People always complain about Pokemon's writing, and writefully so. How would you change things to make it better? You can rewrite entire game plots, or just certain characters, or even pokedex entries and lore for all I care. Just show me your autism and how you'd improve Pokemon's writing.
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>have a consistent theme or motif reflected in the games characters and their actions, for example a theme of "how do you view pokemon", maybe guy A sees them as friends, guy B sees them as tools, etc, point is to have it link to a central idea
>make gym leaders feel like actual people and not just obstacles on your way to whatever the frick, hell have them even assist you in taking on evil team
>keep "chosen one" bullshit to a minimum
>it's fine if the evil team wants to use the box legendary's power for their own goals but treat the legendary less like literal gods or creators and moreso powerful creatures with their own local folklore (think mewtwo, legendary beasts, hell even the swsh dogs do this)
>on the subject of evil teams either make them actually sympathetic with a clear shared goal and ideal even if their actions are flawed or it's incredibly basic in execution (skull, plasma, star) or if they're gonna be just evil or jerkasses then keep their scope small, basically dont make them cartoonish "take over the world" supervillains like flare or galactic without a damn good reason (team rocket is arguably one of the smallest evil teams in scope/ambitions yet them essentially being a mafia in the pokemon world is incredibly charming)
>gen 9 did this but stop with the "subverted expectations" evil team because it really only worked in gen 7
these are just a few
>make rivals buttholes again so they feel like someone you actually want to get stronger than and beat, it feels great to wipe the floor with a smugass like blue or silver but when you do it with a doormat like hau or (god forbid) hop there's zero tension or emotion
If you look deep enough, you can honestly find a lot of these wishes in numerous Pokemon stories. Many of the games, including games many people believe to have "bad stories" happen to have some sort of theme or motif to them. Some examples include RBY's theme of Innocence and Maturity, RSE whole deal is about balance between nature and humans, SS is all about legacy and looking after the future generations, and BW obviously has the themes of polarity.
In the case of more sympathetic evil teams, there are many examples of evil teams in the series with suprisingly sympathetic goals. Team Flare shtick comes from wanting to keep the world beautiful and get rid of all the bad people in the world. Yeah it's taken to a cartoonishly evil degree, but the point is still there. Team Aqua and Magma, particularly in ORAS, I'd say is one of the most non-evil evil teams out there. All the two really want is a debate between more nature for Pokemon to live in vs more land for humans to survive. Both Archie and Maxie even regret their actions by the end of all 5 hoenn games.
And for butthole rivals, I don't wanna be that guy but like:
>Gladion
>Bede
>Klara
>Avery
>Arven (to an extent)
>Carmine
>Kieran
And what's cool about new gen stories is they find ways to make the friendly rivals interesting characters beyond being the MC's cheerleader, like Nemona and though it wasn't done perfectly, Hop.
None of this is to say "YOURE WRONG IM RIGHT HAHAHA" but i think you and many other people could get a lot more out of Pokemon and the intention of the writers by just reading between the lines a little. Call it a stretch but I think its interesting.
TL: DR Pokemon stories are pretty cool if you look at them hard enough.
I guess that's fair, though it's also how they convey the themes that help in their execution. As much as SM was a cutscene hell, the things that were plot relevant stayed consistent. Most of the SWSH story regarding the dogs from what I remember wasn't delved into much more than "Sonia appears every few gyms to say something random about the dogs, then fricks off to who knows where". Maybe it was in the postgame, but I honestly lost interest and did not care. The themes you mentioned, while present, tend to feel scattershot when the game's only developing them 30% of the time, and the other 70% is mindlessly holding forward through theme-irrelevant routes and gym battles. Some games don't even really do much with said themes, either.
Also for the rival list, true on all fronts except Arven, I really don't see how he's an butthole in the slightest. He's a bit "ugh my parents left me and im edgy about it" but he's not outright hostile to the MC about it. I also didn't play Teal Mask so I don't know the story there beyond the NTR meme. I appreciate what they tried to do with Hop being more "oh, well if i'm not a good battler i could be a good researcher" but like you said it wasn't done perfectly (and in my eyes was just done bad, but I didn't wanna say "like you said it was done bad" since that's not what you said). Same on the team Flare front. Sure, it's there, but it's done poorly, and while I get the "looking at the intentions" angle, at the end of the day what they made is what they made.
Nemona is a weird case because I don't really think she's as deep a character as people claim, she's literally just a battle autist and it's kinda one note (though that's fun sometimes), but I like that she's actually known within the game and other characters talk about her. But yeah, ignoring the rest of those was kinda bad on my part.
Overall though thanks for not being an butthole about it, pokemon debates are fun when they're not genwar shitfests lol
>Sure, it's there, but it's done poorly
Yyyyyeah despite what I said I can't really refute with that, at least for the majority of the plots say for one or two exceptions. I can tell they're getting better at it but that doesn't mean the stories they made before are suddenly good. I still like them for what they are but I totally get your point.
>keep "chosen one" bullshit to a minimum
This. One of the things that ruined the HGSS remakes was them adding this shit.
take some of the stuff from pokestar studios and put it in the game. we're well past the point of the pokemon world resembling our own, I want to see some campy fun.
SV's time travel and AI professor were a step in the right direction.
Prepare for autism
So I really like the general premise of Rocket in Gen 2 (the remains of a once powerful crime empire reduced heavily and trying to claw their way back up). I think it has lots of potential and ties well with the game's themes of the passage of time, but I think it could be pushed just a bit more.
My goal with this retooling is mostly to just emphasize more what's already there, push the games themes a bit more, and build on the "Giovanni had a son" stuff a bit more. For how a lot of these story bits are delivered, most should be to the side. You don't really hear much of the plans being told to you, just bits and pieces from Grunts as you stop their activities. Avoiding Black and White cutscenes. The last thing is I wanted to avoid adding new characters, but I do think adding one could really help sell the theme.
The start should be the same, you encounter Rocket at Slowpoke Well chopping and selling Slowpoke Tails. You'd hear some Grunts mention how it sucks they have to be getting their hands dirty doing something so menial, and that years ago under Giovanni this would've been handled by criminal nobodies outside the organization. Another Grunt mentions that at least the new leader of Rocket has been turning things around, and that, with a fresh start in the Johto region, Rocket will be better than it ever was before.
Later you find out that Rocket is currently being lead by someone calling themselves the "Son of Giovanni", and has begun leading Rocket to what they determine to be a bright future. This character should be flashy, young, and a visual counterpart to Silver. Where Silver is brooding, has red hair, and wears black colors, this character should be amicable looking, blue hair, brighter colors, and a bit feminine and weak looking. The story should make it clear Giovanni has only one son. I don't think there should be any additional hints in the game about Silver being Giovanni's son outside of what's already there though, Silver doesn't give a shit and wouldn't be eager to claim the title. Anyways this tumblr pretty boy has been managing Rocket well so far, managing to entrench themselves within a few corporations in Johto, securing funding for an ambitious project for Rocket, a device which can use radio signals to forcibly induce evolution in Pokemon, at the cost of their emotional well-being. Some Rocket Grunts adore him so much they even begin wearing white uniforms, mimicking him.
You learn however that not all is well in the Rocket Gang, with there being a second faction within Rocket, composed of many people who are still longing for the good-old-days with Giovanni. They hate having to claw back to the top, they dislike how the Son of Giovanni's schemes tend to be of a different nature than the Rocket of old's, and they hate how he seems to favor charm and diplomacy over intimidation and cunning. This faction is lead by a Rocket Executive (can be the same one from G/S that works as the final boss). Many believe that, if they just get the word out to Giovanni and let him know that they've rebuilt themselves, he'll come back and things will go to how they were.
Main story beats should progress, maybe meet the Son at the Mahogany base. Finally, once the radio tower sequence begins, all hell breaks loose. The Neo Rocket's plan was to infiltrate the Radio Tower, play the signal, and essentially hold the entire region hostage. (Oddly out of the usual MO for Neo Rocket, but still ambitious). However, the older Rocket's decide to hijack this plan and go with their own; send a message out to Giovanni begging him to come back. There's some minor inner fighting you encounter, but it begins to show the cracks in Team Rocket.
You fight the Rocket Executive who leads the old Rocket faction in a boiler room underground (Sunny Day fight) with a semi-fire type themed team. After defeating him, he breaks down, insisting that surely Giovanni will rescue them and things will be back to normal, as they should be, with the region under the palm of Rocket's hand. However, with no more Pokemon, the authorities easily apprehend him.
You then fight the Son of Giovanni on the top of the radio tower as it's storming (Rain Dance fight) with him having a semi-water type themed team. He laments that his plan fell apart, and that even if he defeats you Rocket is sure to collapse after this botched Radio Tower plan. After defeating you, he confesses that he wasn't actually the Son of Giovanni. He just happened to be at the right age, be in the right place at the right time, and overhear the right conversation. Being someone who was meek and sickly for most of his life, he decided to play up the role of a mafia boss' son, and ended up being really good at it. (Basically Breaking Bad). However, with each heist's and plan's success, he craved more. He had hoped the Radio Tower scheme would be one insane and thrilling adventure, and hadn't planned for beyond it. In fact, none of what he did was really planned, he just went with what seemed fun and interesting. With the authorities ready to apprehend him below and him being sickly anyways, the false son decides "oh well" and jumps into the water below, leaving it up to the viewer if it's a Disney death or if he used his water Pokemon to escape.
In both cases the idea here is that Rocket is struggling to deal with the changing times, and both extremes end up dooming them. The Rockets clinging to nostalgia and past end up sabotaging their own operations, in the vain hopes of returning to something that won't come back. Meanwhile, the Neo Rockets eagerly embrace something that's new and flashy, not realizing that it's also a dead end and that they've been taken for a ride. Unable to move on from the past, nor embrace the future in a healthy manner, Rocket finally crumbles completely.
Last thing is that Giovanni should be handled like Gen 2, not Gen 4. No one should know what happened to him. He should not make an appearance.
Anyways, how does this change up of the Rocket GS story work? I thought about using Masked Man instead of a fake son, but
that pic is cringekino, feels like something you'd read on facebook 15 years ago
15 years ago things were better and not irony poisoned, weren't they?
It'd be Genwun all over again. No shrinking.
>No shrinking
What's shrinking? Minimize?
They shrink to get in the balls.
No they don't, pokeballs turn Pokemon into data and store them there, that's why you can store Pokemon in the PC.
Here's how I would fix Gen 2
>Make fifty more Johto pokemon (Including a Spiral Shellder split evo that you get when you trade it while holding a Slowpoke tail)
>Kanto pokemon are rarer in the Johto region
>The Johto gym leaders now mainly/only use Johto pokemon
>Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle can be found Kanto Route 1 but are really really rare
Dumb tripgay
As an XY enjoyer I'll try to address some common criticism
>Friends
Trevor, Tierno and Shauna all being half-assed Rivals is just wasting all of their potential. They should be focusing on meaningfully different parts of the Pokémon Trainer experience.
Trevor is into the Pokédex, and that's how he should be competing with you. Not just saying "you found X, I found Y" either. After you get to Lumiose he should mostly stay there and help the Professor, and evaluating your Pokédex should be comparing it against his progress. He would give you rewards like the Professors' assistants in other games, like False Swipe, useful items, or even Mega Stones. You should also find him seeking out places with rare Pokémon, like talking to people at the Fossil Lab.
Tierno would hugely benefit from Kalos having Contests or some equivalent. Not just him either, it would perfectly fit the region's whole theme of "beauty" and be a more natural place to introduce characters like Lysandre and Diantha instead of running into them in a random cafe. Diantha being a Contest star in addition to the Champion would perfectly suit her character and give her that much more depth. Tierno being a partner and Rival in contests would make his "dance" teams less of a joke, and maybe he could Tutor his dance moves for some of your Pokémon.
Shauna plays the nice/weak Rival role well enough already. She represents a more casual player who doesn't have a clear goal, and dabbles in what all of her friends are doing (again, Contests would suit her too). She doesn't need to be changed, she just needs to be battled more than twice.
Calem/Serena is maybe the most boring rival in the series. They're a battler with no competitive drive who is constantly depressed and defeated by you beating them. If you wrote them in almost any other way they'd be fine. Give them more of a drive for battle, let them show real frustration when they keep losing. Let them get a Mega Ring before the postgame.
>Megas
Every Gym Leader and major fight from Korrina onward should be using Mega Evolution. I think there's just barely enough to go around that each Type specialist can use one without dupes.
More of them should have been implemented, more of that were just "(really) good" instead of stupidly overpowered like Mega Lucario. You shouldn't need to be given one of those to sell you on the mechanic, let your Kanto starter be your first Mega, or even better why don't the fricking Kalos starters have Megas? Why is the only Kalos Pokémon with a Mega Diancie?
There is no good reason for half the Mega Stones to be locked behind postgame, even less to have to do a bullshit time-of-day treasure hunt to find them. Let them be found or earned during the story. Have the Gym Leaders give you a Mega Stone of their ace after you beat them.
>Story
Team Flare is pretty fricking lame, but they didn't have to be. Making Kalos a more decadent kind of beautiful could have helped Team Flare seem more natural. For a team that's supposed to be all rich buttholes down to the Grunts, they could have done something like having them hire generic thugs to do their dirty work and give a degree of separation so they're not immediately obviously evil. Being a semi-secret selective cabal of the rich and powerful instead of a whole criminal organization probably would have lined up more with what Lysandre was doing.
It would also help to explore and earn the idea that they're supported by influential members of Kalosian society, more than just making Sycamore and Diantha seem unbelievably naive. Contests as gatherings of rich socialites again could have helped this. Malva being a Team Flare member is a super interesting plot thread that goes nowhere because the games were unfinished, seeing her take an active role somewhere with a postgame storyline that leads to her being replaced in the E4 would have been really cool, something the games have never done before.