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[Wiz]

Something tells me Hoopa has a lot to do with this.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

I just don't think they're ever going to touch the 'old' universe again at this point. Mega Evolutions are a thing now, and the gameplay needs of the franchise trump whatever ridiculous 'canon' or story is in place. With games (especially games like Pokemon), you mould the story around gameplay needs. It's a distant second place concern.

This is the thing, though: I don't think that recent Pokemon stories do that. When I was much, much younger and first played the Pokemon games, my joy in them came from something that was very similar to the joy I got from the Legend of Zelda: there was a world that I got to explore and build my own story in. You could head off into the fields and the forests and construct your own team, and find your own friends, and get given a total level of independence. Finding things like the Power Plant in RBY was a joy: you felt like you were exploring somewhere nowehere else had ever been, and even if that wasn't true, there was still that thrill of exploration and independence.

This was greatly aided by the non-linearity in RBY - aside from Brock and Misty, which you have to do in order, and Giovanni, who has to follow defeating Gary on Cinnabar Island, you can do any of the other gym leaders in any order. Much of the map can be explored in your own turn - e.g., how you reach Fuschia Town can be totally different on your first play-through between those who go down the eastern coast of Kanto or whether you take Cycling Path.

This started to decline in RBY, but wasn't really strongly noticeable until BW. By this point, the story completely and totally dictates the player path. Unova is ridiculously linear and essentially just consists of the player moving from A to B to C completing the designated story event at each new location. There's no real independence and I don't feel that thrill of exploration any more, it's just "oh, character X wants me to go there, everything else is blocked off. Better do it, I guess". XY took this to absurd new limits, as well as just having generally unenjoyable gameplay - stuttering frame rate, poorly thought out Mega-evolutions, and so on.

I've really not been feeling the series in a while. I really enjoyed HGSS, but the last "new" game I appreciated was Platinum, which is a long time ago now. I don't think the series is really making the steps forward in areas it needs to, and instead is just accumulating useless fat that lessens the experience. It definitely needs a fresh new pair of eyes, I feel, it's at risk of becoming quite stale.

 

[Forkball]

I also forgot to mention the part where you ride Rayquaza into space, burst through an asteroid via sheer speed, and have a Pokemon battle in orbit against a mutated space virus.

That's not even the craziest thing in the game.

 

[Andrefpvs]

I also forgot to mention the part where you ride Rayquaza into space, burst through an asteroid via sheer speed, and have a Pokemon battle in orbit against a mutated space virus.

That's not even the craziest thing in the game.

Oh, that. LOL!

And no one even acknowledges this after you do it.

Everyone's like: "Thanks for saving the world, I guess."

And I just sat on my bed thinking: "This... this kid just did something that no human being could ever hope to survive. Hello? Anyone?"

 

[MrNyarlathotep]

This was greatly aided by the non-linearity in RBY

Take off your nostalgia goggles; pokemon has always been linear which is why HMs exist and why there are gym leader badge requirements for using HMs outside of battle.

 

[Malyse]

so gamefreak went full kingdom hearts?
you never go full kingdom hearts.

Excuse me Kingdom Hearts only has one timeline thank you very much.

 

[MillionVolts]

I don't expect them to do a whole lot with this idea in the future. It's just their way of justifying the changes in the story and to avoid retconning the original R/S/E.

I wonder if Fairy types also had something to do with this decision.

 

[Neku89]

Now that I think of it, a Swimmer in the Battle Resort says that he heard a big "splash" coming from near him, but he couldn't see anything but sea and Pokémon. It may be that Looker fell from the "old" dimension through a dimensional opening (one of Hoopa's rings?). That means that Looker is a dimensional traveler! Game Freak may as well turn him into the Pokémon universe's Doctor (he already resembles Tennant's Doctor)

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Take off your nostalgia goggles; pokemon has always been linear which is why HMs exist and why there are gym leader badge requirements for using HMs outside of battle.

There's literally no nostalgia goggles there; my comments about non-linearity aren't opinions but facts (well, the claim non-linearity is better is an opinion, but the claim that RBY is more non-linear than subsequent games is a fact).

In RBY: Brock and Misty must be done in order. Lt. Surge, Erika, Sabrina, Koga, and Blaine can be done in almost any order; the only requirement is that Blaine has to come after Koga. Giovanni must be done last.

In GSC: Falkner, Bugsy, Whitney, and Morty must be done in order. Chuck and Jasmine can be alternated. Pryce and Clair have to be done in order. The Kanto gym leaders can take place in effectively any order.

In RSE: Roxanne must be done first. Brawly and Wattson can be alternated. Flannery and Norman must be done in order. Winona and Tate & Liza can be alternated. Wallace/Juan must be done last.

In DPPt and onwards: all gym leaders must be done in order.

You can see through-out the series there is a steady progression away from non-linearity. It carries on in map designs, too: RBY features several alternate paths - there are at least two ways you can get to Fuschia City from Celadon, and at least two ways to get to Cinnabar from Fuschia. By BW, the entire game is one single sequence - you don't have any option to chose alternate paths.

 

[Riposte]

You can take things even further and say that Gen I and II are their own timeline:

This is, of course, fans overspeculating. It'll be interesting to see what the upcoming games do with this, though.

Deepest.

Lore.

 

[Brickhunt]

This is what I was thinking. I mean if Gamefreak ever wants to stop adding Mega evolutions, they will simply add an NPC saying how he/she wishes that Pokemon had a hidden power and he/she wonders if in an alternate universe his/her beloved Pinsir can evolve.

Red didn't become a Pokemon Master.

No, you see. We need a game where the MC, using Celebi or Dialga, travels back to the past and cause the 3.000 year old war, so that it can kickstart the events of X/Y and ORAS to happen.

Spoiler

The last game of the Infity Dimension/3D timeline will be the Fire Red/Leaf Green re-remakes, which will both explain how the timelines were born to begin with, will end the 3D timeline and kickstart the a whole new timeline with any BS concept GF decide to tackle in that contradicts the previous games

 

[Huh?]

To be honest, I prefer this to them juxtaposing OR/AS over Emerald the way FireRed/LeafGreen were over R/B/Y. OR/AS have had way more changes to them than FR/LG/HG/SS did, so it makes sense to not try and do the same thing as before. But I've never played X/Y so I have no opinion on that version being separate from the other stories.

Don't see why you have to. Two of them aren't active anymore, and the only active one only has 2 sets of games - ORAS followed by XY.

Pokemon's storylines get shittier and shittier over time. I preferred them when they were relatively non-intrusive and the world felt, uh, 'sensible' once you took in the original premise Pokemon exist. The concept of having Pokemon that can warp oceans and continents and time and space and dimensions on a grand scale that can also be captured in a Pokeball and ordered around by 10 year old kids just seemed beyond stupid and I thought that ever since RSE came out; it's not a nostalgia thing as I was uh... 9? when RSE came out; they're among the earlier Pokemon games I experienced. GSC had it best, I think - legendary Pokemon are just that: legendary. Very powerful and rare, and inspire myths and stories about them from prior centuries when only a very few would have encountered them, but certainly not capable of world-altering feats.

To be fair, the Pokedex has always said these Pokemon have absurd powers. Blue, a ten/eleven year old whose own Grandfather can't even remember his name, can have by the end of the game in Generation I monsters that can fly at Mach 2(Pidgeot), have an IQ of 5,000(Alakazam), live in 3,600 degree molten lava(Rhydon), and destroy entire cities(Gyarados). So while I agree they probably shouldn't have literally had the creator of everything be a Pokemon you can catch and use in battle, I don't think it's too surprising that the legendary Pokemon have some really nutty abilities.

 

[Boss Doggie]

There's literally no nostalgia goggles there; my comments about non-linearity aren't opinions but facts (well, the claim non-linearity is better is an opinion, but the claim that RBY is more non-linear than subsequent games is a fact).

In RBY: Brock and Misty must be done in order. Lt. Surge, Erika, Sabrina, Koga, and Blaine can be done in almost any order; the only requirement is that Blaine has to come after Koga. Giovanni must be done last.

In GSC: Falkner, Bugsy, Whitney, and Morty must be done in order. Chuck and Jasmine can be alternated. Pryce and Clair have to be done in order. The Kanto gym leaders can take place in effectively any order.

In RSE: Roxanne must be done first. Brawly and Wattson can be alternated. Flannery and Norman must be done in order. Winona and Tate & Liza can be alternated. Wallace/Juan must be done last.

In DPPt and onwards: all gym leaders must be done in order.

You can see through-out the series there is a steady progression away from non-linearity. It carries on in map designs, too: RBY features several alternate paths - there are at least two ways you can get to Fuschia City from Celadon, and at least two ways to get to Cinnabar from Fuschia. By BW, the entire game is one single sequence - you don't have any option to chose alternate paths.

Except you know, you can do three gyms in Gen IV in any order.

With that said, that's still bullshit. That's what I argue to be a pseudo-non-linearity. Remember the coffee guard? And "gyms that can be battled in any order" suffer from level creep.

And again, look at your example - only RBY and DPPt can be done in "non-linear" way but at the same time it feels more like a half-assed version than anything else due to how they handled it, and saying them being non-linear is a shallow way of seeing things.

And the only true linear map is Unova.

Oh, that. LOL!

And no one even acknowledges this after you do it.

Everyone's like: "Thanks for saving the world, I guess."

And I just sat on my bed thinking: "This... this kid just did something that no human being could ever hope to survive. Hello? Anyone?"

The hilarity is that XY is the only game so far that truly acknowledges your feat.

Don't see why you have to. Two of them aren't active anymore, and the only active one only has 2 sets of games - ORAS followed by XY.

Pokemon's storylines get shittier and shittier over time. I preferred them when they were relatively non-intrusive and the world felt, uh, 'sensible' once you took in the original premise Pokemon exist. The concept of having Pokemon that can warp oceans and continents and time and space and dimensions on a grand scale that can also be captured in a Pokeball and ordered around by 10 year old kids just seemed beyond stupid and I thought that ever since RSE came out; it's not a nostalgia thing as I was uh... 9? when RSE came out; they're among the earlier Pokemon games I experienced. GSC had it best, I think - legendary Pokemon are just that: legendary. Very powerful and rare, and inspire myths and stories about them from prior centuries when only a very few would have encountered them, but certainly not capable of world-altering feats.

Your nostalgia goggles is showing, even if you don't admit it. Right off the bat in the first game you can catch pokemon doing weird shit, and even GSC had that (resurrecting Pokemon, Pokemon that can control the tides due to its massive power, time traveling onions, etc.) If anything, the games got better because they acknowledge they exist rather than putting them there for shits and giggles.

 

[xaszatm]

I just assumed that Looker got amnesia and washed up in Hoenn after his Kalos adventure. Also there were a lot of Kalos mentions in the game, especially saying that Kalos built their Battle Maison after Hoenn. Now that I think about it, there's not a lot of evidence showing that it's after XY, but not a whole lot that shows it's way before XY either.

Well the biggest thing involves the O-Powers. Obviously spoilers:

When you complete the O-Power sidequest in the game, all the guys literately combine into one human: The O-Power guy from X/Y. It's creepy.

 

[_hekk05]

If I'm not remembering this wrong, gamefreak have already told us that the pokemon remakes (FRLG, HGSS, ORAS) happen in an alternate dimension, and hence the existence of different canons.

 

[Seven Force]

I think blatantly making a separate continuity (and acknowledging the fact) was a somewhat eloquent way of doing things instead of it just overwriting the original games. It worked for FR/LG and HG/SS, because it didn't really add anything too game changing, but Mega Evolution, and how it affects the game's lore (insert obligatory "lol deepest Pokemon lore" remark here) kinda shape ORAS in a far different light than the original games.

I do wish we'd get a Pokemon game again where the legendaries are framed as an important subplot (ala Gold/Silver/Crystal) as opposed to being the target of whatever organization happens to be running amok. Not to say I didn't enjoy those plots (Gen V being the only exception, though I'm aware in in the minority there), but four straight generations of that is enough.

 

[entremet]

Well the biggest thing involves the O-Powers. Obviously spoilers:

When you complete the O-Power sidequest in the game, all the guys literately combine into one human: The O-Power guy from X/Y. It's creepy.

Mr. Bonding is his name.

It was like some weird wizardry lol.

 

[Jo Shishido's Cheeks]

The story in XY was surprisingly interesting and engaging, the storyline in ORAS on the other hand is complete trash although the Hoopa capturing legendaries stuff is pretty intriguing.