Topic: Pokémon Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee!

I'm not saying 'gen wun best wun,' rather that Pokemon should evoke imagination rather than just derivative, cutesy-designed blue animals.

The starters are usually pretty simple. They tend to get more unique and complex as they evolve, but yeah, I don’t have much of an issue with them being based on real animals.

Starters and legendaries also have to be instantly appealing, being the first things you see in a game.

But they don't all have to be RGB animals.

As expected, the leaked Gen 8 starters have been confirmed to be fake.

sauce please

Edit: I think I found the source. That's a shame, I liked these designs more than last gen's starters.
https://www.pokemonmillennium.net/rubriche/140930-esclusivo-f...

Good, keepin' that green hope alive! I wonder if we could get a string of grass-type birds like the now infamous fire/fighting types. Deucideye was grass/ghost and all, so I'd love to get some unique design like Tropius as a starter. Grass/ground is potent too, it'd be interesting for them to align the grass starter with the earth even more so than they did with Torterra, at least in visual terms. They could make a cute little mossy vase that evolves into an overgrown gargoyle of some crazy beast. Or just some reclusive cave plant.

But yeah, it'll probably be a squirrel with leaf fingers :/

@Haru17 Yeah, that's true. But I can't trust any 'leak' that's set up the same way anymore

Torterra is one of the better designs IMO. His sprite was butt-ugly in gen 4, so it took some time getting used to, but I always liked the official artwork. But yeah, I'm all for more fantasy creatures as opposed to generic animals, or animal + whatever theme they have going on these days.

Interesting the Gen 4/5/6/7 starters were all visually distinct, with one running theme I'll touch on.

Swampert was a Water/Ground type mudfish...thing. Bulky and hard hitting.

Sceptile was a pure Grass bipedal dragon gecko fast sweeper.

Blaziken was a mixed, fast bipedal Fire/Fighting KFC monster

Empoleon was a Water/Steel bipedal penguin

Torterra was a quadruped Grass/Ground tortoise of the world

Infernape was a bipedal Fire/Fighting monkey

Serperior was a serpent Grass type

Samurott was a quadruped Water type samurai otter

Emboar was a bulky Fire/Fighting bipedal boar based on Chinese designs

Chesnaught was a bipedal chesnut hedgehog knight of Grass/Fighting

Greninja was a bipedal Water/Dark ninja

Delphox was ugly but a bipedal Fire/Psychic mage

Then Gen 7 happened.

Decidueye, the bipedal Grass/Ghost archer

Primarina the serpent-esque Water/Fairy bard

And we had Incineroar. The Fire/Dark bipedal wrestler.

Honestly at this point, I have a few demands. No more Fighting type starters. Ever. We had 4 in a row.

Second, more uncommon/unique type combinations. Sure Grass/Ghost had been done twice before, but it was UNIQUE seeing a Ghost type starter. Same with Primarina being Fairy. Heck to Incineroar's credit Fire/Dark is uncommon too. That and Dark has only been a starter type twice.

But my absolute must is this - NO MORE BIPEDAL FIRE TYPE STARTERS!! WE HAVE HAD 7 IN A ROW!

Grass managed a mix of serpent, biped and quadruped, and covering a range of species from....Venusaurs...er...thing...to Meganium, to Gecko Dragons, to the world turtle, to a snake, to a hedgehog/chesnut to an owl.

So did water with a tortoise, an alligator, an axlotl on 'roids, an emperor penguin, an otter samurai, a frog ninja and a mermaid seal.

Meanwhile for fire we get Fire lizard, fire echidna, fire chicken, fire monkey, fire boar, fire fox and fire cat. I mean...is it that hard? Go back to a reptile.

If I wanted to base my new starters on anything for their final forms, I'd go a little out there in the same vein Decidueye/Samurott/Serperior/Empoleon/Torterra/Swampert/Primarina/Greninja did.

For Grass, how about something like a Grass/Rock type based on roots that grow into rocks.

For Water, how about something like a Water/Electric type with a thunderstorm motif?

For Fire, well this is tricky, but how about a Fire/Bug type literal Firefly?

@YummyHappyPills There's a 60% chance...

I think the last gen I completely loved all the starters was Gen 4. Chimchar (monkey), Piplup (penguin) and Turtwig (turtle) all looked great to me, and I really liked their evolved forms.

@Octane Part of me wants to say Horse, but they just did a Clydesdale Pokemon in Mudsdale.

Then again they also did Litten right after Litleo so...

Oh yeah, if Litten wasn't boring enough, they already had a Fire cat in Gen 6

I like most starters. There are some I didn't like at first but I'd end up liking them later. There's usually one that stands out as the one I'll pick for sure.

I had hard time picking a starter in Gen IV, though. None of them were very appealing so I chose to go with fire type as usual. I picked Torchic in Ruby as well because I loved Charmander and especially Cyndaquil (still my favorite evolution line) and it turned out that Blaziken wasn't that great. It's quite ugly Pokémon in my opinion.

I finally decided to start my game with something other than fire starter in Gen V and I'm happy I did. Snivy and its evolutions are great while Emboar is 10x uglier than Blaziken. Now that I think about it, I've used grass types for the last 3 generations. Chesnaught was ugly as well but I liked its moveset. Spiky Shield is a fun move.

I know I started by saying that I like most starters and now I've listed bunch that I didn't like as much but none of them are outright bad and I like the ones I didn't list.

Gen 1 - Love them all
Gen 2 - Not a huge fan of Meganium & it's pre-evos, but they're not bad.
Gen 3 - No problems with any of them.
Gen 4 - Methane Monkey = NOPE. The others I don't mind.
Gen 5 - Snivy & its line are the only designs that I like throughout. Oshawott got progressively cooler, but overall I'm just not a big fan. Tepig is cute, but after that it got progressively uglier.
Gen 6 - ...Really, the only designs here that I liked were Fennekin and Greninja.
Gen 7 - I like Rowlet on up, Litten started out good but ended up...well, not bad IMO, but not great either. I'm not a fan of Popplio's group at all.

I like all of the Pokemon generations, some more than others, but generally I think they usually made cool mons. Gen 3 is probably my favorite overall considering Seviper and Huntail and my two favorite mons. Gen 5 is actually runner-up. I just love Krookodile, Seismitoad, Galavantula etc. etc. My least favorite is probably Gen 4 in terms of new mons. A lot of the designs were just okay and so many previous gen evolutions like Tangrowth and Lickilicky so the originality wasn't exactly at its peak.

As for Gen.8 Mons, would be cool if we finally got a Dolphin pokemon. Pretty much any animal that hasn't been covered or maybe covered once(kinda like Donphan being the only Elephant Mon).

I'm drawn to animal-based designs the most. As long as Game Freak keeps the stylization dial below crazily exaggerated anime monster, I'll be satisfied with some new 'Mons for the next adventure.

I wanted to propose several ideas to the community and see how you respond. Warning I'm a big Zelda fan as well so some of these ideas will be drawn from that franchise as well so hear me out:
1. Open World:
Loose the linear pathways that the games have always taken with regards to story. Instead you could instead start out in a central town of the region and then explore out from there. geographically, there's not going to be one path through each town. Give the world more exploration to give the player the feel of a greater mission at hand.
2. Gyms/Trials Change:
This could make the gyms/trials be do able in any order similar to the A Link Between Worlds dungeon system, more freedom to the player. Granted the dungeons will have to be changed based on maybe how many Pokemon you've collected or the levels of your Pokemon to keep the gyms or trials interesting.
3. Optional Sub Plot:
I understand the tradition of having a subplot to games is a staple but this could still be saved. you could start with one encounter with that enemy team and they hint at where they're going and you can choose to follow them and the subplot of this enemy team to catch the legendary or get whatever.
4. Fellow Travelers:
Another Zelda inspired idea would be to have other fellow Pokemon trainers also traveling the world that you can talk to and/or battle. It would give the world new life and show that you're not just one Pokemon trainer traveling around. Heck, the trainers could be actual other trainers from around the world who travel around like in Festival Plaza from Gen 7.
5. Improved Environment:
We could see more better environments and environmental effects, similar to Pokemon Go, where rain allows you to encounter more water types and such, but this feature should be optional if people want defined place and time to find pokemon. Also with the environment, when you have a battle, with the hardware of the switch, make use of the existing environment instead of the loading screen and classic fight set up. I think it would make you feel more a part of the world. This idea probably should be optional but preparedness of a Pokemon trainer such as warm clothes for a cold environment. Granted, this could be distributed freely to the player through interactions or other means. Something else to make it more real is have certain Pokemon with migration patterns, we've seen similar things in the anime (Butterfree). For example, groups of Squirtles travel between bodies of water during a week or other period of time. It would make to world more believe-able instead of certain Pokemon in certain clumps of grass.
6. Dusk and Dawn:
With open world, a new day and night cycle is in order, it would be decently long but still changeable to the player. I always play in the evenings, so it was always night time when I played Sun. In a new day and night cycle, we could add camping to change time of day and possibly camping with other groups of Pokemon trainers to get new interactions with the worlds characters.
7. Co-op-ish:
A cool feature I'd like to see is the Co-op synced games, where the player share the same world for a period of time and travel together but interactions are independent (can't have two people become league champion).

Thoughts?

This obsession about turning every franchise into an open world format is ridiculously bad to be honest.

Welcome to the eighth gen.

I'm not really inclined to read that wall of text, but I had two thoughts not in reference to its particulars.

Firstly, yes the open world gray goo is devouring the medium we love head first and spitting out the few scraps of considered stories and singleplayer campaigns we had left.

Secondly, I really don't think these rules apply to Pokemon. There's not a story to save in Pokemon games, no rarified game structure. There are stories worth telling in Pokemon, sure — they aren't getting told. Protecting and capitalizing upon the brand are more important to the company than making interesting video games.

I wouldn't mind a safari-like Pokemon game with fewer downs, no routes, and more exploration. I thought Sun and Moon were better than most Pokemon games, but they were mostly just the series finally getting a technical overhaul for 3D. They still didn't change much really, and really, change would be the best thing for Pokemon.

Just like, something different — actually anything. Remove humans, let us catch trainers' Pokemon, motion-controlled Pokeballs, I don't care. They've made like 10+ games and remakes that are all at their core the same thing following the same rules. I honestly don't think any change they could make would hurt because at least we would be awake while playing instead of knowing exactly what to expect.