this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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It's sad too because I don't want edginess, I want Nintendo to just explore Pokemon like they're living creatures.
The worldbuilding is so shallow and the Pokedex entries don't make sense. And the new Pokemon roll out to replace the old ones (hate that it's called dexit).
It's frustrating to think about the proposed ideology of Pokemon about stewardship, compassion, and working together when the franchise itself is just that, a franchise.
Tangential to that, it always annoyed me growing up with the media and the games that key to all the stories is the idea of individual pokemon actually being important and growing meaningfully as part of a largely static team, but in the games they're just disposable type, stat, and move pools that get switched out or binned indefinitely and your static team at the end is a bunch of stuff you caught in the last fifth of the game or less. The one, singular exception to that in my experience was when I caught a shiny vulpix in one of the gym challenges in Sword (of all places), and that became my sweeper for the entire rest of the game and both DLCs, but that's the most edge case of all edge cases being something that was insanely rare and special in its own right, that was also a very strong and viable pokemon, with nearly perfect stats on top of that.
Like there's a huge disconnect between the sort of collecting gameplay and the story about growth and whatnot, since you're basically playing a looter shooter and the pokemon are just new weapon rolls to be evaluated and kept or tossed, and none of the franchise's mechanical attempts at fixing this have worked because they're always just limited gimmicks that can't get in the way of that core looter-shooter progression loop.
Consequently, I've always wanted to see something where a given pokemon's progression is more fluid and has higher peaks than just "this is a one stage low-stat trash mon and that's all it will ever be, bin" or "this has one mid-tier evolution that comes super early, good early game bruiser and then trash as soon as something better comes along," as long as you actually invest in it and keep it around. But I don't think Pokemon could ever do something like that, because that turns it into an RPG where pokemon are mechanically characters instead of weapons and the evolutions or whatever are like classes they prestige into instead of fixed forms.
I think there's something deeply contradictory in Pokemon's messaging that there is a quantifiable hierarchy in power, even in the anime. Training is great and everything, but a starter bird wouldn't win in a matchup with any fully evolved mon, let alone a legendary.
There's a cynicism that's passed off as realism that decides that one creature is inherently better than another. Is that biological essentialism? I had a similar issue in Steven Universe where Jasper was treated as a superior fighter to Amethyst regardless of training and tactics.
Like yeah, a physically weaker creature might not win in a battle of strength, but that doesn't mean there's no way to win a fight in another way. And even if not, it's fucked up that there is an inherent value system in place.
Then again all of the Pokemon values they express in the series falls apart when you look at the fact that it's possible to trade a Pokemon, and there's an incentive to do so. It really fucked me up as a kid seeing ash trade his Butterfree and then later feeling sad when Butterfree left on his own accord and was sad. Pokemon are depicted as sentient and it's bizarre at this point they still incentivize trading with the tagline: Gotta Catch'em All!
Ironically I was just thinking "like what if evolution trees were more fleshed out and went further, so some filler trash like pidgey ends up having a path to turn into the legendary birds or something comparable." And the more I thought about how, mechanically, that would work I came to the ironic conclusion that instead of pokemon being looter-shooter weapons, they should be more like the weapons from Monster Hunter in having trees and upgrades.
Yeah, that disconnect between how the story is just "they're real and smart and your friend" and everything else is "so we gotta sell two identical versions of the same game but with different collectables, and we gotta move all these gacha card packs, and..."
I've always thought that Pokemon should introduce the competitive tiers to the main game. Explain them as being the in-universe equivalent of weight classes - there's nothing wrong with being a featherweight, but it's understood that you shouldn't get put into the ring with a super heavyweight, because the competition favors certain physical attributes over others.
Hell, the games could be completely revitalized if they based more of the game mechanics around competitive battles. Teach the players about walls and sweepers, program smart opponents who play to win, cut out all of the XP grinding and the breeding for perfect stats shit and focus on the player getting better at the game instead of just increasing their numbers, etc.
this sounds like a formalisation of the smogon shit which i don't think im opposed to but i havent played a pokemon since X & Y so yeah. i dont think there's any point being made here, just nintendo making ubers real would be funny
try radical red sometime. it's a mod that forces you to learn competitive strategies and team building because the AI is not only playing to win, but it also has access to things like favorable terrain that you can't change.
I’ve long felt that friendship level should be explored much more deeply and be at minimum equally impactful as the rest of the stats combined.
Ash is objectively a bad trainer. His ability to befriend Pokémon he trains and coaches in a talentless manner transcends the rest (except for every time he reaches a final).
The power of friendship and bonding with companion creatures is the main thing about the show.
That's on you, Pokemon games are generally pretty easy and you can beat them with most any party. I beat gold with pretty much just my feraligator because I was a dumb kid who didn't level anyone else.
That's true, but the games are designed with the intention for players to replace Pokemon in your roster. The anime did it too, with Ash changing out his team between regions and only occasionally revisiting them.
There's a level of disposability baked into the series.
they're written by children
That's the cute meme, but the reality is that they were written by the developers without much forethought. I read that post about Diagetic Essentialism a few days ago, and I know it's splitting hairs to over invest in worldbuilding, but I think such a popular series could stand to be a little more responsible in how it explores the relationships between humans and animals. Even fictional ones.
I don't want an age-up or edgy story, I just want the world to be depicted with more depth. I just want to know where the ham comes from when you make sandwiches in the new games. Or just don't have meat. Nobody asked for it and it just raises more questions.
Signed,
An autistic person with terrible luck in special interests.
I mean, it just kinda sounds like you want Monster Hunter then (or maybe MH: Stories given it's a turn based team RPG ala Pokemon).
I just want Pokemon to actually do more of its early premise of humans and animals working together in community. I would love a team-based mon game, but I really just want to see Pokemon answer and explore the philosophical questions present in the series.
Don't think gamefreak is capable of that tbh. The last time they attempted to do that was gen 5, and unlike most pokemon fans I think its writing was really bad. They shove team plasma being cartoonishly/one-sidedly/comically eviilllllllll into your face after they're barely introduced, N just comes across as incompetent and ignorant in light of team plasma's incredibly obvious/open eviiiiilllll and hypocrisy, and IMO none of the issues raised were actually addressed by the end of the unova games (nothing genuinely changes and basically everything returns to the status quo at the end of it all)
I agree on all points and that just makes me all the more passionate about getting rid of IP laws and letting an ambitious fan write the Pokemon game we deserve. Liberate all Pokemon!
I haven't seen the anime but IIRC the original head writer wanted it to end with pokemon realizing they were exploited and rising up against humans, but the higher ups didn't allow him to do so
Hopefully with Mewtwo leading the charge.
I was really hoping to find a mod that recognized that N/plasma were completely right and that you as the player should join them. alas, no such mod exists.