Pokémon Disaster

Gotta catch em all…after beating them mercilessly into submission of course!


If only this kid lived in the world where Big Boss
exists, he could have a whole different set of issues
with this kind of enthusiasm

Writing dark deconstructions involving the Pokémon series never gets old, and quite frankly is a seemingly endless treasure trove from which to mine from. Which is a good thing, too, as I’m not always immersed balls deep into any one game in the series, in spite of multiple titles usually coming out during any given year, though my amorous tendencies for the series remains unabated. As I’ve briefly mentioned before on ATE, I have had a tenuous relationship at best with Scarlet and Violet, as the games just represent what I deem as an excessive low point for the series, which makes it a serious difficulty in swallowing the dreck that represents Pokémania in any tolerable fashion. Even the thought of booting Scarlet up at the current moment makes me shudder, as the title is such a trial in patience on every conceivable level.


What Pokémon Scarlet and Violet should have been called

Though the titles have shaped up a bit through patches and post launch content, it’s a day late and a dollar short, quite honestly. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: just because a game has an awesome approach to game design, doesn’t mean everyone needs to ape it. I know it’s inevitable, and especially in a day and age where the triple A gaming industry is always looking for a sure fire hit, you’ll bet your ass that anyone who’s anyone is going to crib notes from something as prolific as Breath of the Wild without batting an eye, but carbon copying the experience while losing the series DNA in the process does active damage to the brand, and nothing positive for anyone in the long run.


How I imagine most conversations go during
Pokémon developer brainstorming sessions

I guess since the publisher is at least shared in this case, one developer publishing under the Nintendo banner borrowing from another developer could *at least* be somewhat justified as colleagues of sorts sharing notes, but Pokémon never needed to go full open world in the first place, at least not the mainline titles. It was an experiment better saved for a side project, and to be left at that, as it makes Scarlet feel far too aimless in it’s scope when you really pair down the entire experience. The industry goes through ebbs and flows with this kind of thing all the time, as you’ll see something like Street Fighter II, Mario 64, GTA III, Halo, WoW, Minecraft, or Fortnite touch down like a mother fucking meteor on the face of the gaming planet, and everyone wants to make the same colossal impact, sometimes spawning entire sub-genres of *insert game killer here*, and thus the new trend will be born.


Sometimes the comparisons of quality work as
intended if not quite literally, though not all are so lucky***

And while I iterate now for the sake of transparent acknowledgement, Scarlet and Violet were obviously never billed as a Zelda Killer, but the lengths of effort in which the devs themselves went to compromise the very foundation of the Pokémon design ethic ended up coming off as a net-negative, and upon reflection, just completely sabotaged the whole notion of quality therein.

Being inspired is one thing, but make sure not to lose your own identity in the process.

~Pashford

(***EDIT: Dark Cloud rules, by the way.)

Get Real, Pokémon

I need to stop bothering you fucking people with such petty bullshit


Imagine if that’s what Professor Oak said during
the tutorial for the next Pokémon game

Reality is testing me something fierce today, I’ll tell you that much. Just that feeling of moving from one minute to another filled with nothing but the energy of rolled eyes and stubbed toes. My “cold open” today (see above) has a slightly more direct reference point of sorts, as there was a massive Pokémon leak that went down over the weekend, a moment in time I’m sure Nintendo’s lawyers were likely truly delighted to see in terms of job security and a steady paycheck.


Anytime Nintendo’s lawyers get wind of a new
Pokémon fan made website hosting unofficial mods

Among some of the juicier details involved with the data leak, was the code name for the Switch’s successor, which was confirmed by the leak to be “Ounce”, the next major Pokémon release is entitled Pokémon Legends: A-Z, which is due out by next year, and also apparently the source code for HeartGold and SoulSilver, which is likely to be a major boon for the modding community, in whatever hidden underground bunkers they’re all still cooking up romhacked versions of Pokémon games while successfully trying to hide from Nintendo’s lawyers at the same time.


The average dwelling for Pokémon Rom hack makers

There’s a lot of other details involved with the initial leak itself, and this is one of those happenings which will likely to continue to bear fruit, as gamers and modders the internet over will scour through the nitty gritty in search of even more yet to be discovered truths previously buried among the data debris. One of the more interesting tidbits I’m still waiting on hearing about is whether or not Gen 10 of the Pokémon series, internally nicknamed “Gaia”, will even be any fun to play or not.

(Pikachu liked that)

Not to be such a Pashy-Pissy Pants about the series, but it’s been riding on the fumes of nostalgia for awhile now, and the series is about due for some kind of serious overhaul. The reappropriation of the design approach in utilizing the Breath of the Wild style gameplay in Scarlet and Violet just didn’t cut it, and even after numerous updates, the games still felt like fucking betas, with very little in the way of compelling gameplay to deliver in any meaningful way.


Is this a pic of a poorly implemented Pokémon game?

A lot of people have been going on for-fucking-ever about the series finally getting the MMO treatment, and I can’t emphasize enough what a shitty effort that would end up being. Would it generate money and hype? Yeah, but something more akin to Pokémon Go was and is still a much safer bet to how something like that kind of adaptation can work, and I really don’t think we should go any further down the road of mass player exchange in trying to move the needle on that particular reinvention process. I know this flies in the face of recent thoughts I had in both regards to remakes and games in general, but I think it’s about time Game Freak go back to the old drawing board to inject some much needed life in the Pokémon franchise, lest they remain in a creatively bankrupt state of mind.


Let’s pretend “just add guns” isn’t an option

I think the series is just in dire need of a bit more complexity, as they keep building the whole thing outwards instead of building inwards. The series has subsisted too long on shallow simplicity, and the people that grew up with the series have indeed grown up themselves, and are ready for something meatier to bite down on. Especially when you consider why Gen 1 is always so heavily focused upon, in that it had cultural relevancy in being ripe for the nostalgia wave, with newer iterations being less favorable for not bringing anything interesting enough to the table. When you combine that with the notion that even “retro” gens of the Pokémon series, like gen III for example, were already dramatically less popular when they even initially launched, and you realize they’re going to run out of nostalgic track to run that train on sooner than later.


A sneak peak of what the remakes to Pokémon Black and White’s
launches would look like

Truth be told, I don’t claim to have my finger on the pulse of the Pokémon fandom, so all of this might be horrendously off base conjecture that may completely contradict an average fans outlook and public desire, which makes me the old man shouting at clouds right now in terms of where Pokémon as a series should be headed, but last time I checked, the geriatric millennial is pretty much the series bread and butter if we are speaking to the reality of relevant demographics, so I don’t feel like I’m chugging stupid juice right now in critiquing Pokémon as a whole. With all of that said, I think Pokémon is in need of a much needed self-identity overhaul, pronto. Make the games more real without being more realistic. We need some kind of depth involved, or the Pokémon series is destined to drown in the shallow end creatively speaking. A sad fate for such a beloved franchise.

~Pashford