Boy, I can't help but think you might be looking way too into that.
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Do you want Pokemon to continue emphasizing story and narrative more in games?
- Thread starter Deleted member 249
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I don't want any kind of story unless it has to do with your trainer journey. I play Pokémon to explore a new region, go on an adventure, find new pokémons, meet cool characters... In theory that's more than enough to drive the game forward. I don't want these villain of the week stories or interdimensional mysteries.
I thought the story in Sun Moon was refreshing. None of the other games really had compelling stories. I'm okay with them leaning more on making interesting characters and motivations like Lusamine.
This is a great way of putting how Pokemon has become recently. Waaay too many moments in S/M of some NPC walking up to you off-screen and taking your control away while they drop exposition about the location you're in, or whatever part of plot progression you've reached.
It feels like you're barely able to explore or see things for yourself, because you're constantly being stopped!
With that said, I want Pokemon to continue being narrative based, but they need to add the option to skip cutscenes, and stop littering these plot progression flags all over the map that rip you out of the gameplay. There has to be SOME way for GameFreak to establish an elaborate plot, but not take away player control, I'm sure.
I second this.
I don't really do the whole competitive thing with Pokemon (blasphemous, I know). I just play through the story, maybe sometimes do the single-player post-game stuff, and then I'm done. The story is the main thing I do, so naturally I want it to be there and I want it to be good.
All I want is non-stop battling with a team builder. Not having to hatch a million eggs or go through a bland cringe-fest story is the dream, but it's not going to happen.
That's so arbitrary especially considering how one dimensional Blue and Silver were and how much better Cheren and Hau were in comparison. Also Gladion exists.
Yeah all Sun and Moon's story did was getting in my way of actually playing. If the cutscenes and dialogue weren't so bad I wouldn't mind that much. But all it does so far is sending me on a track I barely care about. I hate to sound like a genwunner, but the first few games did a great job at just throwing you in there and having storybeats along the way that didn't stop you from engaging with the game.
After playing Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (I know that's a weird comparison), no. I like games driven by story and it's characters, don't get me wrong. But with Pokemon I want my own adventure.
I'd rather they just focus on worldbuilding. Pokémon stories are usually droning and boring. Gen 5 was pretty cool but I'd still prefer a more open and loose game with enviromental storytelling rather than the usual loop of cutscene > corridor > cutscene. Pokémon should be about the player and their bond to their partners.
I forget to mention Pearl/Barry as annoying as he is. Cheren was decent but lacks rival potiental to me and hau is not even a rival worth mentioning, Too friendly. Gladion had potiental I guess.
Here's the thing.
I would be down for a more fleshed out story but I am unconvinced that Game Freak is really all that qualified to deliver that, I don't think it's in their skillset. Gen 5 was a noticeable improvement but I wouldn't exactly consider it among the better rpg narratives out there.
My main issue with Pokemon storytelling as a whole is that it's usually saccharine to the point of blandness. It feels like every character had any potential interesting qualities, whether it be in their personalities or dialogue, filed away and what we're left with is like cheap candy, sweet but utterly lacking in any substantial flavor. It has no bite to it at all and fails to really hold my attention.
This isn't me necessarily requesting that the games become "dark and edgy", I get that being warm and welcoming is part of Pokemon but like even Paper Mario has had more characterful and entertaining writing in the past. I just don't get the impression that GF is ever gonna deliver it in a satisfying way.
This is all with the caveat that I haven't played Sun and Moon. I have heard that they made some improvements but there are some mixed feelings, I will have to play them myself to form my own opinion. Maybe some of my complaints have gotten addressed.
Overall I feel it would be much more satisfying to have an unintrusive, passable story and just focus on a more satisfying gameplay experience. Trainers with better/more well thought out teams and more diverse strategies, a good selection of Pokemon for the player to make their party, increase the QoL features (getting rid of HM's was a great idea), etc.
It's not merely about the writing in abstract but how they function in the greater scope of the game.
Blue and Silver aren't particularly multidimensional characters, but they work well within their role as a rival. Blue is always one step ahead of you, and his dismissive attitude towards you motivate you to beat him. Silver presents a contrast to the philosophy that the games are trying to instill and in the end he has a subtle change of heart that is visible through game mechanics (his Crobat).
I cannot speak for gen 7's characters but cheren was not that good to me despite the writing being more fleshed out, I don't think his character arc was particularly interesting. Blue and Silver did more for me with less.
I would be down for a more fleshed out story but I am unconvinced that Game Freak is really all that qualified to deliver that, I don't think it's in their skillset. Gen 5 was a noticeable improvement but I wouldn't exactly consider it among the better rpg narratives out there.
My main issue with Pokemon storytelling as a whole is that it's usually saccharine to the point of blandness. It feels like every character had any potential interesting qualities, whether it be in their personalities or dialogue, filed away and what we're left with is like cheap candy, sweet but utterly lacking in any substantial flavor. It has no bite to it at all and fails to really hold my attention.
This isn't me necessarily requesting that the games become "dark and edgy", I get that being warm and welcoming is part of Pokemon but like even Paper Mario has had more characterful and entertaining writing in the past. I just don't get the impression that GF is ever gonna deliver it in a satisfying way.
This is all with the caveat that I haven't played Sun and Moon. I have heard that they made some improvements but there are some mixed feelings, I will have to play them myself to form my own opinion. Maybe some of my complaints have gotten addressed.
Overall I feel it would be much more satisfying to have an unintrusive, passable story and just focus on a more satisfying gameplay experience. Trainers with better/more well thought out teams and more diverse strategies, a good selection of Pokemon for the player to make their party, increase the QoL features (getting rid of HM's was a great idea), etc.
It's not merely about the writing in abstract but how they function in the greater scope of the game.
Blue and Silver aren't particularly multidimensional characters, but they work well within their role as a rival. Blue is always one step ahead of you, and his dismissive attitude towards you motivate you to beat him. Silver presents a contrast to the philosophy that the games are trying to instill and in the end he has a subtle change of heart that is visible through game mechanics (his Crobat).
I cannot speak for gen 7's characters but cheren was not that good to me despite the writing being more fleshed out, I don't think his character arc was particularly interesting. Blue and Silver did more for me with less.
Only focus on story if you're able to write something good. Unfortunately Gen V is really the last great Pokemon story, and all subsequent generations have been shambolic to say the least.
Regarding your first point, Sun and Moon have pretty dark turns in the story and characters area, and even in side quests. And it also had a ton of flavor with Team Skull and side characters in general, despite the former being mostly used as comic reliefs.
This is something I've wanted for awhile. I think it would be cool if at the beginning of the game, Professor ___ asks you more than just "What's your name?". They could ask you stuff like:
"Do you have any experience with Pokemon?" (and if you pick yes, it doesn't have nearly as many tutorials and the game is harder)
"What is your goal - to be the very best, or to catch them all?"
Your choice here would effect the initial playthrough of the game. If you pick "To be the very best", it's more like a traditional pokemon game. If you picked "To catch them all", it plays more like Pokemon GO where it's a lot more focused on collecting than it is battling. I also would like each option to have certain things exclusive to it, if you picked the battle option, you would have access to stuff like a Battle Tower or a game-equivalent of unofficial-gyms. If you pick the collect option, you would have caves, forests, and other paths that are open to you with a larger variety of Pokemon than the battle option would get. Once you beat the E4, you're able to go through scaled up versions of the stuff that wasn't previously unlocked to you, so if you pick "To catch them all", you would gain access to a harder version of the unofficial gyms after the elite four, whereas if you picked the "The be the very best" option, you would gain access to the previously blocked off caves and forests with higher level Pokemon in them.
Story is nice, but don't make me sit through boatloads of monologue when I just wanna catch em all. Especially not when it hasn't been 5 minutes since I was last interrupted. Worse than the monologue is when I have to watch terrible animations of the person monologuing moving around or making a facial expression between their lines.
Not really, I always consider the story in pokemon as the basic framework to propel you forward and that's about that. I'd actually rather they emphasis more on open exploration and different ways to play. Give me more life sim in my pocket as other stuff to do lol I'll make my own story.
More like gen 5 and less like 6 and 7 or just dial it back completely. Felt like I was just dragged along against my will.
Sure, but without walls of text. More exploratory emphasis please! A sense of mystique brought by stories told by NPCs and more elaborate environmental design. Hoenn and Sinnoh were such cool regions. I care about the world, less so the raw text.
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OP
OP
They did not. They said "in the style of X/Y and Sun/Moon" to denote it would be "mainline" and not a departure like Let's Go, but they have never explicitly confirmed a Sun/Moon style story focus.
Hmmm nope, you're talking about a different interview.
Back in 2017, Ohmori explicitly said in the Pokémon Switch interview (to Game Informer) that as hardware got more powerful, they also wanted to scale storyline so they become bigger and more important to the game.
No sandboxes, no open world. Keep the structure the same. If they do that, they can do whatever they want with the story.
They did in the Game Informer interviews post E3 2017, where they said that now that the hardware is very capable they're more interested in giving the story more emphasis since they can be more expressive with characters animation, etc.
Trying to find it, but masuda said at one point they want to focus more and more on story.
Pokemon needs an explorable world not tied to the story. Make the world the story in the side quests you do and characters you interact with.
Not every plot has to be 10 year old kid save the world. The dramatic stakes just make it less relatable. Just let me explore with my monsters.
Not every plot has to be 10 year old kid save the world. The dramatic stakes just make it less relatable. Just let me explore with my monsters.
I'm happy with story focus, but I wish the exploration wasn't interrupted quite so often for it (and really a lot of the interruptions in X/Y and S/M barely count as story focus). Instead of being forced to stop for dialogue and cutscenes when I get somewhere, just make it so I can keep exploring until I actually approach and talk to the character of interest. So if I get to a new route and see a story character hanging out somewhere, I have the option to bypass them and explore the route for a bit before going back and starting the conversation.
And hell if it has nothing to do with the main storyline, maybe this tenth cutscene with friendly "rival" before the second badge can actually be optional. What a crazy idea. How much better would X/Y have been if you could just walk right on by Tierno and Trevor whenever you saw them?
And hell if it has nothing to do with the main storyline, maybe this tenth cutscene with friendly "rival" before the second badge can actually be optional. What a crazy idea. How much better would X/Y have been if you could just walk right on by Tierno and Trevor whenever you saw them?
Yes, if it's more like black and white and not basically the rest of the series with two caveats.
The first is that is it should also absolutely 100% let you skip any and all cut scenes like any other modern RPG.
The second is that despite the narrative being improved, it should still take a backseat to having a world where you have many options on where to go and how, with the world changing somewhat dynamically on options the player choses (e.g. the world should be designed so that you have multiple possible ways to go, and the order you enter routes on changes what level Pokémon are there, or they appear in evolved states, same for trainers. Or have the status of wild Pokémon depend on how many badges you have or something, with a toggle you can set postgame or something, not my job to work it out).
The (at least seemingly) increasing linearity of Pokémon games isn't going to cut it for me for much longer.
The first is that is it should also absolutely 100% let you skip any and all cut scenes like any other modern RPG.
The second is that despite the narrative being improved, it should still take a backseat to having a world where you have many options on where to go and how, with the world changing somewhat dynamically on options the player choses (e.g. the world should be designed so that you have multiple possible ways to go, and the order you enter routes on changes what level Pokémon are there, or they appear in evolved states, same for trainers. Or have the status of wild Pokémon depend on how many badges you have or something, with a toggle you can set postgame or something, not my job to work it out).
The (at least seemingly) increasing linearity of Pokémon games isn't going to cut it for me for much longer.
OP
OP
Yes pls, if you can share the link I would appreciate it
Why is there a "Yes" and a "Yes, but only if it's good" option?
Who would pick "Yes, but only if it's bad?"
At any rate, yes, I want them to keep trying to push the game in new ways and story/narrative is definitely one of them. Obviously I'd want it to be good.
Who would pick "Yes, but only if it's bad?"
At any rate, yes, I want them to keep trying to push the game in new ways and story/narrative is definitely one of them. Obviously I'd want it to be good.
As much focus as they put on it, I don't think Pokemon will ever have a plot that I would consider interesting or anything more than shallow, so I'd rather them to put the effort on other things.
Especially looking at SM, which has terrible pacing and the exploration suffered so they could tell its story, like it's something super innovative and incredible.
Especially looking at SM, which has terrible pacing and the exploration suffered so they could tell its story, like it's something super innovative and incredible.
No one wants it to be bad, but some would still take a lame one over sandbox openworld.
Edit: actually this is another bit, that part was in the other video
I liked Black/White but nothing before or after had a good story and it has mostly been a big annoyance in the later games. Especially in Sun/Moon, which I will never replay due to it.
Mystery Dungeon games have shown that you can make good Pokémon stories and I would rather have that than no story. If the only thing they can manage is on the Sun/Moon level then no story is way better.
Mystery Dungeon games have shown that you can make good Pokémon stories and I would rather have that than no story. If the only thing they can manage is on the Sun/Moon level then no story is way better.
Can't forget Serena. The game made you feel like an unintentional jerk every time you beat her.
