SPOILERS! Indigo Disk Discussion

Need some explanation with the BBQs - I've heard people talk about them in a way that implies that there's a fixed amount of them, is that true or did I mishear?
 
Pax_Unda said:
Need some explanation with the BBQs - I've heard people talk about them in a way that implies that there's a fixed amount of them, is that true or did I mishear?
Click to expand...

There isn't much variety but they are repeatable, you always get new ones when you finish one of them. So it's basically an infinite loop of 10 varieties of quests or something. There are some that are exclusive to groups formed in union circle.
 
R_N said:
I don't think this is a gamefreak fuck up (TM) as it is an intentional design decision.
They just didn't want Stellar raids.
Click to expand...

Which begs the question of why going out of your way to code it like that. Surely they could just have left it and never used it?
 
For all the gripes about the story feeling rushed here (especially the Area Zero stuff) the Crystal Pool event was genuinely one of the best parts of the entire game and feels like a pretty good payoff for the game. Just hope there's more through a free update like Daybreak or the Pecharunt event, because I can't get enough of Paldea's lore
 
I will say that despite my quibbles surrounding it storywise, I did enjoy the melancholic feel of the whole scene and cutting back to the title screen with the book back and a new mix of the title theme was nice.

Also comparing to the other title screens, we went from a sunrise (with book & Ball), to midday (no book/ball) to a sunset (just the book). That's cute.
 
DHR-107 said:
I've highlighted one of these points here (not that I don't disagree on most of them - a lot of unanswered questions) but after viewing the cutscene at the Pool - This just ends up being really awful "Time Travel" writing.

So I was talking to a friend about a lot of this (Hydrattler) and we just couldn't make the time loop work.

For example; In Tears of the Kingdom the "Time loop" gets resolved correctly. There are Two Master Swords and Two Zelda's in existence for the majority of the time prior to the game starting. We then send the Master Sword back in time to get brought to us in the future - there is only 1 in existence and it can exist in both sides of the loop. It gets back to Link the slow way around after we send it back and so there is now "One" again. This is also used in Chrono Trigger effectively with Robo and changing the timeline and creating an entire forest. We leave him there, hop to the future and he has changed the timeline.

However, these loops resolve correctly from the point of view of the object being time travelled. This does not seem to be the instance in Pokemon SV. Arven starts off the with the "SV Book" at the start of the game. All good. The game happens and eventually, Arven gives us the SV Book in order to shut down the time machine. The AI takes the SV Book with them. This all works fine linearly.

The player then gets given the White Book from Briar in the later stages of the Indigo Disk DLC. This White Book is referenced directly by the Professor in the Area Zero Depths and he mentions a meeting with someone by a lake where he obtains the book.

This happens to us after the events with Terapagos in the Depths, when we return to the Kitikami Crystal lake. This is where the problem starts. This Professor explicitly says they haven't got the time machine working yet, and are just as confused as you as to why they are there. They trade their copy of the SV Book to you for the White Book. We know it's the same book because it has the "This has Profs name scrawled on it" tag.

Therein lies the problem. If we have the book, the book could no longer be in Arven's possession at the start of the game as WE now have that book in the future. The worst part of this is ARVEN NOTICES THE NEW BOOK and says "Oh you got the copy from the Library?" LIKE NO? IT HAS THE PROFS NAME ON IT?

This could have been entirely resolved by the Prof having a throwaway line. Instead we have a full paradox occurring. This other timeline may resolve in Arven never discovering the Herba Mystica or even meeting the player.

I've thought about a few ways the game could have resolved this but none of them really work. The AI Prof sending the book back between Prof leaving the book at the surface and then you meeting him at the pool is handwavey, but the worse option is the "Prof made two copies of the book" which is just the worst explanation.

This has honestly frustrated me a great deal as they had the chance to make a good Time Travel Story but they just crapped the bed at the last. Like I said earlier, a simple quote line about "The book reappeared to me after my last visit to the surface" or something just to keep it being the same book (though this does ask the question of that book being potentially hundreds of years old depending on how many times the loop has happened).

End of rant.

As an addition to this, none of the questions about how Heath know about the paradox Pokemon get answered, again a very lazy explanation is that in testing the Time Machine Prof got the times a bit wrong and dragged things not far enough into the future, or fired them too far into the past. I don't really like that explanation either. A lot of this doesn't really add up and it's insulting that they didn't think people would see these glaring issues.
Click to expand...
Or there's a simpler explanation:
It's already implied that the Paradox Pokemon in our universe come from alternate parallel universes (at least that's implied in the chat with Past!Prof), so...Past!Prof isn't from our universe. Both versions of the professor write their name on their books (I'd write my name on books I write into, too). Alt!Past!Prof receives Our!WhiteBook from us and forks their Alt!Book over to us and that's that.

Of course, this then requires Our!Prof to receive a white book from Alt!Us and not relinquish their Book to them, but they can go "But all I did was sign my Book! You can just buy another copy!" to them. The various versions of the professor do not have to think completely alike...
Speaking of all this, where in the Indigo Disk (if any) do we get those drawings of Heath with Terapagos that the trailers showed? And they never explain how Ogerpon's trainer got the Tera crystals they dumped into the Crystal Pool, do they?
 
Lectrys said:
Speaking of all this, where in the Indigo Disk (if any) do we get those drawings of Heath with Terapagos that the trailers showed? And they never explain how Ogerpon's trainer got the Tera crystals they dumped into the Crystal Pool, do they?
Click to expand...
All the drawings in the trailer were just the ones in the Scarlet/Violet Book that you can see in the library.

And no, there's no explanation to who Ogerpon's trainer was nor why he had those tera crystals with him. Maybe he was just someone from the exploration team.
 
R_N said:
All the drawings in the trailer were just the ones in the Scarlet/Violet Book that you can see in the library.

And no, there's no explanation to who Ogerpon's trainer was nor why he had those tera crystals with him. Maybe he was just someone from the exploration team.
Click to expand...
I assume that gets mentioned in the Pecharunt quest
 
R_N said:
I honestly wonder if the intent with everything dealing with the paradoxes and time machine and the book was just leading to "wow! This is all weird and messed up huh? What a........paradox!" and then they mug for the camera, roll credits.
Click to expand...

I’ve actually been kinda thinking along these lines too. After all, time travel is completely fictional. There aren’t any real “rules” as to how it works. Some stories try to take a very neat and consistent approach, because that works best for the type of story they’re going for. But you don’t have to do it that way, if you’d rather go for the vibe of time travel making logically impossible scenarios possible. The professor giving away their SV Book before the story begins despite Arven having carried it throughout the story? Shouldn’t be possible, and yet it is. Maybe that’s the point.
 
Esserise said:
I’ve actually been kinda thinking along these lines too. After all, time travel is completely fictional. There aren’t any real “rules” as to how it works. Some stories try to take a very neat and consistent approach, because that works best for the type of story they’re going for. But you don’t have to do it that way, if you’d rather go for the vibe of time travel making logically impossible scenarios possible. The professor giving away their SV Book before the story begins despite Arven having carried it throughout the story? Shouldn’t be possible, and yet it is. Maybe that’s the point.
Click to expand...
There aren't real world rules, no, but Pokémon already has established that it functions on a system of one changeable timeline in all previous instances of time travel in the franchise.
 
Esserise said:
I’ve actually been kinda thinking along these lines too. After all, time travel is completely fictional. There aren’t any real “rules” as to how it works. Some stories try to take a very neat and consistent approach, because that works best for the type of story they’re going for. But you don’t have to do it that way, if you’d rather go for the vibe of time travel making logically impossible scenarios possible. The professor giving away their SV Book before the story begins despite Arven having carried it throughout the story? Shouldn’t be possible, and yet it is. Maybe that’s the point.
Click to expand...
At the very least in that light I can let it go. It at least speaks to an intentionality behind the whole Paradox thing, and probably only gets exacerbated because we had a long time to sit on it with expectations that there might be more to it.

Still gonna be annoyed at how they dropped the ball on other aspects of Area Zero in the DLC, though. Ah well...
 
R_N said:
So, did anyone go back to Ogre Ousting to see how much easier it is
Click to expand...
Spawns seem very much toned down and slower. You can go a whole second trip without seeing a spawn sometimes, so clearing Stage 6/Normal is pretty viable and you're more bottlenecked by your pace of popping balloons. Also you can't fly.
1703019026799.png
 
AztecCroc said:
There aren't real world rules, no, but Pokémon already has established that it functions on a system of one changeable timeline in all previous instances of time travel in the franchise.
Click to expand...

Honestly, I don’t think the mainline Pokémon games have engaged substantially enough with time travel as a concept to have meaningfully established any rules. After all, we went through the entire plot of Scarlet & Violet without there being even a single mention of the fact that time machines used to be installed in every Pokémon Center 20 years ago, because the Time Capsule was ultimately just a frivolous side-feature that probably wasn’t meant to be taken too seriously. They’re not exactly drawing from a rich history of time travel narratives here — I think the only instances of time travel having major plot significance in the games have been the Celebi event in HGSS (which is a small but clean and self-contained loop) and Legends: Arceus (where it’s just a premise starter that never gets resolved in terms of causal impact).
 
I would also bring up that Pokemon has raised multiple concepts for a Multiverse or Alternate Reality approach to things with the Delta Episode dialogue and the Ultra Wormhole letting out into seemingly parallel versions of Alola. As far as the purposes of a Pokemon story tend to care, these would function about the same as its instances of Time Travel, since the Giovanni Loop prevents any change to how the other events play out and Legends Arceus not resolving your "out of time" situation means it just functions as another Isekai option.

If the story put more emphasis on things like the consequences of things being pulled out of time specifically these would be more important specifications, but the only significance the Paradox Pokemon are given is the fact that they exist in the game world and they should not ecologically, regardless of when or what they are. If anything this is about the same amount of explanation or focus something like AZ's war or the Ultra Beasts received, it just pops out here because by nature it's trying to get the player questioning it/confused whether or not providing answers is the point. On a subjective/English-Student level, I almost think the questionable info about the Paradoxes reinforces the idea that the Professor was playing with forces WAY beyond their control or comprehension using the (alleged or otherwise) Time Machine, driving home how dangerous their unchecked ambition was compared to something like SM Lusamine knowing the Ultra Beasts are Lovecraftian Aliens and still wanting to bring them to her.

Nintendo games are no stranger to throwing in massive sources of speculation that they don't resolve if the game itself and its primary story function without those answers (which regardless of the paradoxical holes, SV's does since the main purpose of the Pokemon is being displaced Entities of immense power): Zelda has its share with things like Stone Tower in MM or the vague Twili origins in TP, most of Metroid's story is in piecing together scan logs or side manga/comics, and Kirby is the poster child for a story on a pamphlet and lore that fills an Encyclopedia. SV is just one of the few times Pokemon has those elements entwined with its main narrative instead of tucked away in the Pokedex or attached to potentially-fiction-in-universe writings like Sinnoh legendaries.
 
The only thing I don't understand is what "postgame event" it refers to.

Looks like it's a base game event, as it specifically says to complete the main stories of the two DLCs.

I guess it wants you to finish the gym rematches as well?
 
pika pal said:
I would also bring up that Pokemon has raised multiple concepts for a Multiverse or Alternate Reality approach to things with the Delta Episode dialogue and the Ultra Wormhole letting out into seemingly parallel versions of Alola. As far as the purposes of a Pokemon story tend to care, these would function about the same as its instances of Time Travel, since the Giovanni Loop prevents any change to how the other events play out and Legends Arceus not resolving your "out of time" situation means it just functions as another Isekai option.

If the story put more emphasis on things like the consequences of things being pulled out of time specifically these would be more important specifications, but the only significance the Paradox Pokemon are given is the fact that they exist in the game world and they should not ecologically, regardless of when or what they are. If anything this is about the same amount of explanation or focus something like AZ's war or the Ultra Beasts received, it just pops out here because by nature it's trying to get the player questioning it/confused whether or not providing answers is the point. On a subjective/English-Student level, I almost think the questionable info about the Paradoxes reinforces the idea that the Professor was playing with forces WAY beyond their control or comprehension using the (alleged or otherwise) Time Machine, driving home how dangerous their unchecked ambition was compared to something like SM Lusamine knowing the Ultra Beasts are Lovecraftian Aliens and still wanting to bring them to her.

Nintendo games are no stranger to throwing in massive sources of speculation that they don't resolve if the game itself and its primary story function without those answers (which regardless of the paradoxical holes, SV's does since the main purpose of the Pokemon is being displaced Entities of immense power): Zelda has its share with things like Stone Tower in MM or the vague Twili origins in TP, most of Metroid's story is in piecing together scan logs or side manga/comics, and Kirby is the poster child for a story on a pamphlet and lore that fills an Encyclopedia. SV is just one of the few times Pokemon has those elements entwined with its main narrative instead of tucked away in the Pokedex or attached to potentially-fiction-in-universe writings like Sinnoh legendaries.
Click to expand...

tl;dr Game Freak wants us to ship Great Tusk with Enamorus
 
Worldie said:
The only thing I don't understand is what "postgame event" it refers to.

Looks like it's a base game event, as it specifically says to complete the main stories of the two DLCs.

I guess it wants you to finish the gym rematches as well?
Click to expand...
It's probably the Academy Ace Tournament since that's the last bit of proper "plot" and has their last normal set of teams.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top