Old Pokemon General(RIP)

[Prof Gallows]

If you play like I do, then I completely understand.

I have a Tyranitar I got as a Larvitar on a nuzlocke run for Soul Silver, and I'm very attached to him. He's in my White 2 game right now and I haven't taken him out of my party since bringing him over.
Starters are the same for me. I just can't seem to stick with them. They were given to me, I didn't go out and catch them, and no work was done whatsoever to get them.

 

[ACking]

To a lot of pokemon fans, getting attached to those little bundles of pixels and code isn't weird. I've got pokemon I've kept all the way up from gen 3 on my white 2 game right now.

I don't feel so weird now! Lol. Does anyone else go through phases were they can only think about Pokemon?

 

[Prof Gallows]

I don't feel so weird now! Lol. Does anyone else go through phases were they can only think about Pokemon?

Yeah, pretty much every day for the past seventeen years. XD

There are days when I do feel like doing nothing but playing pokemon, and I tend to focus some of my writing time on working on stories that are pokemon related. But it's not every day.

 

[Juicebox]

I don't feel so weird now! Lol. Does anyone else go through phases were they can only think about Pokemon?

Yeah, it definitely goes in waves. Right now, my Pokemania is pretty calm since it's been awhile since any new Pokemon news has rolled in. When the next announcement for X/Y comes in though, I'm going to be hooked again.

Although my recent Harvest Moon kick could possibly at fault. When that ends though, I'll be right back to being obsessed with Pokemon.

 

[Officer Berri]

I don't usually get a kick as hard for pokemon like I do the bigger games I love (like Animal Crossing, lol). I've played the games, with pretty much the same exact basic premise for so long, really clicking into the games has been hard for me. I'm hoping that the coming generation not only changes up the look with the 3D, but they also change the story up a little so I'm not just doing the whole "get starter, catch pokemon, beat trainers, beat gym leaders, take on evil team, elite four, credits~" routine.

 

[Stevey Queen]

They should make a Pokemon game that's like the main games, only no gym leaders and whatnot and that you are a secret agent guy.

 

[Juicebox]

I don't usually get a kick as hard for pokemon like I do the bigger games I love (like Animal Crossing, lol). I've played the games, with pretty much the same exact basic premise for so long, really clicking into the games has been hard for me. I'm hoping that the coming generation not only changes up the look with the 3D, but they also change the story up a little so I'm not just doing the whole "get starter, catch pokemon, beat trainers, beat gym leaders, take on evil team, elite four, credits~" routine.

I don't think that they will ever really get rid of the gym system, just because it's so convenient for pacing.

However, I want them to get rid of the evil teams so bad. Don't get me wrong, I loved Team Plasma, but there aren't a whole lot of places to go anymore. They need to come up with a new conflict that doesn't revolve around beating up the bad guys. Like, maybe you are searching for a treasure that can cure your mother's rare sickness, or maybe the world is going to end, and you have to get all the estranged gym leaders to come together to help prevent the ending. Or, if you need a bad guy, your home town is in danger of being torn down by a company. Your town is supposedly the place where the legendary Pokemon sleep, but the company won't listen, so it's up to you to win the league and save your town.


Seriously anything would be cooler than Team --- wants to catch ---- in order to ----.

 

[oath2order]

I doubt they'll change it up.

 

[Prof Gallows]

I doubt they'll change it up much too.


As much as I would love for there to be a different way to play the game as far as story goes, I don't see them changing something that has been working for seventeen years. I wish that at the start of the game your character wasn't completely unaware of the entire world they live in, that has always bothered me.
There are preschool kids training pokemon. So why are our characters all of a sudden just now picking up on it? Especially since they're much, much older than preschoolers.
That is the sort of starting story I'd like to see. Explain why our characters are just now deciding to train pokemon and challenge the gyms.

Any sort of plot that goes on alongside that could be anything. Instead of bad guy teams there could be multiple rivals from different towns competing against you to challenge and win the league.
There hasn't really been an actual rival with that motivation since R/B/G. That was the whole point of the rival, the whole point you and them decided to train pokemon in the first place. What happened to that?

I like the part about the home town being in trouble that Juicebox came up with. I'd like to step it up a bit further and say that this company, or multiple ones, are pushing industry in that region and wiping out forests and carving up mountains and destroying places where pokemon live. Story wise this is going to piss a lot of people off, especially pokemon rangers. Having them battle alongside you and making them a big part of the story would fit well into a plot like that.
I'd also like to mention that I mean the pokemon rangers from the main games, not the spin offs. Like, these guys are legitimate trainers, they just have the same goals.

 

[oath2order]

I like the idea of having rangers from the main games team up with you.

I thought the reason why the characters just now decided to train Pokemon was odd. I mean, R/S/E had the player motivated to train Pokemon after the Professor got attacked. The weird thing about that story though was Norman was the gym leader, so why was his family just now moving into town? Were they from a different region or what?

 

[Prof Gallows]

Yeah, I think there were like tiny bits of dialogue through those games that mentioned you and your mom moved so you could be closer to your dad.

 

[Juicebox]

I've always wanted to have the trainer start out with a Pokemon at their house, but they aren't allowed to use it for whatever reason. Maybe an overprotective mother? You could try to train whatever the Pokemon is but she could tell you,
"No. I know you're eager to be a trainer, but if you don't have any badges, you father's Pokemon isn't going to listen to you."

I'm fine with the trainer not having any knowledge of the world, because by extension, they are supposed to be the younger kids who are playing, that really don't know anything about the games. I just wish they would come up with an explanation of why this is happening. Like maybe your mother is allergic to Pokemon so you couldn't bring them in the house, or it's a tradition in your family to get your Pokemon at a certain time. Something, anything to add depth.

I was also disappointed in B/W2, because when they showed the trainer school in the screen shots, I thought that your character was going to be starting out there. I think saying that they're still in school is a very viable excuse. You then get your Pokemon for graduating.

 

[oath2order]

I like the trainer school idea.

Yeah, I think there were like tiny bits of dialogue through those games that mentioned you and your mom moved so you could be closer to your dad.

I don't understand why the family didn't move when the dad got the job at the gym initially >.>

 

[Juicebox]

I like the trainer school idea.



I don't understand why the family didn't move when the dad got the job at the gym initially >.>

It's been made pretty clear throughout the Pokemon series that fathers are unnecessary. The fact that May/Brenden's mother even acknowledged that she has a husband shows more devotion than any of the other moms combined.

 

[Prof Gallows]

I automatically assume that the fathers are still out on their training adventures.


Other than a little bit of story content, the mothers are pretty useless too. =p
they're pretty much a pokemon center. Except in GS/HGSS, where your mom buys you things.

 

[Juicebox]

I've honestly always imagined an Earthbound scenario for most of the fathers to try and keep all of them from looking like dead beats.

For those of you who haven't played Earthbound, the father of Ness never appears. He is always implied to be at work, and the only way you can access him is through the telephone. It was made that way to try and represent the busy salaryman trope who works so hard that he never sees the family. That's the scenario that I've always put in my head, or at least that's how I imagine Red's father since he is mentioned in the game.

Because even if the dads are out training, they still pretty much abandoned their child.

 

[Prof Gallows]

It might not be viewed that way in the pokemon world, though.

If kids are going out and walking over their entire region and training pokemon without anyone worrying about it, it's probably the same for everyone else. The dads could come home every now and then just like our characters can do.

 

[Juicebox]

To me... it still doesn't feel right. Unless, they're sending the winnings, then I suppose it would be like a dad working far away.

Then again, I don't think that all the player characters have the same dad story either. It would be a weird coincidence to have all the fathers disappear in the same way, and have all their kids end up becoming champions.

 

[Prof Gallows]

Yeah, I think that's why they stopped relating them after G/S.

In the game universe, the regions are like their own little worlds. Anything happening outside of the region pretty much just doesn't exist. So it's not like all of a sudden a bunch of kids starting defeating the champions across the world. If the games were to be looked at realistically, then someone could point out that the gym leaders and elite 4, and champion, are all adults.

They've spent way more time training their pokemon to get to where they are. Our characters, like any game, story, movie, etc. Are the heroes. They do these unbelievable stunts and get to this huge position without even having to try. If it were realistic, that wouldn't happen. A kid going out to start their adventure is going to spend many, many years training the pokemon they catch. It could possibly take months on end to just be able to defeat the first gym leader.

That's the sort of pokemon world I have in my head, anyway.

 

[Juicebox]

I've always sort of imagined that too. The games that we play are pretty much a super condensed version of the Pokemon world, which is why all the towns only have 8 people and stuff like that. What I have as my head cannon is that every time the game is saved and turned off, the characters did all the stuff they wouldn't have done in game (eating, bathing, sleeping, all that good stuff). Just like with movies, we are only seeing things relevant to the plot, not the entire story.

I also firmly believe that the games take place several years in between one another, since it was confirmed that Gen I and Gen II are three years separate. I think that Gen III takes place in between those two gens and is very far away. Sinnoh takes place about a year after Gen II, since the Red Gyrados would have been seen, but not caught. Finally, Gen five takes place about 10 years after everything else.

Personally, I think that kids and teens are pretty much the only ones who actually do travel around. The elite four and champion could have won as kids or teenagers, and it could have taken years before they were defeated. Adults generally have things like a family and a job, so it makes sense that they wouldn't want to be running around fighting gym leaders with the same freedom as kids.