One of the best parts of Sonic x Shadow Generations, released last week, is the wealth of music, stories, and art in the game’s Collection. Acquired hidden emblems throughout each stage can be used as keys to unlock treasure chests throughout the White Space central hub zone and, with a quick shift of location, Shadow can check out his history through some wonderful artwork.
Earlier, Hoshino worked as an artist and character designer on several games such as Sonic the Hedgehog CD, Sonic Adventure, and Sonic Heroes.
Shadow the Hedgehog as a character was first launched in 2001’s Sonic Adventure 2 as the ‘Ultimate Lifeform,’ before appearing in his own standalone game in 2005 where he wields a gun. Hoshino worked as an art director on both projects. With further details provided by Hoshino, the sketches reveal early concepts for not only Shadow’s design, but the proposed weaponry, and bad guy Black Doom.
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Breathing New Life Into The Character
"I wanted to create a deep, mature story suited to backstory. Shadow was created with the idea of him being a lead character and not just part of a cast of characters," Hoshino tells Eurogamer of working on the Shadow the Hedgehog game, where that promise was fulfilled.
"When designing Shadow, I wanted to create a character with that sense of speed to rival that of Sonic himself. Sonic's speed is a result of running very fast and it would be boring if a new character achieved their speed in the same way. So I thought back to when I designed Metal Sonic, who achieves his high speeds via a jet engine and I also drew inspiration from speed skaters, giving Shadow his own unique ability that allows him to achieve the same speed as Sonic but in a different way."
Before Shadow, there was Terios - a design with longer spikes and scars to make it look particularly menacing. "When we originally started development, Shadow was first called Terios, and his character was more obviously evil," says Hoshino. "So in his earlier design, we were trying to give him a more evil appearance. And at that time, I personally called him Terios the Prisoner."
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Shadow Isn’t Just Fast But Also Handy
In the standalone game, Shadown doesn’t just run swiftly - he also wields guns too. This was unique to this particular game and hasn’t been explored after that. This led to some interesting gun concept designs, as well as poses of Shadow with the weapons.
Indeed, Shadow is a great character, a counterpoint to the blue blur himself - and this leads to some very dynamic artwork. That’s certainly been mirrored in Sonic x Shadow Generations, with Shadown’s cutscenes depicting him in a more action-hero manner.
"Shadow's selling point is his speed-skating-inspired action," says Hoshino. "The way he smashes his powerful rage into his enemies has a completely different appeal from Sonic's smart elegance."