[Discussion] Plot Discussion Ideas: Kanto to Johto

[Corvus of the Black Night]

In the game I'm producing I want to have it be a remake of both generations I and II, but I'm coming across a slight problem: Combining the original Kanto arc with the Johto arc.

I want to preserve as many story elements as possible but I'm still having a couple of tiny little issues. I have two options - force the player to start with lower leveled Pokemon, or keep with the high leveled pokemon at the end of the game. The problem is that Johto will not be able to be played out as long as it was if this is the case, so I'm leaning on forcing the lower level Pokemon.

This is what I have thus far.

Basically, after defeating the Elite 4, there's a problem in Johto and Kanto which prohibits transporting Pokemon across the border. This is due to Team Rocket's plans and is an attempt to reduce Pokemon smuggling from region to region. Oak realizes the problem and sends you to New Bark Town along with a choice of one of the three Johto starters to help try to quash Team Rocket. Then, after Team Rocket's issues are resolved, you are permitted to use your old Pokemon/items again.

To be honest I think that sounds a little hookey but yeah. I'm trying to connect everything into a fluid script so that way a player can visit all the lands eventually.

 

[tImE]

Honestly, that's a bad idea. Never restrict the player directly. It makes the player a lot less interested in playing the game.
Also: Nintendo managed to do the reverse without resetting the levels. Just be careful about Wild Pokémon levels and the amount of trainers and you should be able to finish the League at level 45-ish the first time, before heading to Johto.

Having to highleveled Pokémon is only a problem if you try to squeeze another region in, imo.

 

[Corvus of the Black Night]

Honestly, that's a bad idea. Never restrict the player directly. It makes the player a lot less interested in playing the game.
Also: Nintendo managed to do the reverse without resetting the levels. Just be careful about Wild Pokémon levels and the amount of trainers and you should be able to finish the League at level 45-ish the first time, before heading to Johto.

Having to highleveled Pokémon is only a problem if you try to squeeze another region in, imo.

I suppose. I want to make a single game where you can eventually go to all the regions, so that's why I'm split. I'll ask what other people think, too. Basically, I want it to be like several games in one, but instead of having to trade between them to, for example, get a charmander in Johto, you just have the Pokemon already there.

Being a port that wants to include pretty much all the games and your Pokemon you raised in them in one neat location is tricky after all...

 

[tImE]

Well, everyone who has ever made a fan-game has wanted to or considered making a game with all regions, but it never works out, because while it may seem fun in theory, it will take at least a few years to accomplish it with an experienced team, and longer alone.
I'm making a Generation 1 remake myself, and I've reached Lavender Town, completion-wise, and I've been working on it for soon 2 years. Many people underestimate the effort to complete even one region while making it fun to play.

Moreover, most people will grow tired of the game if it takes too long to complete. It seems fun, but once you reach region 3, or even 2 for some people, the game becomes boring because you just do the same thing over again with different Pokémon, and most people won't even change Pokémon.
Since it's a singleplayer game, no one bothers to "catch 'em all" or train new Pokémon, because what's the point, you can't battle anyone with them anyways.

And lastly, making a game with "all regions" actually challenging is pretty much impossible.
It is insanely difficult to make a gym leader or champion hard to beat without heightening the levels of their Pokémon. This will result in a way too fast up-leveling of your team.
If you want to have let's say, 5 regions in your game, that means you should divide it into 20 levels per region, so you become level 100 at the last regions league. Well, that also means the first Champion can max have Pokémon with level 20, which means you essentialy can't have trainers except for Gym-Leaders. :I

 

[Corvus of the Black Night]

I mean I kind of have to; it is intended as a tied together port and it only makes sense to make the characters transferable (which is the sole reason why I'm not splitting it into many games). I mean, I agree with your point. That's perfectly fine. Maybe I should take the "collections" approach and connect only where it makes sense. I normally would agree but I think there's different circumstances here, since basically I want to have it be kind of like a "collection" with the games but at least loosely tied together. The canon is just making it very clumsy...

I know a lot of people have wanted to make this point before but I think that the fact that my game is intended as a port to open up the games to a new audience that has previously not had exposure to the original games is a fair enough reason to aim for a full region game (as opposed to just doing it because OMG every pokemon!!). I don't know so much about Kalos but I want to try to get everything else doable sometime.

I'm sorry if I sound arrogant here, I'm trying not to sound that way at all. But yeah, that's why I want to try to connect the games.

If you're wondering this is completely just a canonical issue. Functionally I can pretty much do what I want.

 

[Maruno]

As soon as you talk about resetting the player's achievements and going to a different region, you're talking about making a different game. Saying "but they can get their old Pokémon back eventually" is meaningless - that's a tacked-on little extra that shows up at the very end of the second game (and the third, etc.).

Canon is only what you make of it. Canonically for the official games (which you're attempting to copy), each game is a separate game. Why you think yours should be a mega-compilation of all of them, much less have them actually lead on from each other, is beyond me.

You've said yourself that the only reason you want everything to be in one unreasonably huge game is that you want the player to eventually get all the Pokémon from everywhere they've ever been. This information is stored in save files, and it's easy to look for a save file from a different game and load its contents and transfer things around - everything doesn't need to be in the one big save file.

There's also the limits of space (999 maps), the ever-bloating size and the incredibly long development time to consider, along with many other issues I can't think of off the top of my head.

I'd say you can consider making a multi-region game, but only after you've successfully made a single region game first. Maybe you'll expand on that same game, maybe you'll start afresh, but the point is that you'll learn how much effort is required to make even a single region, while minimising the total amount of effort required to just that one region (it's less daunting that way).

 

[Corvus of the Black Night]

Again, this isn't Pokemon Essentials or any other starter kit, this is a game I built myself, and I'm aware of the physical limitations of it. This is only about the design of the game, not the actual capabilities. And fortunately 999 rooms is definitely not the high limit. Of course there may be the actual production issue where I can't finish the project but that's okay because sometimes things don't get finished, especially if you're doing it as a labour of love.

I plan on creating a sort of "reverse G/S/C" first where you start in Kanto and go to Johto. All of the things required for Kanto are already implemented bar scripting events and very specific events such as minigames (although I do have the slots currently working). Again, having it just have higher level mons is doable but doesn't really give the player enough level-leeway to return to Kanto for post-game content that isn't all level 100 spam.

I think I've got it thought out though. I was doing this thought exercise while waiting for the extension for saving to be built (or rather, the guy who was doing it had an outage for a while where he couldn't deliver it). I personally like the idea of "restarting" the game over and opening access for at least once, perhaps after the Kanto-Johto arc. If I change the leveling a little bit, since it's kind of uneven to begin with, it might be a bit less of a grind to play the game and would allow for higher level battles to take place when one returns to Kanto.