Well if they plan to make it vague, chances they might utilize in future stories. Like who knows they might change their mind if they gave a concrete answer that could contradict in the future.
The thing is... they're already contradicting themselves with the random time travel portal explanation. For example, in IDW (which the writers state Sega has close oversight over), they have Silver indicate that Silver is willingly staying in issue 12:
Like, he's not saying anything of the sort about weird, vague forces of the cosmos(?) enabling him to stay or not. He's staying, and I can only take that to mean that he's staying here by his own volition. But then in Future Growth and onwards is when the "oh but I can't actually control my time travel ):" comes in, forming a direct contradiction with this previous statement. There's also an old Sonic Channel picture that says he uses Chaos Control, so that's getting contradicted too.
And aside from those, there's just... no games that indicate he's getting sent around like a ping-pong ball between eras due to unexplained forces opening portals. I would argue there's definitely contradictions between that idea and what we see in the games, even. Silver in TailsTube indicates that he doesn't know if he's getting sent back for fun or for world-threatening stakes, but then how was he able to take material with him to craft the Psychic Wave? (ZG: "This mysterious gear is made of an unknown metal. Perhaps it came from the future along with Silver…"; FR: "Little is known about the material used to craft this gear. Perhaps Silver brought it with him from the future."). Surely he wasn't just carrying a whole bunch of raw material with him for the off chance that he got invited to his first-ever Extreme Gear race this time the portal appeared, lol. That aside, if he is uncertain about whether he's here for fun or for world-threatening stakes, why is he so casual about just letting Sonic and Tails do their thing in Colours DS, immediately accepting that they don't need help without pushing further? If he says that he diligently jumps into the portals before the future can take a turn for the bad in TailsTube, how is the future ruined already when he comes back in the Forces prequel comics?
Silver's time travelling is confusing and the state of the future can be vague going just by the games, absolutely. Even my goats Rivals 1 and 2 have some uncertainty whether the future is bad to begin with or will be bad if no action is taken: in Rivals 2 Silver says both. But the explanation we're getting now did clear up something for me (the future exists in a fluctuating state and can go from good to bad depending on Silver's actions, answering the paradox question of whether the future turns bad before his very eyes or not. Sure, it can be argued in Colours DS Silver says that he lives in the Blue Skies future, but these aren't inherently contradicting statements to me)... but also makes everything so much more confusing due to how utterly undercooked it is. And I don't think an IC Silver is the kinda guy who'd just... let this happen. Who'd just accept he's getting flung around time in those portals without any apparent interest in finding out what causes it (since he was all "I dunno" about how he time travels in TailsTube). I see ample room for them here to clear things up, but I really just prefer the clean and straightforward answer of Chaos Control, at least until we get a clear explanation as to what is making this happen, to be honest XD
I know time travel lore isn't that important to be cleared out when the focus isn't on the engineering and exploitation of time travel. (At least, I don't think Silver would be interested in diving that deep about time travel unless he sees the threat of not doing so.)
But at the same time, we have always been under the impression that Silver travels back in time at his own will (Sonic 06, Rivals, Team Sonic Racing). So the impression that he isn't initiating time travel due to his own reasons, but instead the world chooses to throw him into situations, just like how Blaze is being taken somewhere else by the Sol Emeralds without her understanding the reason, is off-putting to a lot of ppl, who for all these years have believed Silver can do that at his own will, bc that's what he would do for the sake of saving the world.
It would be better if it's just the portals appearing and Silver volunteered to check them out, rather than saying it as if he's being dragged into this. Getting accustomed to the time travel power enough to have portals garuntee to happen close to him, would make the whole thing seem less random.
But they need to explain that in a much better way without putting too much emphasis on the randomness of it. The leading reason has to be Silver himself, for it enhances the environmental story telling of Silver being sb full of hope for a better future and justice, to the point of having portals opening up for him bc he's done that so many times. Instead of, portals magically appearing as if the world is inflicting this responsibility onto him. See, he had went back in time to *hunt down* someone or something (or participate a competition LOL). Even if this time he's just here to chill, I feel like he'd be more confident on his initiatives instead of implying being stuck in limbo.
The difference between world inflicted and self inflicted motive is huge, even if they tend to overlap on many aspects. Personally I still prefer the good ol Chaos Control b4 Sonic Channel JP abandoned their old version website (I don't think newer fans know about this 😭).
