Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Predictions/Speculation/Discussion Thread

[Oriden]

open world games do offer more in the exploration department, but in my experience, they struggle to give a meaningful sense of progression. i didn't finish breath of the wild because what i was doing felt pointless; i didn't feel like i was actually making progress towards anything. the world should gradually open up as you progress through the story; it should not be open all at once.

I think maybe having most of the world be open, but having areas that can't be reached until you can climb/swim/fly there. That would allow you to roam around freely while still locking some areas behind progress for whatever those things are that you need to do to climb/swim/fly.

Also maybe some areas that need you to have X many badges to access. Prove that you're a strong trainer and can handle getting your butt whooped by whatever's inside. Make whatever does the butt-whooping stronger than what you need to access it, though, so players don't feel like they've been wrongfully restricted from their right to freely get their ass handed to them.

 

[blitzle stan]

Even BotW had a progression system, with the stamina system locking out many areas (unless you make a million foods) and the warrior power ups being sometimes necessary for certain fights (unless you’re really good at the game, which I wasn’t!).

And each area has its own plot arcs that feed into the overall plot arc, etc. I never understood the criticism that BotW being open world means there was no plot or sense of what to do and where to go.

EDIT: ESPECIALLYYYY after playing SwSh, a linear game that had almost no plot.

 

[Norzan]

I think i would be more excited for an open world pokemon game if it came out way earlier than it is now. At this point open world is completely played out and it has become what the linear games became in the late 2000s, just an overabundance of this type of game to the point of being annoying. Pokemon is way too late to the party.

Honestly, i'm more interested if they are finally gonna do anything when it comes to having any adjustable difficulty and if they are gonna add meaningful side activities. I'm more interested in stuff to do more than i can go anywhere at the start of the game. Because an open world is pointless if there's nothing to do in it.

 

[BackSet]

I like Open World games because when done well (such as Spider-Man PS4) there's always something to do even when I'm not progressing the story which is great because it gives me a breather when I'm having difficulty focusing on the main quest.

 

[Bolt Strike]

open world games do offer more in the exploration department, but in my experience, they struggle to give a meaningful sense of progression. i didn't finish breath of the wild because what i was doing felt pointless; i didn't feel like i was actually making progress towards anything. the world should gradually open up as you progress through the story; it should not be open all at once.

Who says games HAVE to have a sense of progression? Not everyone views a game in this way. I, and seemingly many other console gamers, have always viewed console adventure games as more of a giant playground. In fact you'll see the term "sandbox" thrown around for certain styles of 3D console game because of how well the metaphor fits. And progression doesn't really fit that style of play well. Like, imagine you go to an amusement park and you see all of these neat rides you want to go on. So you decide the first thing you want to do when going there is go on the roller coaster. But then you get there and an employee tells you "Sorry, but you have to ride the ferris wheel before you ride the roller coaster". Or maybe you see a cool looking ride in the distance and you want to go there, but then an employee tells you "Nope, you have to ride the ferris wheel before you can go to this section of the park". And you ask why and they say "Well we think it's best that you experience the rides in this order to work your way up from the most relaxing rides to the most intense rides". Does that make any sense? Why should they be dictating a specific order for you to enjoy the park? Going from most relaxing to most intense might be a good recommendation, but should they really be enforcing that? What if they've been to amusement parks before and they know what they already like? What if they're not the type that likes relaxing rides? Exploration elements don't really work well with a fixed progression, exploration games work best when you're given a choice and can satisfy your own curiosity and discover for yourself what's over that hill or across that lake. So it's not wise to force it. Just let people do their own thing and decided for themselves where they want to go and what they want to do. They'll enjoy it better if they can find their own path through the region instead of trudging through the path the developers forced them to.

But actually BotW does have some sense of progression, just not in terms of opening up new sections of the overworld. You progress to each of the Divine Beasts to help reclaim them to use against Ganon. You also progress in terms of increasing your health and stamina over the course of the game. There's just no real progression in the actual exploration of areas because that element of the game doesn't work well with a sense of progression. This game looks like it'll be similar. There's no sense of progression in the actual areas and you can choose how you want to experience that aspect of the game, but the progression will come more with you constantly leveling up and evolving your Pokemon.

 

[BackSet]

Minecraft is open world. In fact, Minecraft is probably the most open world of all open world games.

 

[Oriden]

Who says games HAVE to have a sense of progression? Not everyone views a game in this way. I, and seemingly many other console gamers, have always viewed console adventure games as more of a giant playground. In fact you'll see the term "sandbox" thrown around for certain styles of 3D console game because of how well the metaphor fits. And progression doesn't really fit that style of play well. Like, imagine you go to an amusement park and you see all of these neat rides you want to go on. So you decide the first thing you want to do when going there is go on the roller coaster. But then you get there and an employee tells you "Sorry, but you have to ride the ferris wheel before you ride the roller coaster". Or maybe you see a cool looking ride in the distance and you want to go there, but then an employee tells you "Nope, you have to ride the ferris wheel before you can go to this section of the park". And you ask why and they say "Well we think it's best that you experience the rides in this order to work your way up from the most relaxing rides to the most intense rides". Does that make any sense? Why should they be dictating a specific order for you to enjoy the park? Going from most relaxing to most intense might be a good recommendation, but should they really be enforcing that? What if they've been to amusement parks before and they know what they already like? What if they're not the type that likes relaxing rides? Exploration elements don't really work well with a fixed progression, exploration games work best when you're given a choice and can satisfy your own curiosity and discover for yourself what's over that hill or across that lake. So it's not wise to force it. Just let people do their own thing and decided for themselves where they want to go and what they want to do. They'll enjoy it better if they can find their own path through the region instead of trudging through the path the developers forced them to.

But actually BotW does have some sense of progression, just not in terms of opening up new sections of the overworld. You progress to each of the Divine Beasts to help reclaim them to use against Ganon. You also progress in terms of increasing your health and stamina over the course of the game. There's just no real progression in the actual exploration of areas because that element of the game doesn't work well with a sense of progression. This game looks like it'll be similar. There's no sense of progression in the actual areas and you can choose how you want to experience that aspect of the game, but the progression will come more with you constantly leveling up and evolving your Pokemon.

To be fair, @There Is No Arceus just expressed that they didn't feel a sense of progression with it. And I can understand that. Like as fun and limitless as Minecraft is, it's also easy to get bored or exhausted by the lack of clear direction. I'm all for having the freedom to just screw around in a game, but I think there's also merit in having a sense of accomplishment, making progress towards a goal, and having actually earned something.

I don't think it's impossible to have both open world and some sensible fulfilling goal posts.

 

[There Is No Arceus]

Who says games HAVE to have a sense of progression? Not everyone views a game in this way. I, and seemingly many other console gamers, have always viewed console adventure games as more of a giant playground.

not all series have to have a strong sense of progression. The Elder Scrolls is one of my favorite game series despite not giving me the feeling that i'm actually achieving much. what i don't like is series that did give me a sense of progression now tend to veer more towards a format that is inconducive to it. variety is good. part of my aversion to breath of the wild stems from the fact that this is not what i look for in a zelda title. i'm cool with open world games existing, but games that were not open world previously shouldn't become open world.

 

[Oriden]

Interesting

Leak! Wrong thread!

 

[Moonlight~]

Leak! Wrong thread!

Omg again.. I posted in the wrong thread.

 

[Bolt Strike]

not all series have to have a strong sense of progression. The Elder Scrolls is one of my favorite game series despite not giving me the feeling that i'm actually achieving much. what i don't like is series that did give me a sense of progression now tend to veer more towards a format that is inconducive to it. variety is good. part of my aversion to breath of the wild stems from the fact that this is not what i look for in a zelda title. i'm cool with open world games existing, but games that were not open world previously shouldn't become open world.

Thing is that some of those IPs did have a sense of exploration to them from the beginning. Zelda was a game that was all about exploring the overworld, so BotW in a sense feels true to its roots even if it's diverged from the formula popularized in games like A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time. Similarly, Pokemon has always had a sense of exploration from the beginning where the game was about adventuring through a region to catch and train Pokemon and go around defeating gym leaders to qualify for the Pokemon League. And again, I feel like the open world of SV may be closer to its roots than the linear games. The older games didn't gatekeep you so heavily with the "We're dancing here for no reaosn and we'll leave for no reason" NPCs, or even the HMs when that was still a thing, and in fact you had a smaller scale sense of freedom in Kanto, especially late in the game. You just, explored the region looking for Pokemon, trainers, and gyms.

I myself was not happy when games like BW1 and XY started making the region and I actually felt that was inappropriate for Pokemon. It made the whole experience feel forced and inorganic by having you constantly go exactly where the game wanted you to go and stop and do what the game wanted you to do before moving on. It didn't feel like a real adventure like some of the older generations.

At any rate, I think Pokemon needs both exploration and progression in its gameplay, but not necessarily in the same gameplay elements because again, the two pretty much contradict each other. I think the exploration is better for elements such as the region/overworld and the Pokemon and progression is better for leveling up and for story. But I do not think progression should be a reason to disallow open world gameplay.

 

[Daren]

It didn't feel like a real adventure like some of the older generations.

Yes, this exactly. The term I've used is that at some point it started feeling like we were going on guided tours of regions instead of an adventure through them.
Part of the reason I hate Team Yell is they were constantly used as a plot device to keep me on the railroad.

I don't think it's impossible to have both open world and some sensible fulfilling goal posts.

I'd say it's been done, depending on how strict you are at interpreting "open world". Baldurs Gate 1 (but not 2) has most of the game area open from the start but is still divided into chapters with specific bosses and story beats, for instance. Same with a number of older RPGs I've played.

I don't know how Sc/Vi is going to work for sure, but I've been assuming we'll have some sort of Gym and league equivalents so we'll have specific goals to aim for but significant freedom to determine the order we accomplish them in.

 

[There Is No Arceus]

Thing is that some of those IPs did have a sense of exploration to them from the beginning. Zelda was a game that was all about exploring the overworld, so BotW in a sense feels true to its roots even if it's diverged from the formula popularized in games like A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time. Similarly, Pokemon has always had a sense of exploration from the beginning where the game was about adventuring through a region to catch and train Pokemon and go around defeating gym leaders to qualify for the Pokemon League. And again, I feel like the open world of SV may be closer to its roots than the linear games. The older games didn't gatekeep you so heavily with the "We're dancing here for no reaosn and we'll leave for no reason" NPCs, or even the HMs when that was still a thing, and in fact you had a smaller scale sense of freedom in Kanto, especially late in the game. You just, explored the region looking for Pokemon, trainers, and gyms.

I myself was not happy when games like BW1 and XY started making the region and I actually felt that was inappropriate for Pokemon. It made the whole experience feel forced and inorganic by having you constantly go exactly where the game wanted you to go and stop and do what the game wanted you to do before moving on. It didn't feel like a real adventure like some of the older generations.

At any rate, I think Pokemon needs both exploration and progression in its gameplay, but not necessarily in the same gameplay elements because again, the two pretty much contradict each other. I think the exploration is better for elements such as the region/overworld and the Pokemon and progression is better for leveling up and for story. But I do not think progression should be a reason to disallow open world gameplay.

i don't like the original legend of zelda. the formula introduced in a link to the past is the reason i love the series. that's what "zelda" is to me. i'll acknowledge that BotW did technically go back to the roots of Zelda, but those roots hadn't been revisited by a zelda game since the 80s. that was no longer what zelda was.

as for pokemon, i much prefer the approach taken in gen 3 and 4 over the approach of gen 1. hoenn and sinnoh have a decidedly linear progression with areas unlocking as you progress through the story, but still plenty of areas to explore if you wish to go off the beaten path. though i'll agree the dancing guys in gen 5 were weird; they should have used a more natural-feeling roadblock.

 

[Bolt Strike]

i don't like the original legend of zelda. the formula introduced in a link to the past is the reason i love the series. that's what "zelda" is to me. i'll acknowledge that BotW did technically go back to the roots of Zelda, but those roots hadn't been revisited by a zelda game since the 80s. that was no longer what zelda was.

Well not everyone can like everything. That's probably more a failure on Nintendo not keeping the ALttP style going through a spinoff/side series for the people that like that and not the new open world style (they do have remakes/remasters to sort of satisfy that, but they really should have new games in that style as well). The best way to keep both sides happy would just be to have different subseries for that, in the same way that 3D caused a split previously between the traditional 2D style and the newer (at the time) 3D style.

as for pokemon, i much prefer the approach taken in gen 3 and 4 over the approach of gen 1. hoenn and sinnoh have a decidedly linear progression with areas unlocking as you progress through the story, but still plenty of areas to explore if you wish to go off the beaten path.

Again in that case you might want to actual push for them to keep a linear style of gameplay going alongside the new open world style. A Hoenn/Sinnoh style game could certainly still offer some things that an open world style can't, but again, we shouldn't really have that over open world. Ideally we should have both.

though i'll agree the dancing guys in gen 5 were weird; they should have used a more natural-feeling roadblock.

The dancing guys are an absurd example (probably played up to make fun of themselves using NPC roadblocks), but I don't really like an excessive number of roadblocks period, natural feeling or not. And we started seeing a LOT more roadblocks in Gens 5-7 than 1-4.

 

[Norzan]

Yes, this exactly. The term I've used is that at some point it started feeling like we were going on guided tours of regions instead of an adventure through them.
Part of the reason I hate Team Yell is they were constantly used as a plot device to keep me on the railroad.

Handholding is far more guilty than linear region design in terms of feeling like we are guided tours instead of adventures in recent generations. If they loosen the handholding grip i think a lot of the feeling of adventure would come back even if a lot of the region was linear.

I would not honestly mind if this gen went back to be like in Gen 1 where there were portions of the playthrough where you basically just go around battling trainers, collecting badges and catching pokemon, with next to no interruptions by characters.

 

[Oriden]

We all know this is the only obstacle a trainer should face.

 

[Beer&Nyquil]

its also pretty standard in open world games to have certain regions with more difficult enemies to function as natural ways to progress through a game and retain the feeling of getting stronger/rewarded the further in you get. elden ring, which im playing rn, uses this to great effect, for example, and every time i beat and enemy that used to kick my ass i feel like ive really accomplished something

 

[There Is No Arceus]

The dancing guys are an absurd example (probably played up to make fun of themselves using NPC roadblocks), but I don't really like an excessive number of roadblocks period, natural feeling or not. And we started seeing a LOT more roadblocks in Gens 5-7 than 1-4.

i don't think gen 5 really had that much more roadblocks. it just feels that way because the gen 3 and 4 roadblocks came in the form of HMs and were thus generally less intrusive and unnatural than those in later gens. But people don't like HMs for reasons i honestly don't fully understand (defog was bullshit but the rest were good), so they made HMs optional in gen 5 and did away with them from gen 7 onward. then they put unnatural, dumb roadblocks in their place.

 

[Daren]

But people don't like HMs for reasons i honestly don't fully understand

I thought it was fine in R/B/Y but there ended up being far too many of them as the games went on. 8 is an insane number of move slots to be used up on getting around when every Pokémon only gets four; that's a full third of a full party's movepool.
Compare to R/B/Y where there were 5, 1 of them only used in a single area, and three of the remaining ones were decent to great in battle.

 

[Bolt Strike]

i don't think gen 5 really had that much more roadblocks. it just feels that way because the gen 3 and 4 roadblocks came in the form of HMs and were thus generally less intrusive and unnatural than those in later gens.

Actually it goes further than that, even if you factor in HMs for Gen 3, Gen 5 had a roadblock in pretty much every city until you beat that city's gym, Gens 3 and 4 had entire chunks of areas spanning multiple cities that weren't blocked off.

But people don't like HMs for reasons i honestly don't fully understand (defog was bullshit but the rest were good), so they made HMs optional in gen 5 and did away with them from gen 7 onward. then they put unnatural, dumb roadblocks in their place.

It's because they took up moveslots. It hinders team building to have to sacrifice 8/24 moves in your party just to progress in the overworld. Although really that wasn't the right solution and they ended up with an even more drastic fix with Poke Ride in SM that actually did address the root cause, but still.