Knuckles new life

For the longest time, I thought that knuckles would always be sonics counter part in the future games. He could almost run as fast as Sonic and he had the ability to glide and climb. Knuckles and Sonic would always get into scrapes with eachother. But then I think the whole bit about Knuckles ability to glide, climb, and run fast made knuckles an unbalanced character. How could Sonic compete with a guy who could do the stuff he does and more? Well the game programers saw to that. Knuckles soul duty is to the Master Emerald and although it always has been, he shouldn't be a treasure hunter. Every time you played with Knuckels in adventure and adventure 2, the master emerald was shattered and Knuckles had to go and dig for the pieces. That in my oppinon just doesn't do him any justice.

So here is my question: How can SEGA improve on Knuckles?

Maybe him getting in touch with his past or the past of his former Echidna tribe (The one Tikal was from) Other than a few flashbacks that show nothing other than the Echidna's taking advantage of the Master Emerald and releasing Chaos back in Adventure. Knuckles himself doesn't seem to have any knowledge about it...

Sonic Chronicles did that kinda. It was meh. I expected more from Bioware.

I think knuckles should stop digging around in the dirt and stretch his legs again. He used to run like sonic back in the day so why does it have to stay back in the day? Why not make the next sonic game with him as a runner?

I think the point was that they were trying to make Knuckles different than Sonic so you didn't end up playing 2 Sonic characters in the same game (As with Adventure) and then they introduced Shadow as their alternate Sonic to be the kinda bad guy Anti-hero so Knux still had to be different so he made a match for Rouge (During Adventure 2) If they made him more like Sonic again, there'd be no point in having Shadow...

I dissagree, I like variety and busting "knux" back in would give the user more options. Shadow would still be able to be used by his fans, same as sonic.

I'll take this time to point out that he worked rather well as an alternate runner in Black Knight. Not that black Knight was great, just so-so, but still.