#pokopia plot

This is genuinely the best plot of a Pokemon Game I have ever played or seen. It's not heavy handed, it's optional, even, but it drives you to adventure. You start out with the driving question: what happened here? And that drives you to keep searching, keep exploring. Through that exploration, you find hints and stories.

You are a pokemon, ever so lovingly tucked safely into the PC box as the world falls to disaster after disaster. Humanity is leaving for the stars, and they cannot bring you with them, but goddamn if they aren't going to try and keep you alive. They plan to visit, plan to be so much more involved, but they made an error. They don't have enough fuel to come back.

So you are saved by a fallback, a 'just in case'. Every time you make a new habitat, the PC releases a pokemon out into the world that might survive there. You are here because someone thought to try for the sake of others, and now you can go out and create so much good.

And you do, you help create flourishing, thriving environments, and it all leads back to a strange tower in the very first area, built by someone you know if tricking you. But they're asking for help and you give it anyway. You give food and supplies and furniture and electricity, and then finally, a photo of you. The party poppers won't fit, so you set them off outside with the mentor whose been there the whole time.

The building is a rocket, a rocket with enough fuel to get off the ground, and a rocket with enough fuel to bring the humans back. You know none of this, you're a Ditto and you can't read, but it is your actions, your hope and your drive to find your friend that sends them the very thing they need to come home.

And on that ship is a photo of you, a pokemon, in a world lush with life and alive again, taken after the humans left. It's proof it's safe to come back now, it's safe to come home. The world is ready and you are waiting there for them. The rocket, battered and damaged, reaches the humans, and it's all thanks to you.

Pokopia is a game about how it's always possible to rebuild, to make something amazing out of so little. It is a game about hope, and hope comes to you and to the humans that you send one very late homecoming message to.