Unpopular opinions

Basedwell said:
I do think that HGSS butchers Silver's character but I strongly disagree that 1). Silver is just like Blue: to me Blue comes across like a spoiled brat, and Silver comes across like a feral child -- Someone who had come from a bad environment and didn't understand how to connect with other people
Click to expand...
Unless I'm misremembering from a later post, I didn't say Silver is explicitly like Blue though: I said "As for my opinion on Silver as a character, he's a tiny bit more interesting than Blue, but not by much. I like Blue's development in this game more than I like Silver's personally. I feel like with Silver, they went so all in on making an outright mean character, and it went horribly right."

As for Silver coming from a bad environment, my response is the game needs to show me that. Multiple times. Even if you take the Celebi stuff into consideration, that's just one scene. I wouldn't say Silver is a bad character at all, I just wish they thought it out a little more.

One of the things I disliked most about SWSH was Bede's character-I really dislike them going back to a shallow character with no depth that arbitrarily hates you. People may knock friendly rivals all they want, but they're way more interesting. Hop in SWSH gets the box legendary and temporarily changes his team on account of Bede (as much as I dislike Bede, that was an amazing curveball the first time). Bianca is such a similarly realistic portrayal of what if a Pokemon game asked "what if the rival isn't good enough?" - heck even XY's distaff counterpart rival flirted with this. The SV rival characters were wonderful with the exception of Kieran (my least favorite Pokemon character by a landslide).
 
Volt-Ikazuchi said:
VGC has been blowing up SV's arena problem, especially since it's coming off SS's hype stadiums.

You can hardly find a decent one, and Mesagoza's looks wack.
Click to expand...
1740001780945.png


I think the arena they use for the finals is pretty neat, considering it's SV.

The crowd, the fireworks, it all feels like a true celebration.
 
QuentinQuonce said:
View attachment 715555

Thoughts on this?

Because it feels like a hugantic, ginormic reach but I'd genuinely be happy to be corrected
Click to expand...
Reach, but maybe not as much of one as it seems at first glance. Venusaur, Blastoise, Pinsir, Ampharos, Gyarados, Steelix, Heracross, Houndooom, Sceptile, Blaziken, Swampert, Gardevoir, Sableye, Medicham, Manectric, Camerupt, Bannette, Salamence, Rayquaza, Gallade, Diance all look nothing like either. While there are some X and Y shaped megas, Glalie, Metagross and Abomasnow being the most obvious ones, it's nowhere near pretty much all.
 
MoonlightRose said:
Reach, but maybe not as much of one as it seems at first glance. Venusaur, Blastoise, Pinsir, Ampharos, Gyarados, Steelix, Heracross, Houndooom, Sceptile, Blaziken, Swampert, Gardevoir, Sableye, Medicham, Manectric, Camerupt, Bannette, Salamence, Rayquaza, Gallade, Diance all look nothing like either. While there are some X and Y shaped megas, Glalie, Metagross and Abomasnow being the most obvious ones, it's nowhere near pretty much all.
Click to expand...
I really wouldn't count Metagross in favour of this, it's been X-shaped since gen 3.
 
The Pokemon fandom and massive leaps in logic, name a more iconic duo. Feels like all the big fan theories are things like this.

"Hey, did you know X? I mean sure, the only real evidence for it is circumstantial at best, and if anything we have more proof against it, but we all know X is true, so why bother fighting against it?"
 
I have never seen a fanbase for any ongoing media franchise as utterly obsessed with nonexistent patterns as the Pokemon fanbase. I see shit like "Oh we gotta get a BW remake in Gen 10 because it fits the pattern of releasing remakes in even numbered gens" and I just. Literally where did this impulse come from. You can say "Oh it's because this series was so predictable for so long" but that hasn't been the case for a decade and even then I'm pretty sure Call of Duty fans don't do this shit
 
Yung Dramps said:
I have never seen a fanbase for any ongoing media franchise as utterly obsessed with nonexistent patterns as the Pokemon fanbase. I see shit like "Oh we gotta get a BW remake in Gen 10 because it fits the pattern of releasing remakes in even numbered gens" and I just. Literally where did this impulse come from. You can say "Oh it's because this series was so predictable for so long" but that hasn't been the case for a decade and even then I'm pretty sure Call of Duty fans don't do this shit
Click to expand...
You say "utterly obsessed" like it's a bad thing, and not part of the appeal of Pokemon. People are going to find non-existent patterns in everything, it's part of being human. The mystique of the world of Pokemon drives children to circulate rumors to each other about things like the truck Mew, Pikablu, and so on. Pokemon is a necessarily social game, so it's got a huge social base that's interested in thinking about these things and communicating about them. It also happens to be the biggest media franchise on the planet, which certainly helps.
 
missangelic said:
You say "utterly obsessed" like it's a bad thing, and not part of the appeal of Pokemon. People are going to find non-existent patterns in everything, it's part of being human. The mystique of the world of Pokemon drives children to circulate rumors to each other about things like the truck Mew, Pikablu, and so on. Pokemon is a necessarily social game, so it's got a huge social base that's interested in thinking about these things and communicating about them. It also happens to be the biggest media franchise on the planet, which certainly helps.
Click to expand...
It's annoying because when it doesn't happen people get viscerally upset and say the devs suck / don't know what they're doing

Shit, I've done this before when the theories for SV DLC, which were based on patterns in the game, vastly surprised the actual story. I'm guilty-!

Think about how many times people have gotten upset about not getting a second region lollllll
 
ant4456 said:
It's annoying because when it doesn't happen people get viscerally upset and say the devs suck / don't know what they're doing

Shit, I've done this before when the theories for SV DLC, which were based on patterns in the game, vastly surprised the actual story. I'm guilty-!

Think about how many times people have gotten upset about not getting a second region lollllll
Click to expand...
double post bc editing on mobile is awful

Also this is a long grudge I've held for like 6 years now, in SWSH hype season I told people in a Discord that a new Eeveelution wasn't gonna happen and was practically bullied by some people for that take lol

And ofc, no one gives a shit about how rude they were like that when they're wrong- they forgot long ago lmao
 
Also I just wanna get this out of my system because I don't know when I'll get another opportunity but I'm stunned at how many people are still asking for BW remakes. I thought Unova fans wanted followup on Blueberry Academy and a check-in on Emmet but a surprisingly large chunk apparently just wanna reheat the 2010 DS game and cram it in the next year while Kalos gets all the actual cool new content and worldbuilding. "But the original games are too expensive now and I want new players to experience them" ok, fair enough. Ask for a DS Pokemon Legacy Collection or NSO ports then.

I have seen one genuinely good argument for a BW remake and that's restoring the Dream World in an entirely in-game form. Everything else, in my view, is tantamount to asking for a boring, inferior product as a Unova revisit. This isn't even BDSP doom: They could release a Supreme Black and Wondrous White that's absolutely gorgeous and lovingly crafted with 5 years of dev time and more content than HGSS and my overriding thought on it "Why didn't you make a Link Between Worlds-style BW3 with all this stuff?????"

Legends has raised the bar. The possibilities for returning to old regions are basically near-infinite now. Let go of remakes.
 
ant4456 said:
It's annoying because when it doesn't happen people get viscerally upset and say the devs suck / don't know what they're doing

Shit, I've done this before when the theories for SV DLC, which were based on patterns in the game, vastly surprised the actual story. I'm guilty-!

Think about how many times people have gotten upset about not getting a second region lollllll
Click to expand...
That sucks that there's people who have behaved badly or had really shallow reactions, but I don't think the non-existent pattern-finding is a thing that can or should be resolved when it's such a core element of why the series is fun to engage with. "Hoenn confirmed" was probably one of the funniest Pokemon memes of the early 2010's. Pokemon thrives off of imagination; some people described how intrigued they were about the possibility of going to the power plant in the trailers for Pokemon X and Y, even though the dungeon wasn't particularly enjoyable when I actually got around to playing it. The "missing" parts of Kalos's map still drive discussion about the games over a decade later. The potential and boundaries of games drives discussion and speculation about other games, such as Dark Souls and Disco Elysium.

I think there's actually too much shallow reading into the themes and elements of Pokemon as a series, like in the lack of discussion on the Kanto region's design as involving a rural/natural periphery versus an urbanized core. Some of this is also because the themes and motifs that inspired Pokemon are not in the global consciousness as much, such as the concerns about genetic experimentation and cloning that were high-profile in the 1990's. People describe Team Magma and Team Aqua as "cults" instead of thinking about what they might be trying to communicate about rigid and organized attempts to tip the scales of a natural balance in service of a narrow-minded goal. Scarlet and Violet are clearly trying to say something about issues like bullying, misunderstandings, and rejection: the Koraidon/Miraidon that loses a "territorial dispute" and becomes the player's partner, Penny and Team Star, Ogerpon and the "Loyal" Three (and Pecharunt), and Kieran's arc across both DLCs.

I definitely enjoy looking for smaller patterns in Pokemon too, though. In fact, sometimes I feel like there's not enough of it! A lot of the design of RBY seems to have been kind of forgotten and less-discussed. Base stats and movesets for Pokemon have a lot of these little quirks and overlaps, and some of them become defunct with things like the special split, stat buffs, regional forms, evolutions, and new games.
 
Part of it I feel is due to remakes softening some things, but even in OG Kanto I feel its themes for Urbanism and environmentalism were poorly conveyed. It's an urban area, but it barely acknowledges the experiences there, and is mostly unrelated to the game's straightforward objective (get badges while stopping a yakuza/gangster group)

Like, the 1996 GF Pokedex book states that Koffing, Muk, Gengar are mons that are the result of said pollution in urban environments, but in game none of the mon encounters or even in game dex entries supports this. Koffing and Grimer* lines are found in Pokemon Mansion, instead of more thematic places like Power Plant or other areas that has pollution, Gengar line are restricted to the graveyard in Pokemon Tower

*Grimer actually is found in Power Plant, but just for Yellow and LGPE, seemingly cuz Ditto took its place. FRLG interestingly makes it fishable in Celadon City, but the area looks clean...

The lack of committing to a theme has ironically led to some crack fan theories. People still think Ditto is a failed Mew clone when;

-only Yellow and LGPE has it in Pokemon Mansion. It's found in multiple routes
-the 1996 Pokedex book doesn't note any connection to Mew/Mewtwo
-GS similarly show it not being that rare in the wild

The Pokedex book also has Porygon's theft by Team Rocket not be part of a larger scandal, it's just them simply stealing Sylph tech then selling it in casinos

The influence of TR in Kanto is arguably more important than the themes of urbanism, and we know in development for RG that Blaine was potentially involved with them + Power Plant, but the final game just treats them pretty generically and separate. Interestingly Adventures references the connection...

And this is just the tip of game design correlating to worldbuilding, I feel Kanto's turbulent dev and establishing style is why it's so odd and obscured compared to later games
 
I think there's a fundamental difference between trying to understand the cultural, historical context of pokemon games and concepts (even though, in my opinion, pokemon has always been pretty cowardly about actually saying anything interesting lol), and just making shit up and swearing up and down its true. "the mega forms are all designed to look like x's or y's" is not interpreting existing text, its being delusional and being annoyingly smug about it.

The reason why hoenn confirmed was funny was because by the time it left /vp/ no one took it serious. it was literally mocking the overtheorizing and pattern seeking behavior of the fandom, and then it got revived when hoenn was finally confirmed for realsies.
 
Also ok sorry for double posting but its a completely different topic that's been on my mind: Yknow how when people bring up the azure flute, the first joke is "lol the azure flute was too complex but they made the regi puzzles?? is gamefreak stupid??"

Maybe its a topic people talked about and I missed it, but why do people act like thats some sort of epic gotcha and not a pretty understandable reaction to feedback? I know that the inclusion of braille in the game guide was not universal, and with the fact not all kids would even keep game guides around, the number of calls for help/confusion over the puzzle would be pretty large across most places. it wouldnt surprise me if they were like "ok guys, next time if we make a puzzle like this the information NEEDS to be in the game itself" and avoided similar puzzles in general.

hell, we only returned to pretty insane convoluted puzzles and evo methods in the recent 2 gens, and I think its influenced by the speed of leaks and information research: sure runerigius evo method is stupid as hell, but its also going to be revealed in 1-3 or so days regardless, so it doesnt matter. and we can talk about kids still playing the game, but all kids i know will google shit and check wikis (before even facing a challenge really, they'll get a pokemon and immediately check if it evolves and how), they aren't that hopeless stupid
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top