The Dreamcast was the swan song of Sega’s time as console developer. Anyone who had the opportunity to use the thing as child would tell you how ambitious the console was, as the first console with internet connectivity, using a controller that was effectively the Wii U Gamepad long before the Wii U would be conceived, and making the jump to both fully 3D graphics and 4 player couch co-op options at the same time Nintendo did. Unfortunately, while Nintendo had long since become synonymous with video games, Sega could not compete with the new entrants in the market, and the advent of the Playstation and Xbox firmly cemented the company’s transformation into a third party developer. But that’s getting slightly ahead of ourselves. This was still a brand new console once; with a new console, comes a new adventure for the company mascot.

Sonic Adventure would be equally ambitious as the console that it heralded. Cinematic cutscenes are a dime a dozen today, but the concept was brand new in the late 90s, when 3D modeling was such an infant technology that we were being wowed by the visible polygons of Super Mario 64. Cutscenes tended to be either rigid affairs, obviously rendered in a different engine than the gameplay, or framed via textboxes and maybe character portraits. While Adventure would not be the first game to break this mold (Metal Gear Solid had released a year earlier), it was the first recognizable, big-name series to portray the story through in-engine cutscenes in which the characters moved the way they would on television or in a movie. This wasn’t the most seamless of processes (I’ve certainly seen these cutscenes glitch out on more than one occasion), but it was a quiet step forward for the industry. The game was equally as ambitious in other ways, such as being the first game to feature Downloadable Content (in the form of updates that placed holiday decorations in the hub world, Station Square), and the push to not only move the Sonic series into the third dimension, but also to expand on what gameplay was in this franchise.

By this, I of course mean the game’s primary selling point: the six different stories, each starring a different character. While previously playable characters Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles were all expected, and Amy could have been predicted after her promotion to playability in the spin-offs, it also took the risk of introducing two new characters in E-102 Gamma and Big the Cat. These characters all visited the same stages, but went through different sections of them using their own unique mechanics, sometimes with different goals, and each told pieces of the complete story. Sonic saw his gameplay from the past translated into 3D, Tails was given a goal of racing Sonic to the end of his levels to prove he could be a hero as well, Knuckles had scavenger hunt sandboxes where he hunted for shards of the Master Emerald, Amy had a slower puzzle platformer levels where she was chased by an invincible enemy, Gamma flew through timed shooting gallery stages while hunting for the boss fight, and Big… went fishing. I’m not the first to tell you that not all of the ideas landed, as Big’s fishing games have been rightfully derided as unintuitive and out of place for years. But in a game about ambition and freedom, I can honestly say that I’m glad all six characters are here. Themes are at the core of every game, even if that theme is just “have fun.” In Sonic Adventure, the theme is freedom. Sonic continues to be the free spirit he was always intended to be, but can now express it with the introduction of fully voiced cutscenes. Tails looks to free himself from Sonic’s shadow, a story told by making his gameplay about surpassing his friend, and by reframing Sonic’s cutscenes in a way that makes the hedgehog seem so much stronger and Eggman so much more menacing than either of them truly is. Knuckles is given literal freedom by his job finally forcing him to go see other parts of the world as he explores his sandbox-style levels. Amy’s plot is about escaping from her damsel-in-distress situation on her own, growing into a degree of independence (that future games are reluctant to allow her), and sharing what she has learned with the creatures Eggman turns into robots. Gamma seeks to free himself and his brethren from Eggman’s control. And Big refutes the purpose of the Sonic series, doing the thing he wants to do instead, because he is free to live his life as he pleases, our expectations of what happens in a Sonic game be damned. This all ties together at the end when you see that Chaos, the watery monster the plot revolves around, was a prisoner for long enough that it doesn’t know what to do with its newfound freedom except lash out, and with Sonic and co. (somewhat cheesily) freeing it from the negative emotions that Chaos allows to control it. Sonic is presented as an ideal at the end of his own development that the other characters all chase after (sans Big, who knows what life he wants) all the way up until they convince a god to let go of its hatred. This is far from deep (we are still talking about a Sonic game after all), but the story and gameplay invest everything into this idea, even if something might not work out as intended. And if this game is defined by the ambition it took to create it, then pushing for every character to be free to follow their own ambitions, however big or small, just feels appropriate.

In the eternal battle Sega had been facing to finally add characters to the main cast, Sonic Adventure… still failed. Big was heavily disliked upon release, and it would take years until he finally had an appearance where people liked him. Gamma was actually rather beloved at the time, but his plot required him to die and stay dead, so there was no reusing him. Chaos does make the occasional legacy appearance, but it’s less using it as a character and more harkening back to the iconic final battle against it. The one thing that would stick around, the Chao creatures, saw use as virtual pets that could be moved into the Dreamcast’s special controller, but were less “character” and more “cutesy mascot.” No, the characters that would stick around were Shadow and Rouge, who would be introduced in Adventure’s sequel.

Adventure 2 is, perhaps because of quality, perhaps because of nostalgia, my favorite entry in this series. It also finally manages to expand the cast in a meaningful fashion, with Shadow becoming nearly as popular as Sonic himself and eventually getting a spinoff game, and Rouge not hitting that point, but still becoming a staple character to the point that she’s still main cast in the recent Sonic Prime cartoon. For the characters that came from the previous title, everyone is very much still following their development from the first game. Tails has found a niche as the tech guy and is pushing himself as the brains of the team, the shiptease between Knuckles and Rouge furthers the concept of Knuckles developing a life outside of his duty to the Master Emerald, Amy skips on being the damsel to help rescue Sonic and uses her unique perspective to convince Shadow that maybe destroying the world wouldn’t make Maria happy, and Big is no longer present because he doesn’t care about this plot and Big does what Big wants.

The game would remain ambitious in some ways, featuring the darkest story in the series up to that point (and if we’re being honest, about the darkest story Sonic can believably pull off), while also taking a moment to listen to feedback about the first Adventure. While there were still six characters in the story, these were consolidated to a more manageable level. In place of six separate stories, there were now two, one for the heroes and one for the villains, plus a brief finale after each had been completed. These stories saw the player swapping between the three characters of that story between levels, each visiting unique areas designed for their own abilities. Scaling back further from the six unique characters, however, this game’s roster effectively had variations of three characters. While everyone has a few unique powerups to collect, Sonic and Shadow are effectively palette swaps of each other, as are Knuckles and Rouge. Making his main-series playable debut is Eggman, and Tails has built himself a similar mech that allows the two characters to share a moveset. This led to the game effectively having three characters to iron out, and while it mostly benefits from this, there are still some missteps, such as Knuckles’ radar system getting significantly worse in the jump between games. There were also a few other characters available in the multiplayer for the Gamecube remake, but once again, these were effectively palette swaps of the existing cast. If I am going to pin anything in this title as ambitious, it would be the choice to make Eggman the main playable character of his own story mode. Villain modes are rare even nowadays, and there really wasn’t a concise concept of what his gameplay should be, given that he pilots a new mech with different abilities every twenty minutes. Taking Gamma’s gameplay as a foundation to build off, however, they did it. And while the Tails levels aren’t especially popular, I’ve found that most people enjoy Eggman’s portions of the game. This idea of a villain story also expanded on the story telling changes Adventure’s cutscenes had introduced, now allowing us to view the story from both sides and see all aspects of the situation. Which proved quite valuable in properly foreshadowing Shadow’s nature as the twist villain, since that would have been impossible to deduce from just the Hero Story.

Of course, that’s not how Shadow would permanently be. While this game ended with him, spoiler alert, reconsidering his motivations and sacrificing himself to protect the world instead, the executives had other ideas. The character was frankly too popular and, as a near palette swap of Sonic, too marketable. They had learned that killing off Gamma wouldn’t produce a marketable character in the long term, so the very next game would seek to bring Shadow back and set him up for a spin-off of his own. He would also give Sega the idea that adding a new protagonist to the series meant making them play more like Sonic, rather than differentiating them as had been done in Adventure. In some ways, that makes Adventure 2 the franchise’ original sin that would lead to some more questionable decisions down the line. I’m finding it harder to talk about this game than the first, even though I like it more. Perhaps that is just because sequels tend to build on what was done in the past rather than offering new directions every time. We wouldn’t see an Adventure 3, as the plans for a direct sequel would be replaced by the plans for a new game instead. One that would double the playable roster while still effectively only having three mechanically distinct characters…