6th Gen Development

When we played the Generation 5 games, you maybe noticed that Unova has some pretty well developed personalities for their characters! But, how far do you think will X&Y will go to further their own character development?

For example, would you like an instance on where during in game, you see the full-on backstory of your given rival, or a given gym-leader, with a set ending to their possible past suffering? How detailed should the back-story be? What can that mean for the main character? Should the same thing go with our main protagonist? Can our protagonist have the potential to carry deep, dark secrets within themselves that will come to full light during this game? Could the main protagonist have their own personality to reflect that? Do you guys have any other thoughts on how character development will play out?

In 4th gen Cyrus showed his ideals and thoughts as a person justifying recreating the world.
So its very well possible. The opposing force will probally have a just cause but oppose it to strongly.

Well, as far as backstories go... what I'd like to hear is the backstories of the evil team in Pokémon X and Y, in how they begun and why they became a team in the first place.

And also, perhaps the player would have flashbacks of his/her earlier days before he started his journey, and maybe even showing his starter Pokémon if it was raised from an Egg.

It would also be nice to learn about how the different Gym Leaders became Gym Leaders in the first place and what inspired them to become a Gym Leader, as well as a depth into their personal life.

I'd rather get to develop my own character more. Have some options to make his personality a bit more like mine. A lot of the story has you forced to say yes or no, but why not let me say either and the story moves along with minor changes.

Ex. the rocket goon on the bridge. Maybe if we could say yes he'd jsut laugh and say he was joking : "Ha! Ya right! Team Rocket isn't looking for runts like you now scram!"

We develop our character that way, but the main story is still the same. Maybe now instead of being a hero by beating rocket you do it to prove you are strong and they should have accepted you. The side characters are already developed fine. Pokemon is an RPG so I want to Role Play my character. I'm kinda tired of having to do it only on forums.

It seems to me that with each generation we earn more and more about... ALL the characters. I think for characters like the gym leaders there will be about the same amount of development we saw in Gen V, because there are eight of them, and to go in depth would just be annoying for the player. (especially when replaying) If there is to be more development with a gym leader, it would be because you'd... buddy-up with them on a quest or something. As for the main character, I would LOVE if they had some sort of dark past that was revealed by other characters on our journey. Maybe some flashbacks would be cool too? I don't think the MC's personality will really... affect the story, as the MC has always been silent and I don't see that changing. As for our rival, I definitely want them to be really developed. I felt like in Gen V the rivals came pretty close to this - we learned about Cheren's struggles with what he wanted, Bianca's struggles with family/growing stronger, and Hugh's hate of pokemon abandonment... but it still felt like something was missing. So if we had our rival as a good friend of ours who was also reallly competitive, I could see that being a good angle to work an awesome backstory in. And also, I would love to see the main antagonist get a great backstory. I had always wondered why they wanted to take over the world or were hydrophobic so they needed more land or whatever. Would be really interesting in my opinion.

I disagree with the above statement, at least for the gym leaders. I feel we need them to be completely fleshed out, and given more story central roles. They hold great power in their hands, and to just be there, with various hints to there lives is a bit off. To give you an example, lets use the BW gym leaders. They could have given us clay's main offices, or perhaps Skyla's grandfather as an NPC, if he's alive of course. More importantly if a gym leader comes from a dragon village like Iris, give us the dragon village, or at least specify something that could fit it, like Blackthorn is the Dragon Village in Pokespe. Also give the gyms deeper meanings then fancy buildings, have them act more like Lenora and the Trio's gyms, and not the rest of them. They started off so well having them be stuff of our daily lives, and then they skimped off into fantasy land once more. B2W2 also does this, gives us two reasonable, dual-functional gyms, ones a school with training grounds the other is an underground cafe, and then they go off giving us a hangar that wants to kill you, giant dragon statues and some lily pad puzzle, so on so forth. Sure the latter sounds more epic then the former, but I kind of like my Pokemon Gyms a bit grounded.

I think characters have a huge chance of being heavily concentrated on. Like given what we had in gen 5, I think that characters will have even huger backgrounds than in Unova. Don't think there will be much for the protagonist though :(

I don't ever think there will be much development for the protagonists since the games have always taken on a more "grow as you go" type formula. People perceive us as a weaker trainer at the beginning and as we make progress, they take note of how much we're getting stronger or how much we've achieved since the start of our journey.

One of the highlights in Unova was how they explored the backgrounds of some of its character. For example, Hugh in Black 2 and White 2. I love that we see how connected he is with his sister and how Team Plasma stealing her Purloin really affected the person he was and eventually becomes. That kind of character development is something I admire GameFreak doing. So I'd hope we get to see this sort of development for characters in X and Y explored even more than we did in Unova.

I really want a story that's worth getting investing in. I don't ever feel for the characters, except MAYBE Hugh who had some backstory fleshed out for him. I'd love to see the evil team, your rival, your family, well, everyone to actually be fleshed out more. It'd make a much more immersive story for us to adventure through.

Maybe it's just me but I thought the storyline with Hugh and his sister was very lacking. His personality was too one dimensional. He was just "argh get the baddies" literally ALL of the time. That's who he was and it was annoying.

As much as I love the pokemon series they rarely surprise me with the storyline or characters. I suppose I can't really expect much in this area. Although I'd say N and to some extent Colress are probably the most unpredictable and interesting characters they've ever created. So that at least makes me optimistic for the next generation.

It would be nice if they developed the whole "Are they good or bad" thing that we had with N......but make it even more confusing and dramatic. It would also be nice if they didn't stereotype characters so much.

Sabrewulf238 said:

Maybe it's just me but I thought the storyline with Hugh and his sister was very lacking. His personality was too one dimensional. He was just "argh get the baddies" literally ALL of the time. That's who he was and it was annoying.

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I agree entirely! If it's overdone like that I don't want deeper personalities. Something that's actually balanced and can relate to our character would be nice to see really.

The only sad thing about that, however, was that was probably the most development we still got from a protagonist/rival period. I'd love to see a more three-dimensional personality that that of course, but at least they took a step in the right direction and gave him a backstory and motivation to give him some development.