The future must have looked so bright for Sonic Adventure players back in 1998, running endlessly under the clear blue skies and golden sunshines in their favourite character’s first journey on Dreamcast. Roads stretched into dizzying infinity just for fun, tornadoes were but an excuse to effortlessly fly higher and higher towards intriguing floating ruins, and the evil scientist trying to take over the world was so cartoonish that it was easy for everyone to agree that he was just a ridiculous villain who Sonic & friends would inevitably defeat and save the day. In 2025, the world seems impossibly more complex, overwhelming and drenched in conflicts of all sorts, and i’m sure some people on social media would argue that Eggman’s totalitarian nature-destroying activities are Not That Bad Actually; but then i go back to Sonic Adventure and nobody in its central city Station Square has a Twitter profile, which helps in making zooming through it feel like a true vacation away from smartphones or online discourse.
It’s not that things are exactly perfect there either though: gambling addiction keeps mums and kids apart, men abuse their date’s trust in them to cheat with other clueless women, people are overworked and can feel the crush of self-doubt or a longing for rest. But unionised train workers just need to go on strike for their demands are immediately met the next day: i imagine that, when you slow down the fastest hedgehog in the world, he takes you seriously and maybe even helps you pressure your boss for better working conditions. The wildest, densest jungle is just one station away from downtown and it still has secrets kept hidden from the outside world for ages. Above all else, as is told and repeated to us through the playable characters’ multiple points of view, nothing feels out of reach (both figuratively and often quite literally) for a group of friends determined to protect their home from a disastrous techno-militaristic future.
All around Station Square in Sonic Adventure’s colourful levels, the game eschews its chatty characters to speak through its places and motion. It is still telling the same story as before, albeit a more abstracted version of it. Nature is constantly celebrated in both its quiet beauty and its dangerous energy, human-made places buzzing with life and fun can be appreciated, while the last levels, built of deadly contraptions and wires, are threatening only until they are broken apart as they deserve. The environments are kooky warped dioramas, dreamt distorsions of the real world in which a lighthouse can be in the middle of a bridge, or the exit of a raceway in space can lead directly into a railercoaster car for yet another speedy ride. Constant movement is what makes sense of them then: it's so easy to just get lost in the motions, feel the wind blowing loudly in our hair and be caught in the infectious joy of our characters as we dash from one spectacle to the next.
But when we take a step back from all the fun attractions and diversions the game holds our hand through, aside from snowboarding and wind gliding and running on skyscrapers, we can catch our breath, slow down and take in the warm surrealism of it all. Not running, in a Sonic game of all places, feels like a radical, strange decision. Yet here, it rewards us with low-poly postcard-worthy views and lo-fi photographic horizons, taken straight from our world to wrap around the game’s: putting the focus back on the reality we live in and the wonders we’re all surrounded by.
Sonic Adventure fills my heart with optimism, today perhaps more than ever. In its 27-years-old wisdom, this game reminds me that running on the beach is fun, that the sky is gorgeous when the sun sets, that it’s okay to relax for a bit and go fishing. It knows that public transport and workers deserve to be respected, that after the busiest night out always comes a calming dawn. Confidently, it shouts that technology built for violence can be taken down and that the most diverse people will always be present in solidarity and friendship for one another.
Sonic Adventure depicts not a utopian society where everything has turned out perfect, but a world very near ours, one where things seem to be just a little bit brighter and easier than here. With a touch of resolve similar to Sonic’s, together, we can also fight to change our world for the better; and maybe today’s not the day, but i think one day, the sadness will end.
