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What if Game Freak made an older protagonist?
Throughout the generations, we've traditionally been playing as ~10 year old protagonists that go out there and save the world from awful evil teams. This is understandable, because Pokemon is geared towards young children primarily.
What if Game Freak changed all that, and instead had players play more adult-aged protagonists instead? Without much of the gameplay itself being changed but the age of the protagonist? Would this be a good decision by Game Freak? I'm kinda curious! |
yes please i'm tired of being told i'm 11 cough cough sun moon
a welcome change that could go with slightly more mature themes that i think we might see in the upcoming games since they're not geared towards newbies |
Doubtful, because they'd still be the victim of absolutely dismal narrative with zero characterisation. It'd be an aesthetic change only, which wouldn't fix anything.
You can have meaningful and interesting characterisation with younger characters; sometimes the development can be more believable that way, even if it isn't personally relatable. Nor does older have to mean darker and therefore automatically better...in fact darker often means worse, because it lacks any kind of subtlety and often relies on cynicism and shock value to sell its pointless suffering and angsty drama. Some of the best RPG stories out there have been coming-of-age stories, or stories of personal self discovery, that have worked precisely because the characters have been younger. But there is this tendency to think that "more mature" automatically means "darker" when it is in fact the opposite - or it should be anyway - and this is a VERY common theme in RPGs...whenever you see an older character as a protagonist, there is going to be a lot of brooding, crisis of existential nihilism, badly written romance, and general misery that has no real justification or point to it. It makes for an interesting counterpoint when said character is a companion, but it's extremely tiresome when said character is the central protagonist. ...actually, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that having an older protagonist is a bad idea. It'd either change nothing, or they'd be an angsty edgelord straight out of the mid-2000s, because Game Freak doesn't have any competent writers. I'd rather they fix the core issue of bad writing, rather than just slap a new coat of paint on it in the form of an older protagonist in a poor attempt to hide it. No thank you. |
should just give us the option to choose the player characters' age in some manner really
they've always been sort of intended as self-inserts, and not being explicitly 10-12 helps with that |
Pokemon is still primarily aimed at kids so I guess it makes sense to give them something to aspire to. They are the heroes, they don't need an adult to save them, they will save the adults. It's empowering.
Satoshi Tajiri originally came up with the idea for Pokemon because he liked collecting bugs as a kid so Game Freak will probably always keep the protagonist young in honour of that. However, as an adult (sometimes), there will always be something really amusing about the thinking of: oh look a ridiculously dangerous, frightening situation that must be faced to save the world... let's ask that young kid to go in while we do nothing :pink_laugh: |
It can - and has - been done fine before I feel; just not by Game Freak. Wes in Genius Sonority's Pokemon Colosseum title was an older teenager protagonist, and a pretty cool one - and yet still served the silent protagonist role at the same time.
I don't think it's necessary, but it would be as mentioned nice to have some kind of option, or at least something notably different with the general structure. Even with SM/USUM we had a new setup... that ended up with the same "beat 7/8 trials and then challenge the E4/Champion" beat, mixed with "stop Team Bad-guys in their plot and something-something legendaries" that's persisted since gen 3. |
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Not sure one has to be younger to look up to someone btw, especially in the world of Pokemon where pre-schoolers can have high levelled Pokemon. |
I'm actually fine with this aspect of the game. It feels like an integrally established part of the culture in Pokémon World is that trainers start their trainer life early. Because this is the norm I'd want to know why my character is starting their trainer career much later than many other trainers did...which I doubt they'd bother give a reason for in his (or her) origin story.
If my character would already be in their 20s then they've already potentially lived some of a life. I would not like thinking that my character didn't bother to do anything with their life before starting their Pokémon journey, which I'm sure is how it most likely would be written. |
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I'm fond of playing as youngsters, really. Me being one might have something to do with it. But I don't know. Playing as an adult sounds pretty fucking awesome if done correctly. Picture this...
.... you're a spinster thirty-something-year-old living in your mother's basement, and she kicks you out her house because she's positively sick of you bumming off her and jeopardising her flailing love-life through your constant presence. You need to get a job and find a purpose, so what do you do? Pick up the Pokéball and aim for the title of Champion so that sponsorship deals rain upon you like sweet... rain. It'd only work if the protagonist was a despicable lotus eater, but I think it'll resonate with today's generation. We're pretty much all despicable lotus eaters. |
They should have a MMO feature where you can change the height of the protagonist during customization.
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I do think they should increase the age of the protagonists. I mean it makes zero sense for a child to go outside, without supervision.
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