Awawawa!
Yeah, it’s been a while, hasn’t it.
A scientist barrels into me before I can enter Devon’s HQ of evil, screaming in spikybox.
Ouch… the jerk says. Oooh? You’re that fantastic Trainer who helped me before!
Yes! I am! And as part of how fantastic I am, I think I have to destroy your whole company and maybe you? Like, if your company was 1940s Germany, would you say you were like a regular Nazi or more like, say, SS?
The door opens again and a Team Magma guy pops out. Yo, geek!
Aiieee! You’ve got to help me, please! yelps the scientist, hiding behind me. Dude, geek is barely even an insult, grow a thicker skin before you ask kids to defend you.
Whoa! You’re the kid Trainer I met before! says the grunt. So many people remembering me rather than talking about some stupid gym leader or rival! Aargh! You’ve getting in my way again!
Well, not necessarily. Has Magma gained some scraps of morality? Are you here because he and Devon at large are super evil?
He doesn’t want to explain himself like an adult, though, and instead just sends out his L48 mightyena, raising all sorts of questions about how fast pokemon level and how come the world isn’t packed with L100s?
I send out Groudon because BOW BEFORE ME MORTALS BOW
I win.
Grrrr… Am I destined to lose to you all the time?
Well…yeah, kind of.
The rapid leveling is honestly pretty weird, though. It reminds me of people debating D&D leveling and arguing the reason the place looks like vaguely medieval Europe is because people can go from level one newbies to level twenty demigods in six months, so there’s actually so much churn nothing’s ever accomplished. But in that case, why bother trying to accomplish anything yourself, when anybody can level up and solve the problem? I mean, if some random grunt and a hiker hanging out by a cave can get to L50 this fast, surely the gym leaders and elite four could’ve managed to eke out a couple more levels and handled the whole apocalypse themselves?
Also, where are all the L100 pokemon? At least D&D has actual places for the demigods to head off to.
I mean, rapid leveling’s been a question since the beginning, but it keeps getting more obviously a problem as the games go on.
Perhaps annoyed by all this, the grunt runs off in a huff.
Another one pops out. What’s wrong, Grunt?
The scientist cowers behind me again.
What? You again? …Fine. Even though I know I can’t win, I’m going to challenge you for Courtney!
Hoping to wear me down with sheer quantity is a pretty reasonable goal! Good job at having a realistic idea of your abilities, random grunt.
It’s a little weird he says this when he’s got a L51 weezing, but on the other hand, he should know I have Groudon.
Even though I knew I wouldn’t win, it’s still disappointing!
Yeah, I mean, L51 weezing, that’s a win against most people. You must’ve worked hard.
Sound the retreat! be shouts. It’s only good sense to save my own hide– for Courtney’s sake!
He runs off, another appears.
I’m hungry, so I’m going back… Gaaaaah! Well, my stomach’s ready for battle… ‘Cause it’s rumbling…
And now look, this one doesn’t even care.
I lost. Like I figured… I’m gonna get some food on the way back.
And like the rest, he gets to just walk off, because Lucki practices catch and release.
Th-th-thank you! You helped me again! As my thanks, I’ll give you another Great Ba–
Then he hops up and down and screams in spikybox, Oh, now is not the time for this! In a more normal tone of voice, he continues, We’re in big trouble! Team Magma stole the control device for the Link Cable that our company had been developing…
Wait, let me get this straight. BECAUSE you need me to help you more, you’re replacing the shitty greatball reward with absolutely nothing?
It’s a special tool called the dimensional shifter. The person who stole it was short and pretty, and she had a nasty look in her eyes!
You’re creepy.
What shall I do? What would you do? WHAT SHALL I DO?
Well, what I’d do is murder it with my godmon, so…yeah, not really applicable to your circumstances.
They must have headed for the Mossdeep Space Center… Steven must have gone ahead to the Space Center, but…I’m worried…
Okay okay so I go there now.
Actually, no, game, I came here to see Devon and I’m not going to leave without even entering the place. Hey, president guy! Do you have new dialogue?
The last hope of humanity… If we lose the dimensional shifter now, we will have no way to stop the asteroid from striking our planet…
“Except for whatever way they used back the last couple times this exact event happened, I mean.”
Plus presumably most people don’t want to die, so the person stealing it likely intends to still use it.
Anyway, glad the programmers thought to update that for anybody who didn’t want to just race through locations at top speed.
Honestly, I wish they’d move away from having the final act of the game involve flying back and forth. I think what they’re trying to go for is a sense of fast pace, but it’s just tedious instead. There should be a reasonable amount of something happening at each location. There wasn’t even any point to this one.
So I head to Mossdeep. Lucki, apparently still unclear on how this whole “beating people” thing works, skids to a halt with an exclamation mark over her head and the camera has to move on alone to actually reach the interesting part: Courtney holding forth to a group of five grunts.
Mission, start… she somehow spikyboxes. She heads up and they follow. The camera returns to Lucki, still standing there like an idiot. Next to her is that sailor guy. Despite being next to her and facing in the same direction, he just tells me about the wailmer again.
You know, if she hadn’t had the exclamation bubble, it might’ve been clever to think that the camera moved because Lucki actually was too late to see Team Magma and they head inside before she gets close enough. But she obviously did, so what’s this guy’s excuse?
None of the other NPCs on the way up mention anything either. When I enter, though, things have changed. All the scientists and ordinary people are clustered on one side, and Team Magma’s on the other presumably menacing that secretary or whatever who guards the stairs.
So, let’s chat with the regular people!
Whoooooooa! …I’m saying something that I can only say at a time like this.
I saw quintuplets for the first time! I kinda feel lucky!
I also like to have rendezvous with the wrong sort of people, like them…
Uh, what?
Okay, so that’s the schoolgirls. Let’s try a doupleganger of the stair-guarder.
Aieee. Weird people… S-scary… At a time like this, my big sister wouldn’t be rattled at all… I’m a failure as a professional…
Ah, that’s a good note. See, by having her immediately compare her wussiness to another female character, we avoid making her behavior seem like the default for women. Plus, assuming the sister is the stair-guarder, it gives an explanation for why the sprites look the same.
Next is an old guy: Whaaat? Those thugs! I’m so flabbergasted, I can’t move!
How about sailor guy? Wh-wh-why? I heard on BuzzNav that Team Whatsit cleaned up its act!
Ugh we’re still doing the too lazy to actually change the name between game scripts thing. Also, right, probably should’ve been using that app. Probably lots of cool worldbuilding tidbits and possibly more on the subject of Nazicorp.
Finally, a pair of scientists.
I’d like to protect the rocket… But I’d like to protect myself, too…
Those thugs… Are they after our rocket?!
Okay.
Time to head over.
Somehow, it’s the one furthest away who notices me and gets the question mark over their head, then heads over as the rest part. But then they seem to say their dialogue from top to bottom.
Hee hee hee!
We finally meet again.
It’s been three– Hm? How long has it been?
Nincompoop! It doesn’t matter!
Brace yourself! We won’t let you call us mere quintuplets!
Considering you have L25 mightyena and somehow think that’s going to do anything, “mere quintuplets” is far nicer than anything I think I’d call you.
Also, the mightyena have one of them roar at the end of each turn which seems to just accomplish undoing all their stat-lowering effects, which is all they had going for them.
It ends with Groudon and earthquake.
Hah, hah, hah… I knew we would lose…
I wanted to win in style like the Hoenn Rangers!
It’s odd. That strategy–Intimidate five times in a row–should be invincible… Did you cheat? Grumble, grumble…
YOU USED ROAR YOU STUPID FUCKS.
Seriously what the fuck programmers you think up a halfway decent stategy for an opponent and then make sure it doesn’t actually work because it’d be awful if there was any actual gameplay requirement getting in the way of handing it to the player?
Nincompoop! You’re strong, aren’t you? Stop whining!
Courtney is on the second floor. It’s pathetic, but we can’t stop her… Please. Please help her.
What?
The screen goes black…to accomplish them teleporting to slightly different locations? Why couldn’t they have just walked there, game?
Well, more chatting. Stair guard?
I shouldn’t have let any scoundrels go upstairs… But I’m petrified and can’t move…
Eh.
So I go upstairs.
There’s Steven chatting with Courtney.
Your timing is impeccable as always, Lucki. Team Magma… What do you intend to do with that device? You do realize this is the last hope we have of saving this planet?
… replies Courtney. Last…hope? … Ha ha.(music note) Ahahaha! (music note) Ahahahaha haha! (music note music note music note) Ahahahaha hahahahahahaha! (music note music note music note music note) … My team… The team I put all my hope into… Leader Maxie…was broken. He was broken! He was broken by this brat!
How convenient it must be for you to put all the blame on another, replies Steven, despite the fact that makes little to no sense. I guess he means that Maxie’s…whatever isn’t due to my awesome battling skills but the fact the whole thing was a clusterfuck? But I’m sure getting beaten by a preteen deserves an awful lot of credit for why a grown man is apparently “broken” now.
Courtney pulls out the spikybox: Grrr… Shut up! which is actually a lot less impressive than her sprite actually animating while shouting it’s all my fault. Enough! I’ve had enough of this world!
Not really a fan of the girl one going crazy because something happened to the male leader, but always a fan of people being furious and doing stuff. This also seems like it’d fit better with Aqua, given Magma seems to be about human success and getting us all killed is very not that, but you could see an Aqua member getting so weird they figured that pokemon getting wiped out by the impact was acceptable if it meant no more humans.
Aha! (music note) I know… (music note) Inside that rocket is the same amount–no, even more–Pokemon life energy than what powered the ultimate weapon in the war 3,000 years ago.
Especially with this! You can really see how a member of the humans suck let’s save the pokemon and nature cult would decide fuck it, rocks fall everyone dies at this point.
Wha–?! spikyboxes Steven, presumably because he’s so shocked she knows their secrets.
Ahaha! (music note)
But really, who’s the crazy one, the one who’s casually all “yeah everything runs on genocide btw” or the one laughing hysterically as she realizes no one gives a fuck?
I think we’re in for an impact so big it will surpass the massive explosion that ended that war! I don’t know what all this talk of a meteoroid is, but I have no need of it. Here, by my own hand… I’ll make this rocket explode… And bring an end to this world… I will…fix…Project AZOTH! Of course, I’ll also destroy this dimensional shifter that’s supposed to warp the asteroid away someplace, too. (music note)
Courtney makes some good points.
…Lucki. This fool! This incredible fool really intends to do it! If we don’t stop this now, our whole world will be embroiled in the destruction. You’re ready to battle…aren’t you?
Steven you are so damn lucky Lucki doesn’t have a conscience. Fuck yes she is ready to beat up whatever an authority figure says she should.
…Wonderful!
Don’t. Get. In. My. Way. snarls Courtney in spikybox. Really, actually done pretty well.
Of course, then the battle screen still has her doing her ridiculous pose.
Okay, so: L51 mightyena, L55 camerupt…and Steven releases a L57 skarmory? God, game, you’d think you could stop trying to make him do the whole battle after I’ve beaten the entire elite four.
I have Groudon lava plume the lot of them. Fuck you, Steven. Her mega camerupt then earthquakes it to death. Steven, failing to take a damn hint, sends out a L57 aggron, then passive-aggressively uses earthquake. When his stupid aggron goes down? L57 claydol. It takes out the mega camerupt before I can kill it.
Why? Why must…you always… Always, always, always, always… Get…in…my…way! Then she switches to spikybox: Darn! Dang it! Spikybox dialogue continues to be disappointing.
… says Steven, presumably as he reflects on the fact that if your rating doesn’t allow cursing you’re probably better off writing around it. …Lucki! Now is our chance! Take the dimensional shifter and–
Mumumurrr!
Oh thank christ Zinnia’s here.
It steals the shifter from Courtney.
That Pokemon… Doesn’t it belong to…
???: Nice one, Aster!
You’re the–!
The Draconid, yup. Or you could just call me Zinnia.
Zinnia, don’t talk to Steven, he’s a jerk and he’s going to try to say you’re just as genocidy as him somehow. He’s rapidly approaching Douchy Mcflamehair levels of manipulation.
Aster!
Murrr!
Thank you, dear. Now then… That is an impressive machine. Snap you fingers, the asteroid vanishes, and we all live happily ever after? Ahahahah! Indeed! It’s like that former Champ said! This thing is the best hope we have of saving this planet and everything on it. But you know… It could also be the worst tragedy imaginable for some other world and everything on it.
Given their whole genocide thing, yeah, sending it right into another populated planet does seem like them, yeah.
…What are you trying to say? says Steven.
That she’s recognized everything you do is evil.
I’m not talking to you. You don’t get it.
<3!!!
Ugh…
But you, Lucki… Hope for our world… Tragedy for another… You get it, don’t you?
…does she? She must. She might be willing to do what Steven’s been asking, willing to do evil if she’s told it’s for some purpose, but it’s not that hard to understand that Devon has no interest in doing minimal damage and that there are other options available by this point.
And you come through again! You never disappoint me. My people know it. From generation to generation, we pass along the lore about the distortions in the world borne by the Mega Evolution mechanism. And about the existence of another world, which we have long observed to be just like this one and yet not the same… That’s right. A Hoenn region that’s almost exactly like this one we live in. Filled with Pokemon and people like us. A world where maybe the evolution of Pokemon took a slightly different path, where Mega Evolution is unknown…
Steven was going to genocide the third generation game worlds?
A world where that war 3,000 years ago…never happened. A world where the ultimate weapon was never even built. And in that Hoenn of that world… What would happen if one day, out of the blue, a meteoroid appeared? What would happen to the people of that world, without the technology to destroy the meteoroid or the power to warp it away? … Looks like it’s beyond the power of your imagination.
She looks so disappointed! Zinnia!
She turns away. The screen goes black.
Zinnia crushed the dimensional shifter in her hand!
I am so glad I’m able to get back to this game! Oh, Zinnia, why did we have to wait so long to get to you?
What kind of fool are you! yells the grey-haired non-hunchback scientist. You have no substantive proof, and yet you claim another world, one just like our own, exists?
Pretty sure this just proves they totally knew. He’s not asking about how she knows or how certain she is, it’s just “you can’t prove that’s what we were doing!!!!!”
Out of this fantasy, you–you have destroyed our only hope!
How many only hopes do you guys have? Wasn’t the original plan to just genocide beam it?
What have…you done… gasps Steven.
Farewell, brief hope… replies Zinnia.
The grey nonhunchback scientist hops with rage and spiky-yells, Y-you! Do you even know– Now what are we to do?!
Honestly, it’s starting to look like maybe just letting the damn meteor hit is the best option.
Calm down there, Prof. It’ll be OK. I… We… We can protect this world…and the other.
That’s sweet, Zinnia, but maybe you came in a little late, because Courtney just explained that the rocket alone is more dead pikachu than the entire genocide beam. Protecting this world is going to involve killing a lot of the people in this room.
A question mark floats out of Steven’s evil head. Who exactly is “we”? What are your intentions? A corrosponding exclamation mark pops out of Zinnia’s, I guess she’s surprised he keeps insisting on talking to her.
Oh yeah! Silly me… I forgot the other thing I came for.
She walks past him and Lucki toward Courtney. Wha-what… she spikyboxes for some reason. Then Zinnia steals her keystone.
Wha… Errgh!
And that’s the Key Stone gotten… Now I’ll put it together with the Key Stone they’ve got in their base…
Murrr!
Looks like my next appointment is calling, so I’ll excuse myself now. She turns right to Lucki! Later!
Murrr!
Bye Zinnia come back soon!
Our…leader… says Courtney. Jeeze, chill, weren’t you going to destroy the device yourself anyway? Leader Maxie’s… Key Stone. Is she trying…to steal it?! No…no… Courtney, just go back to killing everything and don’t fuss about it. You can start with Steven since he’s right here.
Confound it all… So she must be making for Team Magma’s hideout next… Think, Steven. Think! What to do, what to do… Steven’s cute thinky pose is totally ruined by the fact he’s followed his anime destiny and turned out to be as evil as all whiteish haired boys.
…and that’s it. The cutscene’s over.
Talking to the woman by the screens: That girl who passed by… I was petrified by the overwhelming strength that I could feel from her! Guess it’s nice how girls are finally getting in on this trope.
Guy on the balcony: Mossdeep has many clear days, and its wind patterns are stable. That’s why it’s an ideal location for launching rockets into space.
You don’t turn around much, do you? Or pay attention to anything people are saying. Oh! Maybe he’s deaf. He’s lipreading when I come over to actually talk, but during all the drama he’s totally unaware since he’s looking in the wrong direction and everyone else is too involved to signal him.
How about the scientists who were there for the drama?
This is no time to lose heart! I’ve somehow got to find a way to repair the dimensional shifter!
You guys are so insanely evil.
Other guy? Any second thoughts about everything you do involving mass murder?
Problems just keep popping up one after another… We’re supposed to be carving out a bright new future with the power of science, but…but this mess… Sigh…
Maybe if all your science didn’t rely on killing incredible numbers of people and wasn’t a bright future only for the select few.
As annoying as it’d have been to be playing Alpha Sapphire and spend the main game fighting the ecoterrorists who seem to have a valid point, it’d have made for a good contrast to here, while in Omega it’s just one after the other without anyone seeming to notice that Devon is basically Team Magma with fewer poochyena and more evil.
You know what’d have been so great? Getting to be Zinnia. She’s running around doing stuff just like Lucki is, but she’s speaking truth to power and stealing shit and not planning on genociding everybody, while Lucki’s being ordered around by Hitler Jr.
The problem with all this is that the writers were so afraid of making Zinnia a good character that they have to make turn Devon into NaziCorp just to make her morals superior by comparison. Hell, take away all the whole genocide shit and leave in the whole “Teleport the meteor to the third gen universe which Zinnia conveniently knows all about like she got teleported from there to this terrible universe by some of Devon’s or Hoopa’s schemes” and we’d get the point just as much and we can just see Devon as plain ignorant and incompetent who didn’t know the consequences of Operation “Teleport this rock somewhere and pray it doesn’t hit anything” and yet were willing to do it anyway rather than Satan incarnate.
Seriously, even though Zinnia is more moral than say, Alder or Gen VI Devon, she’s still an author darling of the developers, where everything has to be twisted in order to make her look good, whether it’s necessecary or not. This apparently includes turning Devon into PokeSatan/PokeSoylent Corp because all the necessary details of the plot (Them relocating a meteor to the third-gen universe) wasn’t enough to make Zinnia’s plan look like the better option even though they are. Remove the whole quip about Devon using pikachu furnaces for generations and the plot will be exactly the same, as all the scientists never mentioning “Infinite Energy” at all at this point can attest.
The difference in how this generation and the earlier generations approach story tellings is that the previous generations use characters while the more recent generations use author darlings disguised as characters.
Unlike traditional characters, author darlings never actually develop. The authors flaunt their darlings around like Mary Sues and Marty Stus, being so “awesome” without actually being so (See Alder). If they ever develop at all, it’s actually a regression as the effect of another darling (see, Estelle, the only person that can reasonably not be called a darling in Trails of the Sky, turning to the waifu of the God and possibly Ancestor of all Author Darlings Joshua). An example of this is well, N, who is basically himself an author darling, albeit one with better morals than most, unfortunately losing them in the face of the competitive world of author darlings in BW. Another example of this is of course Kirito and maybe Asune in SAO, where everything is resolved by the former killing everything despite going against traditional MMO culture. At least Kirito can be seen as anime trying to have its own “Neo” from the Matrix, which would almost work if the virtual world he’s trapped in wasn’t an MMO. The ultimate difference I’m trying to convey is that characters adapt to the world and the situations put against them, and thus change positively or negatively.
Meanwhile the author darling molds the world to himself, herself, xirself, or itself, and the world basically gives them a soapbox to announce how cool they are every step of the way. From Alder announcing how the status quo is god, to that miner guy in BW acting like a Texan because Texans are cool apparently, to Kirito announcing that killing everything himself is cool and good and that everybody else is useless and collateral damage, to Shinji Ikari making it all about him, disrupting the war effort against the Angels until it ended the world, rather than having the Angels, and the fact that the Evas are basically Pokemon, affect the people of NERV, to Haruhi and Kyon becoming lovers even though the former is an alien deity who can do pretty much anything she wanted and literally mold the world to her will and the latter shown nothing but disdain for him, to your average fanfic Mary Sue/Marty Stu making everything about him, to making everything evil apparently because Zinnia needed loads of clarification to the audience’s attention that she’s supposed to be the good guy and that the third generation is the best generation with how obvious she came from that universe (yeah, but here is basically an excuse not to even try to make characters we can care about rather than soapboxes for your hatred of your jobs), to everyone from Bravely Default where they tried so hard to be FF5 and wanted you to know it so much that they literally make you go through the game a hundred times so you can experience the FULL AWESOMENESS of Ultra-creepy Brock guy and EVIL OMOCHAO FAIRY BEHIND THE WHOLE UNIVERSE in their fullest rather than putting them through things that actually challenge their world views and everything.
And that’s why modern storytelling is ruined. There are no more characters or normalcy or decency having the audience relate or anything, just author darlings getting on their soapboxes and announcing how ULTIMATE AND AWESOME they are without ever being challenged. I blame modern storytelling bible Trails in the Sky and ultimate Marty Stu Joshua, the ur-Kirito, for this and its cast of author darlings which managed to be popular only because the game has more words than FUCKING WAR AND PEACE on how ULTIMATE ITS AUTHOR DARLINGS ARE!!!
Um… yeah. “Modern storytelling” is ruined, RUINED, because of a JRPG most people have never heard of. That’s not overstating the case at all.
Don’t worry. Logic was ruined forever earlier, so that post doesn’t contradict it.
I read the first and last sentences of this, and I have to tell you, I kind of never want to know for sure how it got from, “The problem with the genocide plot…” to “MODERN STORYTELLING IS A SHAM.”
I’m not sure how you managed to work Shinji Ikari into your rant about power fantasies, but I admire the effort.
I think you’re using using author’s darling so widely that it’s lost meaning.
The problem with all this is that the writers were so afraid of making Zinnia a good character that they have to make turn Devon into NaziCorp just to make her morals superior by comparison.
and
Seriously, even though Zinnia is more moral than say, Alder or Gen VI Devon, she’s still an author darling of the developers, where everything has to be twisted in order to make her look good,
also appear to directly contradict.
Zinnia’s honestly pretty confusing – she’s got a lot of hero flags on her, but at the same time the narrative keeps insisting what she’s doing is reckless and morally grey even when it involves Nazicorp doing the complaints, as if they’ve got moral high ground.
If it makes you feel better about Courtney, in Aqua it’s the male admin who goes nuts and tries to blow up the world ’cause his “best bro” is feeling down.
“Best bro,” much like Achilles and Patroclus, I’m sure.
So they’re cousins is what you’re saying?
It actually really does! And it’s also nice that there’s at least one time they flipped genders and without totally changing the story.
The moral of the story so far? Everyone is evil except (possibly) the player character who is just trying to make the best of a bad situation.
Not seeing how Zinnia is evil.
She’s stealing from other people, joined Magma/aqua to help they raise the continent destroying primal legendary’s, destroys other people stuff, all based on century old knowledge?
I mean she’s doing it all for a good cause and she’s the lesser of all these evils, but she’s stolen from several people, more than likely killed some with the whole reviving super-ancient Pokémon plan all on a prophecy she has no proof about. She’s not out and out evil but she’s not exactly a saint either. Well intentioned extremist more than anything, but still an extremist.
That’s crazy. That’s like, several levels of crazy.
One of the things I like about the American constitution is that bit about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. It just sounds sort of nebulously nice until you realize that the original idea at the time was “life, liberty, and property”. Fuck property. If someone’s on fire I will steal your bottle of water without a second thought.
There’s a meteor coming to kill everybody. If Zinnia is wrong and Groudon/Kyogre doesn’t get Rayquaza’s attention, then possibly Groudon/Kyogre manages to kill us before the meteor hits, and probably the meteor beats Groudon/Kyogre to it, depending on how many days it takes them to make the planet unlivable. Even assuming you think theft has any particular meaning in a world where everyone’s about to die, the meteor’s going to turn it into glass with the rest of us, so the only way that property is going to be preserved at all is if she steals it now for her plan. If she refuses to give any of it back afterward, that and that alone would be wrong, and not even like “evil” wrong, just ordinary wrong.
We don’t know what evidence she has about the prophesy. That there’s an ancient prophesy doesn’t mean that there’s automatically no evidence, and the fact she knew about the meteor in advance of anybody else and was also aware of alt-Hoenn before anyone else suggests the exact opposite. (And again, there’s actually a meteor coming – even if she doesn’t think the prophesy is necessarily proven, this is the best plan anyone’s got and you lose nothing by the attempt.)
So we’re left with more than likely killed some with the whole reviving super-ancient Pokémon plan on the basis of actually no proof whatsoever and lots of evidence against (what with us being there for most of the plan and seeing no deaths) and destroying stuff, the only stuff I’ve seen her destroy so far being the thing for wiping out alt-Hoenn which – I mean, do you really think the fact it was Nazicorp property and not hers makes her evil for destroying their means of causing a planetary extinction?
She’s actually been the opposite of a well intentioned extremist, given she hasn’t been going on any sort of killing spree despite the fact it’s easy to argue that a few lives lost is acceptable when you’re looking at everyone dying. A well intentioned extremist is willing to massacre people when there’s not even any real reason it’s necessary, she seems to be only doing what’s actually necessary. (And that has nothing whatsoever with following prophesy – a person who actually had no evidence and was blindly following a prophesy would be a zealot, not a well-intentioned extremist).
The game is trying to sell the idea that she’s risking lives or whatever, except that the meteor is more dangerous than anything else. If the meteor was clearly stated to be something that’d definitely kill SOME people, while Groudon would kill ALL people if not stopped, then yeah, plan wake Groudon hoping Rayquaza shows up is risky (which is not the well-intentioned extremist trope, risk has nothing to do with that) and means it’s relevant to ask how sure she is of the prophesy and what evidence she has and if it’s right to make this decision for everybody else.
…No disrespect, but both heavy downpours on mountains and deserts/burning light in shallow waters and remote places kill.
I don’t mean Zinnia is evil as in some sociopath, I just mean she’s not good either, she is a well intention extremist by definition, there is a threat she’s trying to stop, and rather than share her knowledge and try to get a bunch of people to help her she goes and helps a criminal organization, before going on a crime spree across the continent where if she’s wrong can kill millions.
You are right though on the prophecy, the older draconiod/family member said it was an old story. If Zinnia only has that proof than yes, she’s risking everyone’s life on century’s old story edited who knows how many times. If she does have more knowledge than it’s different, but that would again bring us to the problem on why not share this info, get the champ, and elite four to help her out without so much fuss.
No where am I stating she’s a bad person, but she’s not pure as snow either and her whole method leave several questions.
rather than share her knowledge and try to get a bunch of people to help her she goes and helps a criminal organization, before going on a crime spree across the continent
Okay, but I would do this too if the government was run by Nazicorp. Criminals aren’t automatically evil, especially if the standard authorities are evil. Magma/Aqua didn’t appear to do any lasting damage up until the summoning, and she was certain that Rayquaza would nip that particular apocalypse in the bud. Meanwhile, the League has major ties to Nazicorp, which has been passively genociding pokemon for who knows how long.
Magma and Aqua can recruit enough people to fill several bases all based on ideals around land mass, and Zinnia couldn’t recruit the one guy with the levels 50 slaking by dewford town(I think that’s where he is…) And is there any evidence Drake or the psychic twins care about Steven or anyone else.
And this pretty much defines the problem with the whole plot. The way I see it, the fact that Zinnia knows so much about the Gen III Hoenn as if she was
A. teleported to the Gen VI universe from there from one of Devon’s mishaps and thus can gleam that they’re going to drop a meteor on her own world, and then used her knowledge of Rayquaza saving the day in Emerald and attempted to help Team Aqua/Magma summon Kyogre/Groudon in order to repeat that scenario and summon Rayquaza to nuke that meteor.
Or
B. Read the script and the developer’s tirade notes and had to add more to the other theory that the developers were just sick and tired of Pokemon that they had to make everybody else in ORAS evil in some form or another.
Yeah, there was no reason to add that “Yes, Jill, Devon is PokeSoylent Corporation’s Energy Branch and 1,000s of pokemon are sacrificed every day to power up your housing applications because we developers can’t handle grey and grey morality. Sweet dreams.”
That whole genocide thing is based off of a few lines of dialgoue as passively as possible and taking that trait out would do nothing to the whole plot since their whole “save this world by possibly destroying another one” plan is reason enough for people to side with Zinnia over PokeSoylent Devon alongside the idea of catching Rayquaza over watching an overcomplicated plan do everything.
So basically this is the Pokemon BW plot, where Alder and friends are supposed to win the debate of Pokemon liberation with Team Plasma’s side of the debate only allowed to make vain arguments in an attempt to make the whole conflict more grey on grey, but in the end having their whole side invalidated by Ghetsis running things.
This time the side the game’s siding with (Zinnia) is thankfully objectively morally superior and the opposite team (PokeSoylent Devon) gets invalidated by becoming Nazicorp/PokeSoylent with Steven’s arguments against Zinnia’s plan having as much impact and care put into them as Team Plasma’s arguments because everybody knows Steven wasn’t going to win this, he’s Hitler Junior! Also he’s not going to lead you to the metagame’s strongest pokemon ever!
Besides, the whole “summoning Rayquaza to destroy a meteor” plan is ripped off wholly from Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red/Blue Rescue Team.
Way to change your username instead of respond to criticism. Not that I have any idea what point you’re trying to make here, either.
Additionally, I don’t think a franchise can “rip off” its own canon.
Additionally, I don’t think a franchise can “rip off” its own canon.
…Yes it can? It’s called self-plagiarism. And it is a pretty big problem in these long-running franchises (see also Legend of Zelda).
“Self-plagiarism” is an oxymoron that irritates me. It’s literally not possible to plagiarize yourself, that’s not what the word means.
If a writer wants to take another stab at an idea I don’t really see anything inherently wrong with that (hello, Tsukihime). Complaining that a franchise addresses a point of its own canon– rayquaza saved people from a meteor– in the relevant main-series game is just bizarre.
Eh, the problem isn’t really that Devon is evil, the problem is that the game doesn’t seem to realize it’s evil.
As you said, the genocide thing is based on a few lines of dialogue, which openly contradicts the supposed goal of making Devon look as evil as possible. If that was the goal, you’d expect Devon people to go on villainous monologues or try to convince the MC to join the dark side (I’ve heard picachu furnaces are great for making cookies), or make excuses, or, you know, do something to make them look evil instead of acting like the energy source is exotic but ultimately harmless, which is what we have here.
You compare Devon to Team Plasma, so it’s worth noting that every time you talked to TP goons, they’d tell you how they just love abusing pokemon, and various NPCs would tell you about how heartbreaking it is to have their pokemon stolen, etc. Basically, there was an obvious effort to make them look evil in player’s eyes.
With Devon, it’s absent. As you said, if only you erase a few lines of dialogue, Devon suddenly ceases to be so absurdly evil.
Which most likely means it wasn’t intended to be so absurdly evil.
The whole thing feels like someone slipped a few lines past the editors or forgot to add a few lines rather than a conscious decision.
So should i use one team of pokemon and completely buff them up or should i constantly switch them out and level them all up over time?
Oh yea i also need an eevee and i don’t know how to get it.
Why did this post come back up top?