For those of you who did not have the chance to grow up with Pokemon, perhaps you did not remember the original theme of the whole series (gotta catch 'em all...), but those of us who do remember and are still invested in the series may, you know, actually believe in that theme.
It's just the recent direction that GameFreak has taken that is totally throwing us off, and here, I shall list a few:
1. Cross-region gameplay was always a possibility. They could have always made a Pokemon game that's much larger in scale, that spans multiple regions. The idea started in Gen 2 but never went anywhere else. If a game that had this scale was released and updated regularly to begin with, there would be a point to the National Pokedex, and there would be a way to fill it all up. Alas, the scale of each subsequent game was adjusted, and recently (in Sun and Moon), they became extremely... limited. But okay, I guess we can all agree that GameFreak understandably does not have the necessary resources to pull off a Pokemon game of that scale... yet (hopefully not never).
2. The character count was entirely up to them. GameFreak only has themselves to blame for the humongous roster of Pokemon available now. So they are their own worst enemy. I would argue... actually that if they start cutting old Pokemon so that they can introduce new ones, then it exacerbates the problem and essentially makes it practically impossible for any future game to ever contain the full roster. It's simple really: do they want to introduce 100-200 new Pokemon for every generation? Make the total roster >2K within the next 2 gens... Or do they want to do maybe 50 at most, and keep expanding on the regions you can visit in a game, with tweaks to already existing characters? The latter is exactly what sports games like FIFA (actually, prime culprit is indeed FIFA) does. But aside from the Switch version that changes very little, can anyone as a whole say that FIFA on other consoles, with tweaks to gameplay, visual upgrades, and some new modes to enjoy the same old characters... is a bad game? No? Hm... And ignoring FIFA, how bout Pro Evolution Soccer? Is that a bad game because it keeps basically the same characters around, just on different teams?
3. Is asking for the original promise of "gotta catch 'em all" to be fulfilled in at least one non-Go game about Pokemon an "entitled" wish? I honestly have waited for such a game for far too long, and judging by the direction of Sword and Shield, I guess I won't have to wait anymore as the answer is clear: it's a never from the current management at GF. I won't say "it's a disappointment" or "it's a disaster", but more like... "I guess the one Pokemon game I have been waiting for will never come". Instead, what will most likely happen now is... maybe there will be one or two games that I will see a mon I really like being in it, and then there will be games without that mon, and with a bunch of other mons that I may or may not give a damn about because... who friggin' cares when they may or may not appear in the next generation.
4. So you may not realize this yet, but GameFreak is essentially setting the stage for all Pokemon to essentially be "disposable". Whichever mon it is you like, if it's not popular enough, won't appear very frequently in a future game, or at all. So... why should I care about these new mon? Why should I invest my time in catching them, training them, or raising them when I know there's a chance I won't see them again until like... a few games later? Give me one compelling reason why I should even care about these new mons when even their creators don't seem to think they were made to last?
So that's my reasoning as to why I will most likely skip Sword and Shield, and many more after this generation... until someone at GF has decided to give all of these Pokemon the care and love they deserve. It's hard to be excited about a Pokemon game made by people who don't think some of these mons will be loved and used by people at all, you know.
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Re: Junichi Masuda Says Cut Pokémon Will "Definitely" Return In Future Games
I had to register just to write this comment...
For those of you who did not have the chance to grow up with Pokemon, perhaps you did not remember the original theme of the whole series (gotta catch 'em all...), but those of us who do remember and are still invested in the series may, you know, actually believe in that theme.
It's just the recent direction that GameFreak has taken that is totally throwing us off, and here, I shall list a few:
1. Cross-region gameplay was always a possibility. They could have always made a Pokemon game that's much larger in scale, that spans multiple regions. The idea started in Gen 2 but never went anywhere else. If a game that had this scale was released and updated regularly to begin with, there would be a point to the National Pokedex, and there would be a way to fill it all up. Alas, the scale of each subsequent game was adjusted, and recently (in Sun and Moon), they became extremely... limited. But okay, I guess we can all agree that GameFreak understandably does not have the necessary resources to pull off a Pokemon game of that scale... yet (hopefully not never).
2. The character count was entirely up to them. GameFreak only has themselves to blame for the humongous roster of Pokemon available now. So they are their own worst enemy. I would argue... actually that if they start cutting old Pokemon so that they can introduce new ones, then it exacerbates the problem and essentially makes it practically impossible for any future game to ever contain the full roster. It's simple really: do they want to introduce 100-200 new Pokemon for every generation? Make the total roster >2K within the next 2 gens... Or do they want to do maybe 50 at most, and keep expanding on the regions you can visit in a game, with tweaks to already existing characters? The latter is exactly what sports games like FIFA (actually, prime culprit is indeed FIFA) does. But aside from the Switch version that changes very little, can anyone as a whole say that FIFA on other consoles, with tweaks to gameplay, visual upgrades, and some new modes to enjoy the same old characters... is a bad game? No? Hm... And ignoring FIFA, how bout Pro Evolution Soccer? Is that a bad game because it keeps basically the same characters around, just on different teams?
3. Is asking for the original promise of "gotta catch 'em all" to be fulfilled in at least one non-Go game about Pokemon an "entitled" wish? I honestly have waited for such a game for far too long, and judging by the direction of Sword and Shield, I guess I won't have to wait anymore as the answer is clear: it's a never from the current management at GF. I won't say "it's a disappointment" or "it's a disaster", but more like... "I guess the one Pokemon game I have been waiting for will never come". Instead, what will most likely happen now is... maybe there will be one or two games that I will see a mon I really like being in it, and then there will be games without that mon, and with a bunch of other mons that I may or may not give a damn about because... who friggin' cares when they may or may not appear in the next generation.
4. So you may not realize this yet, but GameFreak is essentially setting the stage for all Pokemon to essentially be "disposable". Whichever mon it is you like, if it's not popular enough, won't appear very frequently in a future game, or at all. So... why should I care about these new mon? Why should I invest my time in catching them, training them, or raising them when I know there's a chance I won't see them again until like... a few games later? Give me one compelling reason why I should even care about these new mons when even their creators don't seem to think they were made to last?
So that's my reasoning as to why I will most likely skip Sword and Shield, and many more after this generation... until someone at GF has decided to give all of these Pokemon the care and love they deserve. It's hard to be excited about a Pokemon game made by people who don't think some of these mons will be loved and used by people at all, you know.