User blog comment:BigBadSquid/PE Proposal: Black Doom/@comment-39032584-20191222141816

Ah, Shadow the Hedgehog... the epitome of the darker and edgier trope done wrong (only the game though; I like the character himself well enough otherwise). I'm really glad I only rented this game once back in the day instead of actually buying it. For all the ups and downs the Sonic franchise has had since then, at least it rarely embarrassed itself as badly as it did here afterwards (aside from the infamous 2006 game of course, though that was mostly for different reasons). There's a reason that line about the fourth emerald was mocked so much...

Anyway, sorry, whenever I have strong feelings about a work for better or worse, I often feel the need to do a bit of commentary about it. An absolute yes to officially approving Black Doom, yet another candidate I fully expected to be brought up sooner or later. Even now, and especially at the time of the game's release, he stands out as a shockingly dark villain for the franchise who doesn't have a hint of humor to his character, hypocritically preaches about how evil humanity is while committing atrocities that are just as bad, if not far worse, has his army terrorize and almost certainly kill many in search of the emeralds, couldn't care less about his soldiers to the point he annihilates a whole city with many of them in it, and his ultimate plan to use humanity as a food source, as well as using a paralyzing gas to make them that much easier to devour, is flat-out horrific, even if it does feel like a very forced attempt to be dark and edgy as possible. Plus, it's obvious he never really cared about Shadow, and was ready to dispose of him as soon as he went against his orders or ceased to be of any use to him. Making him frequently relive Maria's death to convince him of humanity's evil is just the cherry on top.