My Pokémon Scarlet/Violet Wishlist
Ability to catch 'em all! Service for the other generations! DANGER! All herein!
The latest news on Pokémon: Scarlet and Violet dropped yesterday. Since the game’s announcement in February, Game Freak and Nintendo have kept relatively tight lips about what it will involve. They’ve revealed a release date of November 18. They unveiled the starters at first announcement: the happy Grass kitty Sprigatito, the dopey Fire lizard Fuecoco, and the helpful Water duck Quaxly. They’ve slowly leaked a few new Pokémon and regional forms, including the meme-inspired Normal pig Lechonk and a regional variant Poison/Ground Wooper. They unveiled the legendary creatures who will be your means of transport around the Paldea region, and the new battle enhancement, Tera, harkens to a more streamlined, better-looking version of Dynamax from Generation VIII. Most importantly, the game was revealed to be open-world with three different mainline quests to be completed. This is a huge announcement given that in the past, the gameplay had to be completed in a linear fashion. Freeform completion has become all the rage nowadays, even if it has always been around (looking at NES title Nightshade as a perfect example of this).
It's not unprecedented to have so much mystery surrounding a game three months before its release, especially in the Pokémon series. The advance information surrounding Pokémon Legends: Arceus was so sparse that experts and observers were certain the game would be delayed past the release date. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. The drawback of having such little info leak out is that the human brain, whether or not it wants to admit it, wants to have as much information about an upcoming thing as possible. We all want to calibrate our expectations and have the mini-hit of dopamine just thinking about the experience as we do when we have it. However, the converse of that lack of advance is for the short time between the present and release, our imaginations can run completely wild. I’m talking about wishlists, things we want to see in the new game. During this time of unfettered dreaming, I stress not to pay attention to any of the so-called leaks from non-Nintendo sources, especially this far out from release. The further out from the game’s availability, the less accurate they are. Plus, they ruin the fun, right?
I have several things I want to see in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. I’m not going to list all of them because I will be here for hours. However, I do want to hit a few big key items I’d like to see in there. Some of them are realistic. Others might be farfetched (but not Farfetch’d). Here they are, in no particular order.
A Full Pokédex in the game – None of the three games from Generation VIII contained a full retinue of Pokémon. In fact, there were ‘Mons available in one game that were impossible to catch or transfer into the other two. The funny thing was that at first, the entire Dex to date wasn’t available in Pokémon Sun and Moon either. I don’t know if it was the outcry or if the game, the last entry into the fully handheld set of games was rushed before the entire retinue was loaded in, but Game Freak has been kicking around the idea of exclusivity for a while now. Rumor has it that there will be Pokémon who will not be loaded into Scarlet and Violet. I hope that’s bunk, and that Gen VIII was the test run to work the bugs out of full 3D with the Switch.
The dirty truth is that each available Dex in each of the three games was balanced that completion was superfluous. However, the slogan of the series is not “Gotta catch enough to have a balanced arsenal.” It’s “Gotta Catch ‘Em All.” There’s a good shot that the number of Pokemon available when everyone’s jumped in the pool will be over 1,000. The dream of every single super nerd trainer like myself since the beginning of the series has been to have LEGION. I want to have all of them available to me, from the oldest ones like Rhydon and Mew to the newest ones like Pawmi and Cetitan. I want the most powerful creatures at my beck and call like Arceus and Zeraora and the puniest ones like Pachirisu and Volbeat. GIVE THEM TO ME.
New Regional Forms to concentrate on generations other than the first one – When Regional Forms were introduced in Generation VII, they sent the fandom into a tizzy. Alternate forms of existing Pokémon? Cool! Every single new form that was introduced in that game was of a Generation I Pokémon though. Whenever a new wrinkle gets introduced, it feels like the marketing of it heavily concentrates on the original 151. It makes sense, to be honest. So much of the cultural cache around the games and even the anime center around that first installment. There are still sizeable numbers of oldheads who say they only recognize the first game. I get it; I’m a wrestling fan, where promoters and older fans alike cannot get their heads unstuck from 1998. They continue to chase the dragon (Dragonite?) of that original high.
However, Pokémon did not become an international, 25+-year phenomenon off the original 151 and the Kanto region. Each generation begets new fans with new nostalgia attachments. The number of original Pokémon families that don’t have a special enhancement, a regional form, or an evolution past what they got in Red, Blue, and Yellow is minuscule if even numbered. I think it’s time to stop mining the original games so the other gens can get that same attention. To their credit, they started strong; the first Paldean regional variant introduced was a Poison/Ground version of Wooper, the lovable mud-type mudskipper/axolotl from Generation II. I hope this is the start of a trend that puts the other regions and individual PokéDexes in the forefront and leaves the first games mostly alone.
The element of danger – One of the best elements of Pokémon Legends: Arceus was the ability to catch Pokémon without needing to engage them in battle first. The direct interface led for some unique strategy, but it also added the element of danger to your own person. I need that to bleed into the mainline RPG. Game Freak has shown their audience vast expanses with Pokémon going about their daily lives. Why should a rampaging Hydreigon or a timid lil’ Lechonk automatically trigger a thrown Poké Ball? The interaction with the environment was one of the big selling points on PLA, and it’s something I think would add a lot of flavor to the mainline games.
Adding an “active time” element to battling – Pokémon has kept the promise of the earliest JRPGs alive with purely turn-based battling. While one could argue that has satisfied a necessary evil to keep the focus on the main crux of the game – collection – it now more than ever is out of date when it comes to gameplay. The pure turn-based battling system was passe back when Square Enix figured out how to get rid of it way back in the ‘90s with the SNES Final Fantasy games. Why should Pokémon continue to mire in the past? Older gamers almost certainly have at least played a title like Final Fantasy VII. Younger gamers aren’t unperceptive children.
Adding an “active time” element where speed isn’t expressed as a binary but rather as a timer would enhance the gameplay. There are a ton of Pokémon that have moves rendered unusable because they are so slow. I guess the flip-side to all of this is if you thought battling was too dependent on speed now, defense might become an afterthought. Of course, you cannot tinker too hard in one direction without making adjustments in another. There’s no way Game Freak and Nintendo are restricted not to make moves to enhance defensive statistics and the way move damage is calculated.
That’s just a smattering of things I want to see in the new Pokémon game. I’m not a consumer tyrant who is super demanding, and a lot of my other wishes are generic or so arcane I probably can’t put them into words. However, I do think it’s good to have expectations and standards. Even if none of the above happen, as long as they give me a game that is worth 200+ hours of my time, I will be incredibly happy as I have been even with the worst of the Pokémon games I played. It’s just exciting when your wishes and their output line up, y’know?