Two Games, Two Paths?

[iAzire]

How would you feel about instead of releasing two of the same game they released two games with two different paths? For example with Gen 5 White could follow the normal hero path and Black could follow the villian path.

This has bothered me since Gen 1 when Team Rocket offers for you to join and you don't get a choice in the answer. If you don't like the idea of good vs evil what about like Team Aqua/Team Magma. You would get a side based on your game choice.

I don't see a problem with future story considering other games give you a choice but there is always the Canon opinion.

[tabor62]

Hmm, while that seems interesting, I would rather have both paths in both games. Splitting them up just makes it more expensive to be able to play through both paths. I've always wanted to play the part of the villain for once. I know there is a ROM hack somewhere here that puts you into Team Rocket and I thought it was pretty cool.

[pikakitten]

Although it would be more expensive, I think it would be a good feature, plus to make it less expensive, they could let you choose in-game in the follow up i.e. In Ruby you could choose to join Team Magma if you want; In Sapphire, it could be Team Aqua, BUT! In Emerald you can choose either, if you'd want to join a team that is.

[Sassy Milkshake]

I think I'd prefer one game where you get to choose your path. That way you can reset and choose the other path if you choose to, after you play the first one. Probably not the most economical idea, but most convenient for me lol.

[LilJz1234]

In Emerald they should've made the game based on Team Aqua and Team Magma where you get to choose which side you would want to join, and in the end. it all comes down to Kyogre, Groudon and Rayquaza in one last battle

But yes I agree, instead of having different Pokemon in different version, it would be cool to also join the good/bad team for once

[Brendino]

If the two path option came in one of the future pairs of games, I think that's the only way you'd be able to get me to buy both versions. Even more so, though, I'd like to see a game with a branching storyline. You could have the option of joining the evil team, or even have your main objective being a Contest Master or catching every single Pokemon rather than just becoming the Champion.

[Olli97]

I'm not that much up for the idea myself, but there's a good chance it might be implemented some time in the future. It'd be a great way for Nintendo to get people to buy both versions of the games, and they've already started doing it through version exclusive areas and such. Although, while they'd probably gain from it, it'd also require much more time and money for themselves. They'd basically have to create two different games, just with a lot of the same elements. And exactly how would this work. The main series games have always focused entirely on the journey to gather all the badges, beating the Elite 4 and eventually making it to the top, with the newer generations throwing in bigger plots with the evil teams. But I just don't see how a game would work with actually being the villain. Unless we were someone who climbed the ranks and eventually got to choose which Pokemon we wanted ourselves, we would be limited to use the Pokemon the teams use, and we just wouldn't really be as free as we normally would, which is something I've always liked about the games. And would we eventually have to lose, or would the evil team be successful in this version? And what exactly would we have to do? Beat up trainers and steal their Pokemon and stop anyone who tries to interfere. Our options just seem a whole lot more limited, and I just don't feel like we'd be free to do much at all with such a specific path. I'd actually rather have that we were able to choose this path in both games as an option, so that we'd be able to play the games like normal, and try it as an alternative type of gameplay, but I honestly think such a thing belongs more in a spin-off, since I just don't feel like it'd fit in in the main series games.

[Arlo]

I don't see this happening, or at least not in a "good vs. evil" sense, nor would I particularly want it to.

In the first place, I don't think that GF and Nintendo could do Pokemon games with an actual choice between following a "good" path or an "evil" path even if they chose to. While that might appeal to edgy adolescents, it's going to alienate an awful lot of parents, and parents buy an awful lot of these games. Slap an ESRB age-restricted rating on a Pokemon game and it's pretty much doomed, right there, because that would mean that many parents would neither buy it nor allow their kids to buy it, and that loss in sales certainly wouldn't be made up for by edgy teens because, after all, it's Pokemon. So the closest the devs could get to such a thing would be to make the "evil" so cartoonish and muddled that it would be inoffensive and innocuous and wouldn't kill that coveted E rating. But then the "evil" wouldn't really be anything even vaguely resembling evil at all, and then the choice wouldn't be clear-cut - it'd just be superficial and ultimately meaningless. Instead of good and evil it'd be just meh and a slightly different flavor of meh.

Beyond that, I don't much see the need or the benefit anyway. Pokemon has never been about plot - the story is just a contrivance to get you to follow the path through the game. The point of the game is catching and training and battling pokemon, and that's where the focus should remain. If I want a game with a compelling plot and meaningful choices I can go play one of those instead, and when I do, that's what I do.