#doomcaptor

Try looking at it this way:

Almost every book is just words on a page, describing events that happen. Where’s the innovation, right? Some books innovate, doing weird stuff with colored text or unusual typography or postmodern nonlinear narratives. How come most authors just stick to words on a page describing events that happen, and nobody’s decrying that for being stale?

Well, I’d say a great part of the reason is just that words on a page describing events that happen is a very tried and true format and there’s nothing wrong with it. Not everything needs to be innovating in every aspect of every thing. It’s very cool when some authors do, but not doing so is not a flaw in every other book that’s not doing that. People enjoy reading plain narrative books. It’s an established thing that works. The content of the words on the page is enough to make each book unique and worthwhile, and it’s not all that relevant to the vast majority of people that yeah, they’re all just words on a page.

Liking standard narrative books, and just wanting to read more standard narrative books, with no desire to branch out into avant-garde postmodernist literature, is obviously not the same thing as wanting to just read literally the same book over and over. Yeah, I can replay my old games - but I do want new Pokémon games with new stories and regions and Pokémon. I just care very little how much they innovate with the main gameplay and structure. I already like the main gameplay and structure just fine, just like I like narrative books just fine.

Yes, there should be video games that do wild new things with the format, invent new types of gameplay and do something totally different from anything you’ve seen before. I love playing cool innovative games! But I don’t really think that it’s a flaw in a given video game if it’s not doing that. And in particular, if there’s a game whose gameplay I just enjoy to bits - I am more than fine with a sequel to that game that's pretty much just the same thing but more of it, gameplay-wise. Heck yes, more of the thing that I like! Awesome!

But as I said, that’s a personal preference.

Look - Let’s Go was a shakeup of the gameplay formula, right? Innovation? Would you have wanted it to just be the next main series game, wild battles are never coming back, next time they might do something of the same caliber? Well, maybe you would. I know at least one person who would’ve liked that. But I know I would absolutely not. I think it’s cool we got something like Let’s Go, as a spin-off - but if Sword and Shield had not been a return to formula, it would’ve significantly damaged my interest in the series, because Let’s Go just does not scratch my Pokémon itch in quite the right way. Again, I really like the main series formula. Most significant deviations from it are going to be something I like less. By all means make more deviations, more different games for different sorts of people! Maybe they’ll even eventually make a kind of Pokémon game that I happen to like even more than the main series. But it hasn’t happened yet, and I’m not convinced it ever will.

I love his designs (he thinks about the realism and then pushes them that little bit further). Would you be okay with them if they matched the tone of the movie? (i.e. ‘gritty’, a bit of horror)

No! I don’t want a gritty horror Pokémon movie. A movie about ugly, unpleasant gritty horror monsters isn’t a Pokémon movie in any useful sense. They might fit fine into a gritty horrorish movie that has nothing to do with Pokémon, but I absolutely do not want them or anything like them in my Pokémon.

The thing is I think RJ’s designs are intellectually interesting and really creative and fantastically drawn, but they are very unappealing.

Charizard is my favorite Pokémon, right? I love Charizard. I’m not sure I could name any particular features of Charizard that make me like it, but I’ve loved Charizard fanart in all sorts of styles that takes various creative liberties. Here’s RJ Palmer’s realistic Charizard:

Now, I could make specific critiques of this thing. It looks weirdly unbalanced standing on its hind legs when the upper body is so massive compared to the tiny dainty hips, and those wings look even less likely to carry it than those of actual canon Charizard. But mostly, to me, there is just nothing appealing about that thing whatsoever. It’s just this weird ugly lizard with some wings on it. Sure, it’s a big orange reptile with a flame on its tail, but that doesn’t make it a Charizard. If Charizard looked like that, I wouldn’t like Charizard. If Pokémon in general looked like his designs, I wouldn’t like Pokémon, period. I don’t want to train that. If I saw this on the cover of a game I’d think ‘ugh, that’s ugly’ and look at the next cover.

And Charizard is one of his more grounded and faithful designs. His Gastly that’s a very fat bat whose ears look like eyes from afar? Holy shit, that’s creative, but please get it away from me. I don’t have words to describe the extent to which I Do Not Want his Gastly family. I’m even someone who thinks actual real-life bats are adorable, but no. There are a couple I’m okay with (Vulpix and Ninetales, thank goodness, are pretty much just foxes), but overall, nnnnnnope.

I think the Eevee family may be the most illustrative example. The canon Eeveelutions are all adorable and very naturally animal-like; surely if they existed in real life you’d expect them to be at least about as cute and appealing as actual real-life cats or dogs, right?

I can’t say I’ve ever really given that any serious thought, actually, hmm.

It’d be neat, but the lack of diverse wildlife to base the actual Pokémon on might be a bit of a problem. We’ve got something like literally seven species of wild mammal (arctic fox, reindeer, mink, polar bears, mice, rats, rabbits, where rabbits means ‘pet rabbits that people release who occasionally survive the winter’ and polar bears means ‘one gets stranded here and is promptly killed maybe once every five or ten years’), no reptiles whatsoever, just generally almost nothing but birds (on land, that is; I guess you’d be able to make a decent chunk of Water-types). And then there’s farm animals and pets (and okay, you could have an Icelandic horse Pokémon, and an Icelandic sheepdog, but they’d be a bit Yet Another Horse and Yet Another Dog). Could go heavy on the mythology and folklore angle, I guess? There’s plenty of that, although most of it involves humanoids (always a bit more awkward to make into Pokémon).

Readmored for spoilers!

Ooh nice, is Reykjavik cathedral a gym though? It's so majestic and iconic and I'm kinda obsessed with it. It must be at least a pokestop.