Alola's relations to Kalos

[BettyNewbie]

That's a rather radical conclusion to jump to. oO Again, your definition of "complete" most likely does not mesh with what Gamefreak considers "complete".

Why am I (or anyone else) in the wrong for expecting decent storytelling from these games? I don't think anyone's expecting a deep epic from a Pokémon game, but there is an expectation for at least solid storytelling, especially since BW. Otherwise, we might as well just return to RBY levels of storytelling, aka. no story besides "get 8 badges and become the champion."

Zygarde probably wasn't supposed to have a super big role like those of Kyurem, Giratina and company, and played more of a smaller role in the grand scheme of things, so it didn't need such an expansive story, who knows?

Then, why make it a mascot legendary that's clearly meant to be connected to Xerneas and Yveltal? If they didn't want it to have a significant role of any kind, then they could've just made it a one-off event-only Pokémon instead (like Darkrai, for example).

 

[blue]

What about that Strange Souvenir that we received in X/Y? The dialogue matched up to this new Region and the guy who gave you it said it was from his home Region which we would see soon enough. Coincidentally he happened to be stopping at a hotel which would indicate he was travelling from Alola and visiting Kalos temporarily. Not only that but the image of the item resembles some sort of Tiki Idol which are found in Hawaii.

Spoiler:

If this guy really did travel from Alola to Kalos, that means it is possible that the two are connected and that it is possible to travel to and from both Regions.

 

[MarinoKadame]

I'm wondering if we could transfer the strange souvenir to Alola.

 

[BettyNewbie]

Then what were you expecting? You're being unclear about what you, or anyone else for that matter, is expecting as far as an actual story. Do you want something equivalent to Platinum version, or even B2W2, where the third mascot essentially becomes the core of the whole story? Gamefreak somehow managed to make things work with fusing Kyurem with Zekrom or Reshiram, because it fit in with the theme of truth and ideals and it was even hinted before B2W2 came out iirc that Kyurem was basically the leftover body that remained of Reshiram and Zekrom since they were all one "being". Giratina, for all intents and purposes, was kind just there as the polar side to the dimension people normally reside in, and represented anti-matter in that regard. A story was dedicated to Rayquaza because its job was to qualm Kyogre and Groudon's complete crapfest whenever they fought.

But BettyNewbie, what is Zygarde's role and relation in how it relates to Xerneas and Yveltal? I don't want you to get the wrong impression and think I'm not disappointed that it doesn't get a story--I am--but at the same time, I've come to realize....what can it really do in the grand scheme of things? It seems that the most Gamefreak did was gave it a few new forms, maybe called it day, maybe those forms will have some use later on. But each and every time a third mascot was introduced and it had its own game, it a) either interfered with, interacted with, or caused some strife with the first two mascots of the games (Rayquaza, Kyurem) or b) In the case of Giratina (because in the games, we haven't seen Giratina fight Dialga or Palkia, he just drags you and Cyrus to the Distortion World) existed more for philosophical purposes than anything else.

So far, we can't figure out what kind of relation Xerneas, Yveltal, or even Zygarde have besides just representing different themes. Does Zygarde fight Xerneas and Yveltal? If not, does it just sit there and maintain balance between life and death? If it's supposed to have strong ties with the two mascots, then surely, at some point, there should be a Z version (unlikely with the announcement with S/M, but we'll see), but if Gamefreak somehow left it in the dust like you and others are supposedly upset about, then that must mean its purpose might be just fulfilling a philosophical purpose like Giratina did. However, what differentiates the two is that it's not hard to build a story around what Giratina represents. However, building a story on what Zygarde represents...might be a different matter altogether.

All this tells me is that GF really did treat XY's story as an afterthought (especially compared to BW). Again, why create a trio of legendaries that represent themes more dark and complex than you're capable of dealing with?

I don't know about you, but a poorly-written story frustrates me far more than no story does. Either you give it your all (BW) or you just have no story (RBY), no in-between. Nothing worse than wasted potential, which XY were full of.

Are you telling me it hasn't been like that for every single Pokemon game? Each Pokemon game has had various "storytelling" depths, if you will, but it all ends at the same point (7th or 8th gym, generally) and it's always "get 8 badges and become the champion", so that point is generally pretty moot. Unless attaining gym badges and defeating gym leaders becomes insignificant and GF makes the story the forefront of the games, I dunno...

Yes, all the games have the badge collecting plot, but there's a pretty big world of difference between, say, RBY and BW.

 

[OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire]

Zygarde is basically the Vishnu of the trio. It's supposed to keep the world in balance. While Yvetal is the Shiva, and Xerneas is Brahma. Perhaps looking at Hinduism which seems to have inspired their themes can give us ideas as to what Zygarde's role in a possible Z would've been.

I wonder...perhaps Zygarde was unable to go 100 percent in XY because it's other half of the cells were in Alola, yet the threat from Xerneas/ Yvetal was enough to force it to gather half (from a story perspective I mean). Perhaps we see Zygarde's cell in Alola, hinting at a possible future return to Kalos to solve a crisis larger than in XY.

 

[WingsofBliss]

It's strange, really... because if the anime is anything to go by, one Zygarde Core on its own has the ability to restore plant life within a diameter of a few miles of damaged areas. But Xerneas' and Yveltal's ability in the games and movie appear to affect Pokemon, humans, and plant life. They all seem to have the ability to control the stuff that Infinite Energy comes from, and quite possibly a closer connection to said energy than even Mega Rayquaza and the Primals. I have a theory that Zygarde is the natural embodiment and controller of Infinite Energy, and that would likely cover more than just the lore of Kalos; I think Zygarde is meant to be like Arceus and have lore in all regions but to a lesser extent. I think it's highly unlikely that Zygarde's Formes will be only for the anime and side-games. They gave height and weight stats for them, which are utterly useless in the anime. Masuda had also hyped their reveal in CoroCoro, when Game Freak is not even responsible for creating anything outside of the main series games.

Also... I couldn't help but notice something about the player characters, they both appear to be Japanese in their default formats. The boy and his mother in the live-action trailer also seemed to be Japanese. In one of the screenshots taken of the gameplay trailer, you can see that your family owns a Meowth as a pet, which is a Kanto native. I'm wondering if our PC's are originally from Kanto? I don't like to suggest this, but what if we end up visiting a revamped Kanto in the post-game in commemoration for the 20th anniversary? I know a lot of people are sick of Kanto, and I'm one of those people... but it makes sense from a 20th anniversary celebration perspective, right? *gets shot in the face*

 

[LilBueno]

The issue with Zygarde is that BW set an unfair standard for it. We've had plenty of Legendaries that represent important issues that were rarely touched upon in the games, Generation II especially. I agree with colours (I think that's who said it? #toolazytoquote) that just because Zygarde has such a significant theme doesn't mean there was always a plan to give it its own story. From my point of view, Yveltal and Xerneas barely had any significance in XY. They were mentioned and then found, captured, and used all off-screen and barely mentioned after the fact. I thought the whole thing was lackluster for such powerful Pokemon. Same thing with Zygarde: it's clear that it completes the trio (it's the Z to their X and Y) and has a similar theme, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was ever planned to have its own version or story dedicated to it. Hell, look at how insignificant of an event it was to find and capture it.
Now does that mean that Generation VI didn't have its storytelling flaws? Nope. I agree that it was weak storytelling and bad planning, but simply the creation of a third Legendary doesn't mean its own story.
I wouldn't be surprised if we did have some Zygarde plot in Hawaii considering how nature-attuned of a setting it is, but Zygarde's side of the story was never promised. We all expected a Gray Version and got B2W2. "Generation" isn't a GameFreak term and I'm sure -because of that- that they don't necessarily start coming up with a pair of games with the intention of making a third version. If anything, Zygarde was included just in case they decided to go down that route after XY, but not so they had to go down that route.
Still...weak storytelling, yeah.

 

[BettyNewbie]

As much sense as it would make to visit Kanto from that perspective, I wouldn't be a huge fan of it. The way I see it as this (in regards to the whole "you can travel back and forth between regions" thing): if history is anything to go by (despite Gamefreak being trendbreakers, I know), we've never really had a "new" region that would allow you to travel back and forth between past regions (sans Johto, but that's a different matter). And even if Alola had some sort of method to transport the player character to Kalos, or Kanto, or heck, any other region, we'll probably be able to only explore a very small part of it, which makes the addition all the more redundant if Alola is bigger than what it seems to be and we already have the opportunity to explore multiple islands in the region itself.

I'd expect the 20th anniversary surprises to be moreso reveals within the Alola region itself.

As much as I hate it, I have to agree with you. I don't see us getting anything more than a few cheap throwaway references to older games (like XY did with RBY). I don't think we're even going to see any characters from past games, let alone past regions. It's an all-new region with an all-new story and all-new characters, aka. a reboot.

Unfortunately, I think the RBY re-release was the full extent of GF's 20th Anniversary nostalgia. SM, if anything, will probably seem more reminiscent of RSE than any of the Kanto/Johto games, complete with the isolated (and likely, water-logged) tropical region, protagonist moving in from another region, and legendary trio warring over things in the sky.

(All that's needed are dueling evil teams called "Team Solar" and "Team Lunar" that only appear in one game version each and want to use their corresponding legendary to create endless day or endless night and take over the world. Hey, didn't we just remake these games? :rolleyes2:)

 

[WingsofBliss]

Yeah, I think having the story-driven plot in Gen 5 right before them taking a nose dive with Gen 6 is what caused a divide amoung the fans on this particular issue. Xerneas and Yveltal are my favorites design-wise next to White and Black Kyurem, but X/Y were shoehorned into a plot that would have done well without them. Instead of needing their energy to power the weapon, they could have used the Mega Evolution lore instead, because clearly Lysandre had knowledge and interest about it in the games and the anime. And IIRC, Team Flare were spying on all the trainers for intel through the Holocaster, they could have tried gathering everybody's Mega-Evolved Pokemon to power the weapon.

 

[WingsofBliss]

So I found the article that people were talking about a couple pages back, where Maduda said something about "tying together XY in unique ways" when questioned about making ORAS instead of a Z:

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/pokemon-director-explains-why-series-is-becoming-e/1100-6422945/

I found it because I know a few of you were wondering what it was, so there you have it. :3

I do have to wonder: will Mega Evolution make a return and once again be central to the plot of SM? In ORAS and even in a smaller context in XY via the Anistar Sundial, Mega Evolution has close ties and origins with space and Meteorites. Sun and Moon already have space themes written all over their faces with just the titles, is it possible we may see some more lore behind Megas or no? Me personally, that would add on to an already convoluted mess of inconsistencies that we already have between XY and ORAS.

 

[OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire]

In the OrAs Universe it seems that Megas weren't restricted to a specific region. It's possible that S/M have Megas. A good idea would be for the mc to discover Mega stones in Alola, which previously there were thought to be none.

 

[blue]

It may not be the main focus of S/M this time around, but I definitely think Mega Evolution will be back. It is such a game changing mechanic that they no doubt put a lot of effort into designs, concept ect. It wouldn't really make sense to introduce such a revolutionary feature for it only to be exclusive to one generation and a minority of Pokemon.

 

[BettyNewbie]

Somewhere in a parallel universe where GF didn't make Xerneas and Yveltal the main part of the story in X/Y, there would still be people complaining that they weren't part of the story because they're the mascots and as such, they should be.

As WingsofBliss said, a big problem was that XY came directly off of the very story-driven Gen 5, so expectations for the games' story really were a lot higher. This probably would've even been the case had XY directly followed RSE or DPP, which weren't as deep as the Unova games, but still had very involved, complete stories (especially Platinum).

As I've said before in the thread, there's been a general expectation since Gen 3 for the mascots to play a central role in the stories of the games, as well as for the games themselves to be increasingly story-driven (as was the case from RSE to DPP and DPP to BW/2). There probably would've been far fewer complaints about XY's story had they directly followed RBY/GSC, when barebones stories and legendaries having no significant role in the main plot were the norm.

 

[Friezy]

You may have not become invested in XY and the Kalos story, but a lot of fans did, and for GF to essentially tell them, "Forget Kalos, Alola is where we're heading," is basically equivalent to giving them a middle finger.

It's hard to call Kalos "done and dusted" when the story of its Box Legemdaries has been barely told (not even told at all in the case of Zygarde), as well as other plots like AZ's Floette. XY left a TON of loose ends and were clearly meant to have a sequel of some sort. And, they deserve to have one.

GF's main priority may be gameplay/mechanics and competitive battling, but that needs to stop coming at the expense of story. They may view these regions and characters as essentially disposable and interchangeable, only existing to differentiate the games from dedicated battle simulators, but a lot of fans don't, and to show such little respect for the story is to throw a large chunk of the fandom under the bus.

This sets a dangerous precedent for future games. What happened to XY could easily happen to SM down the road, and so on. I fear that one day we're going to wake up and find out that Gen 10 is literally nothing more than a battle simulator.

Honestly, I gave up with Pokemon as a story-telling RPG, I haven't been invested into any of the stories apart from HG/SS and the sevii islands of FR/LG.

I know that Black and White gets a ton of a hate, and I am not a fan of BW/BW2, however I will give the series a plus for better story telling/mature themes.

But, honestly, are you really surprised? I would say that the age of good story telling in video games is coming to a close, why focus on a story when you can focus on micro-transactions and half complete games?

Games like Soul Calibur, Smash Bros, Overwatch have just ditched story telling elements which I found the most enjoyable aspects.

One of the most popular games in the world, Minecraft, doesn't even have a story! Instead they've bundled the story as a separate purchase for those who have wanted it!

This is just the sad state of the industry that we live in.

 

[smocks]

It'll be cool visiting another region in the game, but honestly, I wouldn't go back to the Kalos at all. Yes, Kalos should be able to visit to patch it up, but even if they do improve Kalos, it's just not interesting enough to go back to. I would prefer if we could revisit Sinnoh cause I love the intensity and mythology of it.

 

[BettyNewbie]

Honestly, I gave up with Pokemon as a story-telling RPG, I haven't been invested into any of the stories apart from HG/SS and the sevii islands of FR/LG.

I know that Black and White gets a ton of a hate, and I am not a fan of BW/BW2, however I will give the series a plus for better story telling/mature themes.

But, honestly, are you really surprised? I would say that the age of good story telling in video games is coming to a close, why focus on a story when you can focus on micro-transactions and half complete games?

Games like Soul Calibur, Smash Bros, Overwatch have just ditched story telling elements which I found the most enjoyable aspects.

One of the most popular games in the world, Minecraft, doesn't even have a story! Instead they've bundled the story as a separate purchase for those who have wanted it!

This is just the sad state of the industry that we live in.

Yeah, it is sad. :( Games nowadays are all about micro-transactions and multiplayer, with things like story and character largely taking a backseat. With XY, it was painfully obvious that the story was an afterthought to GF, and that the main focus was on graphics and mechanics, aka. building a good battle simulator.

Sadly, SM don't appear like they'll be much different from XY. Remember how XY had all of those forced, throwaway references to RBY that arguably robbed Kalos of having its own identity? Get ready to see SM do the same to RSE and DPP, except even worse. :rolleyes2: