Plush Infinite Demands Your Hugs this August

7 Comments

1. still a better villian than “Original the Character” aka Shadow.

   1. Is he? If Shadow is Vegita, that makes Infinite… Vegita’s Vegita?

      1. Actually, Shadow is more like Ryuko Matoi from Kill la kill.
         He’s even admits that he knows her.
         https://youtu.be/n0hhwB9M-SQ
         (This is real by the way.)

      2. Shadow is not actually a villian at this point. When he was, he was set on destroying everything, like Infinite, but he didnt really get his hands dirty. There were no confirmed fatalities while he, Rouge, and Eggman collected the chaos emeralds. Shadow put everything into Professor Gerald’s plan.
         This does not make him a bad villian. He’s often considered a sympathetic villian for that game, and he experienced redemption in remembering Maria’s true wish and putting his all into righting his wrongs.
         Contrasting against Infinite, we realize that Shadow’s losing one person (who from Rouge’s research he may have only known a couple weeks) was enough to set him against everyone because Maria “wanted it”. Infinite’s story was horribly written–he had *infinitely* more potential as a character in backstory and story progression, etc., which is why I am a fan. I love the potential. But back on topic, the story we got saddled with was that Infinite already had some sort of grudge against the world when he met Eggman as shown in the prequel comics. He already wanted the world to burn, and he was a mercenary. Presumably given himself and his squad and all their weapons, the were almost certainly not innocent of spilling blood. Sega didn’t strive to make Infinite understandable to us like they did with Shadow. We don’t know why Infinite already hated the world, why or how he became a mercenary, what drove him to become a leader. They made no attempt to make him sympathetic, just evil. But his story still was made to contrast against Shadow’s. Rather than showing us what made Infinite angry with the world in the first place and willing to kill, they showed us his *secondary* reaction to Shadow losing his squad–we don’t even know for certain if he killed them or just beat them up and they quit. The storytelling here is extremely vauge and lazy, making the inclusion of Infinite’s backstory almost pointless. However, whatever happened, Infinite already seems to know when Eggman contacts him as he’s already looking to deck Shadow in the face, and he is still experiencing loss of a group he likely knew a good deal longer than a few weeks.
         The running joke is that Infinite is weak. This is probably more heavily based on horrible dialouge as Infinite screams to himself than the fact that Shadow kicked his tail. Let’s be realistic; Shadow is the Ultimate Life Form. Sonic is the only true rival to his power, using his speed. Almost anyone would get their arse handed to them in picking a fight with Shadow, even royally; it is far from being unique to Infinite. After being given the power of the phantom ruby, Infinite easily helps Eggman bottle up 99% of the world, including Sonic.
         A good deal of these people are taken prisoner, but it’s implied that Infinite’s killed a rather significant number of people, and has had no qualms with doing them in himself. He kills a good number of resistance members as shown in dialogue when they swarm to attack Eggman’s metropolis.
         His death toll is far above Shadow’s. He is not a sympathetic villian, but he is a formidable villian, if only to the npcs of Sonic’s world. All he needed to do, using the phantom ruby, is make someone–or even a whole group think they were burning alive–and they would. (He was never very creative with his illusions, however. More missed potential.) Its true the power of the phantom ruby is a crutch for him–he is not physically strong enough to do these things of his own power and doesn’t harbor natural ESP abilities. But I personally would not call him weak or cowardly. I would call him horrible.
         I don’t beleive he is scared to do similar things without the phantom ruby’s power. He was already a mercenary previously, after all. He’s as ruthless as anyone around him will allow him to get away with. To say he’s strong just is too noble of a trait to pin to him, but I feel “weak” is a word that implies helplessness–which certainly he has shown he is not helpless.
         Tldr; it’s entirely a matter of perspective. Infinite was a very poorly written, unsympathetic, yet formidable villian whose defeat honestly made no sense. He defeated sonic twice with relative ease, and Silver. The Rookie only held up against Infinite in battle due to the phantom ruby prototype they possessed. That prototype was destroyed before the final showdown–given display of all Infinite’s power there was no reason for Sonic and the Rookie to actually win. Had he been written better, and treated fairly (not snuffed out at the end merely because Sonic is the hero and mist prevail), he would have had every potential to qualify as a “good villian”. He could have possibly even been made to be sympathetic, but it’s clear that Sega either didn’t want that, or didn’t care enough about him to convey him in an understandable manner. Whether he is better than Shadow was as a villian is also a matter of perspective; Shadow was more sympathetic, but not as ruthless. (This, of course, is not taking into account events in Shadow the hedgehog–with so many alternate storylines, it’s hard to determine what Shadow canonically did aside from what occurred in the true ending and at the very begining. It was all up to the player. We can infer he at least slaughtered the black arms, but that would be considered more of an act of heroism, so it can’t be attributed to Shadow’s status as a villian in the series.) But people have different ideas of what actually makes a good villian. Some people say it’s one you love to hate. Some people like villians they understand. In most cases, it is one that *is* well written, but the argument could still be made that Infinite’s ruthlessness as a villian, his show of violence, were good villainous traits. Shadow is no longer a villian, but when he was he had no qualms with seeing everyone perish. Just like Infinite. They did things differently, but in terms of violence SA2 Shadow and Infinite may be nearly on-par with each other.

   2. Infinite is what I would consider a “non-character”, so I’m not exactly sure what makes him a villain. He’s a whole lot of nothing.

      At least Shadow came out around the time when Sonic games were finished before being released. Sonic Forces is half complete, at best. Likewise, Infinite is undercooked.

2. So SEGA allows a plush Infinite to be made but doesn’t allow IDW to use Infinite in the comic… maked sense.

3. The money being invested in this thing might as well have been burned in a pile.

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