In an older thread we discussed Rouge's theory about Shadow's identity:
Now, media outside of the games leaves no doubt that Shadow is the real Shadow and not Sonic. That's pretty clearly what SEGA thinks about the character at present. In Sonic Next Gen they had Shadow moving beyond questions about his identity and his past, instead focusing on his future.Ivogoji wrote:The page Rouge was holding had a picture of the Biolizard, which the text identifies by name as Shadow.
She believed the Biolizard was the real Shadow (she knew there was 'a prototype', but not that this specifically was the prototype, or that it was still on the ARK at this point), and Edgehog was a fake created on Prison Island. Recall Eggman at the start of the game searching for a weapon he believed was created there.
In the following dialogue Shadow protests that he's the real deal because he remembers being created on the ARK. Rouge counters that his memories might be fake- and since he remembers Maria asking him to avenge her, which we know didn't happen, there's some truth to this. Gerald's diary said "I made his mind to be perfect... pure..."
Shadow later recovers his memory of promising Maria to give the world a chance to be happy and fights the Biolizard, revealed to only be the sealed prototype and not the completed Ultimate Lifeform.
We never actually find out if Rouge is wrong or not. Our only sources of information come from Shadow (memory tampered), Gerald (insane), and Black Doom (consummate liar), none of whom should be considered reliable. The Biolizard being a prototype doesn't prove that Shadow was born on the ARK; Shadow's "true" memories could have been implanted as well; consider his later amnesia.
From this ambiguity arose the common fan theory that the original Shadow is Sonic himself.
But taking Sonic Adventure 2 in isolation and ignoring later story developments, Shadow's original appearance seemed to keep things ambiguous up to the very end.
"Do you really think that the Professor created him, Shadow, to carry out his revenge...?"
Here Rouge continues to voice doubts about Shadow's memories of being created aboard the ARK. After all, if she was sure Shadow was the true Ultimate Life Form, designed to save Gerald's granddaughter from NIDS, she wouldn't have said he was created for revenge. Sonic doesn't help by answering to the effect that it didn't matter where Shadow came from. Then there's that little bit where Sonic talks to himself ("Could he have been... the Ultimate Life Form?") just before Amy asks if he's okay...
It's all very suggestive, isn't it?
What I'm driving at here is the possibility that -when SA2 was made- Sonic was intended to be the real Ultimate Life Form created on the Space Colony ARK, and Shadow was a copy of him made on Prison Island. The subplot about Shadow's memories being fake was meant to hint that Sonic himself had been subject to alterations that made him forget about his ties to the ARK. Their interactions throughout the game were subtly implying it was more than a mere coincidence that they looked so similar. It all takes on a very different meaning when you mull over Rouge's theory.
The idea wasn't so much to provide Sonic with a definitive origin story, as to add a small *implication* about his past to Sonic lore, something later games could freely ignore without issue. Within the context of SA2 as a self-contained narrative, it would offer a plausible explanation for why Sonic can use Chaos Control, which (at the time) was a one off ability that might never have gotten used again. The real purpose of these details however was to emphasize the tragic nature of Shadow's character: not only was his whole life a lie, but even his promise to Maria was a lie. We were really supposed to conclude that Shadow WASN'T who he thought he was, but as Sonic said "He was who he was, a brave and heroic hedgehog, who gave his life to save this planet..."
It was the fact that Shadow knew on some level that his memory of Maria was fake, yet he still chose to hold on to their promise to the bitter end, that made his sacrifice one of the most heartbreaking and bittersweet moments in Sonic history.
..... until SEGA decided to throw most of that stuff out the window and bring back Shadow for more games, playing up his memory and identity issues in Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog before revealing that he really was the Ultimate Life Form created on the Space Colony ARK.
That's my hypothesis anyway.
Of course, it's impossible for there to be any question about the Ultimate Life Form's true identity at this point.... right?
Well, -strickly speaking- there was no definitive *proof* given in Shadow the Hedgehog that Shadow was really born on the ARK or that someone else wasn't the original Shadow. There isn't even any real proof that this Shadow was the same one we saw in SA2. Sure, Eggman said Shadow was his grandfather's creation in the final boss fight, but why do you trust him? Eggman isn't a reliable source of information. He could have just said that to give Shadow encouragement.
And of course, as I pointed out above, everyone else who knows about Shadow's past is similarly unreliable. They all had motives to deceive him. Most of our exposition in Shadow the Hedgehog comes from Black Doom, the religious extremist, do you really trust anything he shows us?
Shadow being immune to Doom's paralyzing toxin because of their shared DNA isn't absolute proof that Doom is telling the truth either, as that whole scene could have been orchestrated to further soften Shadow up for mind control. It doesn't matter to Doom's over all plan whether Shadow was the real Ultimate Life Form or not, only if he was useful to conquering the Earth. I have more to add about the implications of Doom's involvement in Project Shadow and how this revises what we learned in previous games, but I'm going to cover that in part 2.
Of course, there was one other person in Shadow the Hedgehog who knew something about what happened 50 years ago: the GUN Commander. Now this is EXTREMELY important because the Commander's story ties in with information in Rouge's report:
In Shadow the Hedgehog we learn exactly who it was that leaked information to GUN and facilitated the entire raid-
- the young Commander.
Possessing this information sheds all kinds of light on the Commander's character and his actions in Shadow the Hedgehog. Secretly bearing responsibility for the horrible tragedy of the ARK cover up, the young boy projected his feelings of guilt onto Shadow, blaming the monster for all the deaths he'd unwittingly caused. Motivated by a need to atone for these things, the boy eventually joined the very organization that carried out the abominable deed, climbing to the highest position until he could weed out all of GUN's corruption from the inside. The Commander put the tragedy behind him and dedicated his life to ensuring that nothing like that would ever happen again.... And then the nightmare from his past returned, and all that hatred and guilt and fear bubbled to the surface. The Commander HAD to destroy Shadow, otherwise it meant confronting the fact that HE was the one responsible for the raid on the Space Colony.
Which means that there is someone to corroborate Doom's story of Shadow being created on the ARK, and that boy's role in the narrative goes all the way back to SA2 itself.
Even the Commander's eyewitness testimony isn't totally infallible however. He's been nursing a grudge against Shadow for decades, and his animosity might have colored (hu hu hu) his memory of what the Ultimate Life Form really looked like. He can't be classified as an unbiased source of information anymore than the others and his details are suspect.
Consider this: our friend the Commander here was also the one in charge of GUN in SA2. He was the secret hand behind the faceless military organization hounding Sonic and his friends throughout the game. When Shadow was freed from Prison Island, it was the Commander that sent troops out to retrieve him. It was the Commander that chose to arrest Sonic the Hedgehog in Shadow's place. It was the Commander no doubt who had Sonic finally incarcerated... in. Gerald's. own. cell.
The first time any of us played the game of course it all seemed like a silly joke. GUN sees two hedgehogs and can't tell them apart, arrests the wrong one. Hoho, haha. Then thinking about it, it seemed like an attempt to keep Shadow's existence a secret, eliminating him while passing off his crimes as being commited by Sonic. But looking at Rouge's report, all of the little coincidences piling up in the game, and knowing in hindsight (but what should have been obvious all along) that GUN's leadership possessed the one bit of information that cracked the whole puzzle, this whole situation looks very different...
SEGA certainly made up its mind a long, long time ago that Shadow was "the one and only Ultimate Life Form", but I strongly suspect that this was not initially the case, and there are plot threads running through the entire Shadow saga that point back to an alternative SEGA seemed to have once had on the table. By itself, the theory I've outlined above based on SA2 might not sound that convincing... but there's one more piece of evidence to consider, a connection that if true busts the whole history of the Sonic mythos wide open. This evidence I'll examine in part 2.
To summarize my interpretation of the Truth of 50 Years Ago- let's call it the Adjusted Rouge Theory- in a few points:
- All of Shadow's memories are fake.
- Gerald created Shadow as a weapon for GUN on Prison Island
- The original Ultimate Life Form that Maria jettisoned to Earth is Sonic the Hedgehog
- SEGA switched gears on Shadow's identity from Sonic Heroes onward, but the substance of the theory is still compatible with what happens in-game