Pokémon is within the midst of a generational shift, and no, I don’t imply how Pokémon Scarlet and Violet simply kickstarted the franchise’s ninth technology. Trying again on the monster capturing collection’ final 12 months, it’s unattainable to miss the shift in how Pokémon is presenting its world, characters, and future. Whereas the most recent recreation is at the moment riddled with bugs and struggling to realize the formidable imaginative and prescient at its core, as a longtime fan, this previous 12 months has me feeling extra enticed by the franchise than I’ve been in fairly a while.
Final 12 months was Pokémon’s twenty fifth anniversary, and it ended on a wierd word. Pokémon Legends: Arceus was looming for January, however 2021’s huge Pokémon recreation was Good Diamond and Shining Pearl, remakes of the 2006 DS video games. As devoted remakes of 15-year-old video games, they have been emblematic of a second in Pokémon historical past when the world because it was offered within the video games by no means felt fairly as huge as its promise. For a narrative concerning the gods of the Pokémon universe, Good Diamond and Shining Pearl really feel small in scale, solely reckoning with the realities of its main gamers in subtext and safely taking part in the hits in terms of modernizing a basic. It was a wierd method to cap off the collection reaching 1 / 4 of a century, and is extensively thought-about a low level in these 25 years.
With that in thoughts, BDSP is in stark distinction to Pokémon Legends: Arceus, which kicked off Pokémon’s twenty sixth 12 months in a daring, messy vogue. Legends: Arceus was the collection’ first step into an open-world format. Sure, Pokémon Sword and Defend had the Wild Space, however structurally, that recreation wasn’t constructed round exploration. This modified in Legends: Arceus, and it allowed a fluidity in exploration the collection had by no means earlier than seen (and, due shade to Scarlet and Violet, hasn’t seen since). Whereas two months prior, the DS remakes have been evocative of an easier time with less complicated tales to inform, Pokémon Legends: Arceus managed to make this well-trod universe mysterious, harmful, and value exploring.
It’s been almost a 12 months since I performed Pokémon Legends: Arceus to completion, and I figured I used to be going to be spending the subsequent 25 years of Pokémon ready to recapture the highs of its ultimate hours. The place so many Pokémon video games offered their lore in shallow, surface-level methods and fell into formulaic tales about evil organizations capturing highly effective Pokémon for their very own greed solely to be defeated by a 10-year-old, Legends: Arceus really dedicated to elevating its writing past subtext and broad strokes, really partaking with the unusual conflicts and contradictions that all the time lay simply beneath this world’s floor. It didn’t really feel prefer it was giving into some edgelord fantasy of what Pokémon could possibly be, it was simply extra keen to point out the world because it all the time had been: a world of triumph and tragedy the place folks and Pokémons’ ambitions collide.
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Legends: Arceus was the story about Pokémon gods the unique Diamond and Pearl all the time might have been. It pulled from Pokémon lore to create an isekai story through which your character was dragged by time to undo catastrophic injury attributable to Pokémon’s literal Devil allegory. The titular god transports the principle character into the prehistoric land of Hisui, the place the Pokémon League has but to homogenize many of the world’s tradition to be central to aggressive sport, and as an alternative permits you to see the beginnings of humanity and Pokémons’ coexistence. Pokéballs are new innovations and never everyone seems to be thrilled to see their associates shoved inside them, and whereas its conclusions are up for debate, that it’s even keen to ask questions on long-held traditions on this universe is commendable.
Legends: Arceus paints a narrative of the franchise’s historical past onto a buggy, however fluid canvas. Its ultimate hours, through which god Pokémon Dialga, Palkia, Giratina, and Arceus itself lastly play a task as forces of nature not sure to humanity, however to one another, felt like the sport I wished Diamond and Pearl to be, and was proof that the collection can and would develop up alongside me, with out forgoing the sense of childlike surprise that made it so interesting in my youth.
Regardless of their myriad flaws, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet really feel like an try for Recreation Freak to proceed to bridge that hole, each from a systemic aspect, and a story one. It’s probably the most “open world” Pokémon has ever dared to be, with the Paldea area being one (largely) seamless map you can discover with associates with few limits. It lacks the identical fluid traversal of Legends: Arceus, however it offers gamers extra freedom than ever to discover a world that feels each actually and figuratively greater than it has in any prior video games.
As you journey by Paldea capturing Pokémon, Scarlet and Violet comply with three main storylines, every with a definite human core on the middle. If Legends: Arceus was the step ahead for the way Pokémon offered its lore, Scarlet and Violet takes extra care with its character writing, coping with tales of grief, a surprisingly nuanced tackle a bullying narrative, and a surprising finale that manages to introduce fascinating lore whereas protecting human connection central.
Within the month since Scarlet and Violet launched, I’ve gathered in Discord servers to observe a number of associates play by the sport’s finale and listen to their astonishment on the turns it takes. The character writing all through the sport had been good, however it was nonetheless a reasonably commonplace school-anime storyline. The shift right into a science-fiction catastrophe story with the sport’s scorching professors on the middle feels earned, and possessed of the proper stage of poignancy to resonate as soon as once more with me every time I’ve watched a good friend hit the credit.
Pokémon has all the time had the potential to succeed in these narrative highs, however it hasn’t felt like Recreation Freak has ever been so laser-focused on presenting these tales with such readability as it’s in Scarlet and Violet’s ultimate hours.
However what’s modified within the time since Diamond and Pearl used Pokémon’s gods as largely set dressing? Properly, quite a bit, because it occurs. Occasions are altering over at Recreation Freak, and that was made fairly clear earlier this 12 months when longtime recreation director Junichi Masuda moved to a unique place inside The Pokémon Firm. New management’s spearheading the video games as of late, with Kazumasa Iwao and Shigeru Ohmori directing Legends: Arceus and Scarlet and Violet, respectively. As new leads and new visions come up, Pokémon feels prefer it’s lastly getting out of the samey rut through which the collection has been caught for a number of generations. This presents an thrilling prospect, even when it means saying goodbye to outdated associates alongside the way in which.
Whereas the video games are reaching for brand new heights (and maybe struggling to get there on the technical aspect), so, too, should the remainder of the franchise. Final week noticed the momentous announcement that the subsequent season of the Pokémon anime received’t star longtime protagonists Ash Ketchum and Pikachu. After 25 years, the collection will introduce new leads Liko and Roy, accompanied by the Scarlet and Violet starter Pokémon Sprigatito, Fuecoco, and Quaxly. It’s a tricky tablet to swallow, and whilst an individual who watches the anime casually as of late, it doesn’t fairly really feel actual.
Ash and Pikachu have been the face of the Pokémon present for nearly so long as I’ve been alive, and as such, they’ve been in all probability the one touchstone of the franchise that each fan, younger and outdated, has felt a connection to in some unspecified time in the future.
I can ask my nephew who his favourite Pokémon is, and he’ll inevitably inform me one from Era VII or VIII, as a result of these are those he grew up with. However he is aware of who Ash and Pikachu are, as a result of they’ve been the one fixed. Now my niece, who simply turned two, won’t develop up watching the identical child from Pallet City struggle to turn out to be the perfect like nobody ever was. As a substitute, she’ll know Liko and Roy.
Ash’s departure seems like probably the most readily obvious signal of Pokémon’s altering instances. It’s time for brand new tales, new adventures, and new concepts to lastly make their manner into the long-conservative franchise. As a participant who’d resigned himself to loving Pokémon for the tales I wrote myself as I performed, it’s heartening to see the franchise as an entire acknowledge its personal stagnation, and begin to envision a brand new starting, even when its video games nonetheless really feel like they’re falling aside getting there. As unhappy as I’m to see a few of the outdated methods die, name me Professor Turo, as a result of I’m excited for the way forward for Pokémon.