A What If Thread: BW and all proceeding gens part of a hard reboot.

[Mitchman]

I was thinking about this lately, and the more I delve into this, the more I want to doscuss it. Basocally my question and thread topic is based on the idea that Gamefreak went with gen 5 as a ground zero, a new beginning lets say for the series. Bascally, instead of just using new Pokemon, resetting the route count and dealing witha mostly fresh slate, they went one step beyond. The series up till gen say taking place decades in the past, and no characters or events relate to the previous regions. Remakes still happen, but never try to tie into the current canon. Would you have enjoyed the series last two gens if that were the case? Or just having the Pokemon themselves from the world would've been meaningless, and thus taking some of the enjoyment out of the games? Cause personally, if they went ahead and cjamged things up by cresting a nee era of sorts, it would have felt much better.

 

[Kaydreamer]

I'm not sure exactly what it is you're asking. You may want to go back and rephrase your OP to make it a little clearer.

The Delta Episode in ORAS confirmed the suspicions that Gen VI takes place in an alternate universe to all the generations that came before. That means X and Y were in fact hard reboots of the series continuity. We can probably assume the world outside Kalos and Hoenn is similar to how it's been in previous games, with similar characters, but we can't say for sure.

Gen V is part of the old universe and therefore the previous continuity. Despite changes in the route numbers and a large new Dex, it's not Gen V which presses the reset button. That would be Gen VI and the new Mega Evolution universe.

 

[Bolt Strike]

Yeah, I'm not sure what the OP is asking either.

 

[PaulTheProtist]

And neither am I. I think he is saying what if BW had no connections to other games in the series, but it's pretty unclear.

 

[Osprey]

Uh. Okay, through all that typo gibberish, what I think he's asking is if we'd want to see a core series Pokemon game that is 100% cut off from the continuity and canonical constants that all the games have had since RBGY. No references to Team Rocket, Plasma, or any of those other guys. No calls forward or backward. A new universe with the new gen as its starting point.

Does that sound about right?

If that's what the OP was asking, no, I don't really see the need to 100% reboot the Pokemon universe. I also don't think that the multiple worlds theory that the Delta Episode more or less confirmed as a true reboot either.

Honestly, between the core series and the two main spinoff series, Mystery Dungeon and Ranger, it seems to me that the only narrative that is completely separate from the rest is Mystery Dungeon. And I'm okay if it stays that way. No need to go retconning a bunch of stuff from Gen V onwards, now is there?

 

[El_]

Mitch is most likely referring to how many in the fandom perceived Unova as a fresh start in the series, due to having a game set in:

- A non Japanese based region
- Introducing the most Pokemon since Generation 1
- Having none of the older Pokemon being "catchable" during the main campaign
- Filling in some of the old traditional roles these older Pokes stated back in Generation 1: Woobats instead of Zubats for example, or Sawk & Throh filling in for the original Hitmon fighting duo
- Featuring something of an actual well woven plot-line that was given better emphasis within said campaign than the prior villain teams
- Character development for several in-game characters over the course of the campaign, and further development in BW2

This and and likely a few other reasons I might have missed is why I liked the original BW so much, and again why many said those games felt fresh. However, I wouldn't exactly call them a hard reboot no matter how much they called back to the original RGBY games. Perhaps if they went a bit further in changing up the formula, then I would say so. They did try at the very least, which is a good thing. What Gamefreak truly did Gen 5 and afterwards, is basically shift the direction from the east to the western world of the Pokemon universe, and setting the games further into the future via timeskip. Definitely a "soft reboot" of sorts, but if anything I'd say its a change in direction which fits their earlier comments about the direction of the Pokemon world/games evolving as time goes on.

@Thread topic What I'm guessing Mitchman is asking is this: Would you still enjoy the main series, had the Unova games went one step further and taken place in practically a wholly new Pokemon verse? If I'm understanding OP correctly, no Zubats in this verse, just Woobats right? Hopefully this is all understandable, and I'm not just rambling on as usual.

 

[Boss1708]

I think the OP is not worded correctly, however I understood what he means. And I am glad Gen V wasn´t hard reboot, I like the franchise like it is, I don´t know why people want to change the games we know and like!

Anyway, I think Gen VI is the closest thing to a reboot that we have had. It introduced the biggest change in a lot of time: Fairy types and Mega Evolution.

Of course, explaining this change ingame is not easy, but I am not a big fan of the excuse GF gave us in the Delta Episode.

 

[The Outrage]

So...you want Pokemon rebooted and starting with Black and White...with it being the exact same game, minus any references to old regions. So literally the exact same game with minor NPC dialogue change.


.-.

All I'm hearing is "I want Pokemon, but AMERICA"

And then you want the games that you rebooted out of the series retroactively remade. So literally what's been happening with every generation up to Gen III. Except you don't want them to acknowledge the other games. So basically the exact same games we have, minus the minor NPC references.

 

[Alola]

I'm not sure exactly what it is you're asking. You may want to go back and rephrase your OP to make it a little clearer.

The Delta Episode in ORAS confirmed the suspicions that Gen VI takes place in an alternate universe to all the generations that came before. That means X and Y were in fact hard reboots of the series continuity. We can probably assume the world outside Kalos and Hoenn is similar to how it's been in previous games, with similar characters, but we can't say for sure.

Gen V is part of the old universe and therefore the previous continuity. Despite changes in the route numbers and a large new Dex, it's not Gen V which presses the reset button. That would be Gen VI and the new Mega Evolution universe.

This was confirmed? I thought a timeline was released that proved that they do in fact all happen in the same universe?

 

[Necrozma]

This was confirmed? I thought a timeline was released that proved that they do in fact all happen in the same universe?

There was a tweet, but it was deleted, AFAIK.

 

[godiego]

This was confirmed? I thought a timeline was released that proved that they do in fact all happen in the same universe?

the timeline that was tweeted by Matsumiya confirms the general direction of the games (FRLG/ORAS/RSE -> HGSS/DPPt -> BW -> BW2/XY). of course, that was also prior to the release of ORAS and the Delta Episode, which confirmed the general multiverse theory for Pokemon. given how ORAS and Origins handled Mega Evolution, you could probably assume that most Mega!Regions' plots are almost identical to their non-Mega counterpart with the only substantial changes to the plot being the presence (or absence) of Mega Evolution meaning that the timeline would still be largely intact regardless of the fact that HGSS and XY are not in the same universe.

 

[The Outrage]

Technically, each version is its own universe (as evidenced by Black and White) so to say "they do in fact all happen in the same universe" is incorrect--the major events all happen in all the universes, except for half of them, Mega Evolution didn't happen, and in the other half, it did. Team Rocket, Groudon and Kyogre's awakening, Team Galactic, Team Plasma...they all would have happened in the Megaverse as well, in the same general order revealed by Matsumiya.

 

[Arceus the Dragon]

I am not sure what this mean but I am pretty sure that none games from BW and all that came before it are a hard reboot (unless the reboots are the same as remakes in which case FRLG and HGSS are).

 

[EmpoleonProd]

I could link you to a bunch of threads I've participated in within the last year, but here's something that'll give you an idea:

If anyone else remembers those threads, we had loads of fun discussing this topic, the Delta Episode confirmed this as fact as Zinnia was worried about RSE Hoenn being forced to deal with something they weren't as technologically prepared for as ORAS Hoenn was.