Despite the fact I haven’t talked much about it here, Pokemon is probably up there as one of the most important gaming franchises for me. I don’t necessarily think the games are the best, but even with that knowledge in mind it is very difficult for me to not be excited about the prospect of playing and re-playing Pokemon experiences pretty much constantly.
Globally, Pokemon is just about as important to gaming. Not a lot of other video game properties can boast similar levels of penetration into general human culture, and even if many stopped caring about the Pokemon games over the past twenty years the franchise still remains fascinatingly powerful. From a trading card game that continues strong, to a mobile game that surprised the world by showing us how many people still wanted to just catch them all… It’s a franchise that doesn’t seem to want to stop, and deep down we don’t want it to either.
Then enter the Nintendo Switch, and we have potentially one of the biggest things that threatens to shake Pokemon since it first started on the Game Boy. For decades now, Pokemon has remained comfortably a portable experience, and despite the occasional console releases (done by other companies, such as Genius Sonority’s Pokemon Colosseum) not a lot of effort has been put into moving Pokemon out of a portable market. The hybrid nature of the Switch means that, for once, delicate thought has to be put into how to make Pokemon work not just as a handheld experience, but also as a console one.
Cue the topic of this post. Given the “disruptive” nature of Breath of the Wild and the mention of Pokemon devs of wanting to be equally disruptive, I want to sit down a really think about what that might mean for a Pokemon game. To get started, I want to go into detail on staple features of the Pokemon series so far, more than anything to zero in on what must remain and what can be improved. Of note is also the notion that Pokemon has a lot of different niches to satisfy, which is an important bit to think of when wondering what Pokemon Company, Gamefreak and Nintendo would be willing to change.
Collection
Easily the most characteristic mechanic we can talk about is the notion of collecting creatures compulsively with the aim of completing a list, usually the pokedex provided in-game during the story. This is the sort of mechanic I considered saying very little about, given that this is such an important mechanic that I don’t for a second think it needs to be changed in any way. No one is going to be surprised when the Switch Pokemon game still features hundreds of Pokemon, some new and some old, and have a sizable portion of the quest involve collecting all of them.
Then because it’s Pokemon Company we have a host of other smaller mechanics that can’t really change about collection. Exclusives, of course, have to remain, particularly since we can assume that they will continue doing two versions for the same title as long as it continues to be highly successful. Event Pokemon work just as well, so there is reason to expect the same process as all other Pokemon games where months after the release of the new generation we get newer, more “special” Pokemon we cannot get unless we redeem them at a Gamestop or through a special online code. This is the sort of cadence of release that also hinges on the rest of the Pokemon money machine, which features also the yearly movies, the anime and the TCG releases, as well as other merchandise. It’s because of this too that we can expect starter Pokemon, legendary Pokemon and mythical Pokemon to all continue recurring.
Now, for the Pokemon themselves. The genius of Pokemon as it has always existed in that Pokemon species are designed with sufficient diversity that you guarantee appealing to different demographics. You’ll get cute Pokemon that are meant in Japan to appeal to both female and younger players. There’s the ones that are supposed to be cool and fearsome, meant to star in anime and movies and find themselves in fighting crossovers as the things any young teen might want to find themselves fighting with. Then there’s less intuitive Pokemon: the ones designed with a specific combat gimmick in mind, the ones designed with a specific bit of world lore in mind, the ones designed to be common and boring, ones designed with specific trainer characters in mind, etc. As a whole, Pokemon Company and Gamefreak have the art of nailing Pokemon designs mastered by now, and if anything this is something I expect to be consistent going into the next generation.
Battling
While for a lot of players the notion of capturing is meant just to further a checklist, for a bunch of others (such as myself) the true reward lies in training and utilizing Pokemon in battle, whether in-game during the story events presented by the game or against other human players. This is perhaps one of the aspects of the games that has undergone the most change over time, to the point where re-playing the first games in the series can feel a tad unfriendly due to the number of improvements and variations that now exist on the formula.
Main staples since the beginning include: a maximum of six Pokemon to a team; four moves per Pokemon, each with a limited amount of uses; different moves and Pokemon having different types, each with strengths and weaknesses; maximum of two types on a Pokemon; turn-based combat; difference between physical attacks and special attacks; ability to switch Pokemon in and out, as well as to use items in battle; the possibility of landing critical hits or missing moves; and of course, the possibility to inflict status conditions, both marked and unmarked.
Over the different generations, new elements have either added complexity or variety to the notion of battling: newer types; weather effects; entry hazards; double, triple and rotation battles; ability for Pokemon to hold items; Pokemon natures that further determine stat growth; Pokemon abilities; mega evolutions; Z-moves… and probably several other notable battle mechanics that I fail to think of at the time of writing.
Ultimately, however, there is only so much that the battle mechanics can change, much like with collection. The main reason for this being that a significant portion of the Pokemon community exists around competition, whether it is in the officially supported VGC format or in fan-organized sites like Smogon or Showdown. While it makes sense to expect new mechanics that can be tossed into the mix of current mechanics for a new season once the new games come out, I don’t think it makes sense for us to expect battling as a whole to change much in nature without Pokemon Company risking either alienating or splitting its community. And sure, while the latter would be fascinating, the idea of different Pokemon battle systems coexisting competitively, it’s hard to imagine such a risk being taken when side games like Pokken Tournament increase battle diversity within the Pokemon Community without risking the appeal of main-entry Pokemon titles.
The World and the Player’s Journey
While to me the strength of Pokemon lies more than anything in the personal journey the player crafts by selecting their own team of Pokemon, or their own conditions for how to play (see: Nuzlockes), we cannot deny that from the first Pokemon game there has always been a desire to create stories that focus on world exploration, traveling, and growing.
The first Pokemon game features two young men going off on an adventure, growing as they face each other, as they collect gym badges, take down an evil organization, and consequently proceed to a Pokemon League to find and defeat the strongest trainers, before finally fighting each other to determine who is the best. Story-wise, it’s a journey that is instantly appealing, and as a result it is easy to see how the core notion of this has remained in every Pokemon story to date.
All generations so far retain all of this with some variety. For the most part, all stories begin with the main character being new to the concept of Pokemon, with a number of recent entries in particular having the main character arrive to the region as a foreigner. Evil organizations have also remained, though what began as a mafia-but-with-Pokemon progressed in intensity over time to more nefarious organizations bent on using extreme power for extreme change. The elite four and Pokemon League has also remained constant, with later generations adding variety in league rematches as well as throwing in extra tasks to accomplish after becoming champion. Meanwhile, the notion of having a rival has over time morphed more into the notion of having a friend undergoing the adventure with you, with some generations even giving you multiple “rival” trainers, which are really all just friends. Generation six was particularly intense about this, having you start your adventure with a total of four in-game friends, each weaker in ability than the next.
Then you have generation seven, which has already thrown some classic mechanics into upheaval. Largest of which is the notion of collecting badges, which in this game were instead replaced by an assortment of trials that test different abilities with occasional battles in between, and culminating in batling a particularly strong Pokemon called a Totem. Ultimately, this is a notable change and makes this generation rather unique, and there is elegance in the fact that the excuse given for the change lies in the location of the region being special, the sort of excuse that allows for them to abandon the experiment later if they wished by locking it to the Alola region.
Speaking of regions, that’s the other main characteristic of Pokemon games and their stories: up until generation four the regions were limited in scope to Japanese islands while still maintaining thematic cores, such as the highly traditional and folkloric Johto and the nature-heavy Hoenn. Beginning with gen 5 the expectation became more global in nature, as Unova introduced us to the U.S. of the Pokemon world, Kalos in gen 6 represented France, and Alola the island of Hawaii. What makes it a fitting change is the realization that, production-wise, the Pokemon games became progressively more international in nature and began to get localized before even Japanese release. In my opinion, this has been a great improvement to the Pokemon experience, and economically I imagine it being rather successful given it continued from gen 6 to gen 7 and the Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon games as well. With Pokemon Go in the past having proven the global impact of Pokemon, international Pokemon is something I expect to continue.
What I Expect from Generation 8 on Nintendo Switch
Ok, so with all those things in mind, I’m actually going to go ahead and be a bit predictive, in part proposing what I think would be most interesting to the Pokemon formula, and in part talking about what I expect the developers to be thinking about.
The first big question I have comes to the matter of region, and it’s in large part because I know that the Pokemon devs have been looking at Breath of the Wild. What makes Breath of the Wild “disruptive” for Zelda, after all, is not that it’s a completely new take on Zelda, but a logical progression of what the very first Zelda was about. Given that, I think it’s logical to expect Gamefreak and Pokemon Company to not necessarily be trying to reinvent the wheel, but looking at the original iteration and going from there.
So while I think it would be optimal to continue the trend of new regions based on world locations, and there are a lot of really interesting takes we could see here, part of me wonders just how keen the Pokemon devs might be in re-visiting previous regions. Not necessarily as a remake either, but simply having new characters in older areas that exist in a different time. This would allow them to do multiple things that fans have been clamoring for, like allowing for the multiple regional exploration people loved from Generation 2.
The other reason why a re-visit of previous regions could prove an interesting deconstruction is that it can allow them to experiment with restructuring the Gyms without sacrificing what they stand for. To put it bluntly, I think one of the lessons I expect Pokemon devs to take from Breath of the Wild is the idea of discouraging a set order of progression somehow. While with Pokemon this isn’t as easy to accomplish, the fact of the matter is that the first generation was able to do it during a portion of the game in which various cities and their gyms were jointly accessible.
I don’t think this is even an original idea, but something a lot of Pokemon fans have been wanting for some time. Even within anime interpretations of the Pokemon world, the main reasoning for Gym leaders being stronger than kids has been that Gym leaders alter their teams based on how many badges challengers have when they enter the gym. With this being the case, it’s easy to imagine the desire for a format like the Divine Beasts in BotW, a format that would allow player choice in progression. This could also be an interesting mechanic for online interaction with others: imagine getting to an online lobby for battle or trading and being able to brag about the specific gym badges that you have relative to other individuals. It could be even made more interesting if it’s a combination of multiple regions or a new region with more than 8 gyms, and the player has choice of which Gym types to tackle without necessarily needing to do all of them. It’s the sort of personal journey aspect of Pokemon that would improve the notion of multiple runs or the notion of the community sharing stories with one another.
The main complication I foresee with this is the way in which Pokemon levels are scaled throughout different routes. While Gen 1, and to a lesser degree Gen 2, managed to allow for some freedom of progression by keeping the levels of wild Pokemon standard around multiple routes, this instead led to the problem of having to grind to keep up with the level of later trainers, culminating in the ridiculously over-levelled Pikachu owned by Red. Later generations, while they feel extremely linear and streamlined, have managed to solve the issue of grinding by keeping the areas you visit under control and littering them with trainers to ensure the levels of the player’s team remain at ideal levels. I would say this is the problem that needs to be solved to really begin to think about ways in which to approach a less linear Pokemon experience.
An interesting way I would personally find interesting is taking an approach similar to the Xenoblade games. Basically, instead of having Pokemon and enemy trainer levels depend on the specific point of the game that the player is traversing, have them depend on the nature of the area being explored. For example, have Pokemon near a city location be justifiably low-level to account for domestication and adaptation to living with humans. But then the further you venture from a city or a town, the greater the risk of high level encounters and the greater the chances of encountering other strong trainers. What’s more, it’s in these particularly rare locations, like mountain tops or caves or hidden grottos or whatever else, that players should be able to encounter rarer Pokemon and perhaps even legendary ones. The notion here is to develop a more realistic geography in a Pokemon game wherein creatures far away from civilization are wilder than ones close to it. What’s nice too is that you can utilize story elements from the “evil team” organization to force story beats that encourage player exploration into dangerous areas. And of course, it would also be highly entertaining to be walking around a safe area and suddenly find a high-leveled beast that randomly levels your entire team without a second of effort. It’s the sort of experience that increases respect for the wild while also encouraging fear and care in how the players maintain their teams.
The phenomenal thing about this is also how it allows for the players to scale difficulty accordingly. Over time Pokemon has become an admittedly easy experience, naturally as a result of it being a kid-friendly experience. If the series manages to retain that while allowing more experienced players the freedom to go to more dangerous areas regardless of story progression, it could finally cater in-game to the sort of intense experiences players currently have to artificially create through hacks or nuzlocke runs. Much like how Breath of the Wild allows for a casual-friendly experience while allowing speed runners and more technical players room to experiment.
At the moment, all this is what comes to mind when I hear the notion of disruptive. If not a new region, then the revisiting of one or two old regions but retouched to allow for a more customizable experience. But at the core, the principle that each player can approach their Pokemon journey in entirely different ways, that they can compare to each other to further the experience. Before cutting it there, let me mention some other things I think would be fantastic. Stray notes format, engage!
- Imagine the possibility for multiple player characters within the same world, much in the same way as Animal Crossing. Given the Switch would exist as a single console within a family unit, it would be user-friendly to allow for multiple kids to play within the same world within the same game. This would also have the cool bonus of possibilities like hearing about the exploits of the other playable characters and have them be treated as rivals, or the notion of having to try to take over the league from a sibling or friend’s character.
- In this vein, since it’s Switch, why not multiplayer? If two siblings get to play at the same time, allow them to pull a Misty and Brock and be companions to each other, turning in-game battles into double battles. God knows I’d rather have my boyfriend as a doubles partner than Hau from Sun/Moon or Hugh from Black 2 and White 2.
- Using Pokemon for movement has to come back by this point, in my opinion. While the process of getting rental Pokemon in Generation 7 was still too connected to progress to feel exciting, it is still significantly better than what HMs used to be.
- There is a sizable laundry list of great mechanics that have existed in Pokemon games but gone forgotten for reasons unknown. Chief among these is Pokemon following you, which feels overdue for a comeback but is probably highly dependent on how many new 3D models the developers feel compelled to use. Ideally what we get is a stylized version of what Generation 7 uses, which would spare them this work.
- Other bits of that laundry list: Gym leaders that are actually involved in the story; trainer cards with the option of showing your team; unintrusive UI that shows availability of online friends; ability to know whether all Pokemon in a specific area have been seen; actually flying around.
- This has been said multiple times by multiple people before me, but the Pokemon games are sorely missing a real rival. No friendly trainers who are happy to lose to you because they had fun (I’m looking at you Hau)… no, someone who is always just a bit stronger and who appears at the worst possible times to be a real elitist prick. It adds to the fun of the game to have a rival that’s so easy to hate, and not since Blue and Red has this been done so well.
- You know how the Switch has a companion app that so far only Splatoon 2 seems interested in using? Perhaps this is the way we can finally have a mobile companion app for a Pokemon game. Knowing Nintendo, probably not.
- And now for random list of things I want that I have no real reason to expect: ability for the player to have their own gym; more character customization; unique Pokemon typings we still don’t have; sharing features, or really, anything that makes recording and screenshotting better than it currently is.
- Last aside: I’ve mentioned before how VR is not perfect and I hold little current interest in it at the moment, but wouldn’t it be cool if a Pokemon Stadium game went VR, allowing one to witness Pokemon battles from the perspective of the in-game trainer? This is has little to nothing to do with the topic of generation eight, but I nevertheless wanted to mention it as it would be phenomenally entertaining, and as much of an alluring prospect as seeing Pokemon battles in 3D was originally.