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Speculation Johto Remake Discussion (Johto Confirmed?!)

There's two things that a Johto Let's Go remake would truly need to do, but I don't have faith because of their whole commitment to keeping things as faithful as possible lately when it comes to remakes. Johto's Pokemon distribution needs to be handled A LOT better. I mean, there's Pokemon you can't even catch until Kanto, and it resulted in a much smaller amount of new at the time Pokemon available until the post game. The other thing is not ignoring evolutions from other generations.
 
Oh god please no. Whether they decide to go with the Let's Go route or the BD/SP route, Johto remakes in this era would be mediocre and would never surpass the originals or HG/SS. Nintendo needs to milk the franchise in other ways instead of relying on nostalgia to sell. It's getting unoriginal and boring seeing them appeal to nostalgic players while ignoring true innovation and creativity.
 
Oh god please no. Whether they decide to go with the Let's Go route or the BD/SP route, Johto remakes in this era would be mediocre and would never surpass the originals or HG/SS. Nintendo needs to milk the franchise in other ways instead of relying on nostalgia to sell. It's getting unoriginal and boring seeing them appeal to nostalgic players while ignoring true innovation and creativity.

I don't think Nintendo has anything to do with the remakes being too faithful, the Pokemon games don't seem to follow quite the same design philosophy as Nintendo's other IPs. It's probably another entity like Game Freak or TPC deciding to make the remakes ridiculously similar to the originals.

Everything else though, totally agreed.
 
I wonder where the major disconnect is between Game Freak, TPCi, and the fanbase. From what I see on several forms of media, everyone wants remakes to be made like they were with FRLG and HGSS, where it's everything from the original games, AND more content added in on top, even ORAS did a good job of these kinds of things with the Delta Episode, making Deoxys catchable, a complete overhaul of secret base functionality, an expanded Pokedex to include evolutionary relatives, soaring to mirage spots, really the only criticism ORAS can ever receive is the absence of the Battle Frontier. If it had that it would genuinely just be the perfect definitive Pokemon game that games like Emerald, Platinum, and HGSS are considered to be.

Why did they stop innovating and improving? Even with LGPE, I loved the concept of the game, and the games were graphically beautiful, the best-looking Pokemon games to date, but was the removal of Pokemon really necessary? Back in the pre-Gen 7 days, a remake would allow you to have EVERY Pokemon to exist up to that generation, you wanna use a Xerneas in ORAS? Do it. Rayquaza in FRLG? Yep. Arceus in HGSS? There's literally an event coded INTO THE GAME for if you transfer one to HGSS. All the Pokemon from USUM should've been usable in LGPE, but at BARE minimum, all evolutionary relatives should've made the cut. If you don't want me to use Dawn Wings Necrozma in a nostalgic remake of Yellow, okay fine, but why can't I at least evolve my Magmar into a Magmortar or my Eevee into a Sylveon? We're still staying within the region's evolutionary families which I think fits thematically enough.

The removal of Abilities, held items, and EVs as well as like half the moves in the game was completely unnecessary, one of the main reasons I used to love remakes so much was I got to play through the same region and the same story but with new tools at my disposal. Using Megas in ORAS, being able to take better advantage of the physical/special split in HGSS, having access to the Sevii Islands in FRLG as well as all the Johto Pokemon available, they were the same as the originals, but different too. Games like LGPE and BDSP are trying too hard to be faithful to a fault, to the point of removing features that have been in the games for literally generations. I still enjoy the games for what they are, but I do miss the days when they still innovated with the games. ORAS kinda feels like the last games that did any of that. I suppose I'll at least give BDSP credit for including the original 493, but that does almost feel like the bare minimum... I suppose it could've been worse, we could've just been handed only Pokemon in the Platinum Dex and told to move along.

The main thing giving me hope is Legends: Arceus. If that game is truly as innovative as they try to make it look and is a game that lives up to the hype, I hope it sells like crazy so it inspires Game Freak to continue to innovate. I think they are trying to turn things around with this upcoming game and I think if LA succeeds, that will mean better, more innovative remakes and improving the new generations as well. That's not to say the games aren't still good, because they are and I still do enjoy them, but they aren't anywhere close to 9/10 or 10/10 games. I've been around Pokemon forums for a long time and the last game I remember having truly no criticism whatsoever on release was HGSS, it was just seen as this sort of ultimate pinnacle of Pokemon gaming. Every game since has been heavily criticized by portions of the fanbase for one reason or another. Lack of old Pokemon, lack of new Pokemon, not enough Pokemon, too many Pokemon, not enough postgame, too easy, boring story, etc, but a lot of those criticized games have aged into having a generally positive reputation, BW, BW2, and ORAS to name a few.
 
Actually FRLG wasn’t innocent in this regard either, as anybody who had a friendly Golbat or Chansey before the postgame can attest. Weird stuff like that is surprisingly not new.

I found Let’s Go not having any cross-Gen evolutions odd (even though they did have Alolan variants and Megas…like, huh?), but I ended up having fun with those games. A Let’s Go Johto has more potential to include future evolutions in my opinion, because they were the generation to introduce future evos and prevos in the first place. I attempted to do the math, and if it’s correct a Johto game with future evolutions and regionals (that we currently know of) would have a pool of 314 Pokémon to work with. Throw Megas in there (I refuse to discuss Gigantamax lol) and the total increases to 334 - not a bad amount for one pair of games.

HGSS remakes, on the other hand, would likely only have the 493 we got in BDSP, because “faithfulness”. I suppose we’ll have to wait for Legends: Arceus to see if they’ll patch Hisuian Pokémon into Sinnoh. That would open things up more for Johto and Kanto.
 
Actually FRLG wasn’t innocent in this regard either, as anybody who had a friendly Golbat or Chansey before the postgame can attest. Weird stuff like that is surprisingly not new.
I can forgive that though because you still got access to the Pokémon eventually, whereas LGPE just pretends they don’t exist entirely. In FRLG I guess you could say the Johto Pokémon are just treated like they’re a new discovery or that they’re just really rare to see in Kanto, although I much prefer what HGSS or ORAS did where new evolutions were just straight up accessible whenever.
 
The removal of Abilities, held items, and EVs as well as like half the moves in the game was completely unnecessary
Go didn't (and still doesn't) have abilities or held items; the point was to remake Yellow in a way that is more like Go than the 3DS games. LGPE's AV system is candy-based like Go's.

Legends won't even have natures, let alone abilities or held items. The stat system seems to be fairly different, too. This is arguably warranted by the battle system.

I think that LGPE overdid the removal of moves, but honestly 50 more would have sufficed for the Kanto roster. Sugimori wanted to streamline the games as early as 2013:

In addition to the vast number of Pokémon we now have, together with their attacks, abilities and items, Sugimori feels that we won’t be able to decrease the number of Pokémon, but it might be in the series’ best interests to make a large adjustment to the number of attacks, abilities and items. This is also something he’s heard from Pokémon fans, he reveals.

Hmm. They did end up decreasing the number of critters per game. SwSh's post-DLC count is closer to BW's than XY's.
 
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I wonder where the major disconnect is between Game Freak, TPCi, and the fanbase. From what I see on several forms of media, everyone wants remakes to be made like they were with FRLG and HGSS, where it's everything from the original games, AND more content added in on top, even ORAS did a good job of these kinds of things with the Delta Episode, making Deoxys catchable, a complete overhaul of secret base functionality, an expanded Pokedex to include evolutionary relatives, soaring to mirage spots, really the only criticism ORAS can ever receive is the absence of the Battle Frontier. If it had that it would genuinely just be the perfect definitive Pokemon game that games like Emerald, Platinum, and HGSS are considered to be.

Why did they stop innovating and improving? Even with LGPE, I loved the concept of the game, and the games were graphically beautiful, the best-looking Pokemon games to date, but was the removal of Pokemon really necessary? Back in the pre-Gen 7 days, a remake would allow you to have EVERY Pokemon to exist up to that generation, you wanna use a Xerneas in ORAS? Do it. Rayquaza in FRLG? Yep. Arceus in HGSS? There's literally an event coded INTO THE GAME for if you transfer one to HGSS. All the Pokemon from USUM should've been usable in LGPE, but at BARE minimum, all evolutionary relatives should've made the cut. If you don't want me to use Dawn Wings Necrozma in a nostalgic remake of Yellow, okay fine, but why can't I at least evolve my Magmar into a Magmortar or my Eevee into a Sylveon? We're still staying within the region's evolutionary families which I think fits thematically enough.

The removal of Abilities, held items, and EVs as well as like half the moves in the game was completely unnecessary, one of the main reasons I used to love remakes so much was I got to play through the same region and the same story but with new tools at my disposal. Using Megas in ORAS, being able to take better advantage of the physical/special split in HGSS, having access to the Sevii Islands in FRLG as well as all the Johto Pokemon available, they were the same as the originals, but different too. Games like LGPE and BDSP are trying too hard to be faithful to a fault, to the point of removing features that have been in the games for literally generations. I still enjoy the games for what they are, but I do miss the days when they still innovated with the games. ORAS kinda feels like the last games that did any of that. I suppose I'll at least give BDSP credit for including the original 493, but that does almost feel like the bare minimum... I suppose it could've been worse, we could've just been handed only Pokemon in the Platinum Dex and told to move along.

The main thing giving me hope is Legends: Arceus. If that game is truly as innovative as they try to make it look and is a game that lives up to the hype, I hope it sells like crazy so it inspires Game Freak to continue to innovate. I think they are trying to turn things around with this upcoming game and I think if LA succeeds, that will mean better, more innovative remakes and improving the new generations as well. That's not to say the games aren't still good, because they are and I still do enjoy them, but they aren't anywhere close to 9/10 or 10/10 games. I've been around Pokemon forums for a long time and the last game I remember having truly no criticism whatsoever on release was HGSS, it was just seen as this sort of ultimate pinnacle of Pokemon gaming. Every game since has been heavily criticized by portions of the fanbase for one reason or another. Lack of old Pokemon, lack of new Pokemon, not enough Pokemon, too many Pokemon, not enough postgame, too easy, boring story, etc, but a lot of those criticized games have aged into having a generally positive reputation, BW, BW2, and ORAS to name a few.

The more relevant disconnect is the disconnect between the desires of the hardcore fans on the internet and message boards and the casual fans. Despite the numerous issues with the series and the games getting worse and worse, the games keep selling. And Game Freak and TPC pay more attention to what sells than what makes the fans happy.

As for how this all started, the root cause seems to have been a change in design philosophy in 5th gen. They shifted towards appealing to casuals around that time due to complaints over getting lost in DPPt, so they decided to simplify the games to appeal to casuals. Other factors began to arise shortly after such as the shift to 3D requiring more development time to be spent on graphics and the rise of mobile gaming which create a snowball effect that pushed them further and further towards cutting content. And this rubbed off on the remakes by having them ignore third version content and trend more and more towards making the games minimalist copy/paste jobs instead of legitimate recreations of the game for a modern era.

Legends Arceus is a glimmer of hope towards reversing course here. BotW and other similar sandbox/open world games fly in the face of everything they've started to believe about the key to success in gaming (although if you really understand console gaming, this wouldn't be terribly surprising but Game Freak and TPC obviously do not), so now they've been starting to experiment with this sort of gameplay in Pokemon. If Game Freak can get a piece of that success they might reconsider. But for that to happen, Legends Arceus has to sell, and it has to sell about as much if not more than other Switch Pokemon games like LGPE, SwSh, and BDSP. If not, that's just going to reinforce the notion that a high quantity and quality of content isn't necessary for Pokemon to be successful. If you want the games to start having content and making larger changes, you need to buy Legends Arceus and pray that the casuals do too. Otherwise it's just going to be minimalist faithful remakes from now until the end of time.

Actually FRLG wasn’t innocent in this regard either, as anybody who had a friendly Golbat or Chansey before the postgame can attest. Weird stuff like that is surprisingly not new.

Yeah, FRLG didn't quite change as much either. It was basically the same game as FRLG (aside from adding in Dark and Steel types, held items, and abilities) with a tacked on post game. But it seemed that up until the change in philosophy in 5th gen, the series was slowly improving, getting bigger and better with each entry and making larger and larger changes from game to game. Then things peaked in 4th gen when they decided to casualize the games after that point and it's been downhill ever since.
 
I believe there is a chance the remakes of Johto will not come into existence, at least not before the remakes of the 5th gen games. Still, if they are released, I believe they will be simple games, without much ambition, such as BDSP. And if so, it will be cool, but not amazing.

As for the 5th generation remakes, which, in my opinion, was the most ambitious generation in the franchise, I hope they don't make remakes as simple and literal as BDSP.
 
Also, if they do a GS2, I'd like to see a Goldenrod Gym become a Fairy type gym with a new gym leader. There's so many good Fairy types in the Johto for them to show off, Granbull, Togetic, Azumarill, Clefable, and Wigglytuff would be solid options for gym Pokemon. Whitney and her infamous Miltank can still hang around, but in a different capacity. Maybe she could be battled somewhere else in the storyline or be promoted to Elite 4 or something. But with so many typical Goldenrod gym Pokemon being retyped to Fairy and Goldenrod's theme fitting Fairy type, it feels more natural for the gym to be Fairy type now.

I'm curious to see what speculation about Whitney's gym looks like. It's kind of hilarious actually, since the layout of the gym is of a giant Clefairy and it didn't even keep its normal typing like Jigglypuff did!

The way I see it it could go one of two ways depending on if the gym remains Normal or changes to Fairy. If the former, just swap Clefairy out with Jigglypuff and you're good to go. It even has the added benefit of shutting down a pure Fighting type strategy since Fairy beats it but it's still a Normal type.

I could totally see Whitney the Kawaii Queen as a Fairy type Gym Leader, but that means replacing Miltank which is a pretty big meme in the Pokemon lore. I'm trying to think of physical Fairy attackers or Fairy types with Rollout that would work and I'm thinking either Granbull (thematically probably the best), Azumarill (learns Rollout and Huge Power could be really annoying) and Wigglytuff (does it learn Rollout? I know Jigglypuff does in Smash Bros.)
 
I'm curious to see what speculation about Whitney's gym looks like. It's kind of hilarious actually, since the layout of the gym is of a giant Clefairy and it didn't even keep its normal typing like Jigglypuff did!

The way I see it it could go one of two ways depending on if the gym remains Normal or changes to Fairy. If the former, just swap Clefairy out with Jigglypuff and you're good to go. It even has the added benefit of shutting down a pure Fighting type strategy since Fairy beats it but it's still a Normal type.

I could totally see Whitney the Kawaii Queen as a Fairy type Gym Leader, but that means replacing Miltank which is a pretty big meme in the Pokemon lore. I'm trying to think of physical Fairy attackers or Fairy types with Rollout that would work and I'm thinking either Granbull (thematically probably the best), Azumarill (learns Rollout and Huge Power could be really annoying) and Wigglytuff (does it learn Rollout? I know Jigglypuff does in Smash Bros.)

I think Miltank is a pretty strong argument in favor of keeping Whitney a Normal specialist (that and her name corresponds more to Normal than Fairy). I also suspect that if they went the BDSP route they'd just keep Clefairy even though it switched to Fairy. They seem to prioritize nostalgia over practicality and function, I mean they didn't bother adding in the Platinum Dex and kept the dumb rosters that didn't have a full team of their type! I could see them not caring that one of Whitney's original Pokemon isn't even a Normal type anymore and just keep it in because "Ehh, nostalgia". I just think Johto's selection of Fairies is just too good not to have a full Fairy specialist.
 
I personally believe the Johto games should get a either a sequel or a Legends game instead of a full on remake, since if you're familiar with me on the Bulbagrden Discord I disliked LGPE and the overall Kanto hype/pandering that's been going on since Gen 6 and I'm really not in the mood to go to Kanto again after returning it twice in the past ten years (HGSS and Let's Go, not mentioning Kanto being constantly mentioned throughout Gen 7). Plus I feel like if LG Johto happened, I would not want to see a Trace version of Silver cause if they had the audacity to make Trace, they would have the audacity to make the most water down version of Silver possible or just literally make Trace again.

The reason I say sequels though is because Johto is in this weird symbiotic relationship with Kanto since well, they are sequels to the Kanto games. But this works against Johto's favor since the region is so forgotten by GameFreak or just Kanto II and given no fanfare even though the Johto games gave more of what the series is known for today and yet it's just never there.

Heck even their Gym Leaders can't use their own regions Pokémon, over half of the Gym Leaders use more Kanto Pokémon than Johto Pokémon and we can't even get some Johto Pokémon until we get to Kanto or get into Johto's famous landmark without going through Kanto (to fight a Kanto trainer no less, who uses only one Johto Pokémon depending if you're playing the originals or HGSS).

This is why I say sequels instead of remakes, since LGPE foolishly limits the Dex if we use sequels we can have a non-limited dex to just 251 plus some variants and possible introduce new Johtonian (ugh, Johtonian makes no sense too) variants. This also gives the excuse to modify the teams instead of preserving them, like instead of Bugsy having a Scyther, Metapod and Kakuna, give him a Pineco or Foretress, heck even a Ariados; y'know one the Pokémon his Gym is based on in HGSS!?

I want to see a more independent Johto from Kanto, give us more to do in Johto than just going to Kanto. Give us a Johto League that isn't Indigo Plateau, makes us be able to get to Mt. Silver from Johto. HGSS showed that they were willing to expand Johto for the new Safari Zone and even for the Pokéathlon if just so little, so do that again but give us more for Johto.

I guess a Legends game for Johto can only happen if Legends: Arceus does well but I want to go to the Sinjoh ruins and not through teleporting in general I want to see this relationship they've implied with Johto and Sinnoh. I want to see how the Suicune, Entei and Raikou were born and in process how the Brass Tower became the Burned Tower. I guess the mascot would be Celebi of this games since Gen 2 doesn't have many to offer.

I think Miltank is a pretty strong argument in favor of keeping Whitney a Normal specialist (that and her name corresponds more to Normal than Fairy). I also suspect that if they went the BDSP route they'd just keep Clefairy even though it switched to Fairy. They seem to prioritize nostalgia over practicality and function, I mean they didn't bother adding in the Platinum Dex and kept the dumb rosters that didn't have a full team of their type! I could see them not caring that one of Whitney's original Pokemon isn't even a Normal type anymore and just keep it in because "Ehh, nostalgia". I just think Johto's selection of Fairies is just too good not to have a full Fairy specialist.
Counter argument: There is one Pokémon that could take Miltank's place in my opinion; Togekiss. Since Togepi is obtainable before this battle and you could arguably get a Togekiss yourself before this battle in HGSS if you go to National Park ahead of the battle against Whitney, all that depends is what ability and moves they give it for the battle. Though again, that depends if a remake goes Dex Limited.
 
I think Miltank is a pretty strong argument in favor of keeping Whitney a Normal specialist (that and her name corresponds more to Normal than Fairy). I also suspect that if they went the BDSP route they'd just keep Clefairy even though it switched to Fairy. They seem to prioritize nostalgia over practicality and function, I mean they didn't bother adding in the Platinum Dex and kept the dumb rosters that didn't have a full team of their type! I could see them not caring that one of Whitney's original Pokemon isn't even a Normal type anymore and just keep it in because "Ehh, nostalgia". I just think Johto's selection of Fairies is just too good not to have a full Fairy specialist.
If they keep to BDSP’s philosophy, I’m sadly inclined to agree with you. I just hope they’re open to criticism. Thankfully it doesn’t seem to be only die-hard fans that are complaining those games are “faithful to a fault” (to quote JPR), I’m pretty sure it’s popped up on respected game review sites that are even harder to ignore.

This brings up another question. What’s TPCi’s track record of listening and adapting to criticism? I want to say I remember them being intentional about including clips of Pokémon actually turning in early Legends: Arceus previews, likely because of the infamous Zacian/Zamazenta scene making the rounds on social media. There’s also the direction change after Gen 5’s experiment of all new mons we can look at.
 
I personally believe the Johto games should get a either a sequel or a Legends game instead of a full on remake, since if you're familiar with me on the Bulbagrden Discord I disliked LGPE and the overall Kanto hype/pandering that's been going on since Gen 6 and I'm really not in the mood to go to Kanto again after returning it twice in the past ten years (HGSS and Let's Go, not mentioning Kanto being constantly mentioned throughout Gen 7). Plus I feel like if LG Johto happened, I would not want to see a Trace version of Silver cause if they had the audacity to make Trace, they would have the audacity to make the most water down version of Silver possible or just literally make Trace again.

The reason I say sequels though is because Johto is in this weird symbiotic relationship with Kanto since well, they are sequels to the Kanto games. But this works against Johto's favor since the region is so forgotten by GameFreak or just Kanto II and given no fanfare even though the Johto games gave more of what the series is known for today and yet it's just never there.

Heck even their Gym Leaders can't use their own regions Pokémon, over half of the Gym Leaders use more Kanto Pokémon than Johto Pokémon and we can't even get some Johto Pokémon until we get to Kanto or get into Johto's famous landmark without going through Kanto (to fight a Kanto trainer no less, who uses only one Johto Pokémon depending if you're playing the originals or HGSS).

This is why I say sequels instead of remakes, since LGPE foolishly limits the Dex if we use sequels we can have a non-limited dex to just 251 plus some variants and possible introduce new Johtonian (ugh, Johtonian makes no sense too) variants. This also gives the excuse to modify the teams instead of preserving them, like instead of Bugsy having a Scyther, Metapod and Kakuna, give him a Pineco or Foretress, heck even a Ariados; y'know one the Pokémon his Gym is based on in HGSS!?

I want to see a more independent Johto from Kanto, give us more to do in Johto than just going to Kanto. Give us a Johto League that isn't Indigo Plateau, makes us be able to get to Mt. Silver from Johto. HGSS showed that they were willing to expand Johto for the new Safari Zone and even for the Pokéathlon if just so little, so do that again but give us more for Johto.

I guess a Legends game for Johto can only happen if Legends: Arceus does well but I want to go to the Sinjoh ruins and not through teleporting in general I want to see this relationship they've implied with Johto and Sinnoh. I want to see how the Suicune, Entei and Raikou were born and in process how the Brass Tower became the Burned Tower. I guess the mascot would be Celebi of this games since Gen 2 doesn't have many to offer.

:bulbaWave:

YES! Thank you! I agree with just about everything you said here. I wouldn't mind going back to Kanto if Kanto gets a sequel or Legends game itself, but otherwise yes to all of this.

Counter argument: There is one Pokémon that could take Miltank's place in my opinion; Togekiss. Since Togepi is obtainable before this battle and you could arguably get a Togekiss yourself before this battle in HGSS if you go to National Park ahead of the battle against Whitney, all that depends is what ability and moves they give it for the battle. Though again, that depends if a remake goes Dex Limited.

You lost me here though. You're missing the point, the point is that Miltank is nostalgic and well-known among the fanbase. Togekiss would be great (although perhaps not appropriate until a later game battle), but Whitney never used a Togepi or Togetic and in fact no one else in the gym did either, so there's no

This brings up another question. What’s TPCi’s track record of listening and adapting to criticism? I want to say I remember them being intentional about including clips of Pokémon actually turning in early Legends: Arceus previews, likely because of the infamous Zacian/Zamazenta scene making the rounds on social media. There’s also the direction change after Gen 5’s experiment of all new mons we can look at.

Unfortunately not very good. They seem to have selective hearing when it comes to criticism, they've addressed some complaints fans have had (HMs, difficulty in obtaining Pokemon with the correct EVs, IVs, natures, etc.) but not others (removal of the Battle Frontier, lack of extra features and sidequests, linear area design up until they wanted to ). I suspect they only address criticisms that are quick and cheap to update and then ignore everything else. They might be willing to update gym teams if they can do so with existing Pokemon, but for the most part they seem largely unwilling to update the dexes, especially for remakes.
 
I could totally see Whitney the Kawaii Queen as a Fairy type Gym Leader, but that means replacing Miltank which is a pretty big meme in the Pokemon lore. I'm trying to think of physical Fairy attackers or Fairy types with Rollout that would work and I'm thinking either Granbull (thematically probably the best), Azumarill (learns Rollout and Huge Power could be really annoying) and Wigglytuff (does it learn Rollout? I know Jigglypuff does in Smash Bros.)

Honestly, the easy solution would be to turn Miltank into a fairy/normal pokemon. I mean, it wouldn't even be difficult to associate Miltank with fairy.

That way Whitney could be a Fairy Gym Leader.
 
Honestly, the easy solution would be to turn Miltank into a fairy/normal pokemon. I mean, it wouldn't even be difficult to associate Miltank with fairy.

That way Whitney could be a Fairy Gym Leader.
They could make Whitney a Fairy type gym leader, plop the normal Miltank as her ace and no one will question it. Just look at Flint's team.
 
While I'd much prefer Legends Celebi, unfortunately I think it's going to be Let's Go Pichu and Let's Go Togepi.
Whitney will swap Clefairy for Jigglypuff, keep Miltank.
 
They could make Whitney a Fairy type gym leader, plop the normal Miltank as her ace and no one will question it. Just look at Flint's team.

I think if they're going to play the BDSP "we can't change it because nostalgia" card, the opposite scenario is more likely (Whitney stays a Normal type gym leader and they keep Clefairy on her roster despite it no longer being Normal). Really, even if they do any larger changes, the one thing I can't see them changing is making Whitney a Fairy type specialist. Even beyond her ace still being a Normal type Pokemon, her design and concept and her international names (not quite as sure about her Japanese name as that's based on some type of flower, but her international names are all a play on the word "White" which corresponds to Normal type) are all designed around the Normal type. There's little that really connects her to Fairy, it's just that some (but not all) of the cute, Normal type Pokemon that are common in her gym were retyped to Fairy. Again, I think if they did want to make larger scale changes and flip Goldenrod Gym to Fairy, they would have to start over with a new gym leader, and that would be better for a sequel since they're not going to retcon Whitney out of being the gym leader in any kind of direct remake. Anything short of that and I think Normal type Whitney is here to stay.
 
I have a fairly strong theory as to what the titles to Johto remakes could be, those being Let's Go Pichu and Let's Go Cleffa.

This makes a lot of sense when you think about it, as Clefairy is just as closely tied to Pikachu and arguably even more so than Eevee. Eevee is often considered the counterpart to Pikachu, as it is the opposing starter in Yellow and the Let's Go remakes of the same game, features prominently in the anime because of this, they both received exclusive Z-moves and Gigantamax forms, so Eevee is often considered the opposite of Pikachu, and considering they received opposing games as well, it isn't incorrect to think that Eevee parallels Pikachu and can arguably be considered the secondary mascot to Pikachu, but you can almost make a case for Clefairy to be just as important.

Clefairy was not only considered to be the opposite of Pikachu instead of Eevee, it was actually considered to straight up be the mascot of the franchise instead of Pikachu. It was changed at the last minute, Ash was originally intended to start with a Clefairy which would mean that Pikachu's prominence in the games like with Yellow would've never happened. It would've been... Pokemon Pink I guess. The two evolutionary lines function almost identically too, Pikachu and Clefairy both were originally the first stage of a two stage evolution line, and they both evolved by evolution stone. Starting with Johto, both receive a baby form below the original first stage Pokemon, these baby Pokemon being Pichu and Cleffa of course, both of them evolve by high friendship, and both lines have since had three stages, which would be fitting for a starter Pokemon. The fact that Clefairy was nearly the mascot's franchise has been referenced several times, such as Ash and Gary watching a movie in a flashback when they were younger that starred Red with his Clefairy, or how a Clefairy plushie is featured alongside a Pikachu and Eevee plushie in LGPE, and how a third Pokeball was added to the table in Oak's lab in LGPE which many theorize held a Clefairy, as the lineup was referenced by the aforementioned plushies. Oh, and just for good measure, when they finally made Green a separate character entirely from Red, they gave her the remaining member of this trio, a Clefable, as Red uses a Pikachu and Blue has presumably used an Eevee if you consider that he starts with one in Yellow, so it makes sense that the remaining member, the final evolution of Clefairy, would be given to Green.

I think the fact that Clefairy almost became the mascot over Pikachu could be conveniently referenced by sequel Johto games, Pikachu and Eevee become a little separated in Johto and are, in my opinion, no longer suitable starter counterparts, due to the fact that Eevee gains more evolutions while Pikachu gains a pre-evolution, but if this game gets rid of the mechanic of not being able to evolve, I think Pichu and Cleffa function perfectly fine as traditional starters that you bond with and evolve rather than keeping them in their base form like the Pikachu and Eevee you start with in LGPE. A feature I'd love to see implemented for such a game is mid-battle or even out-of-battle evolutions, with things like walking with Pokemon being featured prominently in both LGPE and the most recent Johto games, HGSS, it makes sense for that feature to become a more important part of the game, now with you being able to evolve your Pokemon in the overworld, and I've been asking for mid-battle evolutions forever. Imagine the rush of adrenaline as you expect to crumble at the feet of Whitney's Miltank, but as your Totodile knocks out her Clefairy, it becomes level 18 and evolves in time to battle Miltank as a Croconaw, clutching you the victory in a situation that was otherwise inevitably leading to your defeat. Or I suppose in this situation, if you don't get access to Johto starters by the 3rd gym, just imagine that knocking out the Clefairy leveled up your Pichu for the first time since it hit the friendship requirement for evolving, letting you use a Pikachu against her Miltank.

Another thing I'd like to see introduced is egg move starters, this would be a nice in-game reference to information that we have from the anime and the fact that the Johto games have traditionally focused on Pokemon eggs and breeding more so than other games, and since LGPE takes place just a bit after Red and Blue set out on their journeys, maybe these new Johto games take place a little while after the discovery of the Togepi egg in the original Johto games, and this is where the anime comes in, it was referenced in the anime I believe in the Hoenn arcs, that Pokemon Professors have their starter Pokemon bred for young trainers, so maybe a couple years later than when Ethan, Lyra, and Silver set out on their journeys, Professor Elm has these specially-bred Pichu and Cleffa, each with an interesting a thematic egg move, like Volt Tackle and Mimic, for example. This would make the early game a little more interesting and maybe give you an easier time using Pokemon like Pichu and Cleffa, which have such low base stat totals (205 and 218 respectively) compared to some more traditional starters, like Charmander and Totodile (309 and 314 respectively). Mimic could be a little redundant considering Cleffa would also know Copycat naturally, so a possible more interesting egg move would the starter Cleffa could be Belly Drum or Misty Terrain. Belly Drum would provide the power needed to overcome the bad stats in the way that Volt Tackle would for Pichu, but would be a little less useful later in the game, as Clefable ends up being very much a special attacker. Still, with the options of giving the starters their own unique exclusive moves or unique stats like what LGPE did, all of this can be solved in other ways than giving the starters a couple egg moves, but I would still like to see that concept of starters with egg moves explored in future games in one way or another. For one reason or another, I'd like to stray away from the whole "starters get unique signature moves and stats" thing that LGPE did, and I'd like the game to play in a bit more of a traditional sense, with us getting Abilities, EVs, and Held Items back. The only things I want to be special about these starters is that they can't be traded away and feature prominently along with your player 100% of the time, even when boxed. Other than that I want them to function like normal Pokemon, if they have perfect IVs and a strong egg move I think that's more than enough to make the games playable with these starters, the only reason Pikachu and Eevee may have required further special treatment in LGPE is because they are locked from being able to evolve, so these weaker unevolved Pokemon needed the buffs, but my concept for LGPiCl (Let's Go Pichu and Cleffa) would have the Pokemon evolve as you play the game like a normal starter, with their evolution line continuing to feature prominently alongside the player even after evolving, and maybe new mini story arcs would become available as your starter evolves, further highlighting your continued growth with your partner Pokemon.

Oh, and in case you were wondering about Togepi, yeah that also kinda fits as the other starter instead of Cleffa. Also a three stage evolution that evolves by friendship and then evolution stone just like the first two, is also a Fairy-type just like Cleffa, and is arguably a more prominent and recognizable Pokemon than Cleffa, making it easier to market it alongside a Pichu, the only thing that doesn't quite work out is that Togekiss hasn't yet ever been implemented into the Johto regional dex, even though some of the Sinnoh evolutions did make it into the HGSS regional dex, but this can of course be changed and Togekiss and Raichu would make excellent final forms for starters. Maybe the Clefairy line is just doomed to never being able to claim the spotlight it deserves as the almost-mascot Pokemon...
 
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