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AmusantTranscription
00:00And now I'll analyze the plot of Sonic Riders Zero Gravity.
00:04Jet's standing in front of ancient Babylonian ruins, and he types into a stone keyboard.
00:10I like the atmosphere that the music gives this scene.
00:14Jet puts his hand on his head like he's face palming, only to give a thumbs up like Sonic.
00:19Jet slowly and carefully picks up a bracelet-shaped rock from a pedestal.
00:24You know, Jet, if you think the pedestal was booby-trapped,
00:27the smart thing to do would be to pick it up from the pedestal as quickly as possible and run like hell,
00:32not act like this so that a trap can be sprung on you from the pedestal while you're standing around.
00:37Wave sees a shooting star and starts making a wish, being uncharacteristically stupid.
00:44You'd expect Storm to be doing this instead.
00:47Jet also starts making a wish, and wishes for the power to beat Sonic.
00:52I guess it's believable that his ego is just that fragile that one loss makes him insecure.
00:59It's just lazy writing that we never learn what she wished for.
01:03It seems like she's got everything she wants considering how overconfident she is.
01:09Jet stands there like an idiot instead of running away and easily dodging the boulders falling towards him.
01:15The bracelet starts glowing, with him unintentionally activating it.
01:19How does that make sense?
01:22I guess it's possible for it to activate by itself when its holder is in danger, because it's got AI in it
01:28that's always aware of what's going on around it.
01:32Where are their airboards anyways?
01:34Why did they go all the way here without them? That would've been a long walk home.
01:38Wave's back at Jet's office, which thankfully looks the same as the previous game,
01:43and I'm not sure Jet needs to know any of this.
01:47There's better ways to react to something than repeating what was already said.
01:52She does very simple to understand Technobabble, and he still doesn't understand.
01:56And he responds in a pragmatic way about it.
01:59And she tells him something they already know, and yet he's acting like he didn't know it beforehand,
02:05even though he used its power for exactly that.
02:09She explains that the Arks of the Cosmos are like the Max Reymold and the Chaos Emeralds, the real original.
02:16The Emeralds are better because they're not boring to look at, and they don't all look the same.
02:21The only thing original is that there's only five of them, and that's not hard to come up with either.
02:26Jet realizes that Wave could get a radar for them.
02:30Storm storms in, and shows Jet a news broadcast of an Ark of the Cosmos.
02:36How the hell can anyone mistake something like that for a meteorite?
02:40He says the Arks really do attract each other.
02:43An Ark rolls up to a robot and activates an entire army of them at once.
02:48All of that's inspiring music, even though we're supposed to be regarding these guys as the villains.
02:53At least the Ark's doing something that the Emeralds don't.
02:57So now we have Tails driving a flying car in Future City while the radio is talking about the Robot Rampage,
03:02and annoyingly referring to Gunn as G-U-N.
03:06Which always comes off like a gutless act of censorship.
03:10And Sonic is throwing the Ark up and down, catching it.
03:13What makes sense is Tails could build a car specifically designed so that he can drive it, despite his shorter height as a kid.
03:20And still call bullshit on an eight-year-old being allowed to drive a car.
03:23And Sonic's in a flying car that has its hood down.
03:26It's extremely easy for him to fail to catch the Ark or throw it the wrong way and potentially have it end up outside of the car.
03:33It's idiotic.
03:35Although it is in character for someone reckless from overconfidence.
03:39How is it going directly up and falling down onto his hands instead of the momentum of the car causing it to end up being sent out of the car,
03:47instead of continuing to move forwards with it and Sonic?
03:52Why didn't he tell him about this right when he gave it to Sonic?
03:56Knuckles was sleeping in the back of the car.
03:59Why was he on Angel Island guarding the Master Emerald?
04:02It's another reason I thought this was an alternate universe at first until the comics had the rogues in it.
04:08It's just degrading to his character.
04:11And why is he looking back when he's driving?
04:14And one of the big problems with the concept of a flying car is that cars are easy enough to get into accidents as it is without making them fly
04:21and having a car accident cause a bunch of cars to fall out of the sky and crash into the ground below.
04:26You'd have to get a pilot's license to be able to drive one of these things.
04:30Thankfully, the flying cars fly through rings, hang out for what look like monorails, and fly through restricted tunnels designed for them.
04:38Tails is spotted by a flying robot that registers Sonic as the target for having one of the ARCs.
04:43Why didn't they keep it at home?
04:46He thinks it's a regular old meteorite.
04:48They all get swarmed by robots.
04:51Tails, the smart guy of the group, asks Sonic what they should do.
04:56Uh, okay.
04:58Sonic tells him to drive the flying car into the elevator to escape.
05:03They see another army of robots.
05:06And Sonic fights off the robots.
05:08Eventually, the car drives through a wall instead of crashing into it and stopping.
05:13So either that's one sturdy car or the metal wall is made of paper.
05:17But again, it is a car made by Tails. At least I assume it is.
05:22And Sonic ends up being launched out of the car and falling into his apparent doom.
05:26Well, that's what happens when you don't wear your seatbelt.
05:29It's like how Knuckles was almost thrown out of the car in the elevator and had to pull himself back into it.
05:35Knuckles isn't supposed to be insanely reckless.
05:38I mean, I can imagine him throwing himself into a fight.
05:42But most of the time, he acts like Sonic is an idiot for being reckless.
05:47It's illegal to not wear a seatbelt.
05:49And you'd expect heroes to be more law-abiding.
05:52Especially considering that, again, Tails would constantly be getting pulled over.
05:56To be fair, you can't tell what age he is just from looking at him from a distance.
06:03I mean, for all the traffic cops know, he's just a short adult.
06:07So Sonic accidentally activates the Ark and saves himself.
06:11Before that, Knuckles was floating somehow.
06:14Because they knew that having him cling to the wall or glide around in circles to stay in the air would look stupid in this dramatic situation.
06:22So he's just floating while standing up.
06:24Like he's Knuckles from the OVA.
06:27Which is all the more confusing in retrospect if the comics think that Riders isn't an alternate universe.
06:33Jet attacks a robot.
06:36Then he sees that Sonic and his friends are standing in the jungle.
06:39And Knuckles complains that they can't just be standing around.
06:43So why were they just standing around?
06:46Why did he not have his seatbelt on if he's like this?
06:50They're about to take action when Amy shows up and tells Sonic that robots were chasing her because she found an Ark.
06:56Robots fly towards them and they start flying on the airboards towards them.
07:01It's never explained why they never use airboards again outside of the Riders series.
07:07It's another reason why it looks like an alternate universe.
07:10And when Sonic and his friends are attacked by robots...
07:13Jet's team destroys them having a badass moment for once.
07:17And I love the music that plays here.
07:20Jet demands the Ark from Amy.
07:23Why does he expect her to know what it's called?
07:25Why does he tell her she's just plain dumb when she naturally doesn't know what he's talking about?
07:30Why doesn't a thief just take it?
07:33And he immediately drops the subject when Sonic tells him that girls hate guys who rush them.
07:39An alarm goes off in the building, an extremely delayed reaction to their presence, and everyone has to run away from the robots.
07:46Tails sounds so whiny here.
07:48I like that Jet is upset that Sonic can't race him right away.
07:52Storm tries to get the Ark from Amy.
07:55At least he's able to stay focused on the mission.
07:58Amy yells at him for trying to separate her from Sonic, and she actually has a badass moment where she smacks him with a hammer and leaves instead of letting him do what he wants.
08:06We don't see Amy smack people with her hammer very often in the cutscenes of Sonic games.
08:13So many things happen in the Riders cutscenes.
08:17The cutscenes of the modern games have nothing but characters standing around.
08:21You barely get anything happening to them.
08:23It makes it come off like they would never have the budget to do cutscenes like this again.
08:29But maybe they're just being cheap and lazy.
08:32So everyone runs into Eggman.
08:35So why did anyone let an infamous criminal like him own a company?
08:39It's not explained that he is shape-shifting technology.
08:43Or that he has someone else pretend to be the owner.
08:46Or if he was able to secretly get a hold of the company himself by forcing or bribing it out of the true owner's hands, how did he keep the fact that he was running the company and building the robots a secret?
08:57Did he have a puppet or android of the original owner attend all the PR meetings to keep up appearances?
09:04There's a lot of work that goes into being a CEO.
09:07I don't think Eggman would want all of that.
09:11Because it'd be a distraction from trying to fight Sonic and stuff.
09:16It already makes him look competent that he got to this point.
09:19Explaining it would be another incompetent moment.
09:22Even something simple like...
09:25He has so much money and fear factor that he just got it.
09:30I mean, who's gonna send the police after Eggman?
09:33The reason the robots are so boring and generic looking is because Eggman built them that way so that people wouldn't suspect he made them.
09:41Eggman explains that even he doesn't know why his robots are on a rampage.
09:45He's shocked to see an ARK, and after being pressured, he explains that all robot activity is normally controlled by the perfect Mother Computer core.
09:53And now I'm experienced enough with Sonic's stories to know how stupid it is that he made this the case.
10:00All someone would have to do is hack into the Mother Computer to ruin his robots.
10:06He's been unable to control the computer remotely lately.
10:10And its power unit is apparently an ARK.
10:13It must have been powered by something else before this point.
10:17Computers are always connected to the electric grid.
10:20I guess the reason he preferred an ARK was that it was free.
10:25You don't have to pay an electric bill for a battery.
10:30It took them all that long to notice that Amy and Storm got separated from them?
10:35I mean, they were distracted.
10:37Amy throws the ARK at Storm so that it's over his nose.
10:41Knocked him over extremely slowly, which makes total sense physics-wise.
10:47It just looks lame.
10:49When Storm gets up, she yells at him for getting her separated from Sonic.
10:53So she tells him that he's gonna find the way out.
10:56And Storm is actually intimidated.
10:59I love that.
11:00Because I don't like him at all.
11:03Storm shields himself with the ARK, which causes the robot to explode after the harmless red pointer light goes into the center of it.
11:11For some reason.
11:13I gotta tell you, this plot's kinda hard to follow sometimes.
11:17They find out that an ARK was actually inside of the robot.
11:21So maybe the ARK inside it caused it to explode just to make sure it could be reunited with the ARK that Storm was holding.
11:28Plots would be a lot easier if it was just the ARKs instead of the Emeralds.
11:32Storm gets excited at finding two ARKs and decides to run off and tell Jet.
11:37And for some reason, Amy isn't running after him to keep up with him, when she doesn't like being ditched.
11:43So because of that, Amy's friends get to catch up with her and get given exposition.
11:48At least we have a somewhat acceptable excuse for artificially withholding the reveal.
11:53Tails needs to think it through a little more first.
11:57Tails thinks he needs to remove the ARK from the Mother Computer.
12:01And Amy makes herself useful telling them stuff.
12:04It's annoying that Knuckles calls himself a treasure hunter.
12:07And he gets an exposition about the Gigan Ruins.
12:10How does he know this? It has nothing to do with Angel Island.
12:14I like how Knuckles is being useful for once, and looking intelligent.
12:19But having him inexplicably know about other treasure hunters in Ancient Ruins isn't the way to go about it.
12:24He's always isolated on Angel Island guarding the Master Emerald. How did he know about this kind of stuff?
12:29It makes it look like he's not a guardian at all in the writers' games.
12:33The only way he'd know about ancient history is by reading a bunch of books.
12:38And while it makes sense that he would do that in front of the Master Emerald...
12:42Because what else is he going to do to entertain himself all day?
12:45And that's the subject that makes the most sense for him to research.
12:48But still, just because Echidnas were last seen in ancient history, doesn't make it make sense for him to like history in general.
12:57I like that he's acting like a friend for once.
13:00And Sonic isn't being a jerk to Knuckles.
13:03More complimenting it on what it doesn't do wrong.
13:06Jet shouts a storm for arriving at his office late, and instantly forgives him when he gets brought back to ARX.
13:13Wave gives exposition that sounds flowery and poetic, but actually means something.
13:18Obviously talking about a black hole.
13:21I understand Jet not getting it, because it doesn't get straight to the point.
13:25But Wave? Really?
13:28And if the Rogues' ancestors understood engine cores...
13:32Then how the hell do they not know what black holes were?
13:36And just because they're ancient doesn't mean it makes sense for them to sound flowery and poetic and indecipherable in all of their ancient writing.
13:43We've got great technology, and we don't talk like that all the time.
13:47Jet realizes that Eggman stole the ARX office desk.
13:51Something that wouldn't have happened if he had been holding onto them the whole time, or kept them locked in a cupboard somewhere.
13:57You'd think he would have a vault, or a special locked room specifically for the treasure he usually steals.
14:05We see Eggman was clearly the model of his Eggmobile from SA1, without any sort of graphical update flying away.
14:12Sonic and his friends show up at the Gigan ruins at night.
14:16Not sure why they wait until night.
14:19Tails somehow is able to understand what the ancient Babylonian picture on the wall means, and give everyone a bunch of flowery exposition about it.
14:28Keep that to the Babylon Rogues.
14:31He learns about new stuff, not old stuff.
14:34And while someone can have two interests, it just seems overly convenient.
14:39It would make more sense if Knuckles was saying this, and it immediately explained that he knew about it because Tails gave him books about it.
14:48Not only does Tails know everything the plot demands because he's a genius,
14:52but Knuckles is somehow able to read the inscription, even though he's not of the Babylon Rogues bloodline.
14:58I appreciate him being made useful, but make him useful in a way that's consistent with his characterization.
15:05This has nothing to do with Angel Island.
15:07It just comes off as lazy writing, like he knows this ancient thing because echidnas were ancient.
15:14The plumes become as stars falling to the Earth. What is this, a metaphor inside of a metaphor?
15:20Tails somehow figures out that the plumes are the Arks.
15:24Just because they fell out of the sky.
15:26Why were the Arks called plumes?
15:30Tails wonders if the Divine Wings are power units used to operate a spaceship.
15:35Hey Tails, maybe it's just made up mythology and they're not metaphors at all.
15:39You don't know. It's only not a metaphor because the plot needs to progress.
15:44So after Tails conveniently comes to the conclusion that the Divine Wings are the Babylon Garden,
15:50everyone sees the Eggmobile being chased down by Jet's airship.
15:54Knuckles reads some more and Tails translates it somehow, figuring out where the villains are going.
16:00So he always knows which way is east apparently.
16:03Logically, why would they have written them in metaphors?
16:06That's not a very good historical record if you have to look past the metaphor to understand what you're saying.
16:12And that leads him and Sonic to the conclusion that the Mother Computer must be there too.
16:17Why would the Mother Computer be there?
16:19Wasn't Eggman trying to log into it from somewhere else a while ago?
16:23It really wouldn't be so bad if at least one of the people here said,
16:27isn't it more likely that it's just a myth and it's not really a metaphor?
16:34Sonic and his friends reunite with Jet and his friends.
16:37I like the music for this scene.
16:39And Wave gives some exposition.
16:41Why is it called the Crimson Tower if it's not red?
16:44I guess because it used to be red.
16:47Instead of insulting the name of Crimson Tower,
16:50Storm complains that Eggman stole the Ark from them.
16:53Tails somehow comes to the conclusion that he was planning on setting the robots rampaging using the Arks.
17:00How do rampaging robots contribute to him building Eggmanland?
17:05It's not like those robots are going to build new buildings in the place of the ones they destroy,
17:10or force people to actually live in them.
17:12They didn't destroy any buildings anyways.
17:15Of course Jet challenges Sonic to a race.
17:18Everyone rushes into the room with Eggman,
17:20and the wind from this causes him to tumble backwards into the machine.
17:24And somehow he doesn't get electrocuted.
17:27He lets go of the Arks and everyone gets him back.
17:30The computer cancels all of his commands because there was a system error.
17:34Eggman complains about his Eggmanland plans being ruined.
17:38So Tails was right.
17:40That doesn't make his conclusion any less irrational.
17:43They see Babylon Garden.
17:45And Wave explains why.
17:48Jet says they haven't settled anything yet.
17:50I thought they had a race just a few minutes ago.
17:53Wasn't that enough?
17:55How does that not count?
17:57Sonic talks like he'd never run away.
17:59But he is overconfident, so of course he won't admit that he ran away from the imprint.
18:04Wave puts all of the Arks in a briefcase.
18:07Tails wonders why the ancient Babylonians sealed a power unit in the Gigan Rocks.
18:12Shouldn't this cutscene be in Sonic's story?
18:15Tails says stiltedly that they can't let the meteorites get near Babylon Garden.
18:20In all the time that it was standing around, Sonic could have easily homey attacked the robot to prevent it from doing anything.
18:26Instead, it steals the briefcase and flies to Babylon Garden.
18:31Despite the fact that it's sparking, there's explosions coming out of it.
18:35Sonic naturally wonders how it's still flying.
18:38Pointing out the problem doesn't make it go away.
18:40It shouldn't have even been damaged at all.
18:43Could have easily made sense.
18:45Eggman explains that something nearby is generating a massive electromagnetic pulse that forcibly engaged a program in its buffer.
18:53Buffer?
18:54What a great script for not clarifying what he means.
18:58Buffer is what happens when YouTube videos are loading.
19:02If the ancient Babylonians could create black holes, why wasn't the entire planet swallowed up?
19:08Did people use emeralds to save the day?
19:11A black hole gets formed around Babylon Garden.
19:15In an awesome CG cutscene, we see a tornado form because of the black hole and blast through the windows.
19:21Which doesn't hurt anyone somehow.
19:23Sonic grabs Tails' hand to save him.
19:26And then suddenly he's not getting sucked in by the tornado anymore.
19:29Wave figures out what they need to do to undo the black hole.
19:33And so this leads to the final boss.
19:36Wave asks Jet if he's okay with all this.
19:39At least she's showing genuine concern for him.
19:42I just don't know why she thinks he would care that he's descended from aliens.
19:47And now Jet says the stupidest line in the entire Rival series.
19:51Why is he talking like that when he's lived on this planet for his entire life?
19:56There's absolutely no foreshadowing to the revelation that he wasn't always living on this planet.
20:02There's no reason he would think that he used to be in space.
20:05I don't like that he trails off either.
20:07What was he gonna say?
20:09They fly away in airboards.
20:12We're never told what happens to the ARKs or what they did with them to make sure this would never happen again.
20:17Even if they buried them, someone could find them with a metal detector.
20:22I like that the book ends it because we're back in Future City.
20:25The first Sonic cutscene took place with the characters talking in the car and the last one does too.
20:31Tails talks about something we already know.
20:33I love that he shows actual humility by saying at least I think that's what happened.
20:39Tails wonders if the Ancient Babylonians made the program as a warning for people to stay away from power beyond their control.
20:45I hate hearing that in stories.
20:48Power can be used for good too, you know.
20:51Black Hole Creation couldn't.
20:53You'd think they would've done a bunch of destruction so that nobody could ever summon the Lightless Black.
21:00But I guess they were too incompetent to do so.
21:03At least they cleared things up that the Rogues are descended from aliens.
21:07It turns out the Babylon Garden was the engine unit of the Babylonians.
21:12So that's why it was floating.
21:14It's weird though, because it's talking like Babylon Garden wasn't put in the ground from incurring the wrath of the gods.
21:23Which is what the previous game explained.
21:25Amy speculates out of nowhere that this might be why people started wishing on shooting stars in the first place.
21:31Even though nobody knew the Babylonians were aliens until this point.
21:35I like how Knuckles is just sitting in the car with his arms crossed looking annoyed while they're just going on and on.
21:41He's just as bored with the exposition as I am.
21:44The story ends with Jet racing Sonic again.
21:48The big problem with the story is there's too much unnecessary exposition.
21:53It grinds the pacing to a halt and is boring.
21:56Did the heroes really need to find out exposition about the Arks before the Black Hole happened?
22:04I wouldn't really say this is a good plot.
22:07There's a lot of things that make the plot confusing.
22:10Characters like Tails and Knuckles know stuff they shouldn't just to advance the plot.
22:15And the story is basically just characters running from robots and occasionally there's a bunch of flowery gibberish for exposition.
22:23I didn't feel anything from this plot that it wanted me to, aside from getting the appropriate reaction to the tense Black Hole scene.
22:30The music in this game does too good a job at being scary.
22:34I don't hate the story, it's just disappointing.
22:37It wouldn't be so bad if Knuckles pointed out we're probably just jumping to conclusions that it's all a metaphor.
22:44Because it was far more likely that it was just a myth.
22:48It's believable that Tails and Knuckles could have found out stuff like this.
22:52But it needs to be explained how they found out.
22:56Sonic should have pointed out how ironic it is that someone interested in new stuff knew about old stuff.
23:02And be told that people can have multiple interests.
23:05And when all Knuckles does is sleep in the back of a car...
23:10It's confusing that he suddenly knows a dead language that has nothing to do with Angel Island.
23:16When I said I wanted a more interesting plot than a racing tournament, I didn't mean...
23:21The most lazy possible premise for a Sonic story.
23:24Looking for McGuffins.
23:26At least a racing tournament is really unique for the Sonic series.
23:31At least a story where they constantly race is unique for the Sonic series.
23:36This is just... that, and they're looking for McGuffins.