Funnily enough, this is similar to (and possibly influenced by, as an in-joke) the original plans for Silph Co. - according to leaked prototype encounter tables, the top floor was supposed to be the postgame dungeon, with rare encounters for Snorlax and Mewtwo, before the latter was consigned to a one-of-a-kind Pokémon.
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SPOILERS! Mysteries and Conspiracies of Pokemon
- Thread starter stage7_4
- Start date
So all the HM talk on a different thread got me thinking.
The order of HMs tends to vary very slightly between different games/regions, but not massively - Flash, Cut, and Rock Smash all come early, Strength and Surf are mid-game, and Waterfall/Rock Climb/Dive are always late-game. Makes sense given their respectively base powers. The only exceptions are where remakes cram in newer moves - Rock Smash is unlocked by the Marsh Badge in FRLG, for instance, which is typically obtained sixth.
Fly, though, is all over the place. In Kanto it's unlocked by the third badge, in GSC it's the fifth, in Hoenn it's the sixth, in Sinnoh it's the third/fourth, and in Kalos it's the fourth too. Playing GSC first, it was a surprise to me to play Red and to be told that beating Lt. Surge lets you use Fly - it's a fairly high-BP move so it seems like it should be a late-game HM. Also it fits being something unlocked later in the game: you can access fewer areas in the early-game, after all, so do you really need Fly early on?
Fly - early-game HM or late-game HM? Cast your votes.
The order of HMs tends to vary very slightly between different games/regions, but not massively - Flash, Cut, and Rock Smash all come early, Strength and Surf are mid-game, and Waterfall/Rock Climb/Dive are always late-game. Makes sense given their respectively base powers. The only exceptions are where remakes cram in newer moves - Rock Smash is unlocked by the Marsh Badge in FRLG, for instance, which is typically obtained sixth.
Fly, though, is all over the place. In Kanto it's unlocked by the third badge, in GSC it's the fifth, in Hoenn it's the sixth, in Sinnoh it's the third/fourth, and in Kalos it's the fourth too. Playing GSC first, it was a surprise to me to play Red and to be told that beating Lt. Surge lets you use Fly - it's a fairly high-BP move so it seems like it should be a late-game HM. Also it fits being something unlocked later in the game: you can access fewer areas in the early-game, after all, so do you really need Fly early on?
Fly - early-game HM or late-game HM? Cast your votes.
I'd argue it's a midgame HM at a point where you have enough going on that you need to start (or are in a better position to do so) backtracking, and makes Hoenn the weird outlier since its so deep in and at a point where you probably wanted Fly around gym 4 instead
Johto is at gym 5 but also the whole mid game of that game is really scrunched and thematically putting it at Cianwood (an island you ha to cross a bunch of ocean for and then immediately turn around to take to Jasmine) makes sense. Fortree's route felt considerably deeper than it should have been which is probably why ORAS gives a few "hey want to come with me?" fast travel options and made Brawly mandatory on first visit.
Like even in Gen 1, you unlock the ability to use Fly at Surge, but you still have to treck through to Celadon (so assuming intended path you're going to travel the route east of Cerulean, go through Rock Tunnel, pitstop in Lavender, take the underground path and then into Celadon proper after which you explore to the route you have a little access to on the left) to get the move. so I wouldn't even call it a third gym badge as it is a 4th gym you just dont need the gym for it. And Celadon's also where a lot of power becomes open to you; Pokemon start evolving more, you get access to the evolution stones, vitamins, a handful of other powerful TMs, you get the ability to branch out to Saffron or Fuschia and the stuff you can get there....
I would guess Fly is later in Hoenn because the first half of the region is set up to have shortcuts back using Rock Smash and Surf so the total distance doesn't need to be that high. The space between gyms 5 and 6 is pretty high still, which is why I expect ORAS gave out the Eon Flute for fast travel pretty quickly after Surf.
Yeah I think Chuck's wife literally says something to the effect of "you should use this to get back to Olivine in an instant"
In Hoenn it's just... kind of randomly placed. I guess maybe they just wanted the Flying gym to give you the Fly HM? You loop the loop all over the western side of Hoenn before going east but tbh it's arranged in such a way that the only time you'd really appreciate it is the trek from Lavaridge back to Petalburg (which, as you say, ORAS gives a fast-travel option for).
I literally just remembered that in Kanto you get it at a point where you could theoretically use it against Erika which helps a lot, so that possibly explains the positioning if not the badge it needs - why not just reverse the moves the Rainbowbadge and the Thunderbadge let you use. You can still use it in battle, after all. The same logic goes for Maylene... or it would if you could obtain Fly before beating her, which I don't believe you can.
I suppose Sinnoh is so vast that I can see the sense in getting it after the third badge, because Veilstone is already miles from Twinleaf Town (should you want to return there for any reason) - like I guess you've almost reached the furthest distance on the map by that point. Whereas if the third badge was in, say, Eterna instead maybe then there'd be a reason to leave it until later down the line.
You get the Eon Flute just before the eighth badge IIRC, not earlier. I've learned not to bother teaching anything Fly in ORAS and just going without it until I get the flute because it makes that move completely redundant.
as a final fantasy fan i always felt like fly should come after surf, even though most of the times it doesn't and of course pokémon doesn't use fly to give access to exclusive or even new places. still, third badge is WAY too early for fly. i guess kanto as mentioned isn't really third badge, and sinnoh does have unusual spacing and the third gym comes quite late for a third gym, but it feels better when it's after the fourth or fifth gym and you already had to overcome quite a few roadblocks.
A visual representation of the amount of region you have to go through to get fly in Sinnoh. The pink is there to account for the alternate route you could take in DP.
All in all it's a pretty fair spot to put it. Even in Platinum (where it's explicitly the 4th badge now), since that makes it easier to use the other Hearthome exit if you want to go to Pastoria that way.
Hoenn specifically...
(order is Blue-Yellow-Purple-White-Red-Black-Green)
So that's roughly the intended route to Fly. Which is a LOT of walking. Particularly the stretch from Wattson to Flannery. But what my little mockup obscures is that basically the entire post-Meteor Falls through surfing west of Mauville route is up to you. There's mandatory things to get to, but no clear route. My white and black options are just one choice, and the red is outright "Go here somehow".
I think the dev intent is pretty clear. You go around the west half of the island a lot in the early game, and figure out the 5 paths from the Mauville side to the Petalburg side. Then, post-Meteor Falls, it's left up to you to figure out how to navigate to Mt Chimney, back to Petalburg, and then back to Mauville. Mauville takes you to the east half of the island, which is brand new and completely linear until you hit Fly relatively early on, which is also when a lot of the west side multiple paths start opening up.
It teaches the player the map, then lets them explore as they pick up new HMs, then teaches a new map while letting the player skip backtracking at that point. In the midgame specifically, it gives the player a reason to revisit areas(you have to), and rewards them for doing so with items in those areas, while good map knowledge makes doing all of that much faster.
That said, you can argue whether that works or not. It's a cool concept, and the fact that Hoenn is a bunch of nested loops makes navigating it without fly relatively fast and breezy IMO, but there's no denying there's a LOT of mandatory overworld movement in the midgame.
(order is Blue-Yellow-Purple-White-Red-Black-Green)
So that's roughly the intended route to Fly. Which is a LOT of walking. Particularly the stretch from Wattson to Flannery. But what my little mockup obscures is that basically the entire post-Meteor Falls through surfing west of Mauville route is up to you. There's mandatory things to get to, but no clear route. My white and black options are just one choice, and the red is outright "Go here somehow".
I think the dev intent is pretty clear. You go around the west half of the island a lot in the early game, and figure out the 5 paths from the Mauville side to the Petalburg side. Then, post-Meteor Falls, it's left up to you to figure out how to navigate to Mt Chimney, back to Petalburg, and then back to Mauville. Mauville takes you to the east half of the island, which is brand new and completely linear until you hit Fly relatively early on, which is also when a lot of the west side multiple paths start opening up.
It teaches the player the map, then lets them explore as they pick up new HMs, then teaches a new map while letting the player skip backtracking at that point. In the midgame specifically, it gives the player a reason to revisit areas(you have to), and rewards them for doing so with items in those areas, while good map knowledge makes doing all of that much faster.
That said, you can argue whether that works or not. It's a cool concept, and the fact that Hoenn is a bunch of nested loops makes navigating it without fly relatively fast and breezy IMO, but there's no denying there's a LOT of mandatory overworld movement in the midgame.
Honestly I do believe Hoenns location for Fly is perfectly fine, as mentioned the first half of Hoenn is very open the further in the game you go, so despite the treak being far it’s never to unbearable. Especially because of the shortcuts you’d have access to as you play through the game, like the Rusturf tunnel or even back the same way you originally arrived. In turn, making Fly something you can go without for a while without worry.
Meanwhile in the latter half the loop is much, much larger, only having Mt.Pyre and the water routes as your two new paths you can take to return to older areas, which means Fly would be far more useful then as a nice QOL.
Meanwhile in the latter half the loop is much, much larger, only having Mt.Pyre and the water routes as your two new paths you can take to return to older areas, which means Fly would be far more useful then as a nice QOL.
The Gen III/IV games get some criticism for the amount of backtracking/convoluted navigation you need to do (which is most likely why Unova went so hard on straight routes and a linear story path) but I think Hoenn actually got it mostly right - it's not that complex in the main and for all the bitching people do their complaints tend to be more "ugh I have to go all that way?" rather than "help me, I genuinely have no idea where I'm meant to go next". It's in Sinnoh where the map design got really complicated: I remember my young cousin once asking me for help with Platinum because she was at Snowpoint City and genuinely had no idea where to go next.
He went off Omg
I’ve been thinking, and here’s all the things I’ve thought of-
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The Old Chateau-
A classic in Pokémon ghost stories, what happened in this haunted mansion? Here we even see ghosts, seemingly the late residents. We see a ghost girl and a butler. What happened to them? How did they die?
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Gen 5 Ghost girl-
I’ve never played Gen 5, yet looking for the quote of the Station Sign, I came across this. Apparently, there’s another ghost girl in Gen 5. She talks about her Abra, too. What happened to her? What separated her from her family
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Anime Ghost girl-
In an episode in the anime, there’s a little ghost girl who tries to lead people to their doom so that they would go to the spirit world. Why? What happened to her that she would be so cruel?
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Shady House-
The Shady House in X and Y, a place of uselessness. A man here tells of a story of a horde of faceless men behind him after talking to a horrified man, but what is this? Why would they pull you over and introduce this?
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Ghost girl-
Who is this mysterious ghost in X and Y? She just all of a sudden comes upon you in the second floor of the Fighting Dojo, circles you, and says, “you’re not the one.” You’re not the one what? The person who killed her? Is she a ghost out for revenge? This all seems pretty dark so far
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Station Sign-
The sign in Lumiose City’s subway. It’s quite mysterious, saying "I'm going to go for help. Wait in the usual place." What does this ominous message mean? Why is this person going for help? What is this “usual place”?
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Ghost’s gift-
In SwSh, there’s a girl in Hammerlocke city who asks you to give something (I forget lol) to a man in Ballonlea. When you find the man, he’s an elder now, and he says that it’s from a girl he knew in his childhood who died of a sickness that she covered up. Why did the girl choose to give her gift then? Why did she cover her illness up?
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Dynamax Calyrex-
One of the biggest mysterious of SwSh, the blue Calyrex. Instead of the typical red light, when Dynamaxing, Calyrex’ light is blue. Why?
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The Old Chateau-A classic in Pokémon ghost stories, what happened in this haunted mansion? Here we even see ghosts, seemingly the late residents. We see a ghost girl and a butler. What happened to them? How did they die?
•
Gen 5 Ghost girl-I’ve never played Gen 5, yet looking for the quote of the Station Sign, I came across this. Apparently, there’s another ghost girl in Gen 5. She talks about her Abra, too. What happened to her? What separated her from her family
•
Anime Ghost girl-In an episode in the anime, there’s a little ghost girl who tries to lead people to their doom so that they would go to the spirit world. Why? What happened to her that she would be so cruel?
•
Shady House-The Shady House in X and Y, a place of uselessness. A man here tells of a story of a horde of faceless men behind him after talking to a horrified man, but what is this? Why would they pull you over and introduce this?
•
Ghost girl-Who is this mysterious ghost in X and Y? She just all of a sudden comes upon you in the second floor of the Fighting Dojo, circles you, and says, “you’re not the one.” You’re not the one what? The person who killed her? Is she a ghost out for revenge? This all seems pretty dark so far
•
Station Sign-The sign in Lumiose City’s subway. It’s quite mysterious, saying "I'm going to go for help. Wait in the usual place." What does this ominous message mean? Why is this person going for help? What is this “usual place”?
•
Ghost’s gift-In SwSh, there’s a girl in Hammerlocke city who asks you to give something (I forget lol) to a man in Ballonlea. When you find the man, he’s an elder now, and he says that it’s from a girl he knew in his childhood who died of a sickness that she covered up. Why did the girl choose to give her gift then? Why did she cover her illness up?
•
Dynamax Calyrex-One of the biggest mysterious of SwSh, the blue Calyrex. Instead of the typical red light, when Dynamaxing, Calyrex’ light is blue. Why?
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This is very much a "dude, trust me" but I seem to recall reading somewhere that this was a reference to a japanese movie that got lost in translation
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I’ve never played Gen 5, yet looking for the quote of the Station Sign, I came across this. Apparently, there’s another ghost girl in Gen 5. She talks about her Abra, too. What happened to her? What separated her from her family
This one was actually tied up in B2W2. Turns out the girl used to live in what is now called the Strange House near Lentimas Town and Reversal Mountain. She became afflicted with nightmares by a Darkrai, and her family wasn’t able to save her before she succumbed. She appeared on the bridge because she was trying to give the Lunar Wing her family had obtained back to Cresselia.
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In SwSh, there’s a girl in Hammerlocke city who asks you to give something (I forget lol) to a man in Ballonlea. When you find the man, he’s an elder now, and he says that it’s from a girl he knew in his childhood who died of a sickness that she covered up. Why did the girl choose to give her gift then? Why did she cover her illness up?
I always assumed it was just a simple human reason like her not wanting him to worry about her.
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One of the biggest mysterious of SwSh, the blue Calyrex. Instead of the typical red light, when Dynamaxing, Calyrex’ light is blue. Why?
Calyrex’s power is typically colored blue, as seen with the Radiant Petal. But there’s a more in-depth, conspiratorial explanation to be had on this one:
There are engraved stone slabs scattered throughout the Crown Tundra which detail some of Calyrex’s history. One of them mentions that Calyrex was found one day by the villagers, in a hurt and weakened state. As they nursed it back to health, they noticed that it always recoiled away from open hands, so people had to approach it with their hands closed.
Calyrex’s Dex entries talk about how it used its psychic power to relocate an entire forest and its inhabitants overnight in order to protect them from an impending meteor strike.
One known meteor strike in Galar’s history occurred 20,000 years ago — that was the meteorite that brought Eternatus, which is the source of Dynamax and Galar particles.
The Max Lair is a site in the Crown Tundra with a massive amount of Galar particles.
Putting these pieces together, it seems possible that Calyrex teleported a forest away in order to save it from Eternatus’s meteor impact. The area where the forest used to be then became the Max Lair when the meteorite landed, and Eternatus suffused the area with Galar particles. Calyrex likely battled Eternatus and subdued it (I assume this because we know that the Darkest Day is dated to only 3,000 years ago), but became greatly wounded and traumatized in the process (Eternatus’s Eternamax form looks like a giant hand, explaining Calyrex’s fear of open hands). My guess is, the Galar particles that Calyrex was exposed to during that fight combined with its own internal energy, which emits a blue glow.
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That actually makes a lot of sense :D
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Canalave city boy-If that’s true, then is that what would’ve happened to the boy in Canalave city? Why didn’t the Lunar Wing work on the girl?
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Yes it's what would have happened to him and because she was too far gone respectively.•
If that’s true, then is that what would’ve happened to the boy in Canalave city? Why didn’t the Lunar Wing work on the girl?
Maybe her past was dark and Cresselia didn't like that :)
yes it's a purposely depressing side quest
lmao
but going back to that post the funny thing is the ZA site is just reusing the Arceus website. https://legends.pokemon.com/en-us/ They completely wiped out the old one.
Japan meanwhile just used legends_z-a and puts it at the end of their urls https://www.pokemon.co.jp/ex/legends_z-a/ja/
well now.
you might think that the anouncement of the new legends game disconfirms everything i said. on the contrary, it adds fuel to the fire. while the main theory of legends silvally was wrong, i still belive it is coming. now, while we dont get much information from the trailer, the name alone makes all the points i made more likely. the name of this game is z-a, which tell us those letters have significance. now, what has those letters?
az
area zero
now add the fact that it is in lumios city, where the ultimate weapon was, and it makes all the dots i connected seem more likely. not to mention the fact that, while it is not called legends silvally, this does not mean that silvally will not have a role in this.
The ultimate weapon was in Geosenge Town, not Lumiose
I meant in kalos.