Since you guys mentioned it, I take a minute to check out Mauville gym and yeah, apparently Wally did battle there. Brendan’s name, though, is conspicuously absent.
Back to 118. I really like how the hidden pokemon mechanic works with surfing – the way it darts around makes me picture the pelipper diving under the water for fish.
Pelipper is a flying transporter that carries small Pokemon and eggs inside its massive bill. This Pokemon builds its nest on steep cliffs facing the sea.
…right, sure, it’s just “transporting” them.
I find another quality easy defense secret base! Now I’m far away from that creep.
…and cutscene triggers. It’s Steven.
Why, hello.
Hello, killstealer.
We met in Granite Cave, didn’t we? No, I remember it. It’s Lucki… Right? It’s good to see that your journey is going well. You know, Lucki… In this vast world, there are many kinds of Pokemon. They come in many types. Should you raise different types? Or will you only raise Pokemon of a certain type you like?
I actually did not do monotype teams back when I was replaying over and over, because you always needed a pokemon with fly and surf and, my glorious surfing charizard aside, that generally meant mixed types.
I wonder what you think, as a a Pokemon Trainer?
I wonder how it’d be different if we didn’t have that element in the originals – if everywhere was accessable, or if the blocks were different ones. Team considerations aside, I do think it works better to have your pokemon be necessary to handle challenges. The true problem is that HMs are annoying to juggle. Surf is the only decent one of them, followed distantly by fly. If you could use fly to cross water, if you could use teleport in place of fly – if there was more than one way of dealing with the problem, it’d be better.
Not that its’ anything I should be concerning myself with…
Gee, thanks.
But somehow I find myself wanting to know what you think.
So while I disapprove of Steven for this, the counterargument is that it’s exactly what kids want. I’m willing to defend CLAMP, so, okay, I will tolerate your crush for now.
I suppose I should be going. I hope to see you again though.
And that’s all for wait nope he’s stopped.
Hyahhn!
…Hm? wonders Steven.
Wait what it’s Latias.
Latias! spikyboxes Steven. Yes I just said that.
Hyaahh! replies Latias.
Do you…want us to soar somewhere with you? What, that’s all you can think of? Maybe she just wants to play.
Lucki. Come with me. Latias… I believe that it sought us out for help. If that’s the case, let’s go!
And onto her back we hop. And now we’re on some isolated inaccessible island. An isolated inaccessible island with an awful lot of streams.
We’ve arrived. Thank you, Latias.
Well, at least he’s polite. He looks around a bit.
… I don’t know what it is… Not quite unease, not quite fear… But there is something…unsettling… It is an odd feeling, as thought I am walking in a dream–or an illusion.
Really not getting that myself. Maybe the music should be a little off.
I once heard an odd fable. It was said that the two Pokemon that live on this island guard some secret about the great form of Evolution: Mega Evolution.
Game, stop with the mega evolution. I know you think it’s really cool. So did I for a couple minutes. Then I moved on with life. You need to do that too.
Could it be that some dangerous element is here because of that?
Sure it could. Basically anything could be true.
… Come, we should be going.
Talking to him makes him say, What is it you want to do? Would you like to return to Route 118 for a time?
Obviously no.
In that case… Shall we go see once and for all whether there is anything to be found on this island?
I guess it’s that the game doesn’t want to trap you somewhere. I do like that about the game design, so I won’t complain, but it’d be nice if Steven required an actual excuse to leave, like that my pokemon needed healing or something. Doesn’t have to require my pokemon actually be injured, just for him to assume that’s my reason in dialogue rather than acting like I don’t need any reason to leave the mystery island I was mysteriously brought to for mysterious reasons.
Also, my dexnav doesn’t trigger from proximity to Latias. Were the people involved in this subplot not speaking to the ones coding the dexnav?
I head toward a path with trees on either side.
(Th– wh– mem–de se– to carv– th–rts…)
I get a second to ponder this before the game provides me with the missing letters.
(Those whose memories fade seek to carve them in their hearts…)
So what was the point of the missing letter version?
Continuing on, I come to Latios.
Latios… It’s beautiful… If I were to describe such beauty in terms of a stone, it would be a Water Stone.
Why didn’t you gush over Latias?
No… It goes beyond that… Isn’t its brilliance like that of a Dawn Stone?
I’m sorry I can’t hear you over being offended you’re only gushing over one of the two.
It is as fantastic as a Steel-type Pokemon…
Latios growls and waves his head, presumably because wow what a backhanded compliment there Steven, and also Team Magma runs up.
Hm? says Steven who is evidently very, very chill. Team Magma, is it? So Latios noticed their coming, and that is why it called on us.
Uh, Latias called on us.
… says the women with the extra big horns who since Ember mentioned a nonstandard costume is maybe the same one as in the forest? Who are you?
Hah?! yelps the guy with her, who is very crankyfaced. M-Mistress Courtney! That pipsqueak over there is the kid that I heard keeps getting in our way!
Thank you. I am the most important person here and it is good you show that by reacting to me first.
But that enviably unruffled-looking fellow there with him…
…him? Did they just screw up the dialogue here?
Hm. I feel like I ought to know him from somewhere… Maybe he’s a contest star?
See, BW2? This is how you do it. Not having everyone sing the praises of the NPC and then wonder who I could possibly be.
Yes, Mistress Courtney says. For the time being…get away from me. The Pokemon behind you… Its Mega Stone… No more…no less. That is what… That’s what we of Team Magma seek.
That’s actually pretty reasonable. Why does Latios even have a mega stone given canon did that thing of saying it requires a trainer?
How about it? Will you get away from me…or not?
Hey, I have an actual choice. And it’s actually hard!
On the one hand, Latios doesn’t seem in danger here. He can’t use a mega stone.
On the other, Team Magma is evil, so I should stop them just on the general assumption they’re probably bad.
Also, Latios would be sad.
But maybe in the long run it’d be better because people would be less likely to hassle him if he didn’t have a mega stone.
Okay. Sure. Why not?
Hmph! hiccups Steven in shock. It’s good that you feel up to joking, but this is no laughing matter. I’ll take part in this battle as well.
Killstealing asshole.
Let’s protect Latios from these beasts together. We cannot allow Latios or even a Mega Stone to fall into the hands of such villains!
… Mistress Courtney says, Well then… Deleting…
oh good god her battle pose
Lucki: Silver, use Surf.
Silver: (On who, Master?)
Lucki: Everyone.
Silver: (What do you mean, everyone?)
Lucki:https://38.media.tumblr.com/37fb2090aa2910f7ec53bdcd89f8ecf5/tumblr_mwus2lI5HV1rpwwe9o1_500.gif
Out of curiosity, what do you think would be a proper way of teaming up with an NPC, if any exists?
I, for one, was expecting the Magma Stereotype and Mr Steel Boner to have 20+ levels on the MC’s pokemon. Just make it so they only attack each other and you’re golden.
Hell, make his pokemon have false swipe as to let you hit the final strike for bonus points. That way you’ll feel you’re doing something.
And, as always: make losing a REAL possibility ffs. (Like, if you take too long to defeat the grunt, Courtney finishes off his pokemon and then curbstomps you)
That would be excellent. Especially as an early preview of a team leader or something, where you eventually get to crush them on your own. Actual logical progression and buildup, yay!
Hell, make his pokemon have false swipe as to let you hit the final strike for bonus points. That way you’ll feel you’re doing something.
I would buy a plane ticket so I could throw rocks through their window if they did that. Rocks and possibly Molotov cocktails.
Why? Too patronizing?
Having the computer slaughter your opponents but leave them with 1HP so you can “participate”. is so far beyond merely patronizing.
At that point I’d rather just have the overpowered NPC kick the shit out of the enemy so hard that your contribution feels completely minimal. Video games that make the player’s contribution pivotal for every little thing bore me. It doesn’t feel like a “world” when they do that. The NPC’s don’t feel interesting.
Well you throw a couple of rocks to break the window, and then the Molotov cocktail, to maximize your damage.
Well, I think the DPP system of partnering you with a chansey worked out pretty well. Have the NPC with pokemon that use softboiled and heal pulse.
For NPCs who are supposed to be badass, having us come in and rescue them is another option. The double battle has one or two high level pokemon…who’s nearly dead and is paralyzed or burned, such that they’ll be out of the battle in a few turns. Our opponents are similarly crippled, or else he’s just finished up the boss and is being swarmed by grunts of more appropriate levels.
A third option is to see them in action in the overworld, like how we see dueling poochyena between the teams. Have a short battle play out in front of us.
Hm. You could also have things set to be an endless wave of opponents until the player character manages to faint X pokemon, with healing between battles from our NPC partner. That way the full difficulty could be higher, because if you’re too low-level, the NPC will be doing most of the work.
That “him” they forgot to change for the female character bugged me too (and I got to see it over and over because I was trying to reset for a good natured Latios). I think it’s especially annoying that they missed that while managing to change up more than pronouns to make the differences in Brendan’s and May’s dialogue. :/
Latias is in Alpha Sapphire, Latios is Omega Ruby, unless you manage to get the Eon Ticket in order to access the opposite as well.
(sorry for the double comment)
Yeah, I remember, I just got my hopes up because it’s Latias who shows up to see you first.
Professor Birch is not swayed by anything but pure cold numbers. It wouldn’t matter if your pokedex consisted of nothing but legends. He’d just say ‘it seems you have only seen twenty-five pokemon; have some condescending advice about how pokemon are sometimes found in caves,’ because he doesn’t actually look at what species you’ve caught. All the professors share this bias. It makes slightly more sense for Professor Juniper in BW2, since she was mapping distribution and the number of species is presumably an important factor. But the rest of them are clearly just lazy losers playing high scores with other professors or something. It explains why poke science is such a mess.
Seriously though, the dex has gotten way too big for completing it in the remakes to really be enjoyable. They never seem to be willing to make more than a handful of pokemon that weren’t originally available appear during the end game. I can’t find actual numbers because pokemon fansites suck at information, but the Hoenn pokedex originally contained around 200 pokemon. Even if they add another hundred mons to catch after the elite four, that’s still three hundered and fifty trades/transfers. Completing the pokedex was always tedious at best and usually impossible, but the number of pokemon in existence is getting unwieldy.
I mean, I’m biased because catching and evolving pokemon is so fun to me and trading is so meh, but still.
Bulbapedia has a chart (http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/List_of_Pok%C3%A9mon_by_availability) of which versions each Pokemon can be found in, which (in combination with regional Pokedex counts) is the closest thing I can find to being able to collate how many Pokemon can be found postgame in each generation.
I’ll do the heavy lifting because I’m actually interested, but I don’t guarantee I haven’t made an accidental dumb mistake somewhere.
Note that I’m excluding the event-only Pokemon Mew, Celebi, Jirachi, Deoxys, Manaphy, Phione, Darkrai, Shaymin, Arceus, Victini, Keldeo, Meloetta, Genesect, Diancie, Hoopa and Volcanion from all the below numbers (since they’re not technically “available,” there’s no reason to count them toward the Pokedex numbers, either) except when noted.
RGBY: 150 Pokedex / 150 available
GSC: 250 Pokedex / 232 available (this was the odd duck generation that had regional Pokedex entries that were impossible to get without trading with RGBY — namely, the Kanto starters, fossils and legendaries)
RS: 200 Pokedex / 200 available
E: 200 Pokedex / 242 available (so 42 Pokemon were added that weren’t in RS)
FRLG: 150 Pokedex / 212 available (so 62 Pokemon were available in the postgame)
Gen III overall: Espeon and Umbreon were only available by trading from ColoXD or by trading an Eevee into RSE (since FRLG didn’t have a clock to allow day/night evolutions); Lugia and Ho-Oh were only available by trading from ColoXD or by event; and there were four event-exclusive Pokemon, so in total, without events or ColoXD you could only get 380 out of 386 Pokemon (378 if you didn’t bother with Espeon and Umbreon).
DP: 150 Pokedex / 437 available (287 in postgame, though many of these were only available through dual-slot mode, so you had to have one of the GBA games to activate their availability… still, this generation was by far the most generous in postgame catching capability)
Pt: 209 Pokedex / 426 available (217 in postgame; aside from the expanded Pokedex, the drop from DP is also mostly due to version exclusives; Pt actually added in Tangela and Tropius, the only non-starters/Legendaries not available in DP)
HGSS: 254 Pokedex / 427 available (173 in postgame; notably, a large chunk of the non-starters/Legendaries absent are available through the Pokewalker that was bundled with HGSS)
Gen IV overall: Event-exclusives Mew, Celebi, Jirachi, Deoxys, Manaphy, Phione, Darkrai, Shaymin and Arceus are of course unavailable; aside from these, the Regi trio from Hoenn were the only Pokemon not available in some way without an event. So in-game, 481 of 493 Pokemon were available in Gen IV.
BW: 152 Pokedex / 465 available (313 in postgame, but almost 100 of these were only accessible through the White Forest, which was only [appropriately] in White version, so Black was considerably more limited)
B2W2: 297 Pokedex / 482 available (185 in postgame)
Gen V overall: This gets a bit complicated. If you’re just playing BWB2W2, you’ll miss out on 99 of 649 Pokemon, by far the biggest proportion of absent Pokemon. But Nintendo was also heavily promoting the Pokemon Dream World as an online companion minigame to the generation, and if you got everything available on Dream World as well, you would only be missing 36 starters, 28 Legendaries, Unown, and oddly enough, the Pikachu line. That’s right — aside from the Pokemon you would expect not be able to get and one gimmick Pokemon, the ONLY Pokemon Nintendo made it impossible to get in Generation V was the franchise mascot. Weird.
XY: 454 Pokedex / 476 available (a measly 22 available in the postgame, although having a main Pokedex two to three times the size of most other games’ Pokedexes kind of makes up for it)
ORAS: 210 Pokedex / 479 available (269 available in the postgame; Deoxys included in both counts since it can be captured without needing an event, for once)
Gen VI overall: With X, Y, OR and AS, you can get every Pokemon in existence aside from 15 of the 16 event-exclusives (since Deoxys was downgraded to being catchable in-game in ORAS). By far the most generous a generation has been since RGBY, due mostly to ORAS pointedly giving postgame access to almost every starter and Legendary (the two categories that have formed the bulk of unavailable Pokemon in previous generations and that also balloon most reliably in successive games).
So in conclusion, I think exactly the opposite as you — you’re right that the Pokedex has ballooned and that most of the postgame ways of getting Pokemon are needlessly frustrating (dual-slot mode, Pokeradar, etc) instead of just normal catching, but I do truly think Nintendo has gone to a significant effort to make nearly every Pokemon available in each generation and to make a large proportion (although not large enough to cut into their profit margins for selling two paired versions) available in each individual game.
Ah, okay, this was probably just prejudice resulting from FRLG being the generation whose endgame stuck most in my head, combined with not being able to find any easy to process data on a fansite. That’ll teach me to wildly project.
I mean, frankly I consider any trading too much because growing up I never had the means to do it. I’ve played every main pokemon game and never been able to do the one thing the game is advertised being about, and now the pokedex is too big and I can’t be bothered. Truly these are the problems of someone with no real problems.
But I do think that they should give up on withholding pokemon who weren’t in the dex originally until after you beat the elite four in the remakes, because it never makes any sense.
Hm. I think a major issue is that we know outside of the game how many pokemon there are total, so the more limited pokedexes each game starts with doesn’t do much to make it feel like you’re accomplishing things, and that you can’t pass pokemon around easily enough, so even if you can catch all the pokemon between the different games of a generation, but you can’t just have your games all register as a single full pokedex. That requires more trading – it’s gotten a lot easier in recent games, but not fast enough to make up the difference with how huge the full pokedex is.
Ah, mega evolution. That’s what it was. You know, despite all the narrative and gameplay reasons it suck, my biggest problem is that all the mega forms look incredibly dumb. Also that it totally rips off Digimon.
The mega forms actually look very similar to the special evolutions that started to be introduced in gen 3, like magnezone or togekiss. I think the problem is just that their general design policy is for pokemon to get bulkier as they approach their final form, so when they try to stick a new evolution on top of an intended-to-be-final pokemon, the end result is a chunky blob.
You can still get Latias, but at endgame. You’ll have to fight her tho. She’ll be level 30.
Also, the Steven Stone of this game felt nothing like the original Steven Stone to me. Too much focus on Mega Evolution. Still, he looks great and was my first crush, so I’ve forgiven him for quite a few things in ORAS.
I think any time an NPC starts babbling about New Game Mechanic Everyone’s Very Proud Of, it should be ignored as far as characterization goes.
I hated the god problem so much in bw. When you catch the ice dragon god who has been tormenting a village for so long that it has become a fortress where no one goes out at night… Nothing happens at all, none of the dialogue changes, you can’t tell anyone, show anyone, ask questions about what the plot significance of the most powerful pokemon in the game is…
And weird magma grunt’s spine is freaking me out, it didn’t seem so bad in the game with wild backgrounds and all
All the time spent in Norman’s gym about how I’m the gym leaders kid, hey, related to this guy who’s in charge of the gym! makes me think that maybe we’ll get that sort of context-dependent change one day.