#on design

I'm talking things that come in and out of nowhere and kill you. For example, the Reaper in Persona games (which also doubles as a late-game superboss), FOEs from Etrian Odyssey (and Metaphor now, apparently), and monster houses in Mystery Dungeon.

Oh sorry, did I say monster houses in Mystery Dungeon? I meant monster parties in Rogue. Somehow, that mechanic from the original Rogue that didn't make it into modern western roguelikes is still present in most eastern ones. Consider that if you're too rigid about the Berlin Interpretation.

The interesting thing about this is that it goes back to what is virtually the roots of the computer RPG. They were originally made by the kind of people who played D&D as a wargame, where an adversarial relationship between the player and the Game Master was expected. In fact, it was part of the fun. So this is the video game equivalent of "took too long, the monsters ambush you."

In the original context, this wasn't a purposeful design decision, but a quick fix by Game Masters who weren't using a ruleset that had any written-in way to prevent dawdling. But in the video game genre of dungeon crawling RPGs, it was imported wholesale. It's a bit like the "killer shopkeep" in that regard.

A narrative continuation of the past series, focused on the preexisting setting. These games would be more focused on worldbuilding and be significantly more experimental than the main series had been up to that point.

A mechanical continuation of the past series, basically functioning also as a spiritual successor to the Stadium games. This would refine the gameplay mechanics of Gens I-IV in a manner similar to many other multiplayer games, without introducing too many new Pokémon or mechanics to mitigate power creep.

You can imagine my surprise now that they're basically doing this. The Legends subseries is number 1, and soon enough "we have Showdown at home" Pokémon Champions is coming out and is basically doing the competitive thing the games really struggle to while bound to being a mainline Pokémon game. The only part I didn't accidentally predict is that there are still going to be mainline Pokémon games.