5th Gen Truth and Ideals

[Nah]

So for a while now the games and their legendary mascots have sorta had a "theme" goin' on. In R/S/E it was the relationship between the earth, sea, and sky (and environmental concerns), in D/P/Pt it was the power of time, space, and antimatter (or something), and in X/Y is was the cycle of life and death (and human nature).

Gen V's theme thing was truth vs ideals, yin and yang. What did you think of this one? What exactly did you think that the games were trying to get across?

....and stuff.

 

[AFeralFurry]

I think they were trying to put the concepts of the truth of what is and ideals of what should be into focus, honestly.

I lean towards Idealism, myself.

 

[Altairis]

I thought it was really interesting the way that they tied the game theme to Plasma and the legendary Pokemon. Having Zekrom and Reshiram being two physical representations of these virtues (and coming from the same original Pokemon!) is really interesting and something that we haven't seen before and I doubt we will again. I also really liked how the legendaries "chose" a hero to represent truths/ideals, even if it wasn't expanded on much and the virtue was only decided on based on the game you were playing.

I thought it was an interesting take, since it allowed them to explore the ethics of Pokemon battling almost (Team Plasma's whole thing). There were some other flaws, however, how the entire evil team just looked over how they wanted to free Pokemon to form the ideal world.. by using Pokemon, but I still thought it was interesting and new, which is definitely what the games were going for.

 

[Necrum]

I personally liked the theme. Both sides are right while also being able to check each other. If you are only governed by truth, then you can easily alienate people. But if all you care about is ideals, it can be too easy to repeat mistakes.

For me, what was a bit more interesting, is how the heroes are recreated in modern time. At first you have the player character and N as the respective heroes, but in the sequel games, N passes off whichever concept he was to the new player character. So by the end of the Unova arc, you have both of your characters representing each of the concepts, as long as you played the same color between games. I think this is awesome! Both of them stop Ghetsis with their respective theme, meaning that the freedom of Pokemon is contrary to both truth and ideals! Doesn't that just blow your mind?

 

[XtinaIsMeLuvinWWE]

I really liked how the concept tied in with what game you picked, in that if you felt strongly based towards one or the other you could do something about it to tweak the storyline your way :) In Pokémon with the storylines usually being so linear it was a nice touch to give the player a bit of control in that regard :)

 

[Hikamaru]

I loved the theme, and how they recreated the Unova legend in the present day by having Reshiram and Zekrom choose a "hero" to represent truth and ideals. Black & White's story also ends with a battle of the player and N battling each other, just like the brothers who were looked over by the duo back in the historic times.

Given I have huge praise towards Unova and its interesting story, I really loved the approach they did here. In fact, Necrum's post pretty much sums up everything I had in mind. As for which path I'd follow, I'd probably seek idealism since it relates to me more than the truth does.