Pokemon Z, according to you

[Alola]

Alola everyone. Just thought I would open a thread about how you all would have envisioned Pokemon Z as the third version to X & Y (assuming there hasn't been one already).

At this point, I don't think would get a third version per se. Perhaps a remake or possibly a sequel since Generation 6 has ended. Thus what would you all have done? Lineup changes? Plot changes? Move-set changes? New features/services within the games? Feel free to be as detailed as you'd like.

 

[Esserise]

I like to envision Z as a loosely scribbled idea on a crumpled piece of paper in the office trash can.

I would never choose to waste a full year's marketing on a game idea so woefully banal. At best, it should have been a DLC add-on episode involving a brief Team Flare revival, a Volcanion subplot, and some additional stuff like extra clothes and new Mega Stones.

 

[Nicolas721]

-It would be a prequel with Dexio and Sina as the player characters. It would take place in Southern Kalos for most of the game, and then the final part of the game it would take place in the first routes in the normal Kalos. Then in the postgame, you can visit the rest of Kalos.
-There would be a new evil team, and Zinnia would be the N/Lillie of the game, everything about her would be explained. (The game would take place after ORAS, but her backstory would be explained).
-The dex would be divided in 3 zones. Central Kalos which would have the same content, and two new dexes which would use the remaining Pokemon. One of them would be named Jungle Kalos.
-Squishy would join you very early in the game, he would have a 3d model and it would be shown sometimes in your arm in battles and he would also appear in the bag sprites. You can collect cells. When you get more than 10 you get access to Zygarde 10%, and this is how he would join your team: You would click on a Squishy icon in the Pokemon menu, and if you have less than 5 Pokemon he would join you as Zygarde 10%. It can't be deposited on the PC, but you can revert it back to Squishy by clicking the Squishy icon, so you have space for 6 Pokemon. You would need at least 50 cells to play in the climax. In the postgame in Northern Kalos, you would found the other cores and the other cells.
-The usual third versions/remakes wishlist: leader rematches, more fun activities, more tutors, more difficulty, more battle facilities...

 

[lavandula]

To be honest, I was unhappy that we didn't get Z or X2Y2, or whatever.
I think Kalos is the only region that didn't have sequels.

It felt like they cancelled it so they could make Sun and Moon on time for the 20th anniversary.

 

[Gengarzilla]

I don't know if fans would have really hit it off with Z, but Gen VI's region honestly feels... incomplete when I look back on it. Kalos has absolutely nothing to its name after X and Y right now, no sequel, no third version, no remake yet. It doesn't help that I like Zygarde way, way more than Rayquaza either.

If we knew earlier that neither the third version Z or the sequel pair XZ and YZ were ever going to happen, then I would have expected much better out of X and Y, simply put.

 

[Bolt Strike]

-Well first of all, I would have Z serve as a Gen 6.5 title, with Gen 7 being pushed until the Switch. So the first big thing it would do would introduce brand new Pokemon.
-The game would be a sequel taking place 3 years later with new protagonists.
-The game would get a large expansion in the form of Southern Kalos, which forms a 4th subregion in Kalos. There would also be a few areas in the northeast. The Kalos Dex would be expanded to 500, with each subdex having 125 Pokemon.
-Zygarde would join you early in the game as a Cell and power up over the course of the game, similar to how Nebby does in SM.
-Xerneas and Yveltal's connection to the Kalos region and to Zygarde would be fully explained.
-Malva would be the leader of a revived Team Flare.
-Rhyhorn Racing would be an actual minigame.
-Lumiose City would contain a Join Avenue-esque feature where you could open up shops along the four avenues.

 

[SerenaToAlola]

Some of my ideas have already been stated though I will use them in a different context. I'll just quote out the parts I want.

-Well first of all, I would have Z serve as a Gen 6.5 title, with Gen 7 being pushed until the Switch. So the first big thing it would do would introduce brand new Pokemon.

Yes but not too many. I think about 50 MAX.

It would take place in Southern Kalos for most of the game, and then the final part of the game it would take place in the first routes in the normal Kalos. Then in the postgame, you can visit the rest of Kalos.

This. I imagine South Kalos to probably be like Portugal/Spain or even Eastern Europe.

-The game would be a sequel

but just two years later and hence in the same time as SM. Calem and Serena are now not just pokemon trainers, they're sort of special agents of Looker and the International Police. Rivals is Emma with Dexio and Sina featuring through the holo caster. Basically, the 5 of them are working together to research on Zygarde with Calem, Serena and Emma being based in Kalos and Dexio and Sinia being based in Alola. The SM protag will make a cameo but not significant.

I would also like for Colress to make an appearance.

-Squishy would join you very early in the game, he would have a 3d model and it would be shown sometimes in your arm in battles and he would also appear in the bag sprites. You can collect cells. When you get more than 10 you get access to Zygarde 10%, and this is how he would join your team: You would click on a Squishy icon in the Pokemon menu, and if you have less than 5 Pokemon he would join you as Zygarde 10%. It can't be deposited on the PC, but you can revert it back to Squishy by clicking the Squishy icon, so you have space for 6 Pokemon. You would need at least 50 cells to play in the climax. In the postgame in Northern Kalos, you would found the other cores and the other cells.

I like this idea so I'm stealing this. <3

Basically I'm envisioning something very different from a typical Pokemon game.

 

[Bolt Strike]

This. I imagine South Kalos to probably be like Portugal/Spain or even Eastern Europe.

I was thinking more the other half of France that they completely ignored in XY.

but just two years later and hence in the same time as SM. Calem and Serena are now not just pokemon trainers, they're sort of special agents of Looker and the International Police. Rivals is Emma with Dexio and Sina featuring through the holo caster. Basically, the 5 of them are working together to research on Zygarde with Calem, Serena and Emma being based in Kalos and Dexio and Sinia being based in Alola. The SM protag will make a cameo but not significant.

Usually when they do sequels they match the amount of RL time it's been since the original game (RBY -> GSC was 1996 -> 1999 so it was 3 years later, BW -> BW2 was 2010 to 2012, so 2 years). Since this hypothetical sequel would release in 2016, it'd have been 3 years since XY's release in 2013.

 

[SerenaToAlola]

I was thinking more the other half of France that they completely ignored in XY.

I am aware that they ignored half of France for XY. I'm not French but is the rest of France particularly different from the half of France shown? I'm assuming that it would be similar so I made the choice to base it on another region.

Usually when they do sequels they match the amount of RL time it's been since the original game (RBY -> GSC was 1996 -> 1999 so it was 3 years later, BW -> BW2 was 2010 to 2012, so 2 years). Since this hypothetical sequel would release in 2016, it'd have been 3 years since XY's release in 2013.

Yes you have a point but I thought it'll be cooler if it was in tandem with SM. Anyway this is just a thread to throw around ideas, who said it'll have to be released in 2016 lol.

 

[Esserise]

Why is them "ignoring" half of France spoken of so pejoratively? They also "completely ignored" 90% of New York in Gen 5 and cut off Hokkaido's tail and sold it to the Ranger games. It's not that weird. Pokémon regions condense, modify, and exaggerate their real-world counterparts.

No one's talking about seeing justice done for Ithaca in B3W3...

 

[ocelotlrama jaguar]

-Well first of all, I would have Z serve as a Gen 6.5 title, with Gen 7 being pushed until the Switch. So the first big thing it would do would introduce brand new Pokemon.
-The game would be a sequel taking place 3 years later with new protagonists.
-The game would get a large expansion in the form of Southern Kalos, which forms a 4th subregion in Kalos. There would also be a few areas in the northeast. The Kalos Dex would be expanded to 500, with each subdex having 125 Pokemon.
-Zygarde would join you early in the game as a Cell and power up over the course of the game, similar to how Nebby does in SM.
-Xerneas and Yveltal's connection to the Kalos region and to Zygarde would be fully explained.
-Malva would be the leader of a revived Team Flare.
-Rhyhorn Racing would be an actual minigame.
-Lumiose City would contain a Join Avenue-esque feature where you could open up shops along the four avenues.

Ohh! I like the way you think. I'd love all this stuff, too.

 

[Fan of Jarrus]

The rest of the Kalos starters having Bond Forms.

 

[Harryghost]

Personally, I was glad with the Zygarde route the anime took in the XY series, and was kinda hoping for a third version focusing on Zygarde after all that development. In my opinion, it would take care of the new Zygarde forms, so that GF would not have to shove them in Alola, when the two do not seem to have much connection at all besides that ecosystem monitoring claim in the Pokédex. Ash-Greninja, eh...I think it could still pass on debuting in either Z or SM, so I don't see it as much of a problem there.

On the other hand, it could be possible that the company would not want to be predictable in its advances, and decided to shut down any Z's to keep it fresh and lively. I totally support this hypothesis as well.

 

[Bolt Strike]

They didn't cancel, I believe. It didn't exist as a possibility. The staff had the entire 2015, and they passed on the opportunity.

I don't think 2015 was ever a possibility, they need break years every so often, and we'd gotten 3 games in a row. If we were getting some kind of Z version it would've been in 2016. Cancelling the game because of the 20th anniversary makes a lot more sense.

 

[Esserise]

They didn't cancel, I believe. It didn't exist as a possibility. The staff had the entire 2015, and they passed on the opportunity.

Ehhh, I despise the concept of Z but I do think it was a possibility at some point. One really must wonder about not only the Eternal Flower Floette that was left in the XY games' internal code, but also the presence of Zygarde's two "Thousand" moves even at that early stage... I think they knew they wanted a new generation for the 20th anniversary and figured they could only get two Gen 6 games made in that timeframe, and decided that Hoenn remakes were a better idea than two successive Kalos games.

(I further suspect that Soaring may have been intended as an XY feature - if I recall, Soaring was a Masuda idea that he insisted to Ohmori to make work in ORAS, and we know that the Mega Eon Dragons are in the XY code; you can even trade the Lati@site to XY with no problems. It'd make more sense of Sky Battles, too. As it stands, they're just a weird limiting gimmick, but maybe they were supposed to tie in with Soaring and GF simply couldn't figure out a good way to handle that. And so for ORAS, maybe they shrugged and said "Fuck it, just make them normal battles and have the dragon not be part of your party." Although on the other hand, a fundamentally exclusionary battle style that touts itself on its merits as a flashy spectacle is pretty in-line with the themes of the XY games anyway, so maybe I'm looking too deep for a conspiracy.)

2015 probably looks like they were sitting on their thumbs, but I'd imagine they were still working on SM, and maybe starting work on USUM or preplanning for the Switch game. Or maybe just getting some needed rest, since XY were such an abnormally large project for them.

 

[Kallyle]

Story Mode
I would have added the twist that what connects Xerneas and Yveltal to each other and Zygarde isn't becuase of some natural history, but the Ultimate Weapon. Basically, like how Mega Rayquaza came about because of the people's wishes to it, AZ's Ultimate Weapon ended up channeling enough Infinite Energy to creating Xerneas as people's desire to lessen the tragedy during the war and Yveltal for something to blame for all of the death surrounding the war. However, this weapon also modified and hindered Zygarde's ability to split and form at will to monitor the ecosystem and ended up typing its existence to that of Xerneas and Yveltal. Because of this Zygarde blames AZ for ruining the natural order of Kalos' ecosystem and will constantly try to get rid of AZ and anyone who holds a Mega Stone or key stone throughout the story.

This is where you, the player, step into this mess. You're mission will be to show Zygarde that not all humans who use the power of Infinity Energy are selfish assholes who try to subjugate nature for their own benefit. However, Bonnie will not only be involved with a Zygarde core like she was in the Anime, but she herself will actually believes in Zygarde's current cause. She too has to be taught the same lessons as Zygarde.

Once Team Flare captures both Xerneas and Yveltal, and AZ finally realizes that what he did all those years ago didn't just make his Floette hate him, but also sees the extent of what he did to the Kalos region and the planet as a whole. After telling this to the play, Zygarde and Bonnie overhear this and decides to let AZ out provided he make amends by helping destroy that awful weapon. Of course, Zygarde's gonna stick with AZ until the deed is done since it wants AZ to prove the sincerity of his remorse.

At Geosenge, Malva appears and becomes annoyed at the fact the man she captured escaped due to the help of "an idiotic child who has no idea how Team Flare will make this world better" and immediately attacks you. After that, the majority of the Team Flare base plays out the same with the inclusion of AZ, Bonnie, and Zygarde expect for the cutscene with Lysandre before you get to the Legendary Chamber. Lysandre reveals the true nature of Xerneas and Yveltals as described above. He also claims that because of this, AZ has no right to stop him because what Lysandre is doing is the same thing AZ did; and that the world will ultimately be better off for it. However, AZ counters that it actually just makes them both selfish terrorists and that Lysandre will sooner or later come to regret this decision as he recently had.

From there, there are two legendary chambers, one with Xerneas and the other with Yveltal. You have to choose which chamber to take on while AZ takes care of the other chamber. Of course, this means you have to wait for the post-game to catch the other legend. Afterwards, things play out like XY, with the parade scene having AZ reunite with his beloved Floette. Also, Clemont scolds Bonnie for supporting Zygarde's misguided actions.

Post-game
Zygarde makes you go through the Cell and core side quest post-game, the same one we currently have with SM, but with the twist of Zinnia interfering because she mistakenly believes you wish to use the Dragon-type legend's power for evil. In addition, the legendary you didn't catch from a chamber is available at Victory Road.

For the Looker missions, AZ decides to help Looker apprehend the remnants of Team Flare, and ends up becoming a detective alongside Emma. From there, you can not only battle Emma, but also AZ. In addition, AZ will teach Light of Ruin to any of your Fairy-type Pokémon in the same vain that we do with Draco Meteor for Dragon-types!

As for Kiloude City, in addition to what's already present, you get two new facilities: the Battle Dimension for Inverse Battles and Battle Skyscraper for an enhanced, more interesting version of Sky Battles. There is also a Trainer House where you can download trainers to battle like with Mossdeep City and the e-Reader back in RS, and course a building with Move Tutors.

 

[Silktree]

This thread should be retitled "Pokemon XY, according to you".

Anyway, I got over Kalos in October 2013 and never looked back. I don't see wasted potential so much as lack of potential. And I almost have to remind myself that Z wasn't released considering the rampant, uninteresting speculation about it.

 

[Mitchman]

-Well first of all, I would have Z serve as a Gen 6.5 title, with Gen 7 being pushed until the Switch. So the first big thing it would do would introduce brand new Pokemon.
-The game would be a sequel taking place 3 years later with new protagonists.
-The game would get a large expansion in the form of Southern Kalos, which forms a 4th subregion in Kalos. There would also be a few areas in the northeast. The Kalos Dex would be expanded to 500, with each subdex having 125 Pokemon.
-Zygarde would join you early in the game as a Cell and power up over the course of the game, similar to how Nebby does in SM.
-Xerneas and Yveltal's connection to the Kalos region and to Zygarde would be fully explained.
-Malva would be the leader of a revived Team Flare.
-Rhyhorn Racing would be an actual minigame.
-Lumiose City would contain a Join Avenue-esque feature where you could open up shops along the four avenues.

Mostly this. Marketing and Pokemon's nature as a franchise dictates that each generation can get a bit long in the tooth after a certain time frame, but I always will be interested in the concept of each generation incorporating Nintendo's ideology of evergreen titles into the games. Maybe we will see this come Gen 8, who knows, but I personally would not mind a cycle that has one generation=one hardware. Basically have one region that acts as two, with an expanded lore by the end, would be great as the series treats its non titular characters with little respect, and it also allows for a more extensive mythos surrounding each region.
But yeah. Between the Nebby style path Zygarde could have had and the fact that new UBs are damn near gen 7.5 territory, a south Kalos game pair would have been feasible, and I really think it was justifiable to think so 2 years ago.

 

[Bolt Strike]

Mostly this. Marketing and Pokemon's nature as a franchise dictates that each generation can get a bit long in the tooth after a certain time frame, but I always will be interested in the concept of each generation incorporating Nintendo's ideology of evergreen titles into the games. Maybe we will see this come Gen 8, who knows, but I personally would not mind a cycle that has one generation=one hardware. Basically have one region that acts as two, with an expanded lore by the end, would be great as the series treats its non titular characters with little respect, and it also allows for a more extensive mythos surrounding each region.
But yeah. Between the Nebby style path Zygarde could have had and the fact that new UBs are damn near gen 7.5 territory, a south Kalos game pair would have been feasible, and I really think it was justifiable to think so 2 years ago.

Yeah, Pokemon's generation based release cycle and the potential to provide a larger amount of content and theoretically infinite replay value ("potential" and "theoretically" being key words here, they sure haven't lived up to this in recent games) makes it a good candidate for the evergreen business model. I've never liked the idea of them cramming 2 generations on one piece of hardware, when you consider that Pokemon generations have to be 3+ years (because that's how long it takes Game Freak to create a new generation) and console lifespans average about 5 years (some even cutting to 4 years if they don't perform well, such as the Wii U) trying to fit 2 of them in doesn't seem that smart unless you have time to kill (such as with the DS).

Anyway yeah, there were a lot of people skeptical about the concept of a Gen 6.5 in 2016 and now in 2017 we're getting essentially Gen 7.5, so I see no reason why they couldn't have done 6.5 instead of Gen 7. Gen 7 has really done us more harm than good.

 

[Kallyle]

Yeah, Pokemon's generation based release cycle and the potential to provide a larger amount of content and theoretically infinite replay value ("potential" and "theoretically" being key words here, they sure haven't lived up to this in recent games) makes it a good candidate for the evergreen business model. I've never liked the idea of them cramming 2 generations on one piece of hardware, when you consider that Pokemon generations have to be 3+ years (because that's how long it takes Game Freak to create a new generation) and console lifespans average about 5 years (some even cutting to 4 years if they don't perform well, such as the Wii U) trying to fit 2 of them in doesn't seem that smart unless you have time to kill (such as with the DS).

Anyway yeah, there were a lot of people skeptical about the concept of a Gen 6.5 in 2016 and now in 2017 we're getting essentially Gen 7.5, so I see no reason why they couldn't have done 6.5 instead of Gen 7. Gen 7 has really done us more harm than good.

As much as I like Gen 7 thus far, I have to agree that the amount of stuff removed and sidelined stuff from Gen 6 is a bit larger than the improvements that Gen 7 made. I know I keep saying this, bit it's almost as if Game Freak are ashamed of Gen 6 for some reason.