For those who don’t know, the video game Shadow the Hedgehog (spin-off of the Sonic the Hedgehog series starring the rival antihero character Shadow the Hedgehog, big surprise there) featured a branching storypath. You could do evil or heroic missions, usually helping the main villain Black Doom or assisting a friendly Sonic character from the series, or sometimes you can just ignore both paths, and the story and level you go to change depending on the mission you go to. This means you could do some evil stuff but then change to hero and end up in a level you’d have been to if you did mostly hero stuff.
This also means the story is usually disjointed and doesn’t follow very well.
Sega also gave a name to every storyline you can do, 326 in all. Because of the weirdness of some of these paths, I wrote a summary in dialogue form. Here’s storyline #157, Diabolical Power:
Black Doom: SHADOW KILL THOSE SOLDIERS
Shadow: lol nope
Black Doom: WHAT, FINE, THEN GO ACTIVATE OUR RUINS
Shadow: lol nope
Black Doom: RGHA;R FINE GO DESTROY THESE OTHER SOLDIERS
Shadow: lol nope
Black Doom: OH YEAH WELL GUESS WHAT WE DON’T NEED YOU ANYWAY WE GOT OUR RUINS FLOATING, SO GO BLOW UP THAT DOCTOR GUY
Shadow: Oh okay actually I will go blow him up, he’s annoying.
Black Doom: YESSS, GOOD, NOW DESTROY THE PRESIDENT’S PLANE
Shadow: lol nope
Black Doom: THAT’S IT YOU’RE COMING HOME AND DESTROYING THESE SOLDIERBOTS IN OUR BLACK COMET
Shadow: oh. okay. that’s fair.
Sonic: I can’t let you do this, Shadow!
Shadow: nope i work for black doom now
Black Doom: YES BUT YOU’RE A TERRIBLE EMPLOYEE SO YOU’RE DEMOTED TO JANITOR
And here is Shadow the Hedgehog storyline #73, An Eternal Rival…
Black Doom: SHADOW, KILL THESE SOLDIERS
Shadow: kay
Black Doom: NOW SHADOW, DESTROY THESE INTERNETS
Rouge: Hi Shadow
Shadow: actually i’m gonna help the hot girl
Black Doom: WHAT. WELL AT LEAST DESTROY MORE SOLDIERS.
Shadow: nah i’m turning over a new leaf.
Charmy: Hey Shadow!! Wanna help me!!
Shadow: no you’re not a hot girl
Dr. Eggman: What about me?
Shadow: you’re cool so okay
Black Doom: YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING FOR ME.
Sonic: Hey Shadow!
Shadow: oh my god go away sonic, black doom if i blow up some defense systems for you will you make sonic go away
Black Doom: YES. WHATEVER. DO AS I SAY.
Shadow: okay but after this i’m going to ignore you entirely and deal with my angst by killing dr. eggman
Dr. Eggman: What was that?
Shadow: i mean activating his volcano defenses
Dr. Eggman: Oh, splendid!
Shadow: haha jk i’ma kill you *karate chop*
Dr. Eggman: nooo
Anyway. I kind of want to do a whole series of this. Maybe not for all 326 though.
Duth Olec's Cuckoo Cosmos 