For the Love of God, Make Another Pokémon Legends Game
My birthday is in November, a month after Pokémon Red and Blue released in the UK.
I'm sure I've spoken about how I first became aware of those games on the podcast: a quarter-page look at what was happening in Japan's gaming world in some mag of the era. All I remember was a screenshot of Squirtle using tackle and the sentence 'Will it be a hit? Or will it be a pile of poo?' or something equally lazy like that and that. Articles in the early 2000s, ladies and gents.
Around the same time, I recall another magazine that had Pocket Monsters Stadium in their 'import only' review section with, unfortunately, a screenshot of Jynx. First impressions then. Not great. But then of course we all know what happened in the following months, with the franchise gaining traction over here and going onto financially enslave every single person on the planet who still had milk teeth left to lose for eternity.
I used to read the Beano a lot as a kid (until one day, I said to myself 'why is everyone in this comic such a fucking arsehole?' and immediately stopped), but nestled between strips for the Bash Street Kids and Billy Whizz, it had the best printed ad I've ever seen: a selection of Pokémon with a couple of questions based on their Pokédex entries. Simple and effective, it gave you cool facts about some cool animals, but not enough to make you think there's nothing left to discover. The anime followed, adding to that drip-feed, and the 32 days leading up to the time I could finally play these games was a jittery slog.
I've been thinking a lot about what made that first Pokémon game stand out from everything else I'd played up to that point, and I think I've nailed it.
Pokémon Blue was the first game I'd ever played that was more a journey of discovery than a journey of adventure. The overarching plot of a child foiling a grubby little syndicate and becoming the champion was overshadowed by building an unstoppable team of 6 beasties, plucked from a selection of 150 monsters you were to find and catalog. 'Gotta Catch 'Em All!', not 'Gotta Beat the Game!'.
The rate of information given to you about each Pokémon prior to the game coming out could only be described as 'teasing', and did what I imagine it was designed to; encourage you to read every single Pokédex entry religiously. It made no difference in battle really, and picking between the fire horse that could kick down a building or the hot dog that was revered as a god became a matter of preference rather than which one had the better stats.
My mindset these days has been a little warped a little by sites like Serebii and Bulbapedia. They're fantastic resources for completion and the metagame behind Pokemon’s brand of rock paper scissors , but in between trying to explore each generation organically, I have been guilty of sneeeaaaaking over to see who has better moves, or better stats.
One of my favourite Pokémon in principle is Lumineon, and yet I've never used one because I looked it up online once and saw how terrible its stats are. 11 year old me wouldn't have cared that it's only got a 460 base stat total, or grinded for a nature that works well with it's moveset! As a simple creature, I'd have just seen a cool fish and been like 'well we're best friends now'.
I soloed Pokemon White with an Archeops! I cannot believe nobody likes Archeops! It has 110 base speed and 140 attack! Not once in any battle did it get to the point where the stat drops from it's Defeatist ability kicked in! I do what I want! Why is Excadrill the speedrunner's choice?! No-item STAB Acrobatics (with max EV Adamant attack!) would fucking gib your opponents if Pokemon had better graphics!!!
(…right I've veered off track a slice here, I was meant to be writing about the new game…)
I think Gen I Pokémon was an excellent start to the franchise. A simple premise executed... well, just a simple premise executed. Nothing extraneous or unnecessary, no silly bullshit like Pokéstar Studios or Z Moves. It's the template for all the games in the main series going forward. Obviously we know now with the benfit of hindsight that instead of clean code, the game essentially runs on twigs and cobwebs, but on release? It seemed a clear and pure experience. The Pokémon Game.
It's been bettered by every game that has come out since, sure, whether graphically, mechanically, or narratively, but it was a bold and brilliant first step.
It's my dream that Pokémon Legends Arceus is going to be the same deal. I guess it makes sense that it’s set in ancient Sinnoh because that mass is what’s currently getting a shake of the remake stick, and having the bonafide Gen IV remake come out a couple of months prior must have made sound sense from an immersive marketing standpoint. Its focal point, a Pokémon that is so honest-to-god rare, made sense too, as even if people weren’t thrilled about the new gameplay style, of course they’d consider picking it up, just to add a legit Arceus to their bank.
But where to from there? What’s the best way to do part 2 in a series that opens with you capturing the Pokémon that controls time, space and antimatter, before biting off a chunk of god itself?
Going backwards.
From Gen III onwards, legendary Pokémon got really fucking stupid. When the box legendaries had wild and uncontrollable powers and affected the story, that’s when they lost their mystique. Stumbling upon a bird that can create thunderstorms in an abandoned power plant, or stumbling across a chilly dog running unfettered across the land? That’s great! That’s how you find every other monster in the game.
Beseeching a huge orca to stop flooding the world by employing the equally ruinous power of a big ol’ lizard that can make it really fucking sunny? Dumb. It’s a stupid idea that cataclysmic power is just out there in the open, ready to be tamed and hung off a child’s belt. Power creep is a real problem in games where you’re adding hundreds of new creatures at a time, but that just means that you need to rebalance the meta, not check off which primordial and spiritual forces you haven’t embodied in a massive gecko and leave the fate of reality to someone who doesn’t even have their first pube.
Pokémon Silver is my favourite Pokémon game, and narrowly beat out Black and White as the greatest generation of Pokémon for me. Mundane by the overarching standards of the series - no gods to contend with, no great final battle atop a huge mountain - just more of what we saw in Red and Blue. Filling the Pokédex, getting rid of Team Rocket, fighting your way into the Johto Hall of Fame. You might stumble on Lugia if you’re lucky, who is just about as powerful as a Pokémon should be- it can flap its wings and blow down a house or some shit, not send the Earth off its axis by doing a little toot.
The game is full of quaint little stories like how Lugia spends its time in the Whirl Islands because its power is too strong, or how Ho-Oh resurrected the Legendary Dogs from three corpses in the burnt tower of Ecruteak City. Wouldn’t it be amazing to see these legends unfold, knowing their impact in the present day games? Outside of settlements sharing the names of cities in Sinnoh, and some characters looking like modern-day denizens, there was very little tying ancient Hisui to modern Sinnoh. Gen II was when the Unown were first introduced, and I’ve been desperate for some answers as to what those spooky Phoenician fucks are all about. Gen II also has Kurt! The guy who makes Pokéballs from Apricorns! There’s your thread from Legends Arceus! His family carries on the good work of critter subjugation from Hisui. Game Freak, you can have that one for free.
I think the main thing I want from the Legends series (and please God let it be a series, I promise not to bitch and moan too much when Gen IX is revealed and its more paper-thin shite like Sword and Shield) is a first-hand experience of the events that were alluded to in the mainline games. The ‘Legends’ concept works. People fucking love it. Plumb the depths of the mythology you’ve created, and give us a Legends game that actually puts you in the legends, not just in the campsites that become the cities in the present day.
Oh, and give Dunsparce an evolution too. It must have peaked thousands of years ago because it gets fuck all love nowadays.
