Topic: Pokémon Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee!

@MarcelRguez I concur. I know some people who are very casual gamers. They play Animal Crossing and a bit of Pokemon, but the idea of using a second stick to control the camera is completely alien to them.

Besides, it's not like the gameplay changes if they implement one. I just want them to focus on what's important for once: The battles, good level distribution, good AI without giving them overpowered EV-trained Pokemon. Fix the movesets, nerf some Pokemon, just balance the game. That's way more important than trivial story elements or a controllable camera.

Dear God, let there be less cutscenes. Amen.

Exactly that. Pokemon is one of the games where the graphics don't matter to me all that much. Sure, I'd like some scaled up textures, especially when I play on my 48" tv. But gameplay is what matters most. And if I may add to your list: I'd prefer adjustable difficulty over a harder game in general; just to please both the core gamers ánd casual gamers.

@toiletduck Like a beginner and expert mode? I'd be up for that. I believe B2W2 did something similar, but I've never played those. Just make sure it's available from the beginning.

But yeah, just like I still think there's a market for 2D sidescrolling games, or 2D top-down games, I don't really have an issue with the way they're currently handling. I personally don't think GameFreak is capable of a ''full'' 3D game anyway. And it would only distract them from the core gameplay. It's already happening with the story elements, I don't want them to have another thing to worry about.

Again, not something younger players should be having problems with. Mario and Zelda don't rely on linear, "North/South" level design either, so Pokemon has no excuse for remaining linear. Game Freak is just stereotyping the market, if this was as much of a problem as you claim games like the 3D Marios and Zeldas would see lower sales than they have.

@Bolt_Strike it really seems like you think little kids have no problem with BOTW and MO's mechanic. Where did you get this impression? I can confirm that you're wrong. Sure, certain kids won't have any problem with the camera movements, but my cousins for example can't get the hang of it at all. They're about 8-9. I don't consider them motorically stupid...

with full camera controls, I'd argue that, though pokemon is still pandering to a young audience, these are switch owners and many most likely have already played mario odyssey, breath of the wild, or splatoon 2 because they're the hottest games for the system thus far. I could see some people purchasing a switch just to dive into the new pokemon game and get thrown for a loop. Still, children are quick to learn and can adapt to that change a tad better

@Tsurii Can we avoid both extremes please?

Less MGS4 and the start of SM, and maybe more substance like BW. Easy.

@Tsurii Forgive me, I didn't play US/UM: did these games lessen or eliminate Sun/Moon's tendency to interrupt the gameplay constantly with cutscenes and non-player initiated dialogue?

@Ralizah Lessen. Significantly.

Thw game actuslly starts within an hour.

@Tsurii When I say within an hour you get your starter as you go up Route 1 for the first time, not after going up route 1, mahalo trail, and a series of cinematics.

Much better paced. I think SM has the worst intro in the series.

Its the kind of the balance zelda struggles with: The freedom vs the story. Considering these later games, they so linear because of the focus on story. What it sounds like is the frustration of waiting to catch and battle wild pokemon which I can agree with. I go to pokemon for gameplay, the story for me is on the side. Thats my preference

@YummyHappyPills @Tsurii Awesome. I might actually have to pick one of these games up at some point. I liked the increased difficulty and some of the changes made to S&M (not having to rely on unlearnable HMs to navigate the overworld is absolutely fantastic), but the constant cutscenes just killed me. I wouldn't mind too much if they lessened after the start of the game, but it never felt like it was cutting loose and letting me do my own thing.

For the record, I don't care about breeding and pretty much never battle online. But I also don't care too much about the stories. If GF doesn't go the BotW route of allowing extreme player freedom, then I wouldn't mind more of an emphasis placed on cool locations and dungeons. But story and character development? In a Pokemon game? Nah.

B&W are the only Pokemon games I've played that had decent narrative/character writing.

All Ill say about USUM is that after the final boss you do one more Trial, Grand Trial, and then the League.

@Haru17 "much more disperse, sparse, non-interactive environments and gameplay with double the walking between actually doing anything, depending on the particular game.":

That's kind of my point though, your description of those environments is precisely why they don't represent a significant amount of the added time and cost of modern overbudget AAA games. You're looking for the causes of the increased expense in production, and that open aspect isn't one of the most significant factors to that. The openness creates some new minor expenses, while resolving some old expenses. It's a mostly neutral addition. The bogeyman for expense lies elsewhere.

@MarcelRguez "So yes, I don't think it's unfair to say the term "open world" carries some expectations from the consumer's end in terms of amount of authored content and player's freedom of choice (among other things), and the games that fail to implement those things end up facing criticism, like MGSV, Fallout 4 or FFXV."

True, but I think my point here is that whether the game were open or not, the consumer would carry the same expectations in terms of amount of authored content, freedom of choice, etc for a heavily marketed game. In fact expectations for authored content are likely to be greater if the game is not open world as the "sandbox" hours would be less existent.

"Pokemon"

Pokemon really has always been open world....that's kind of the charm. Backtracking and going anywhere at any time (unless gated) has been essential to "catch 'em all"....one could say that really Pokemon started that phenomenon. Fixed camera aside. Personally I don't see how a fixed or adjustable camera affects the design of open or not.

@NEStalgia Pokemon has only really been open world in the post-game, which makes it not really open world in general. Open world games allow you to go anywhere at any time like in BotW you can go straight to Hyrule Castle if you wanted to but in Pokemon you have to go things in a certain order before going to Pokemon League. Before Sun/Moon you had to get all 8 badges of which the 8th badge would be unobtainable without stopping the evil group's plans.

Don't know about Gen 7 but I'd assume that you have to do all the trials to unlock the Pokemon League of which you can't do the final trial until you've defeated the evil group.

@Grumblevolcano Er...

Sun and Moon has the final Grand Trial before you even do your last normal trial, but yes stopping the villain is literally the last thing you do before the League, after all your trials.

In USUM, stopping the villain takes place before your last trial and Grand Trial, then the League, though Team Rocket shows up after.

As for the 8th badge thing....eh...

Gen 2 had a relatively open structure as did Gen 1 to a lesser extent. Even Gen 3 let you skip Gyms 2 and 6 until later. You can actually get the 8th badge and reach the League without badge 6.

In Gen 1, stopping Team Rocket was completed by getting the 8th badge, so your logic there doesnt apply.

In Gen 5...well in order to stop Team Plasma in BW spoikers, they are the final boss. Get all 8 badges they are still going and take over the Pokemon League and act as a series of battles instead of a Champion.

In BW2 you needed 8 badges before the final battles against Team Plasma as well.

@Grumblevolcano Not so different from other OW games really. BotW is kind of unique in letting you go anywhere at the start.....but it also only SORT of allows that. It gates you on the plateau, and then cleverly gates you in other areas with near impossible enemy gates. But does allow you to be mostly open. Bethesda games tend to be similar, but most other OW games....GTA, most of the Assassin's Creed games, Watch_Dogs, all gate you to sub-regions at a time, or lock out some sub-regions. Mirror's Edge Catalyst walls off districts until you unlock them. W_D has bridges drawn until you're "allowed" there, AC just puts up the not so invisible invisible wall and calls it a day, unlocking you as you're allowed to advance, Steep lets you go anywhere but Alaska and Fuji but doesn't let you even discover most events, inFamous gates you district by district (with a pool of multiple districts you can tackle at a time in the newest game), BotW and Bethesda games are among the few that let you go anywhere from nearly the start, but they also cleverly try to STRONGLY prevent you from actually doing so unless you like misery.

Like Pokemon, all of these games allow you to go anywhere and everywhere freely once the last section is unlocked, but your advancement is gated and guided up to that point.

@MarcelRguez But Horizon and Elder Scrolls are Action-Adventure, RPG games, respectively. Most of these "open world" games we're typifying are indeed RPGs and action adventures that would be expected to have that breadth of content and quantity of sidequests regardless of being open or not. Arguably even as far back as Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, Fallout 1, in the 90's were technically equally open world. And of course Pokemon. That's why I think it's more marketing than anything else. The concept of a seamless open world has been around for a long long time before it began being viewed as a genre of its own. Such games were always going out of their way to create the impression it was "open world" before real "open world" was even possible, memory-wise. Diablo II streaming the overworld map and dungeons within a world was a revolution for "true" seamless gameplay. When we take off the blinders and think of what an open world game really is, it's not really that new a concept, or implementation. It's a specific formula, or really two (the Ubisoft/GTA format, and the Bethesda/BotW/Witcher format) that these days everyone calls "the open world trend". But it's not really that different than what was done before, at least in terms of what sets it apart from older games. Especially on PC. We just got very used to very very linear games when working in a 3D space on very small maps. The influence of X-Box affected that heavily. Look at Deus Ex Invisible War (very small closed linear maps) versus Deus Ex (PC-only, very large, open environment maps. Not true open world, but not all that different gameplay-wise....remaster it in a new engine without loads and it's suddenly open world, albeit with invisible walls closing in the playable area.)

Now about camera, I think there's just too much crossing of ideas here. To be an open world RPG it doesn't need to play like Skyrim and Zelda. I'm not sure a Pokemon game ever SHOULD utilize verticality. If I put my Nintendo-style thinking Cappy on, verticality is not a gameplay pillar for Pokemon, therefore, it shouldn't exist in the game. And that's fair. They build worlds around the gameplay. The gameplay is turn based battle designed on standing on level ground. BotW/Assassin's Creed/Bethesda are making games with real-time combat systems, so facing and positioning are critical to gameplay. Pokemon is the battle system, so that's surely not required.

However, I also wouldn't rule out that they would make such changes and support a free camera either. Given the use of "camera" in the AR Pokemon Go, and of course Pokken, the context already exists for viewing the Pokemon world in 360 degrees. Given Zelda and Mario both got the 360 treatment, and Pokemon introduced it in the real world with Go, it's certainly something I wouldn't rule out. HOWEVER, I would expect it to look and feel more like XC2 with a distant almost overhead camera than the over-the-shoulder BotW/Odyssey type angles if they did it.

@NEStalgia To be fair, there have definitely been cases of them using verticality to some extent in Pokemon games. Look at the dive channels in Hoenn for what was probably the best implementation. Or imagine an upgraded version of the Soar mechanic from ORAS, there's a lot they could build on there. Heck, even that famous puzzle from Red and Blues Victory Road used vertical movement as best they could. That said, I get what you mean where it will never be as integral as it was to BotW.

Anyways, onto the main point. XC2s camera is definitely where Pokemon should go. It's a pretty perfect set up for RPGs. Though... XC2 makes me wonder if the next Pokemon will (finally) feature battles without whisking away to a separate scene.