Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
Saw more of the myths being translated on tcrf. Interesting how for a long time Palkia was Time and Dialga was more associated with light rather than "space" specifically.
Myth 06 in particular
The plentiful nature was protected by the goddess of time, Ea, who lived in the moon.
To express their gratitude to Ea, the humans and Pokémon would offer round and beautiful jewels gathered from the sea.
[...]
It was a giant Dragon Pokémon.
With two supple legs of skin as translucent as water. Covered by a pearl-like sphere hanging over its back from its shoulders.
The brilliance that brought them good harvest was protected by the god of light, Ia, who lived in the sun.
To express their gratitude to Ia, the people would offer hard and brilliant jewels dug out from the ground.
[...]
It was a giant Dragon Pokémon.
With four thick and sturdy legs of skin like steel. Its upper arms shone like diamonds.
Ia roared with a frightening voice, and covered the western sky with a giant sun.
Its scorching light illuminated the area, set fire to the mountains, and dried up the water. Losing their homes, people and Pokémon died to the heat and hunger.
・What Ia/Ea represent:
Ia - light - stability - sun - agriculture - Japanese people - drought - men - human-made things - anger - diamond
Ea - time - transformation - moon - hunting - Emishi/Ainu people - cold-weather damage - women - nature - sad - pearl
Stuff like Masuda's myth document still refers to space god in addition to representing light, but seems like they weren't fully comitted to it.
E
Oh and in the "game doc" notes there's this , from the gameplay side of things
◎Adamant Orb (=diamond)
An item that shines brightly. When Ia holds this, it becomes able to use time-based moves. Ia becomes able to show its ultimate power when joined with the Adamant Orb.
◎Lustrous Orb (=pearl)
An item that shines beautifully. When Ea holds this, it becomes able to use space-based moves. Ea becomes able to show its ultimate power when joined with the Lustrous Orb.
※ Once you obtain the Adamant Orb (Lustrous Orb), small Adamant Orbs (Lustrous Orbs) can occasionally be found lying on the ground in the mines.
Definitely a far cry from the final there, huh? Guessing they pulled back on this idea pretty quickly.
The bit at the end there likely turned into finding "Prism" (blue "spheres" resembling dialga's chest plate) and "Pale" spheres (pink spheres resembling Palkia's pearls), though I think those can show up even before finding the orbs.
Saw more of the myths being translated on tcrf. Interesting how for a long time Palkia was Time and Dialga was more associated with light rather than "space" specifically.
Myth 06 in particular
Stuff like Masuda's myth document still refers to space god in addition to representing light, but seems like they weren't fully comitted to it.
E
Oh and in the "game doc" notes there's this , from the gameplay side of things
Definitely a far cry from the final there, huh? Guessing they pulled back on this idea pretty quickly.
The bit at the end there likely turned into finding "Prism" (blue "spheres" resembling dialga's chest plate) and "Pale" spheres (pink spheres resembling Palkia's pearls), though I think those can show up even before finding the orbs.
Water does feel more appropriate for time than space, and with Flash Cannon and Mirror Shot being introduced this generation, Steel feels more appropriate for light than time.
Also, Palkia was originally intended to have translucent skin? Is that why it's pink? Were we supposed to be seeing its muscles under its skin?
Theory: The Dialga = Light thing was probably cut sometime during the development of the Gen IV Mystery Dungeon games by Chunsoft(Since due to their release date they likely at least were in the planning stages by the time Diamond and Pearl were released). So it would be Explorers of Light(beta Dialga) instead of Time(final Dialga) to be paired up with Explorers of Darkness(Darkrai)
Theory: The Dialga = Light thing was probably cut sometime during the development of the Gen IV Mystery Dungeon games by Chunsoft(Since due to their release date they likely at least were in the planning stages by the time Diamond and Pearl were released). So it would be Explorers of Light(beta Dialga) instead of Time(final Dialga) to be paired up with Explorers of Darkness(Darkrai)
I'd wager it's more likely they ironed it out significantly earlier than when Chunsoft/Gamefreak/TPC approached each other for Explorers and would probably not be something they changed to go "oh this would make more sense" in relation to what's basically an outsourced spin off.
A lot of the part of the myths that lean into Light also kind of put it way more in Groudon's wheelhouse. I suspect that after trying a few goes at the creation myth they probably realized the association with the sun and the earth was a bit too close to it and they refocused purely onto the Spacial aspect. Then at some point -judging by the note on the Adamant/Lustrous Orbs, still before the pair even had proper names- they swapped who represented what.
It's interesting that "Steel-type legendary that represents the sun" would end up becoming a thing 10 years later with Solgaleo. Lunala doesn't really have anything to do with proto-Palkia besides the moon connection, though.
Saw more of the myths being translated on tcrf. Interesting how for a long time Palkia was Time and Dialga was more associated with light rather than "space" specifically.
Myth 06 in particular
Stuff like Masuda's myth document still refers to space god in addition to representing light, but seems like they weren't fully comitted to it.
E
Oh and in the "game doc" notes there's this , from the gameplay side of things
Definitely a far cry from the final there, huh? Guessing they pulled back on this idea pretty quickly.
The bit at the end there likely turned into finding "Prism" (blue "spheres" resembling dialga's chest plate) and "Pale" spheres (pink spheres resembling Palkia's pearls), though I think those can show up even before finding the orbs.
I doubt anything of particularly special note will come out of this but yesterday a Legends Arceus prototype came out and now it's been cracked and is playable. Also a BDSP debug build
Hey, been working on TCRF tables for Gen 3. Kinda like Gen 2, we got sprite Scratchpads, though it's post Festa trailer dev, so only mons associated with the final mon order is there
I think the funniest thing is Psycho Dog almost being in the game, but Gardevoir replacing it AND the Spider Lily mon
We have weekly log files of the entire RS dev, though not sure how to open it correctly. Lotta stuff to sift through, and this is Gen 3. If more stuff are in the Sango folder, there may be earlier scratchpads soon
Ohhh the scratch pads are really fun. I love beldum as a dumbell and shelgon's silly antennae
That early more kappa-ish Ludicolo is pretty interesting too.
Ohhh the scratch pads are really fun. I love beldum as a dumbell and shelgon's silly antennae
That early more kappa-ish Ludicolo is pretty interesting too.
I have thought for the longest time "What on earth made them theme their metal spider pre-evolution after a dumbbell?", so seeing Beldum being a literal dumbbell early on was hilarious.
I have thought for the longest time "What on earth made them theme their metal spider pre-evolution after a dumbbell?", so seeing Beldum being a literal dumbbell early on was hilarious.
I'm guessing they backtracked from the "metal spider" to "made up of components" to "the first stage would be the simplest lump of metal/leg/core" to "this kind of looks like a dumbell, huh?". Probably changed it better resemble a "leg" to sell the idea more
Hey, remember when shortly after Legends Arceus' release dataminers found an unused, modern-looking room which many speculated was for an unused intro cutscene?
Hey, remember when shortly after Legends Arceus' release dataminers found an unused, modern-looking room which many speculated was for an unused intro cutscene? View attachment 680160View attachment 680162
Well, we got the storyboard for it now!
It’s great to see the speculation of LA having an unused intro cutscene turn out to be true. Though I can see why they scrapped it in the end, as it might have implied that the Pokémon series outside of LA are games-within-a-game and that the player character was transported into the past of a video game’s world instead of simply the past.
There have actually been slight references to Pokémon being video games in the series itself, with NPCs holding handhelds in earlier titles, Mustard playing Pokémon Quest, and the intro cutscene for LGPE coupled with the parter Pikachu/Eevee’s summary screen suggesting that the partner may not be from those games’ world. However, actually seeing what looks like the typical Pokémon game intro on the player character’s TV screen may have broken the fourth wall a little too strongly for the series’ lore.
It’s great to see the speculation of LA having an unused intro cutscene turn out to be true. Though I can see why they scrapped it in the end, as it might have implied that the Pokémon series outside of LA are games-within-a-game and that the player character was transported into the past of a video game’s world instead of simply the past.
There have actually been slight references to Pokémon being video games in the series itself, with NPCs holding handhelds in earlier titles, Mustard playing Pokémon Quest, and the intro cutscene for LGPE coupled with the parter Pikachu/Eevee’s summary screen suggesting that the partner may not be from those games’ world. However, actually seeing what looks like the typical Pokémon game intro on the player character’s TV screen may have broken the fourth wall a little too strongly for the series’ lore.
One neat detail about it though is, considering it's the same devs as LGPE, the fact that both LGPE and PLA were going to begin with a realistic environment -> Sucked into the Pokemon World is a neat parallel.
Like I said the Battle Resort was in the design document, which seems like a pretty basic thing you lay out before you start doing shit. Coupled with Southern Kalos being nuked from the map as of XY's August 2012 build and the answer to your question is most likely "pretty early, if not right at the start".
XY Aliens is dead btw. It was discovered that originally AZ was going to be the main villain, presumably not remorseful and trying to finish what he started 3,000 years ago. The 4chan post made no mention of this so into the trash it goes.
View attachment 679314
So here's another point of intrigue: Seems like at one point they were considering including Max from the Advanced Generation anime. Wonder what he would've done. Any animeheads here got clues?
To be fair isn't this basically every other anime villain? "The world is injust and treated me poorly, I will make the world better by killing/enslaving everyone i dont like :)"
Out of all the responses I wrote I didn't think the one about Lysandre's hypocrisy was going to get the most responses, lol.
Though I did get a DM (not sure if they want me to post their name) who gave a really good explanation why Team Flare ended up the way it did due to Lysandre being the leader of it. If they don't want to post it here I encourage them to post it at least on like the Conspiracy/Theory thread (though didn't we use to have some kind of villain team discussion thread?).
To summarize what they said, Lysandre's own confirmation bias and him simplifying what makes a "person who gives/takes" resulted him creating a barrier of entry that he thinks "people who give" would only do, said barrier being 5 million dollars (even if we relate the Pokedollar to Yen, that's still over $33,400; that's a good chunk of people's yearly salary if they even make that much). This blinds him to the fact that the worst "people who take", the ones he complains about, are very rich and would gladly pay to be part of an exclusive group who plans on killing everyone else (poor people) and live on. (And of course the ultimate irony is Lysandre being the ultimate "Taker" as him killing everyone else assures all the natural resources he says are being hoarded will all belong to him as the leader of Team Flare thus the decider of who gets what.)
But I'll still argue the game didn't really show this that well. Like, I guess after the story and looking back you can confer Lysandre had a confirmation bias, but any subtle hint of that is buried by him being obtuse "this world is imperfect" and people with any authority going "ain't he just quirky?".
Like, instead of our first meeting with Lysandre is him being creepy towards us, what if when we get to the lab we see him & Professor Sycamore doing a televised interview (they could even have Malva be the reporter). Lysandre gets heaped with praise from both the reporter and Professor Sycamore, specifically saying everything he does is right & good and is one of the heroes this world needs nowadays. Then the interviewers run off and we have our first interaction with Lysandre but it's less creepy (not only does he act more neutral but we've just seen him literally called a hero). He leaves and the game continues; though as he's leaving he'd drop which the player picks up saying its an expensive looking ring.
THEN, when we get to the scene where we're first meeting Diantha in the cafe, its the player (& friends) coming into a televised interview where, while she's also praised, the vibe is a more negative. It starts with her receiving praise for her acting career, though it quickly goes into gossip & rumors about her recent role being written for a younger actress and how her "leisurely" activities (which we learn later is her being Champion) have been taking her attention away from her career. Diantha responds coldly to the accusations and ends the interview; interviewers leave and from there the player can interact with but she gives us the cold shoulder.
FINALLY, prompted to return the ring to Lysandre, we later find him privately talking with Dianthe where the masks come off a bit (it would pretty much be the same conversation in the final game). Seeing the player they'll both stop, but when the player returns Lysandre's ring more of his mask comes (as at that moment he see the player as a "person who gives", noting the player could have taken the ring and sold it for a lot of money but chose the right thing and gave it back to him) and he goes more into his "giver/taker" & "beautiful world/ugly people" beliefs. The player can give a response ("What are you saying?", "I don't think that", "That's not right") which Lysandre doesn't take too kindly, believing he has mistaken the "kind" of people both the player and Diantha as, and angrily bids them a farewell. Diantha would then thank the player for interrupting that conversation and act more kindly, even apologizing for her rudeness before escorting the player to the next route gate.
While it wouldn't be much (we should really have gotten more scenes with Lysandre and also Diantha), I think it would better set up their personalities and quirks, especially Lysandre's. Lysandre is held in high regard even by himself, he's quick to let people he thinks believes what he does into the fold, and responds angrily if rejected or argued against.
Pokemon games have never had the issue of "bad programmers". People often point out minor programming hiccups as proof that they have bad programmers but like, no lol.
I never said the games her badly programmed... THOUGH they do have major performance issues (and the in-game animations could use some more polishing). Maybe instead of "better" programmers I should have just said "more" programmers, because it's clear at the (original) speed GF wanted to release games they needed more people to reach the quality people expect from a game by a major game developer and publisher who co-own one of the most wealthiest franchises in the world. Though, now with GF looking to seemingly be slowing down production to hopefully give games more time to "cook", maybe starting with Gen X (if not with Legends Z-A) we can start seeing a bump in visual quality.
As someone who likes to do his own thought experiments with crafting lore for Pokemon they made up, I can understand the constant back-and-forth and adjustments that are going on here.
At first you think you have a pretty solid concept of what you want. Then you start working on it some more, fleshing out the vague details in your head as words on paper (or more likely text on screen). But, as you do that, you then realize something don't quite work or you think of something that would work better. So you do those slight adjustments, which then means you have to do slight adjustments in other places, but as you do that you come across other little issues that need to be worked out either on that level or on a higher. So you just keep tinkering and tinkering, adding and removing, and soon you have something which, while you're satisfied with, only vaguely resembles what you originally had envisioned.
But that's alright, it's a natural result of not only self-criticizing but also working on a larger team who may have their own interpretations and ideas.
Like with them going back-and-forth on whether the non-Time God was Light or Space, it was likely also a response to the changing of what Arceus greatly represented. Arceus is the "Original One", he is the universe, aka "Space", so therefore his children would be aspects created when the universe came to be: Time and Light. But then the children more became split aspects of Arceus, and while Time still made sense, if Arceus was the universe he would have the power of combined "space-time", thus wouldn't the other be a God of just Space? And now with two similar but also different meta-physical concepts of "Time" and "Space", how do you assign symbiology with them, especially representing one with a Diamond and one with a Pearl? And that's not counting all the symbiology you had to change and throw out now that you swapped Light with Space; things feel they belong to the other side or something that shouldn't be exclusive.
AND all this on top of you're on a deadline. At some point you gotta make a hardline decision and stick with it, a decision that's going to have a major affect on decisions and designs going forward. You have to get it right, or at least make it look like your final decision is the right one.
Yeah, like I myself have a few ideas of what could be possibly done and a lot of it would require a bit of work that honestly may not be worth the trouble. Like the two most "reasonable" options off the top of my head:
1. They get four completely new Moves relating to their power overriding what they have while holding their Orb. While giving them greater control how they'll play, this is also very limiting to the player as now one Orbed Dialga/Palkia is the same as another.
2. GF look through all Pokemon Moves and decide which ones are "Space-y" and which ones are "Time-y", then have a way for them to be able to learn those Moves (and would they lose these Moves if the Orb was removed?). Would give more control back to the player, but would require a lot of work & possibly even having to create new Moves just so they'll have an equal list.
And a few stuff inbetween, some which just sound unreasonable. It sucks as it sounds like they had big ideas, but it just wasn't practical what they wanted to do, at least ONLY for these few Pokemon. Though, if this was the original idea, does make me wonder why they didn't have the Orbs give Roar of Time/Spacial Rend a boon in additional to a Power boost.
Though I can see why they scrapped it in the end, as it might have implied that the Pokémon series outside of LA are games-within-a-game and that the player character was transported into the past of a video game’s world instead of simply the past.
Actually it doesn't look like the character was playing a game, it looks like they were just watching TV which had a Professor Oak lecture going on (shoutout to the first episode in the anime in addition to reference to the opening of RB).
Also, even if they were playing a game, why still couldn't be in the Pokemon World? We have "life" sims (one famous one being called just "The Sims"), why wouldn't the Pokemon World have them too for people who can't go on a Pokemon journey? Obviously the in-world version would have a different story (maybe even their own fictional regions & characters, wouldn't that be meta; unless they'd be treated like the sports game of the Pokemon world where the game makers have to get license permission of each region's Pokemon League).
Though wouldn't surprise me if, had this been kept, they would have switched to a Professor Rowan lecture, maybe even have him talking about Sinnoh's past.
I hate it when I'm trying to educate myself when god sucks me into the void, tells me I'm a chosen one, gives me a new kickass phone, and then strands me in the past. "Do the thing, good luck, don't get burned as a witch"
But I'll still argue the game didn't really show this that well. Like, I guess after the story and looking back you can confer Lysandre had a confirmation bias, but any subtle hint of that is buried by him being obtuse "this world is imperfect" and people with any authority going "ain't he just quirky?".
Actually it doesn't look like the character was playing a game, it looks like they were just watching TV which had a Professor Oak lecture going on (shoutout to the first episode in the anime in addition to reference to the opening of RB).
Also, even if they were playing a game, why still couldn't be in the Pokemon World? We have "life" sims (one famous one being called just "The Sims"), why wouldn't the Pokemon World have them too for people who can't go on a Pokemon journey? Obviously the in-world version would have a different story (maybe even their own fictional regions & characters, wouldn't that be meta; unless they'd be treated like the sports game of the Pokemon world where the game makers have to get license permission of each region's Pokemon League).
Though wouldn't surprise me if, had this been kept, they would have switched to a Professor Rowan lecture, maybe even have him talking about Sinnoh's past.
I hate it when I'm trying to educate myself when god sucks me into the void, tells me I'm a chosen one, gives me a new kickass phone, and then strands me in the past. "Do the thing, good luck, don't get burned as a witch"
If you look at the storyboard closely Akari is holding a controller (her phone is on the floor by her), so I think the intent is she is playing a game and seeing Oak's introductory speech.
I do think "Akari is playing an in-universe Pokemon game" is possible, like there's no reason the little easter eggs of buying other Pokemon-based games cant be "real", but even if that was the intent* I can see why they'd cut it. It is just a lot tidier to start with the player already abducted in the void of space/time without the lingering vague question of "ok so are they from...OUR world, or?"
*Which it probably would, the way we catch Pokemon is effectively meant to be because we come from a world where Pokemon Trainers and Pokeballs are significantly more common. And she's using what looks like a pro controller in the storyboard so we can't even say she learned it from Let's Go!
I never said the games her badly programmed... THOUGH they do have major performance issues (and the in-game animations could use some more polishing). Maybe instead of "better" programmers I should have just said "more" programmers, because it's clear at the (original) speed GF wanted to release games they needed more people to reach the quality people expect from a game by a major game developer and publisher who co-own one of the most wealthiest franchises in the world. Though, now with GF looking to seemingly be slowing down production to hopefully give games more time to "cook", maybe starting with Gen X (if not with Legends Z-A) we can start seeing a bump in visual quality.
Out of all the responses I wrote I didn't think the one about Lysandre's hypocrisy was going to get the most responses, lol.
Though I did get a DM (not sure if they want me to post their name) who gave a really good explanation why Team Flare ended up the way it did due to Lysandre being the leader of it. If they don't want to post it here I encourage them to post it at least on like the Conspiracy/Theory thread (though didn't we use to have some kind of villain team discussion thread?).
To summarize what they said, Lysandre's own confirmation bias and him simplifying what makes a "person who gives/takes" resulted him creating a barrier of entry that he thinks "people who give" would only do, said barrier being 5 million dollars (even if we relate the Pokedollar to Yen, that's still over $33,400; that's a good chunk of people's yearly salary if they even make that much). This blinds him to the fact that the worst "people who take", the ones he complains about, are very rich and would gladly pay to be part of an exclusive group who plans on killing everyone else (poor people) and live on. (And of course the ultimate irony is Lysandre being the ultimate "Taker" as him killing everyone else assures all the natural resources he says are being hoarded will all belong to him as the leader of Team Flare thus the decider of who gets what.)
But I'll still argue the game didn't really show this that well. Like, I guess after the story and looking back you can confer Lysandre had a confirmation bias, but any subtle hint of that is buried by him being obtuse "this world is imperfect" and people with any authority going "ain't he just quirky?".
Like, instead of our first meeting with Lysandre is him being creepy towards us, what if when we get to the lab we see him & Professor Sycamore doing a televised interview (they could even have Malva be the reporter). Lysandre gets heaped with praise from both the reporter and Professor Sycamore, specifically saying everything he does is right & good and is one of the heroes this world needs nowadays. Then the interviewers run off and we have our first interaction with Lysandre but it's less creepy (not only does he act more neutral but we've just seen him literally called a hero). He leaves and the game continues; though as he's leaving he'd drop which the player picks up saying its an expensive looking ring.
THEN, when we get to the scene where we're first meeting Diantha in the cafe, its the player (& friends) coming into a televised interview where, while she's also praised, the vibe is a more negative. It starts with her receiving praise for her acting career, though it quickly goes into gossip & rumors about her recent role being written for a younger actress and how her "leisurely" activities (which we learn later is her being Champion) have been taking her attention away from her career. Diantha responds coldly to the accusations and ends the interview; interviewers leave and from there the player can interact with but she gives us the cold shoulder.
FINALLY, prompted to return the ring to Lysandre, we later find him privately talking with Dianthe where the masks come off a bit (it would pretty much be the same conversation in the final game). Seeing the player they'll both stop, but when the player returns Lysandre's ring more of his mask comes (as at that moment he see the player as a "person who gives", noting the player could have taken the ring and sold it for a lot of money but chose the right thing and gave it back to him) and he goes more into his "giver/taker" & "beautiful world/ugly people" beliefs. The player can give a response ("What are you saying?", "I don't think that", "That's not right") which Lysandre doesn't take too kindly, believing he has mistaken the "kind" of people both the player and Diantha as, and angrily bids them a farewell. Diantha would then thank the player for interrupting that conversation and act more kindly, even apologizing for her rudeness before escorting the player to the next route gate.
While it wouldn't be much (we should really have gotten more scenes with Lysandre and also Diantha), I think it would better set up their personalities and quirks, especially Lysandre's. Lysandre is held in high regard even by himself, he's quick to let people he thinks believes what he does into the fold, and responds angrily if rejected or argued against.
I like how that last exchange is basically that one bit from the final boss of Metal Gear Rising, just without the player using the non-E Rating language of "you're batshit insane"
