People love asking for Gamefreak to pick some part of the world and make the next region based of that, but why? What's the point anymore? Once they left Japan they started building regions based off very surface level ideas of what the real world counterparts are. It's incredible that despite the fact that the Japanese regions are based off far smaller places (see picrel), they're way more fleshed out and developed, probably because Gamefreak couldn't just get away with going on Wikipedia for a day and pull out a dozen ideas to use. Do the newer regions really have something like a Mount Coronet, or an Ecruteak City, not really.
Not to mention the moronic design philosophy they have now where every region HAS to have a cold area, a hot area, a mountainous area, which leaves some places looking ridiculous. The big fricking desert in Unova or the 3 second transition between sandy cliffs to glowing mushroom forest in Galar being some examples. When Hoenn had to make an ice type area they put that shit underground in a cave so it wouldn't make the tropical region look like an obvious videogame map.
The real world shit is tired now, and they only use it as a crutch for real worldbuilding. They won't stop because it's way easier to use real countries to fill in the blanks, but it'd be for the better.
I can't think of something like the Dragonspiral Tower in the US or even Area Zero in Spain but you're kinda right, specially on the designated hot/cold spots
Being tourism depiction is normal, but your later example of Hoenn shows the required biomes isn't something that needs to be an issue, and lies in planning.
I mean, Unova wasn't really based on New York. Like, superficially, yes, but there's the whole thing of the KINGS OF UNOVA you have to factor in. It's really just a fictional region with New York inspiration, kind of like what Gens 2-4 had. The only big difference from those was linearity(which was partially a result of the story-driven scenario,) and the nonsensical sandy desert between a formerly lush land and a lush fricking land. I mean, even things like Liberty Garden exist for COMPLETELY different reasons to the ACTUAL Liberty Island, and could've spontaneously have happened in any other region.
Kalos is where I'd argue the whole thing fell apart. Both Kalos and Galar try to cram entire countries into the same region, which just doesn't work.
It was on the ruins of a castle, so couldn't it have enough turned to sand from super war?
That's what I'm thinking. They could've even had used the excuse of "oh yeah, the ruins are actually from the original capitol. When the Tao dragon was split, it devastated the surrounding area, destroying all fertility."
SOMETHING.
It's the style. The first 4 are kind of grounded. Cartoonish, but more traditional, like you'd expect from a cel-based anime or something. Unova has that more CG look to it, which isn't terrible on its own, and then they just go full solid-colored Flash animation on Kalos, which again isn't terrible, but both kind of feel dated.
Of the two, I'd still argue 5 feels more like a happy medium if they wanted to switch styles.
Maybe the accidentally fell for the environmental storytelling thing, because it seemed straightforward in their head and didn't explain it.
i prefer the older style, but i would love to see what they do for a unova map for the remakes. BDSP's new map art is very nice to look at.
This is why I love Hoenn. It has a rich variety of landscapes but it feels believable. The only real oddity is how the tropical rainforest is in such close proximity to the desert area, but I can look past that.
Look up "rain shadow" and you won't have to look past anything anymore.
>tropical rainforest is in such close proximity to the desert area,
Have you even taken a look at a world map before?
Just look at South America and the Sahara.
you're gonna run out of Japan sooner or later
Not a problem with non-Japan regions, just a problem of Gamefreak underutilizing their real world inspirations. They could easily make a dogshit Japanese region if they keep up the same design philosophy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_of_Japan
There are at least eight, not counting islands.
Chugoku is the only virgin land as of now.
they're making a japan region for gen 10 sinnoh/hisui and kitakami is all hinting at it
While I do agree with everything you said, this isn't your personal blogspot. Escape rope yourself.
>DON'T TALK ABOUT POKEMON ON THE POKEMON BOARD
Heed your own advice tryhard homosexual
Don't write shit in the op that requires a TLDR.
>Don't write reasoned posts to open threads
Frick you. This type of thinking is why Ganker is in the gutter. Long form posts were common even back in 2004, and at the time no one saw a problem with it because it was to be expected that long posts and short posts would both exist. Plus, long posts also gave us a lot of memes.
Ganker in its entirety was also a lot slower than even /s4s/ so there's that, but that's a different deal entirely.
have a nice day, you Twitter-Tok reject.
>p-please don't post more than 140 characters I can't process it!!
have a nice day underage
shut the frick up
he gots a point doe
Do your own advice. Dickweed
What would your reaction be if Gen 10’s region is Japan-based for the first time since Sinnoh?
I want to have hope that they can still make a fleshed out region. At the very least a Japanese region probably couldn’t be as shallow or generic as the other regions if they were to base it on a real piece of the country again (plus it would have 4 other regions as competition.) though if they still follow the “this part is ice, this part is fire, this part is grass, etc. etc.” itll probably feel equally as inorganic.
I didnt play SV but I heard the DLC lets you travel to a new place thats maybe a region or maybe its part of another region or something in Japan, idk how that place is designed but those who played it can tell me what they think about it compared to Paldea.
Either way it has nothing to do with Japan in of itself, its moreso just that once they started condensing entire countries into a region they started designing them with the cultural depth of a postcard. All my problems could very easily still exist in a new Japanese region just as they could still be fixed in a non-Japanese region.
>I didnt play SV but I heard the DLC lets you travel to a new place thats maybe a region or maybe its part of another region or something in Japan, idk how that place is designed but those who played it can tell me what they think about it compared to Paldea.
I think Kitakami looked pretty good in comparison to Paldea, but in my opinion the reason is not much because it's inspired from Japanese landscape, but because they had to work with a smaller map, albeit open-world, so I think they allowed themselves to be more creative with it since it didn't have to compulsively contain many different biomes.
I do believe the forest area in Kitakami was a bit too small, but overall it's a lot better planned than Paldea.
Paldea has some cool areas (like the rocky coast on South-West, that weird cave at the opposite end of the path leading to Porto Marinada, that pond with Dragon tamers at North-East, that meadow sort of blending with Artazon ...), but overall it feels empty because it's too big and GameFreak didn't know how to turn it into a truly cohesive world due to their Biomes Checklist approach.
It's probably better than Galar, but still.
Yeah I'm not reading all that.
TL:DR of each post
- I want fleshed out regions.
- Unova feels like a slight spinoff of the previous generations, while anything further doesn't
- Kitakami is good and fleshed out, it's probably the region size which proves to be the problem for Gamefreak
- Environmental story telling and Gen 5+ promotional maps feel computer generated when Gen 4- promotional maps feel handmade.
>Not to mention the moronic design philosophy they have now where every region HAS to have a cold area, a hot area, a mountainous area, which leaves some places looking ridiculous.
Alola solves this with the islands, you get all the different areas without it looking artificial, if only there was anything to explore...
If you you could explore the ocean freely...
Why did GF have the sense to not arbitrarily make an ice island for Alola and instead have it rationally be on a tall mountain when other modern regions will arbitrarily have part of the map frozen?
I remember one of my biggest disappointments with Sun and Moon was that soaring didnt come back, it felt perfect that.
Galapagos islands would make a GREAT pokemon region
The 3 European countries with pokémon regions have snowy mountains on the same locations as in the videogames. Its only the desert under New York which is weird
If I were the developer could argue that it would've been formed by like... a catastrophe, or maybe it's just in a valley(sort of like how Eastern Washington has a desert due to its mountain range,) but for some reason the ACTUAL developers never went for either of these very easily conceived ideas. Baffling, frankly.
amost everything gamefreak does is baffling. its like that one word has become the companies mission statement.
The ruins and the Volcanrona lore isn't enough for you?
No, those are great, don't get me wrong. The problem is that the desert just doesn't make geographical sense without some other explanation which is never given. The environmental story telling approach is fine, but usually that's also given some sort of context clues, where as we just have "desert" and "non-descript ruins."
Pokedex entries
>When volcanic ash darkened the atmosphere, it is said that Volcarona’s fire provided a replacement for the sun.
>Thought to be an embodiment of the sun, it appeared during a bitterly cold winter and saved Pokémon from freezing.
>As it flies, it scatters its flaming scales. It was feared by ancient people, who referred to it as “the rage of the sun.”
>This Pokémon emerges from a cocoon formed of raging flames. Ancient murals depict Volcarona as a deity of fire.
most of the Pokemon deserts are in the rough location of a desert in the real world
yes, even Alola's
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ka%CA%BB%C5%AB_Desert
Wow, okay.
Where is the desert in New York state?
We're talking about Unova's Route 4 here, not deserts like Haina Desert.
>Volcanrona lore
whats volcarona's lore?
Volcanora is a folk hero Pokemon because it saved Unovan crops when a volcano erupted and the skies were rendered unable to provide enough sunlight.
There should be a mountain range dividing Castelia and the desert to explain it. Also that desert would be a cold one like the Gobi not hot
Honestly, the fact that a cold desert hasn't been shown off yet is kind of surprising to me. I hope Gamefreak makes one. new Ice/Ground and Ice/Rock types would be pretty cool to have around.
might just be bc they changed the artist for the maps but it does feel like the design shifts at 5
Completely agreed. Their Japan-centric regions are so much better fleshed out and feel like a more organic world. Everything non-Japan has felt like a stereotypical caricature and it’s always off-putting.
Paldea was shit
Galar was shit
Alola was ok
Kalos was shit
Unova was ok
>Do the newer regions really have something like a Mount Coronet
Sinnoh in particular has a lot of great landmarks. Mount Coronet is probably the most iconic, but there's also the lakes, the chateau, snowpoint temple, iron island, it's a phenomenal region in setting all around.
>Gamefreak couldn't just get away with going on Wikipedia for a day and pull out a dozen ideas to use.
Doesn't Masuda or someone like that go visit the country itself and take notes?
That's just an excuse to go on a paid vacation to laze off
And yet they still return with an understanding of the culture thats as deep as puddle. It doesn’t need to be some 1:1 homage but its certainly doesn’t feel like “Gamefreaks take on *insert country*” either.
Last time they had a unique take on an area gen 5 the fan base shit over the games. So now you get slop that half assed
Feel like a lot of issues I see brought up on this board are explained with “They tried with Gen 5 but everyone hated it so now you get shit!”
>the focus on new mons & trying to make a new dex that doesn’t rely on the old
>the region being more inventive
>the story being a focus
>the sequel ideas
I still feel like Unova are lacking in terms of the cohesion that prior regions had, but I will admit it definitely had some more memorable spots than the regions that came after it
Hard disagree. Unova has cohesion, Sinnoh doesn't and kids complained so much that gamefreak stopped making "complex" regions
How does Sinnoh not have cohesion? Its all centered around Mount Coronet and the lakes. Sure there’s a lot of backtracking but it still has a flow and there’s a very present theme of laid-back tradition and religion throughout.
I feel like Unova is more all over the place and disjointed with the linear progression, but I havent played B2W2 so im not sure what kind of expansions they made there.
The big mountain in the map that you have to slog through that breaks everything up
thats pretty cringe, ngl
kino
Poop
I've been saying this shit for years now.
At first it was more of a novelty, "oh cool, the next game's location was inspired by ___" but as with literally everything else in this IP, it's become an annoying limitation. It's become part of "the formula" which for some reason includes shit like "basing a region on a real-world location" and not "your Pokémon actually follow you".
They don't seem to really care about the Pokémon themselves, they just want to make easy games based on places they can flanderize.
They should do what literally every other game company does and fricking tailor-make a completely original location. Maybe then there'd be some rhyme or reason to fricking anything in the game.
>Rockstar still manages to make unique places out of flanderized California, New York, London, and Florida
It's not even that Gamefreak's idea is a limitation, it's that they're just really fricking incompetent with it.
Hoenn is the wrong angle.
Yes but the real world part of Japan that its based on is at that angle
the next region should be based off of fricking Avalon or something with a heavu fantasy them and there should be like elven and dwarven trainers and shit. No i'm not joking.