Remember how I said “mostly” up there? Here’s another post to talk about Gamma’s story, which is the best story a Sonic game has ever told.
Gamma the robot’s journey starts with him fighting his “brother,” Beta, and defeating him. He then competes with 3 other “brothers” and has to watch as they are disassembled for losing. They are reassembled as generic badguys and put into the war efforts as cannon fodder. This memory of his family being disassembled recurs to Gamma multiple times throughout the game as he struggles with the morality of his actions.
Later, Gamma is forced to chase Amy and try to steal her Flicky bird. He ends up letting them go, and this is the first hint that something sinister is going on, as the bird seems to recognize Gamma.
Gamma has a series of flashbacks of his terrible life and ends up deleting his allegiance to Robotnik. He then tracks down his reassembled brothers and murders them to free the animals inside. After taking down 3 of them, he realizes that the first brother he defeated, Beta, is still alive and on the egg carrier.
Beta has been reassembled into a large death robot dedicated to defending the Egg Carrier. He and Gamma fight, and Gamma wins, but sustains a severe injury. In his last moments, he realizes that he, like all of his brothers, is powered by an animal that must be freed. But it’s not any animal - it’s the mother of the Flicky he was originally tasked with capturing. Instead of repairing himself, he self destructs to set the Flicky free, ending his short, somewhat miserable life.
Like, this is on the short list of things in a video game that has made me cry. I’m particularly sensitive to issues of family loss, I think, but I believe this is a genuinely moving and also disturbing story. And it definitely turns Robotnik from a goofy badguy into a truly sinister villain who traps sentient creatures in robots and forces them to carry out his bidding. Something about the horror of having your will removed, your body destroyed and rebuilt, your own family lost to evil, and even after all that sacrificing yourself to save someone else’s family…it’s pretty amazing.