play that’s just distinct from anything that Sonic does. So we thought, what would make the most exciting and unique experience compared to the traditional Sonic gameplay?”

Sadly, it seems that the two campaigns will remain exclusive to each other, with players unable to use Shadow in Sonic stages and vice versa.

Potential Crossover Content?

With Shadow’s re-appearance in a Sonic game, fans are hopeful that this is a sign for more content featuring both of them in future projects. We won’t lie, we are among that crowd, and so we took the opportunity to ask the developers about the prospects of such a future.

“Unfortunately, we can’t say right now about that. However, let’s just say that if the fandom’s love for Shadow continues to meet our expectations, there may be some possibilities. On a side note, I think some of you may be aware of this, but in the game’s collector edition, there is a really cool shadow figure, another shadow merchandise that comes with the game. We think that a lot of fans love Shadow the Hedgehog. He is an absolute, like in his appearances so far, he’s been really well received by fans. If fans continue to show Shadow love, please continue, of course.”

Return of the Chao

Keen-eyed fans might have noticed a familiar figure in the trailers for Sonic x Shadow Generations, and as we noticed as well, it seems that the adorable Chao will be making their appearance in this game as well. We wondered if these little guys would introduce any new gameplay elements to the game, such as the Chao Gardens from Sonic Adventures.

“In Shadow Generations, there won’t be a feature where you can collect Chao. However, in Sonic Generations, it’s a brand new feature that we’ve added to the game. So in each act, there are opportunities for you to collect (and rescue) Chao. It’s not quite the same as the Chao Garden, but it’s a good opportunity to interact with Chao.”

Following up our inquiry of new gameplay mechanics, they added, “Besides the Chao rescue feature, you’ll be able to access some areas that you previously weren’t able to go to in the original generations. And another thing we want to highlight is the drop dash. The drop dash is a new maneuverability option that just opens up the field of play for Sonic even more.”

White World

Sonic x Shadow Generations will introduce the White World, an open-world area similar to the concept of Sonic Frontiers. Despite the developers’ excitement to discuss it, it seems that, “We’re not at liberty just to discuss much about the White Space right now. Please look forward to more in future announcements. However, what we can say right now is that within the White Space, by using doom powers, you’ll be able to access more and more areas. Additionally, there’s all kinds of ways for you to interact and have fun within the new open zone area.”

A concern raised by players coming from Frontiers is the return of Frontiers’ texture issue, where textures occasionally pop out of the environment in a distracting manner. Thankfully, it seems that they have already worked around it, saying, “One thing that we worked on was optimizing the game even further. We’ve actually thought about pop-ups so that it’s not really going to stand out to you as you play.”

Revisiting Sonic Generations

As much as we talked about Shadow and his campaign, we had to give a bit of the limelight to its roots, the original Sonic Generations. The developers had quite a bit to say about returning to the 2011 game, stating, “one of the things that was really interesting for us to approach was the conversion from HD to 4K. So we were working with past generation hardware and now we’re bringing it to modern generation hardware, but it meant revisiting a lot of things, the UI, the 3D visuals to touch up on. And it was really interesting for us to approach some of the new contents like the Chao Rescue feature as well.”

When we inquired about the music, they replied, “We aren’t quite the people to ask with respect to music. One thing that I can talk about is that in Generations, well, the Generations title as a whole, it’s a game where you’re exploring a lot of areas from past Sonic games. We thought about what we could do within the realm of possibility for those levels that have appeared in previous games.”

Final Remarks

As we wrapped up the interview, we asked the developers if they had any message that they wanted to give to their Southeast Asian fans.

“When Sonic Generations released in its original iteration back in 2011, It was incredibly well received by the speedrunning community. We hope that Shadow Generations, we’ll receive a similar level of popularity by the speedrunning community. I’m more excited for everyone to give it a try.”

“I’m really impressed by the opportunities that I’ve had by seeing fans from Southeast Asia and it’d be wonderful if everyone could enjoy the game. Please look forward to further information in the future. Thank you.”

That concludes our interview with director Shigihara Katsuyuki and producer Nakamura Shun of Sonic x Shadow Generations. We would like to once again thank Shigihara Katsuyuki, Nakamura Shun and the Sonic Team for their time and opportunity.

Sonic x Shadow Generations launches for the PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC via Steam and Epic Games on October 25, 2024.

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