Topic: Pokémon Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee!

Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. You can have open world while still making it turn based.

Now this is just ridiculous, of course camera controls would be helpful, regardless of whether or not it's linear or open world. Camera controls can only help make exploring easier.

Well maybe not that much but you should be able to go just about anywhere on the map from the start (except of course, the Pokemon League).

First of all, they couldn't really do routes in the traditional sense anymore, since routes require a sense of linearity. As for the wild levels, there's a couple of options. They could raise them temporarily depending on the level of your current party, or they could be kept low and give you options to make it easier to train the new Pokemon up. Either way, having them permanently raised is a bad idea.

They can still do that. Being open world doesn't necessarily mean that the game is totally blockade free. They could have the Snorlax block the way to one of the towns and you'd have to find someone with the Poke Flute to get in for example, but you could go to that town at any point you want in the game.

Who said anything about that? Rare Pokemon could still be rare, you would just have to hunt for them. Putting them in hard to reach places and/or giving them low encounter rates could still keep them rare. If you want to go out and find the rarer Pokemon, that's your choice, you can make the game as easy or hard as you want to. And legendaries could be blocked off until later, maybe after a certain amount of gym badges are collected. You definitely shouldn't be able to find those easily.

I don't get why suddenly every game needs to be open-world. It is fine for some games, but I would like to have some diversity. An open world-game for Zelda makes a lot of sense, for Pokémon it would turn into a different kind of game. Sure they could make an open world game for Pokémon, but to make that fun they would need to change a lot, trying to keep both the pokémon game we know and like and make it open world would not turn out into something nice. It could turn out in something nice if they do not try to keep the old linear gameplay, however is that something that most pokémon fans would want for a core pokémon game?

It's not about an open world, but having more than a static blocky 5 generations old world where Pokémon triggers are only land, high grass, water, or caves!

It's not about making an open world, but beautiful big enough landscapes where Pokémon can behave and interact with their environments in a realistic way, and bringing the gameplay away from the old unfun invisible random encounters. Once you discover a Pokémon you can interact with them in various ways by using items and Pokémon skills, (also things learnt from other Pokémon "adventure" games like Poképark and Pokémon Snap can be included here). Then when you lure them into battle you can still have the old trusted roundbased battles, no problem.

I also see it being more like TP than BotW in world design.

If the game is anything like the story mode in Pokémon Colosseum or Pokémon XD Gale of Darkness I'll be very disappointed.

I'm curious as to why you feel this way. I haven't played either of those games (never owned a GameCube), but they always looked like fun spinoffs to me. They seem darker than the main series, at any rate.

Pokemon Colosseum is actually one of the better Pokemon games.

Because they felt clunky in comparison with other RPGs/adventures of the time. They also had some last gen issues. Moving around felt stiff, the animations were lame. The collision detection was wonky and there were invisible walls. The areas felt cluttered. The world design was just mediocre, when compared to Poképark where everything is rather vivid. It felt like the dev Genius Sonority wasn't very good in making 3D games and animation. They just took the Game Boy Pokémon, added 360° movement and low-poly 3D environments. Yes, they're well-designed, bugless, Nintendo quality games. But as for RPGs they were on the lower end of the Gamecube spectrum. I remember completing Gamecube RPGs like Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Tales of Symphonia, Skies of Arcadia Legends, Baten Kaitos, Phantasy Star Online, Summoner 2: A Goddess Reborn, Lost Kingdom, etc. and having a great time with those. I put some hours into Colosseum and the only thing standing out was how slow and boring it was compared to the many other Gamecube RPGs I played before.

For me those two games were not the way home console Pokémon RPGs should be, and since they disappeared after Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness and Pokémon Battle Revolution (which managed to be the worst of the bunch, scrapping all that made Pokémon Stadium good, and Pokémon Colosseum decent) I believe Nintendo and The Pokémon Company thought the same. Genius Sonority then started to make much better Pokémon games for the DS and 3DS and left home console Pokémon development for others.

After that period of weaker home-console Pokémon games, two Poképark games for the Wii started to turn the franchise around. They brought the adventure and charm and the 3D world and animations that a home console Pokémon game should have as a standard. Weren't there rumours about Poképark 3 once? What happened to that game?

Thing is that open world is pretty much the ultimate form of exploration gameplay. It's exploration with no limits and no boundaries. So for any game that features exploration as part of its gameplay, making the game open world fully realizes that aspect of the game for them.

Speak for yourself. I don't really care about interacting with Pokemon in real time, I just want to explore. And there's not much exploring to be done if the game is forcing you in a particular direction.

I will agree about Battle Revolution being rather mediocre. It wasn't so bad if you could import your Pokemon from the games, but your options were very limited otherwise. It was my first Stadium-esque game that I ever owned; after playing Pokemon Stadium 2 on a demo unit years before, needless to say I was disappointed.

@Bolt_Strike

No I speak just for you! No one else is allowed to read this. So please read carefully because you did not understand the first time.

You know I'm ok if this game has only vast openworld-like spaces, and then routes combining those spaces, just like the originals! It matters what's inside these spaces and if the game's still atmospheric and big enough. It worked great for Poképark, Zelda, Mario, and for every game that has big worlds that are not openworld.

If Pokémon Switch RPG is completely openworld like BotW, then that's fine, and it should be a bombastic suprising Pokémon game in 2021! However, to bring the series forward it's enough to get rid of some old boring mechanics, especially those that only worked with Game Boy graphics or limits that have been kept since the Game Boy era and have never been enhanced in all these years.

You say you don't care about more interactions with Pokémon but I do because it makes the game more explorable and that is just what you wish for. Your open world is meaningless and boring if you can't do anything in it, if you as the player character has no actions over anything other than opening up a menu to select an item (and other lame 1985 RPG mechanics).

It sounds like your idea of exploration is running in circles for a 1:100 chance a rare Pokémon appears in a certain spot or getting through dull maze caves to find a Pokéball in a dead end. My idea of exploration is a bit different: For me Pokémon never focused too much on real exploration, so that's the wrong game to begin that topic with anyway, but we all want more or better exploration in Pokémon games for sure. In general all areas in Pokémon games are pretty confined (just like in any Zelda game before BotW), but most importantly Pokémon games never had an agile main character that was designed for action-packed openworld gameplay. And that's where I feel the game needs to be modernized to be more enjoyable. It needs a main characters whose controls feel well and who can do something other than running and opening menus.

The main character needs to get better first. You can't put old Game Boy Ash (or any of his successors) in an open world! Look at other open world games, look what the characters can do in BotW, GTA, Assassin's Creed, and now put Game Boy Ash/Red in there. Without more interactions he would be quite useless in an open world.

This brings me to the other point I have, Pokémon main games were rather light on puzzle and adventure elements and they were missing real-time actions almost entirely in favour of context sensitive simple button presses. Good exploration games have some action, Pokémon is lacking on that front. If you don't care about interaction you won't get a better exploration experience. Pokémon should be a game with better exploration, you and me want it to be a good explorable game, but openworld doesn't make it a good explorable game. Let me shoot thunder with my Pikachu anytime, let me throw Smoke Balls in suspicious trees, let me ride my Aquana through the ocean, and let me do all the Pokémon attacks OUTSIDE OF BATTLES so I can solve puzzles and quests on my journey. And lest not forget, let me move the camera freely around my character. That is interaction that makes exploration better.

Other than that, for me Pokémon has perfected its battle mechanics and I would keep them as they're what makes a main Pokémon RPG - however, the rest around it got stale and big chunks of the main games still feel like 1995.

I'm in favor of more puzzle elements and more actions in the overworld, but I don't think you're going to get something as extreme as interactions with hundreds of Pokemon in the overworld or abolition of turn based battles. The best way they can go about improving that aspect of the exploration is expanding on Poke Ride. Poke Ride is what helps make the character more nimble and adds more diverse actions, so adding more Ride Pokemon and expanding what they can do is a good compromise.

Sigh... why does everything have to be open world?

@rallydefault Because it's all hip and trendy, and we like walking around for hours in video games without accomplishing anything!

Anything that adds to the immersion of the game would be welcomed by me, but I think that it's far more likely that Game Freak will continue doing what they've been doing for the past couple of decades - churning out a new game every year or two with incremental tweaks and improvements in each instalment...who knows, in time we might see these Poké-worlds become more 'living and breathing' - but, for the first Pokémon Switch, I'd expect something very similar to Sun/Moon/X/Y, with shinier graphics and maybe a couple of neat additions here-and-there...

The leap from 3DS to Switch is pretty significant though - and should open up a lot of possibilities for the franchise going forward...but I wouldn't expect big, sweeping changes all in one go - maybe a few in Pokémon Switch 1, then a few more in Pokémon Switch 2 (which will probably come hot on the heels of 1), a few more in Pokémon Switch 3 etc. ..it's the Game Freak way! If they wanted to give it the full 'Breath of the Wild' treatment, they'd need to dedicate many years of development to the game - which goes against their established 'churn 'em out' business model...maybe that's the longer-term vision for the franchise, but I reckon that each game will act as something of a stepping stone to reach that point given their history.

@Octane Your idea of choose your 4th, 5th etc gym happened in Gen 2.

You could do gyms 5, 6 and 7 in any order.

That had a problem. Wild Pokemon stayed in the low 20s at their highest for the duration, and the game has to compensate for that, so you can go to the 7th Gym, battle the Lv30 Gyarados in the lake, and then fight mid teen levelled Rocket goons before a mid 30s gym.

That kind of design but with the way levelling works...not again thanks

@Bolt_Strike I understand that, but I wouldn't want Nintendo to make everything an open-world game, it is fun to have a few of them, but if something gets done all the time, the fun part is gone and it will become a hassle instead. I think I like pokémon more as it is now, however that does not mean that I would mind an open-world pokémon game, as long as it adds new fun aspects that make you feel like it is a pokémon advanture and is not like other open-world games. And as kids we all wished for a pokémon mmorpg right I could see how that could work, but it will never come.

@BLP_Software I'm not saying it's a good idea, but since some people here want complete freedom for the entire order of gyms, I thought this would be a simple compromise.

The choice between three gyms is also a bit too much IMO, two is feasible I think. You're a bit underleveled for one gym and a bit overleveled for the other, or you're just underleveled for one gym. I remember you could also do gyms 5, 6 and 7 in Red and Blue in any order, and that wasn't as big of a problem. You were underleveled anyway, and the gyms were pretty difficult. I'm fine either way, but I liked the fact that you could do them out of sequence, even though it was heavily implied that there was an order.

The issue with Johto is that Steelix wasn't much of a threat and neither are Ice types, so the difficulty level stalled around that part and it spiked again for the eighth gym. Even coming off the fourth gym, level 16-20 Rocket Grunts are way too weak. The strongest Pokemon in the entire Rocket HQ was a level 25 Murkrow with Peck and Pursuit...

I don't mind the sequence breaking, as long as they don't go out of their way to make the later areas weaker in case you decided to do those first.

@Octane If they were going to do that Id like them to do it like Kanto and not Johto.

Johto had major difficulty and balance issues...

@Bolt_Strike It sounds like he wants more interactions similar to the headbutt trees in the Johto games or the honey trees in the Sinnoh games, but done in real time rather than through a pop up menu.

@NaviAndMii
I 100% agree with you. I hate to be a Debbie Downer with all of the hopeful wishes tossed around in this thread but I HIGHLY doubt the next game will be open-world or change too much. GameFreak will think the jump to HD graphics will be enough innovation for one game. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the graphics for the next game are similar to PS3 or at most Wii U graphics even though the Switch is far more capable, simply because they'll have something to then improve on for the next gen of games.

GameFreak's like Apple in a way by having a "tick-tock" cycle; they have a gen with major graphical upgrades but not too much gameplay improvements or story/post-game content, and then a gen with minor upgrades in graphics but major upgrades to gameplay/story and post-game content to compensate. I wouldn't be surprised if gen 8 has the same linearity as previous games, as well as a forgettable story and barely any post-game content. They'll save an open-world, better story, and more post-game content for the Gen 9 games.

I wouldn't mind Pokemon games having a larger/more immersive world, but I think going full-on open-world would be taking things a bit too far. Besides, this is Game Freak that we're talking about. They're all for adding in a few new/changed ideas here and there, but I don't see a full-on overhaul happening for a long time (if at all).

On a personal level, I'd prefer if the games didn't go full-on open world, to be honest.