Because Unown is native to the Shinoh region which is likely getting a remake soon.
Also for potential Lets Go Joto games.
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SPOILERS! Mysteries and Conspiracies of Pokemon
- Thread starter stage7_4
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Also for potential Lets Go Joto games.
The easiest answer is they just bring hidden power back, in its entirety
I mean the cutting of it is arbitrary as-is, but if they really stick to their guns on this whatever the next game with Unown in it wont even be compatible with SWSH so like who cares, just reinstate Hidden Power and whatever else.
I mean the cutting of it is arbitrary as-is, but if they really stick to their guns on this whatever the next game with Unown in it wont even be compatible with SWSH so like who cares, just reinstate Hidden Power and whatever else.
I feel like Dakim is more of a reference to Akuma from Street Fighter, but I realized he also looks like evil Alder.
Believe it or not, the thing linking all 3 of these characters is probably Buddhism. In many Japanese traditions, it's said that Shakyamuni Buddha (the original Buddha) was accompanied by two warriors on his travels: Nio and Kongorokishi. Nio fought bare-handed whereas Kongorokishi had a blade, and statues of these guardians are displayed in the majority of Japanese Buddhist temples meaning they have quite a lot of cultural prevalence in Japan. Both guardians are portrayed as very muscular and, more recently, Nio is portrayed with long red hair. Due to this, many "guardian" characters in JRPGs take inspiration from Nio or Kongorokishi, with all of Alder, Dakim and Akuma being guardian characters -- Dakim is a guardian of Cipher, and Alder is the ultimate guardian of Unova. So I think the resemblance between these characters is coincidental due to their similar source material.
I feel like Dakim is more of a reference to Akuma from Street Fighter, but I realized he also looks like evil Alder.
I was originally going to post this in the little things that annoy you thread, but I ultimately decided to place it here because while it's not a franchise mystery in the traditional sense, there are definitely factors that could make it a lot less cut and dry than "uh oh nintendo/game freak made a booboo"
So I recently discovered this thing. There are apparently officially licensed Pokemon building toys under this so-called "Mega Construx" toyline, and as far as I can tell these have existed since at least mid-2017 or so.
I'm pretty sure you can infer where this is headed, but I still will ask: Why not Lego? I mean I guess this arrangement with this far less well-known brand is working fine if it has lasted for 3 years, but wouldn't partnering with the former company get them a lot more press and sales because, y'know, it's fucking Lego?
One thing I thought of was that maybe Mega Construx is a Japanese/Asian company. But nope, I did the research and they're owned by Mega Blox, which is based in Canada.
Another concern is money potentially. Now considering the kind of money Pokemon as a franchise makes, they probably don't gotta worry about affordability. But a sea of cash can't protect you from raw deals: Maybe Lego takes a big cut from the profits of licensed lines or the parties involved in Pokemon don't think they pony up enough to use the license to where they figured that Mega Blox offering them a better royalty/licensing deal would offset the far lesser brand recognition.
So I recently discovered this thing. There are apparently officially licensed Pokemon building toys under this so-called "Mega Construx" toyline, and as far as I can tell these have existed since at least mid-2017 or so.
I'm pretty sure you can infer where this is headed, but I still will ask: Why not Lego? I mean I guess this arrangement with this far less well-known brand is working fine if it has lasted for 3 years, but wouldn't partnering with the former company get them a lot more press and sales because, y'know, it's fucking Lego?
One thing I thought of was that maybe Mega Construx is a Japanese/Asian company. But nope, I did the research and they're owned by Mega Blox, which is based in Canada.
Another concern is money potentially. Now considering the kind of money Pokemon as a franchise makes, they probably don't gotta worry about affordability. But a sea of cash can't protect you from raw deals: Maybe Lego takes a big cut from the profits of licensed lines or the parties involved in Pokemon don't think they pony up enough to use the license to where they figured that Mega Blox offering them a better royalty/licensing deal would offset the far lesser brand recognition.
One question: was the license established before or after Mega Blocks was acquired by Mattel? I think if it's the latter, it's understandable that Game Freak and Nintendo would want to throw in with a company with as much clout as Mattel.
Now this is interesting. What do you guys make of it?
Honestly that legit just sounds like different upload qualities, and specifically like maybe whoever did this or ripped it messed up the sound channels a bit.
I mean, hell, I've seen (...listened?) to the same thing happen with SWSH's soundtrack. I'll hear a Hop (Finals) upload one timethat sounds just different enough from a separate upload. Certain channels of the song wind up much lower or louder and often gives a different feel.
Also not helped by 2008-era youtube being a Disaster where even a single year later so much about the uploader and behind the scenes quality options changed.
I mean, hell, I've seen (...listened?) to the same thing happen with SWSH's soundtrack. I'll hear a Hop (Finals) upload one timethat sounds just different enough from a separate upload. Certain channels of the song wind up much lower or louder and often gives a different feel.
Also not helped by 2008-era youtube being a Disaster where even a single year later so much about the uploader and behind the scenes quality options changed.
Why is Eiscue's Ice Face form highest stat Defense when its Ability prevents it taking damage from Physical moves and reverting to its Noice Face form? Would make more sense for them to add the +40 to Attack (or +20 to Attack and the remaining 20 to Special Defense).
Because it's an Ice-type Pokémon, which tend to have higher physical defense than special defense.
And also because it can't keep its Ice Face active all the time.
It's meant to be the defensive variant but it also covers edge cases like Mold Breaker. What I'm more shocked about is all the defensive points going into speed whe nit breaks; i figured it was a split between attack & speed.
I think Dynamax Moves might also get around it? Might be thinking of special-based Max Knuckles and such, though.
In addition to Mold Breaker, its Defense also matters in situations like Psyshock, Guard Split, and I think Transform (I seem to recall form changing abilities not working properly with transformed Pokemon, could be wrong). EDIT: Also Download, though that doesn't exist at the moment.
Why they didn't dump all those points into the infinitely less situational Special Defense is beyond me. Game Freak just be like that
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Yeah, but when it changes to its Noice Face form it's Defense drops to 70 and it's Speed is boosted to 130.
Eiscue in its Ice Face form has 75/80/110/65/90/50//470 BST.
Its Ability Ice Face makes it so any Physical move doesn't do damage and changes it to its Noice Face from.
Noice Face form changes its stats to 75/80/70/65/50/130//470 BST.
Like I get the idea behind it, the big block of ice on its head ups its defense but drastically slows it down, and when it breaks it loses that extra defense but gains back all that in Speed.
But with how the mechanic works, outside of certain situational cases that R_N and DrPumpkinz mentioned, that Defense stat isn't going to be used which is a big waste. The same idea would get across if they kept Defense at 70 while they could have increased Special Defense a bit more and/or also increased Attack since Eiscue now has a big ol' ice block it can hit opponents with (speaking of which, it doesn't learn a Physical Ice move by level-up (and Icicle Crash is an Egg Move). Why doesn't it get Ice Hammer? They went out of their way to make so many Signature Moves no longer signature yet Ice Hammer was kept exclusive to Crabominable?!).
Eh, Ice Hammer wouldn't really have made sense on Eiscue. Ice Hammer is literally just Hammer Arm but Ice, not just in effect but also in animation and description. Eiscue's dinky little flippers don't strike me as the kind of limbs you'd be able to slam down on an opponent with great force. Though it would have made sense on things like Darmanitan, Beartic, Abomasnow, and maybe Kingler and Regice.
And Pokemon lacking usable STAB moves in their level-up pools is unfortunately nothing new. Empoleon's only level-up Steel move is Metal Claw, and Parasect needs TMs or tutors to learn a physical Grass move, for example. Eiscue actually has it pretty nice all things considered. Its Special Attack isn't that much lower than its Attack, and it learns some pretty good special Ice moves through level up.
I think you might also be a little mistaken in assuming that they wanted to squeeze every bit of use they could out of those points. I mean, Pokémon like Minior and Darmanitan have higher base stat totals in their in-battle forms than their default ones - I honestly don't doubt that, if they didn't make its Defense any higher in Ice Face, Game Freak would have put those points nowhere rather than dumping more points into Attack or Special Defense for the sake of making it as efficient as possible.
However, there's sort of an aesthetic purpose for it - many players are going to notice stats before they notice its Ability, and the contrast between "this is physically frail" and "this can take any physical hit" would just come off as dissonant and misleading.
I think that, while you can sort of stretch its Attack getting lower from a flavor standpoint, it's unintuitive on a mechanical level compared to the clear-cut switch from "the form that's meant to take hits (and therefore set up)" and "the form that's meant to sweep afterwards." Honestly, I think we would be having very much the same conversation about how unoptimized Noice Face is and why did they make the sweeper form's Attack go down and they should have cut into Defense or something instead.
On a similar note, I think raising its Special Defense - while it would easily make it a more viable Pokémon - would also conflict with Ice Face's gimmick, because special moves are clearly intended to be its vulnerability - if it could actually tank them well, people would instead be making bulky Eiscue that fear physical moves because they cost it its Ice Face. And with aesthetic and communication in mind again, its Special Defense being lower than its Defense - even if its Defense is essentially "just for decoration" - is also pretty useful to communicate this to the player in a natural and intuitive way.
It's obviously a weak Pokémon that could use all of the help it can get, and I understand wishing it could make better use of the limited options it had, but I'm not convinced that "optimize within the confines of the BST" and "I can't believe Game Freak didn't think of this" are really the right angles to be considering with respect to its stats. Kinda feels wrong to say this about Eiscue, but I think this is actually good design.
Thoughts?
....what? no?
Eternatus is dark purple & hot pink, the flower is black and red.
AZ explicitly tied up a ton of pokemon to those stones and vague life energy alone was the power source. And we don't even know if Wishing Stars can like...do...this...at all. They give off their own energy after all, there's no reason to infuse the wishing stars with life force to power the weapon.
He also has the theoretical cause & effect wrong. Eternatus woke up to stay alive, it needed a bunch of energy and the amount it was siphoning off in the 17000 years since it crash landed was suddenly not enough. Put a pin in this.
There's also a lot of weird grasping with Yamask for no real reason despite the mural definitely not depicting Eternatus and the pokedex claiming that the mural itself was intentionalyl etched out with curses to begin with.
The stuff with Toxtricity also jsut feels tacked on. I don't mean the whole "it was probably the first dynamax" due to the darkest day, that seems supported but also there's no indication that it really left a mark in particular nor that it was the only one. It doesn't really add anything to the theory other than, yeah dyna/g-max pokemon probably did not help anything on the darkest day (see: Rose's dumb plan's side effects).
Now all that said I could see the weapon firing linking up with eternatus' awakening. The fact both took place about 3000 years ago does seem at least worth a think on. It could have just been coincidence, of course, and if you want to split hairs there's probably some decades between AZ's firing of the weapon & Eternatus waking up on both side of the timeline but I think we can generalize that to "About 3000 years ago". AZ could've been like 3000 from XY and Eternatus like 3010 from SWSH for all it matters, we'd just round it off to 3000.
if I want to put on my spin on linking these two, and again this could all be coincidental, lets take that pin down: what if AZ's weapon was overtuned and somehow siphoned off a bunch of energy from Eternatus from the neighboring galar. Eternatus goes into a panic state, wakes up, goes into overdrive on abosbring energy and Eternamaxes as a result.
Immediate problem with this theory: how was the weapon "overtuned" to begin with such that it would wake up a pokemon not only in another region but, if we're charitable in assuming Galar is just to the northeast of Kalaos, literally the entire span of Kalos, into Galar, and then into like the midle of Eternatus' resting place but at the same time siphon nothing else. Even if you wanted to shove wishing stars into this theory, they aren't actually connected to Eternatus the way the redditor wants; they're just chunks of Eternatus but using them for power sources doesnt make it go crazy, it no longer has any connection to its bits & pieces. Other wise it would have woken up long ago from the constant useage of Dynamaxing in modern day galar.
By the way as a reminder, the life energy from pokemon has its own name as given in ORAS: Infinite Energy. I nearly forgot about that myself and the fact that it never comes up in SWSH is actually a big retroactive disappointment. Rose's plan is basically what the Devon Corporation did, but on a far more localized (&, comically, disaterous) scale.
We don't even know what dimension SwSh takes place in, and we know there's at least 2 and potentially 3. The non-mega, the mega, and the possible mega timeline 2: rayquaza boogaloo caused by the conflicting "Mega Lucario was first mega" "NO RAYQUAZA".
Seeing as Mega Pokemon fail to be referenced even in passing (went through the game text files to confirm) there's no evidence that the ultimate weapon was ever used in the SwSh universe.
Seeing as Mega Pokemon fail to be referenced even in passing (went through the game text files to confirm) there's no evidence that the ultimate weapon was ever used in the SwSh universe.
In fairness its not unusual for large swaths of things to go unmentioned. Mega Evolution only gets mentioned in SM because the mechanic is there and they need to, like, explain it. SWSH in particular seems uninterested in references to other games in general, now that I think about it; Type Null & Silvally are about it and even then they just obliquely reference Alola in the dex. Maybe some random cooking items?
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I think we still only got the two major timeline splits (disregarding the version timeline splits like which version in a generation is canon and honestly only Gen V and VII is the major stickler for those minor issues): Original Universe (Gen 1 through 5) & Mega Universe (Gen 6 to now).
Of course GF couldn't give a Ratatta's behind about a silly little thing like a timeline so we get retcons such as Kalos being the only place Mega Evos exist... except for also Hoenn and Alola.
Mega Evolution iirc isn't like Dynamaxing. It's not said to have only existed in Kalos, just that the birthplace of Mega Evolution was in Kalos. And that got retconned so it was actually Rayquaza and thte Dragonids. So long as you have a key stone & a mega stone there's nothing stopping it from popping up in Hoenn, Alola and Kanto.
While it is a retcon it's easy to try and handwave it away as Rayquaza was the true birthplace but it was mostly lost to time. Like Rayquaza itself, really. So byt the time Mega Lucario came around, that was the more colloquially known one since it was still held in reverence in Kalos.
Though honestly even if they say Kalos is the only place in the world to have Mega Evolution, well, so far as retcons go let's remember that this same series has claimed:
-the 100 new gen 2 pokemo nwere "newly discovered" by Oak in the span of 2 years. Despite them being native to Johto, which is literally across the mountain and has a strong deep lore for several of them.
-Steel, Dark & Fairy are all similarly explicitly stated to be "newly discovered" at their onset which is especially laughable with Fairy typing
-With Let's Go, Red & Blue apparently already had their journey before Chase & Elaine, and as such did not get to do any of the things they actually did and also i guess never became champions??
HGSS softly fixed the former (& breeding, for that matter) and the steel/dark type thing by tweaking some text but the fairy stuff is hilarious to try and pass off for both the history of the region and how many pokemon it retcons.
And Let's Go well if anything is a third timeline it's probably them.
Haha yeah okay, that's a retcon for sure.
I put it in the same category of "there are 100 new pokemon that are brand new and never ever before seen before!!": they wanted to explain why you never saw Megas before now but did not think through how to phrase it in a way that would allow it to show up in future games. So they just put their heads down and barrel through, they'll retcon it later as needed
Ok, if we wanna really cut this up you can interpret the statement "Why are there examples of Mega Evolution only in the Kalos region?" to mean "Why do certain Mega Evolutions only happen in Kalos?" I'm sure there have to be a few Pokemon who could Mega Evolve in XY but didn't appear in the ORAS or SM dexes...
eh who am i kidding this is just crappy foresight lul
I think my favorite part is that this is not a claim but a presupposition. The way it's framed, Sycamore is way, way past the idea that it's a thing that's unique to Kalos - he's not even telling you "Mega Evolution is only here" as the substance of his sentence, but basing his sentence on the fact that you and he and everyone else must already know that and accept it as true. Like: "We already know Mega Evolution is only in Kalos, but why is Mega Evolution only in Kalos?" "Hey, maybe the reason why Mega Evolution is only in Kalos is because the Legendary Pokémon are also only in Kalos..."
Nobody even deems it worth questioning whether it happens in other regions - they skip right past that to why it doesn't.
It's especially funny because Lisia is a famous pop idol and pretty much everyone knows about her Mega Altaria in Hoenn - I'd be surprised if footage of Ali wasn't regularly broadcast on television, for goodness's sake. Maybe a random Kalosian citizen wouldn't be super invested in Contests, but Professor Sycamore?? Surely if you're actually trying to look for examples of Mega Evolution in other region, it can't be that hard to find...
(Key Stones are also suggested to be way more common in Hoenn - in Kalos, it takes the esteemed professor whose life's work is to research the phenomenon... pulling strings and calling in favors from his own former mentor, whose entire family history revolves around the succession of the phenomenon... to get one single Key Stone, because even they don't have any more than that... and it still takes a formal succession ritual to prove you're worthy of receiving such a high honor...
Steven in Hoenn: "hey, I found this cool stone, but I already have five... I gave four of them to my other friends, so do you want it? here, just take it!")
There's a really, really fun X and Y "conspiracy" I want to discuss in the future, but I do not have the time to do it justice right now. Expect me to come back to this at some point, haha. It's very, very out there and hard to believe, but I choose to believe it anyway... mostly because it's way more fun to think it's true than to dismiss it, but there's also a surprising amount backing it up that I haven't seen anyone point out in other discussions, so I totally want to bring it up and give my take at some point.