User blog comment:Mystic Monkey/My Theories & Headcanons/@comment-1981371-20160129070205/@comment-679780-20160129215057

What I've written about the chaos Emeralds will perhaps be relevent given as part of the games story, Sonic will be warped into the sub-microverse where the Special stages reside purely for story reasons.

Actually going to Special Stages to collect Chaos Emeralds may still be relevent in order to unlock the finale of the story, than simply finding them lying around zones.