#but the way the DLC presents them kind of muddies that theory doesn't it

[antirepurp]

i feel like the ancients in frontiers bother me but im having a hard time pinning down the exact specifics of it. i don't think i have a problem with them being an alien ancient civilization, but the execution of them feels kind of. generic. beyond the implied connection to chaos that is. the echidnas were portrayed as warmongering and power hungry, likely due to their leadership, and they have an interesting position as a part of knuckles' heritage when knuckles is in several ways the exact opposite of their ideals - a peaceful guardian who seeks to preserve and not to conquer. the ancients in boom were left vague due to the dev hell and the repeat rewrites of the story, but in some ways it does them favors i'd say. they are a looming presence upon bygone island, their history scattered about and left to be rediscovered. supposedly a peaceful society sans lyric, who was able to cause havoc and destruction perhaps because the rest of his people did not have something like an army to fight back immediately. lyric was the only one who had any sort of ties to military concepts. the cartoon gives the ancients impressive technology, but i can't recall it being too much more than just fun machines whose primary purposes were along the lines of transportation and entertainment. i think those sort of implications make the ancients more interesting than they perhaps could've been if they were given some kind of obvious and explicit military history.

the frontiers' ancients feel like some kind of unsuccessful middle ground of those concepts i think? we are directed to see them as the peaceful underdogs while they also have a massive military presence and horrific tools of war that we fight directly over the course of the game, that we Require super sonic to bring down. i understand that at least some of that arsenal was built to fight the end, but then you juxtapose that advanced and destructive technology with the seemingly rural architecture littering the islands that, unlike the titans, has rotted and decayed in the face of nature. is that not supposed to speak of their priorities as society? or were their stay at the islands always supposed to be temporary? but then why build something like the cyberspace which is very much connected to the islands themselves?

i don't know maybe im missing something, maybe i've been thinking about the portrayal of military forces in sonic too hard lately, it just bothers me that the ancients are simultaneously supposed to be both a competent and strong military presence which the DLC only amplifies, and a peaceful society that would never even think about doing anything other than defend themselves with that destructive military they've built for themselves