Oh geez, that story about painted chicks is just horrible!
Like, at least with a goldfish you keep it until it dies (which would likely be a few days).
Anyway, well I guess I'm a good pet owner as I kept my Blaziken, infact I guess I'm great as it was the star of my team. Though, that shouldn't be too much of a surprise, even today the Starter is usually the star of my team, Fire-type unless I'm playing a third version or remake. Also I never had any problems with Blaziken, I thought it looked cool. Yeah, sure, it looked more humanoid, but being it fought via kicking it kept on getting longer legs as it evolved made sense.
Though the idea behind why it was designed as such is an interesting one. Not the pushing boundary stuff (I feel they do that all the time now), talking about how it would make some players want to box it and use other Pokemon. Thinking about, it many other RPGs the beginning equipment you get you pretty much replace with better stuff. But with Pokemon, while we do have the early route mons, the Starter itself isn't a crutch but a viable partner throughout the entire adventure. Now obviously they would never do this, the Starters are the most marketable Pokemon of any generation, but would be interesting if they actually ever fully went into this idea: Starters that don't evolve (probably also mono-Type), are strong at the very beginning of the game, but soon are getting outclassed by stronger captures later until you come to a point it might be better to replace them. Now not to make them totally useless maybe make it so that they're actually more fulfill a supporter role than offensive (they're only good early game cause they just have a higher BST and rare Typing), giving them a niche later on if a player decides to keep them (or have some use competitively).
Some other stuff mentioned in the video:
- Reboot: Huh, so reason Hoenn's Dex is mostly new Pokemon and you only see new Pokemon up to the 3rd Gym isn't because they wanted to push the new gen Pokemon but because they did want to make this a full reboot but needed the Type diversity so decided to add in the older Pokemon. Nowadays, except for Gen V, older Pokemon are used from the start to fill Type gaps even before the 1st Gym. While Pokemon has grown so huge we'll probably never have a dex where the new Pokemon outnumber the old, I wouldn't mind them trying to push the newer Pokemon on the forefront even on routes where you can catch the older Pokemon. Like just give them higher encounter rates, this is their debut region so this is where they're most common, then if used in later games will have lower rates so that gen's new Pokemon can be made more common. Doesn't close off getting the older mons, just gotta put in a little extra effort.
- Expies: Taillow and Wurmple are specifically mentioned to be expies of Pidgey and Caterpie; if the games weren't initially designed as reboots they possibly wouldn't have been made. Now this is interesting as it implies Hoothoot, Ledyba/Spinarak, and Sentret aren't meant to be the "Region Bird/Bug/Rodent" of Johto, or at least not intentionally but were kind of able to fall into that subgroup. Makes sense in hindsight, Hoothoot had the whole gimmick of catching it at night or via headbutting trees during day, Ledyba/Spinarak weren't your usual gen bugs, and finally Pidgey and Ratatta were available early on along with the likes of Hoothoot and Sentret.
- Wasn't Worth It: Lol, so apparently the reason Vigoroth evolves into Slaking is because, after becoming very active during its middle stage, it decided "it wasn't worth it" and turns into a fat gorilla/sloth that now doesn't move around so much.
- Zig, Line, & Block: Another theme was Zigzagoon, which moves in zigzags, evolves into Linoone which moves in a straight line. James Turner kept that theme in mind so designed Obstagoon to being essentially a "full stop" which he emphasized in some artwork he drew for his Twitter.
- Designed Not To Be Gen 2: So several design decisions were made specifically because of critics of Gen 2 Pokemon. Gen 2 Pokemon were designed to be more kiddy & cute, so Gen III went with more cool, tough, and monstrous designs. Gen 2 designs were kept simple so they were cheaper to make into merch (like toy figurines) and draw in the anime, but Sugimori decided he wanted to make Gen III mons more complex (hence probably why people say they look more like Digimon than Pokemon at the time, not only did they abandon the Gen II "simple" design philosophy but wanted them to look more complex and fantastical).
- But I Made Moves For That Part: Sugimori at points wanted to remove certain parts of a Pokemon like its tail or horn, but someone would then say they can't because they already gave that Pokemon a move using that part of the body so it stayed and worked it into the final design. So, at least during the Gen III development, Pokemon movesets are/were made alongside the Pokemon's design development and deciding features it would have. Curious if that's still the case or, after this issue, Sugimori changed things so that either movesets were made after the Pokemon was done or the Pokemon's initial concept came along with what kind of moves it would use.
- White Dragon Rayquaza: News to me, there was a beta dex entry for Rayquaza (sadly no image) where its described as the "White Dragon" Pokemon, attacked using its beak, and would shed its white scales while flying creating a belt of light in the sky. While the white scales never came back, the beak and creating at "belt of light" idea might have with Mega Rayquaza via the mouth adornments it grows and resembling a streaking meteor in its "Delta Mode".
- Sprinkler Shrub: There was also this Grass-type which was a shrub that collects water and sprays it out like a sprinkler. I'm going to guess this Pokemon eventually became the Lotad family.
- Gem Of A Name: Ruby & Sapphire was picked because they wanted to go back to Gen I's naming convention (*SIGH*) and pick names which were red-colored and blue/green colored (remember that in Japan blue & green are more considered shades of each other than separate colors). They couldn't agree on names and any they did was already "taken" (?) until four months before release. Since the last game was Crystal they looked up gems and learned that the stone corundum was either called "Ruby" if it was red and "Sapphire" if blue/green, they liked it and went with it. HOWEVER Nintendo didn't want to for some reason (maybe not wanting people to be confused and think it was another set of Johto games?), BUT it was too late in development so allowed it. As a side note, Crystal was picked as a reference to the minerals used in electronics as a big part of Gen II was the Mobile System GB. It's fun learning about the early days of a franchise where the rules for things were so much looser and we get stories like this which would probably never fly today (mostly since the Version titles now have a more direct reference to the version mascots starting with Gen IV).
- Speaking Of Loose... Canon: Because of the reboot mindset they did not want to set in stone if Hoenn was even part of the same world as Kanto & Johto, just definitely saying they're not physically connected. GF even joked that the space center in Mossdeep is maybe where Team Rocket came from, as in they took a rocket from Hoenn and flew to the world of Kanto/Johto.
- Kiri: The girl who gives you Berries in Sootopolis is named after Masuda's daughter who was born just before the release of Gen III. As he was in the hospital and even when holding her for the first time he was receiving calls & messages asking for him to sign off on things. Kiri's Birthstone also just so happens to be a Sapphire, being born in September. She's one of the few NPCs who name isn't changed in the English version (sadly other international versions didn't get the memo except for the Italian; all Asian versions kept her name or a form of it)
- Didn't Know Nothing: Finally getting to the title of the video, indeed the Devs of the Colosseum game never played Pokemon before, they were formed from a group of Sony developers who main experience was with Dragon Quest. When given to task to make the games, they decided to make them both different and mature. The protagonists are same age that fans of the Gen I games would be (Gen I was 6/7 years ago, target audience was 10/11, so Colosseum's protags were made to look 17), Wes was made to look more intimidating to give the villain group someone to be afraid of (deep down still a nice guy of course), to set it apart from the lush forests of Gen I was set in the desert using Arizona as the basis (Phenac City specifically based on Arizona, Pheonix and the story how it came to be, a nice little detail). In particular one dev, Shinichi Hiromoto, joined the project just to make the style mishmash and was the one who came up with the idea of Shadow Pokemon. The composer of the game, Tsukasa Tawada, said some of the music was inspired by Arizona such as the use of the harmonica (there's also music he made that wasn't used in the game though sadly can't share it; also on his Youtube channel he has released piano compositions of Phenac City in 2017 and Relic Forest in 2021).
Messy Pokedex listings > straightforward listings.
Would actually be neat if they programmed the Pokedex to record Pokemon in the order that we caught them in. Like of course there would be an official National Dex numbering (which I personally think needs a redo with all the cross gen evos and forms they've made, but I digress), but if the player is supposed to be the one collecting the data on the Pokemon wouldn't it make sense for each player to have their own personal order? Maybe they can also include a "Professor's Listing" to have a more "logical" listing for ease of use.
I really like the way that, with less than three months to go, we know pretty much nothing about Scarlet and Violet beyond the fact that it's a Pokemon game.
(...)
I will still obsessively follow all the coverage of the game once it's released, on here and on other sites like Serebii, but for now it's been nice to just sit, knowing only that the new games are coming but not much else. It's been a refreshing change of pace.
And a day later they announced a Direct.
