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Shovel Knight Discussion Rule Proposal

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Shmooply

Shmooply

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(Technically God of War, too?)

God of War Scaling

There have been a whole lot of threads about this, so I'll tackle this subject first. Throughout the years, people have been trying to scale Shovel Knight's cast to GoW 3 Kratos based on a secret boss fight in the Playstation ports of the game. At first, the argument has been dismissed due to the fight likely not being canon, however, there would later be confirmation from both Cory Balrog (The director of the entire God of War franchise) and Yacht Club Games that this fight was indeed canon.


(Not pictured: The WoG statement from Bruno Velazquez, as he has proven to be inconsistent and that he tends to mess around with people when they ask him something related to GoW lore or scaling)

So with that in mind, it seemed possible to scale the verse to Kratos, but one more thing prevented that: Consistency. Before and after the fight, the verse only scaled to more "urban" feats, with tier 9 and 8 being more consistent. It doesn't help that after the fight with Kratos, the entire cast were scared of a giant tower falling ontop of them. So the verse cannot scale to Kratos, as there are significant outliers (The Kratos fight being the only thing that put the verse outside of tier 8, and the verse's strongest cast still being scared of a tower falling ontop of them), as well there being plenty of statements and showings that Kratos can control his strength and allow himself to be harmed by things that would be absolute fodder to him. There's one more thing that needs to be tackled though, that being that in the most recent thread there have been debates about the cast destroying the Mirror of Fate in Shovel Knight Showdown would be some sort of tier 2 feat, as it seemingly destroys the mirror dimension. However, not only is this feat very vague, but the feat is only performed by the mirror as some kind of self-destruct move, so it's debatable if even the mirror scales to this feat casually.

All in all, I propose that a Shovel Knight section be added to the Discussion Rules page, and that this should be written on it:
Do not try to scale Shovel Knight and the rest of the game's cast to God of War 3 Kratos, as although Shovel Knight managed to defeat him in a canon fight, the outliers presented in the verse as well as Kratos being able to control his strength makes this feat unusable.
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I'm too lazy to read all this, Shmoopy

Long story short; Shovel Knight shouldn't scale to Kratos due to it being an outlier, as well as there being a plethora of proof that Kratos can control his strength and allow himself to be damaged by far weaker opponents. He also shouldn't scale to the 2-A and Immeasurable Speed stuff from Blade Strangers, due to the scans used for both things being just wonky.

a54ed202b6d0f3bc387cd272098dd2ab3d214018.gif
 
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Last thread for reference: https://vsbattles.com/threads/shovel-knight-2-c.155225/

Well, this thread is certainly better. Fresh start, fresh discussion. Thus...

COME TO ME, MY X-MEN: @DarkGrath @DarkDragonMedeus @Mr._Bambu @KLOL506 @Planck69 @Lonkitt @LordGriffin1000 @Armorchompy @Marvel_Champion_07 @JustSomeWeirdo @KingTempest

Important members with permission to participate: @ZillertheBucko @The_2nd_Existential_Seed @EMagoIorSouI @Lou_change @Arrogant_Schmuck @PROPLAYEN

I want this as a civil discussion. The topics to touch upon:
  • Whether to consider GoW verse and SK verse as canon to each other
  • Whether Shovel Knight's scaling feat is considered an outlier or not (supporters are allowed to bring up potential feats)

Staff from the last thread that agreed with canonicity: @KingTempest, @Lonkitt, @LephyrTheRevanchist, @DarkDragonMedeus & @LordGriffin1000 (though both DDM and LG agreed specifically that this should be a separate key on the profile for Shovel Knight)

Staff that agreed with a solid scaling: @KingTempest, @Lonkitt

Staff that disagreed with canonicity: @Mr._Bambu, @DarkGrath

Staff that disagree with scaling, even if the verses are canon to each other: @Armorchompy, @DarkGrath, @Mr._Bambu, @LephyrTheRevanchist

Neutral staff overall: @KLOL506, @Planck69

Regardless of the conclusion, whether we accept canonicity and/or scaling, I agree that this rule should be implemented at this point, or at the very least be made as a note on both verses. As brought by Shmoopy in the OP, this topic date backs to even 2015, and has recurrently be brought up year after year. As such, we should take a definitive stance.

I expect from the regular supporters and members participation a well behave contribution. From the moment things start to get derailed, you will be thread banned, though after 3 calls of warning.

Let's begin the discussion.
 
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I will repeat: our specific definitions of canon as they are would not permit this, as we require canon crossovers to make a substantial investment in order to be used as such. Magic the Gathering having multitudes of books crossing over with D&D has an argument, Kratos appearing in one (1) version of the Shovel Knight games as a miniboss does not, and nor should he.

Our rules should simply state that we are not to scale Shovel Knight to his existent crossovers, as it has been discussed to death.
 
Mr._Bambu said:
I will repeat: our specific definitions of canon as they are would not permit this, as we require canon crossovers to make a substantial investment in order to be used as such. Magic the Gathering having multitudes of books crossing over with D&D has an argument, Kratos appearing in one (1) version of the Shovel Knight games as a miniboss does not, and nor should he.
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someone in the other thread mentioned that this is potentially debunked by the fact that god of war devs having worked on the crossover meets one of the qualifiers, that being that it’s being made by the same people
 
ZillertheBucko said:
someone in the other thread mentioned that this is potentially debunked by the fact that god of war devs having worked on the crossover meets one of the qualifiers, that being that it’s being made by the same people
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People love saying things like "That's been debunked" when that's not like

really a debunk

My point remains. By our standards we require recurrent and mutual crossover stuff. Of course the God of War devs worked on the Shovel Knight one, that's irrelevant- nobody is arguing that they were just like "yeah, take our most valuable IP, have it back by sundown teehee". Obviously there would be oversight. That's not the core of the issue.

By our definitions of canon crossovers, the appearance of Kratos in Shovel Knight is not it.
 
Canon crossovers officially take place within both continuities, and as such recurrently happen within a shared universe or feature characters made by the same creators. Examples include Mario Vs Donkey Kong or Dead or Alive/Ninja Gaiden. It is canon to both franchises and feats/scaling may be used if they are consistent.

Here’s is the specific part that was referred to by the one who created the argument I brought up before.
 
I got @LephyrTheRevanchist permission to comment here:
I will be very Simple, if GoW and shovel knight are canon to one another, then elements from each verse would apply to one another as well, i don't know much about shovel knight to know if there is anything specific about it, but elements from GoW that would apply to shovel knight are:

The souls are made of specific stuff: souls in god of war verse are "Souls are composed of their form, the metaphysical nature of a being, their luck, their mind and their direction, which guides their path to their respective afterlife as per Mimir's words.[18] Damaging souls can shatter and fragment their memories as a consequence.[19]" simply put, since shovel knight would be in the same universe as GoW, their soul system would be the same, putting anyone who affected any soul in the verse with some special powers derivitate from it, just like how kratos has things such as conceptual and vector manipulation for harming and destroying souls, so if both verse are in the same universe, then the rules of souls of one would have to apply to the other

Magic system: This one is very basic, GoW has an special system for magic, which applies to all magic users in the universe of the verse, so if shovel knight is in the same universe/verse as GoW, then per the norm of the verse it would also have the same Magic system/Universal Energy System and as such apply to every rule of it

Td;Dr: if shovel knight and GoW are cannon to each other, then the verse specific elements of one would apply to the other as they would be of the same verse

as i said i don't know much about shovel knight to know if there is anything verse specific of it to apply to GoW, nor do i know if the verse elements from GoW applying to it would change anything of importance to Shovel knight in the wiki, i will then just let the supporters of the verse to see what changes based on that if GoW is decided as cannon to SK, i hope i was clear and short in my point of concern with this thread, i only ask for people to think about other also important stuff outside of just the scaling, have a nice night everyone, i am heading out to just watch this thread unfold
 
Got permission to make a comment from @LephyrTheRevanchist .

I believe I made the above argument referenced by @ZillertheBucko . To quote it fully:

ShadowWhoWalks said:
Based on the canon crossover definition:
Canon crossovers officially take place within both continuities, and as such recurrently happen within a shared universe or feature characters made by the same creators. Examples include Mario Vs Donkey Kong or Dead or Alive/Ninja Gaiden. It is canon to both franchises and feats/scaling may be used if they are consistent.

It is canon if the crossover either:
1- Happens recurrently within a shared universe.
OR
2- Feature characters made by the same creators.

I agree that the evidence for 1 is lacking, but it qualifies based on 2 since both Santa Monica and Yacht Club designed the boss fight and Kratos' 2D design together, and both have affirmed that the encounter is canon.

The definition also states that the crossover should preferably be referenced in both story settings, so 1 isn't an obligatory requirement as interpreted by Bambu:
Take note that crossovers should preferably be referenced within the separate story settings themselves at some point in order to count as official on each side.


Opposition based on consistency is much more compelling.
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In short:

  1. Being 'recurrent' in a shared universe is just one of two possible requirements. The second possible requirement is to "feature characters made by the same creators".
  2. The guideline specifically states that it is preferable if the crossover gets referenced in separate story settings. So it is explicitly possible per the guideline for a canon crossover to only get referenced in one of the crossover character's universes but not the other. So a mutual crossover is not an obligatory requirement for the canon crossover label.

This doesn't mean that the crossover is consistent scaling-wise, but the wiki's guidelines doesn't clearly disqualify it from being a canon crossover and it can be reasonably interpreted as such within the guidelines.
 
Reminder to the peeps I've given permission (and as a heads up to those that want to ask). I'm only giving it as a one time only as long as they bring up something new to add to the conversation.

Omega's comment should be taken into consideration when dealing with the canonicity status, as certain lore pieces from GoW and their UES may not be compatible with SK. As for Shadow, since his argument were referenced, I felt it important he should've been allowed to clarify it properly. If other staff agrees, he may be given additional permission to further debate his point per the standards on the page.
 
Honestly, I'm gonna be inclined to say the fight to be canon, but scaling to be impossible.

Also, I would like to suggest some other stuff with the note:

1. This isn't GoW3 Kratos he's fighting, it's actually Norse Kratos. Remember, Kratos killed himself by pumping Hope into the BoO and then committing suicide with it to give Hope to mankind instead of Athena. He's weakened, significantly so, but he's still within the 2-C range.

2. Kratos during this era was actively making an effort to not fight anything in his path. He was legit driven mad by his Immortality Curse. He just doesn't care anymore. Sure, he admitted Shovel Knight's skill, but uh... who knows if he was testing the dude or something? The intro of the fight certainly made it sound out that way.

3. Outlier, schmoutlier. Y'all know this was going to happen.

On that note however, this also effectively means SK Kratos's profile gets gutted and gets merged with his canon self. It would preferably form a new key, but it would be a budget version of Norse Kratos with none of the Norse equipment, at the very least comparable to his 2018 self if not weaker.
 
omegabronic said:
The souls are made of specific stuff: souls in god of war verse are "Souls are composed of their form, the metaphysical nature of a being, their luck, their mind and their direction, which guides their path to their respective afterlife as per Mimir's words.[18] Damaging souls can shatter and fragment their memories as a consequence.[19]" simply put, since shovel knight would be in the same universe as GoW, their soul system would be the same, putting anyone who affected any soul in the verse with some special powers derivitate from it, just like how kratos has things such as conceptual and vector manipulation for harming and destroying souls, so if both verse are in the same universe, then the rules of souls of one would have to apply to the other

Magic system: This one is very basic, GoW has an special system for magic, which applies to all magic users in the universe of the verse, so if shovel knight is in the same universe/verse as GoW, then per the norm of the verse it would also have the same Magic system/Universal Energy System and as such apply to every rule of it
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One massive issue. The soul hax is an active hax, not a passive hax. Kratos would need to be actively trying to nip at Shovel Knight's soul with his Blades with intent to do so. As this is a post-GoW3 Kratos, there is no way in hell he's gonna do that. Disagree with this as well.
 
One last thing. When you do make the rule, link all the evidence to the rule.
 
Actually, now I think I do not care whether or not we consider it canon, but at best, it is still an outlier for Shovel Knight.
 
DarkDragonMedeus said:
Actually, now I think I do not care whether or not we consider it canon, but at best, it is still an outlier for Shovel Knight.
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Aite. In the case it becomes canon but still an outlier, what do you think of this?

KLOL506 said:
On that note however, this also effectively means SK Kratos's profile gets gutted and gets merged with his canon self. It would preferably form a new key, but it would be a budget version of Norse Kratos with none of the Norse equipment, at the very least comparable to his 2018 self if not weaker.
Click to expand...
 
BTW, fun note, Kratos actually gives Shovel Knight the Blade of Olympus when he gives the latter the Grave Digger's Shovel.

The shovel is actually the Blade in disguise.

Kratos prolly went back to Greece and took it to give it away to someone I guess LOL

Unfortunately, Shovel Knight has no divinity, so no 2-C power usage for him.

 
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Crossovers have always been finicky, but... Hmm. Well, there is some decent evidence for and against this ideal from what I'm reading. Personally, I am inclined to agree with the canonicity but disagree with the scaling myself. Sorry, but what Kratos does is basically if Shovel Knight were an ant trying to pretend to be the sun. I can't think of a good way to make that last sentence make sense.
 
I just want people to be well aware of the fire that's being played with in considering this canon. Pandora's box and whatnot. This should not be about people knowledgeable on God of War to discuss what this ought to mean, aye.
 
I really do want to stress in this case just how tenuous the argument for canonicity already is. If we are to treat the God of War universe as being canon to Shovel Knight, we have to acknowledge all of this:

- A secret, optional event that only exists in one of the multitudes of different versions of Shovel Knight is considered canon in lieu of its lack of inclusion in every other version.

- Our two biggest sources for this event being canon are Cory Barlog and Bruno Velazquez. Bruno has been established as a person who messes with people on social media who ask him questions about GoW lore, and is also not a Shovel Knight developer. And while Cory Barlog may have had some oversight on the inclusion of Kratos in Shovel Knight, Cory Barlog is not a Shovel Knight developer either. These sources may be authorities on what is canon to God of War, but they don't get to decide what is canon to Shovel Knight. This is a very important distinction here - they can only speak on what is canon to God of War, and if they say Kratos meeting Shovel Knight actually happened in God of War, then so be it. This cannot be inverted to say that Kratos is canon to Shovel Knight.

- The developers of God of War are already known for trying to push for the canonicity of crossovers that are nonsensical and which they have no authority over. God of War: Ragnarok references everything from Horizon: Zero Dawn, to the Last of Us, to Ratchet & Clank, to Death Stranding, to Ghost of Tsushima, and even a Playstation baseball game. They have no authority to say that these are actually all a part of some Playstation multiverse - they don't get to say that God of War is canon to a whole bunch of IPs they don't own. Yet for the purposes of the GoW story, the developers say they are.

- Our only decently valid Word of God statement comes from someone directly asking the Twitter account of Yacht Club Games whether the inclusion of Kratos was canon, to which they responded positively. This is a Word of God statement, but we've been very clear to set the precedent in the past that we don't just decide profiles and scaling based off of social media comments. This is especially pertinent given that this wasn't even a question directed to any particular developer in Yacht Club Games, just their collective account - for all we know, this could have been a statement from Sean Velasco himself, it could have been from a developer who wasn't involved in the story creation, or it could have been from a social media manager who wasn't even involved in the development of the original game. On the hierarchy of source credibility, "a response from a company Twitter account to a fan question" is incredibly low.

- Death of the Author is a relevant concept here. On principle, when a work of media is released to the world, that media is now considered an entity separate from the author who made it. As such, when we are asking what form the media takes, and the media contradicts the author's claims about it, we take the media as priority. Yacht Club Games stating in a social media post that this all actually happened doesn't take priority over the fact that it doesn't happen in all but one version of the game.

- To change the profiles, including the profile for Kratos, in mind with how he appeared in his Shovel Knight cameo means acknowledging that Kratos had the Blades of Exile, the Nemean Cestus, and the Winged Boots between the events of GoW 3 and GoW 4. We know he didn't because of the events of the GoW games, so to give Kratos and Shovel Knight powers and abilities on this basis means basing our profiles off of a one-off crossover that contradicts the primary canon. You could say this isn't an issue if we just don't acknowledge these parts of Kratos' power and agree that he's demonstrating powers that are non-canon in this fight, but if we do, then what's to say that any of his depicted power is canon in this fight?

I could go on, but I think you get the point. I really want to stress how contrived this whole situation is. Pandora's Box is an adequate description of this problem - if this passed, this would be the single most tenuous canonicity we've ever accepted for use on profiles, and would be used as a precedent for future crossover CRTs. Yet looking at the big picture, this was clearly a bunch of developers having fun with an opportunity for a crossover that was made with no obligations towards accurately depicting the crossover or having it make sense in context. They clearly did not think of the implications of this as heavily as we are thinking of them now.
 
DarkGrath said:
- To change the profiles, including the profile for Kratos, in mind with how he appeared in his Shovel Knight cameo means acknowledging that Kratos had the Blades of Exile, the Nemean Cestus, and the Winged Boots between the events of GoW 3 and GoW 4. We know he didn't because of the events of the GoW games, so to give Kratos and Shovel Knight powers and abilities on this basis means basing our profiles off of a one-off crossover that contradicts the primary canon. You could say this isn't an issue if we just don't acknowledge these parts of Kratos' power and agree that he's demonstrating powers that are non-canon in this fight, but if we do, then what's to say that any of his depicted power is canon in this fight?
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This issue was already addressed by Cory stating that this really has no narrative importance whatsoever, just clarifying this. Literally only the fight itself happening would be considered canon.
 
KLOL506 said:
This issue was already addressed by Cory stating that this really has no narrative importance whatsoever, just clarifying this. Literally only the fight itself happening would be considered canon.
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I am aware of this. For clarification, this was intended to connect back to a previous point; namely, the fact that Cory Barlog is not an authority on what is canon to Shovel Knight.

He can say that the inclusion of these tools was just for fun and wasn't put in with the GoW narrative in mind, but he can only speak authoritatively on the GoW narrative, not the Shovel Knight narrative. And even if we take a generous approach and say that, in his oversight of the crossover, he may have been the one who made the creative decision to include those tools in the game (which, as far as I can tell, we don't know for certain), this creates a different issue. The fact that Kratos is therefore depicted at a different level of strength to what he would be canonically calls into question what else about his depiction of strength is canon or non-canon. If the developers gave him a bunch of powers that he canonically could not have had at that point in the chronology just because it would make the fight more fun, then they clearly were not interested in accurately depicting his strength.

So in either instance, whether we take the usage of things like the Nemean Cestus and Winged Boots seriously or not, we can't scale them.
 
ZillertheBucko said:
Um, I think we got seriously off tracked, because this part of the discussion was never even talked about yet
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I'll address this.

The plot of Shovel Knight Showdown revolves around the Mirror of Fate, a magical item that was supposedly created by the Enchantress, and the mirror world within it.
DrDk9xk.png

DceODBg.png



The mirror dimension itself seems to have celestial bodies, and as I know this argument will be brought up, there's no way the dimension is 3-B sized because of this stage, as it's a stage you only unlock by winning in and unlocking the other stages, making it non-canon. It's also been shown throughout the game that the dimension has a really warped and ever-changing sense of time, so there's that.

I do have some counterpoints for this, but I doubt they're enough to actually debunk it.

 
The large building argument is fatally flawed, given that an 8-C would be completely invulnerable to the falling rubble to begin with
it’s also fundamentally dishonest, because it was never explicitly stated (to my knowledge) that it was the building that threatened them, but more likely the death of the remnant of fate, who was releasing all its energy causing the building to explode. In short, it’s not a good anti feat, nor is it really true to begin with.

Also, the same logic that you use for the Mirror’s consuming of the world would apply to the remnant’s feat of threatening shield knight whike dying, since both were really done as suicide attacks. Either the mirror’s attack doesn’t count (I am fine with this) and the remnant’s also doesn’t, or they both count, meaning they would scale regardless.

Also, the remnant of fate is the embodiment of the enchantress’ magic to begin with, so defeating it automatically scales shovel and shield knight to its magic

IMG_0940.png

IMG_0941.png

Additionally, by your own admission the celestial plane stage is non canon, and therefore cannot be used as evidence of anything.
 
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