Speculation What if GenVI is being cut short because the Alola region connects to Kalos?!

[PurplePopplio]

I was so glad when Sun and Moon was announced! I really disliked Gen 6 and really wanted to move on.

I also don't want to begin or continue the whole Z-argument, because I find it pointless to discuss and there's no way to prove or disprove whether Z would have improved Kalos. So let's leave it at that.

 

[Fairy Type Arceus]

Having a ton of loose ends is pretty much the definition of incomplete. For something to be complete there can't be anything missing, and I can point to a ton of things that are missing. Now not every game is going to address every little unknown in the story, but XY has many, many more unknowns than any other generation.



Unless they plan on nailing the initial pair the first time, that is a very bad precedent to set, because third versions, sequels, and remakes are where the most polished games with the most content tend to come from. It's basically saying they don't want to put effort into their games anymore.

But having a 3rd version might make some people not buy the first pair of hands. "Why buy x/y when a better version is probably coming out 1-3 years later...what one didn't come out better go get x/y then." Gamefreak better start nailing it on the first game pretty much.

 

[Bolt Strike]

But having a 3rd version might make some people not buy the first pair of hands. "Why buy x/y when a better version is probably coming out 1-3 years later...what one didn't come out better go get x/y then." Gamefreak better start nailing it on the first game pretty much.

That's pretty much the issue though, they didn't nail it with XY (in fact quite the opposite, it feels more lacking than any other first version ever), so it's a poor choice to break that precedent. If SM ends up being a fairly complete game and doesn't leave us with so many questions at the end (and considering the circumstances, there's a good chance of that happening), then I'd be fine with no third version there, but XY definitely feels like it needs more. Much more.

 

[Icy Wind]

The first pair of a generation are never, in no shape or form, objectively "incomplete". While i can understand people who don't want to pay for both the first pair of a generation and the "third version", game freak makes third version because they can easily expand on a region since they reuse the same engine, not because the first pair are objectively "incomplete".

That ^, and not to mention that whether or not a game is "complete" or not is a highly subjective matter to begin with so yeah.

 

[RileyXY1]

The first pair of a generation are never, in no shape or form, objectively "incomplete". While i can understand people who don't want to pay for both the first pair of a generation and the "third version", game freak makes third version because they can easily expand on a region since they reuse the same engine, not because the first pair are objectively "incomplete".

That ^, and not to mention that whether or not a game is "complete" or not is a highly subjective matter to begin with so yeah.

I agree with this. No Pokemon game is incomplete.

 

[Kallyle]

The first pair of a generation are never, in no shape or form, objectively "incomplete". While i can understand people who don't want to pay for both the first pair of a generation and the "third version", game freak makes third version because they can easily expand on a region since they reuse the same engine, not because the first pair are objectively "incomplete".

That ^, and not to mention that whether or not a game is "complete" or not is a highly subjective matter to begin with so yeah.

I agree with this. No Pokemon game is incomplete.

I agree that no Pokémon game in and of itself is "incomplete" in the eyes of Game Freak getting what they initially wanted out of the way. The main issue @Bolt the Cat and many others (including myself) have is that the region itself, as well as its story, doesn't seem to be able to stand on its own right now as-is.

Here is everything Kalos is missing:

• The boackstory of Xerneas, Yveltal, and Zygarde with the former two only being used as a plot device for the ultimate weapon while the latter just gets shoved aside as a random cave legendary when it heavily implied to be connected to Xerneas and Yveltal. Sure, legendaries don't have to be integrated into the plot, but XY made the mistake of shoehorning the box legendaries in anyways, despite there being no reason to do so.
• There are no unique side-quests in the vain of Contests, Pokathlon, Musicals, PokéStar Studios, etc. even though we are teased with a Rhyhorn racing minigame. One could argue Super Training and/or Pokémon Amie, but that got reused in ORAS.
• As with the above, yet another thing was copy-pasted into ORAS without anyt sort of change or expansion: the Battle Maison was put in place of the Battle Frontier. Seriously, its's bad enough that Game Freak doesn't want to give us something challenging like the Frontier anyone, but did they have to put the Maison into Hoenn instead of the original Battle Tower? It just felt so out-of-place in ORAS compared to it being in XY.
• Although some would argue that the Mega Evoltuion was the big part of Kalos' lore rather than the legendaries, the entire lore and explanation for it was outright retconned in ORAS. While one could claimed that Kalos had the origin of Mega Evoltuion all wrong, considering that the Hoenn games take place earlier in the timeline (alongside the Kanto games), this creates huge continuity errors regarding XY.
• Last but not least, the oonly 72 new Pokémon of Kalos got pushed aside in their own debut generation. This is partially due to Mega Evolution, but it's only made worse by the fact that the Kalos starters got mostly overshadowed by the Mega Evolutions of the Kanto starters. Heck, old Pokémon in general caused the newer guys to be more overlooked due to the lower amount of new species, poor distribution and lower encounter rates in comparison to that of the older 'mons.

As you can see, Kalos doesn't have anything meaningful to make it stand out. All it will be known for is having the first two games to ever utilize Mega Evolution, and once that's taken for granted, what will the games for this region even be remembered for? Even though a follow-up Kalos installment might have not fixed all of those points, there would at least be a chance that one of these things could have been corrected. Heck, even it none of these things got done correctly, we could at least say that Game Freak tried to fix their mistakes. As of now though, all we will remember about the Kalos games is that they existed. We can thank Masuda not wanting to be predictable for that.

In summary, Kalos has nothing important to be remembered for, and in the event of remakes ceasing to exist due to the virtual console, then it never will. The region itself is what is really incomplete.

 

[Boss1708]

As with the above, yet another thing was copy-pasted into ORAS without anyt sort of change or expansion: the Battle Maison was put in place of the Battle Frontier. Seriously, its's bad enough that Game Freak doesn't want to give us something challenging like the Frontier anyone, but did they have to put the Maison into Hoenn instead of the original Battle Tower? It just felt so out-of-place in ORAS compared to it being in XY.

The Hoenn Battle Tower was copied from Crystal, therefore it is originally a "Johto feature". After that, that same Battle Tower was ported to Sinnoh as well. So it´s not like they haven´t done this before.

And Sinnoh´s Battle Frontier was copy pasted in Johto for HGSS with no explanation at all. They didn´t even change the Multi Battle partners, having you team with Riley and the other Platinum Multi Partners in Johto, with no plot explanation for this at all! What are they doing in Johto? What are the Sinnoh Frontier Brains doing in Johto? This is an inconsistency, especially since Platinum and HGSS are supposed to occur simultaneously in the time line.

In ORAS, the Battle Maison was at least given a plot explanation for why it is in Hoenn. The Battle Chateleines are from Hoenn, and the Hoenn Facility is the original one, before the Chateleines decided to move to Kalos. Therefore, it is the precursor of the Battle Tower in Hoenn.

Furthermore, you get completly new Multi Battle partners in ORAS (with Megas, unlike the XY partners), instead of reusing the Kalos ones. And the Battle Music is changed, using the Battle Frontier theme from Emerald. So it is not exactly the same Facility from XY, it is an improved version of it.

 

[Esserise]

The boackstory of Xerneas, Yveltal, and Zygarde with the former two only being used as a plot device for the ultimate weapon while the latter just gets shoved aside as a random cave legendary when it heavily implied to be connected to Xerneas and Yveltal. Sure, legendaries don't have to be integrated into the plot, but XY made the mistake of shoehorning the box legendaries in anyways, despite there being no reason to do so.

To start, we still don't know what the deal with Zygarde is, so I'm not going to comment on that.

Regarding Xerneas and Yveltal however, I don't think it is inherently a mistake to have them feature in the plot without being the central fixture of it. I mean, that's sort of the deal with Ho-Oh and Lugia in HGSS, as the games do steer you toward them and force you to encounter them, but they aren't really in the spotlight. And I think it worked fine there.

I think the mistake with Xerneas and Yveltal was a very simple one. The games did build up to their appearance - certain characters do occasionally talk about them at various points before the ultimate weapon is unearthed. But unlike with Ho-Oh and Lugia, they were made to overlap with the villain plot. Suddenly, they are a key component of the weapon, which is a detail that hadn't been mentioned at all before that point. So all I think it's really missing in terms of execution is a moment prior to the weapon's emergence where the two "prongs" of the story are folded together - they need something to cushion that jarringly sudden intersection.

There are no unique side-quests in the vain of Contests, Pokathlon, Musicals, PokéStar Studios, etc. even though we are teased with a Rhyhorn racing minigame. One could argue Super Training and/or Pokémon Amie, but that got reused in ORAS.

I wouldn't say that we were "teased with a Rhyhorn racing minigame." We were only told that Rhyhorn racing was a sport that exists, and shown that a track for it exists in Kalos, and the fans took that to a certain conclusion. I mean, maybe if we had actually seen some people using that race track, then you could call it a "tease," but as it stands, it's just a bit of worldbuilding. I mean, we've got that eating contest in Celadon City with Maylene, but that doesn't equate to a minigame. We've got those extra rooms in Mr. Backlot's Mansion, but the maids never move out of the way (which, now that I think about it, reminds me a little of the other power plants in XY). We've got Challenger's Cave being described as the dwelling place of a Legendary Pokémon in one game, and then the entrance has randomly collapsed in the next. Perhaps most famously, we have the rockets in Mossdeep (Why else would they show us the rocket ship and talk about increasingly successful launches, if not to suggest that we can ride them into space?? We even have some cosmic Pokémon like Jirachi and Deoxys and Solrock/Lunatone!)

My point is, not everything that could lead to something does; sometimes things are there just for the sake of embellishment.

On top of that, let's not forget that DP's sidequests were lifted from RS. They're just dressed up a little differently in Sinnoh.

Although some would argue that the Mega Evoltuion was the big part of Kalos' lore rather than the legendaries, the entire lore and explanation for it was outright retconned in ORAS. While one could claimed that Kalos had the origin of Mega Evoltuion all wrong, considering that the Hoenn games take place earlier in the timeline (alongside the Kanto games), this creates huge continuity errors regarding XY.

It wasn't retconned, it was just expanded upon. Even factoring in what ORAS says about it, the Delta Episode constantly calls back to XY, and the origin of Mega Evolution is still linked to the ultimate weapon. Rayquaza is an exception, not a replacement.

The only continuity error is Sycamore's suggestion in XY that Mega Evolution has only ever been found in Kalos, but XY already tripped up on the lore of Mega Evolution on their own by initially saying that it was a new kind of evolution, and then revealing that it actually dates back centuries. In any case, these both pertain to mere singular lines of dialogue and can be easily overlooked. A "huge" continuity error would be something on the crazy and *actually* huge like oh, I don't know, bear with me here - it would be something like if B2W2 were to have suddenly started saying that N was never a member of Team Plasma, or whatever. An inconsistency that actually damages the story. The line about Mega Evolution being found only in Kalos? That's completely forgettable, because it only matters for that one scene. The plot of XY functions regardless of whether Mega Evolution is exclusive to Kalos or not. It's like saying that the appearance of Lunatone in AZ's war flashback is a "huge" continuity error because the Pokédex says that Lunatone was discovered only 40 years ago. It's a minor slip-up, but we can ignore it and still understand the larger point they're trying to get across.

Last but not least, the oonly 72 new Pokémon of Kalos got pushed aside in their own debut generation. This is partially due to Mega Evolution, but it's only made worse by the fact that the Kalos starters got mostly overshadowed by the Mega Evolutions of the Kanto starters. Heck, old Pokémon in general caused the newer guys to be more overlooked due to the lower amount of new species, poor distribution and lower encounter rates in comparison to that of the older 'mons.

Unless you're doing a Nuzlocke or something, it's not difficult at all to mostly or exclusively use Pokémon that were introduced in Gen VI. I myself have done numerous playthroughs of XY and rarely have I ever even touched the Pokémon from older generations, specifically because I wanted to try the new ones out.

 

[EmpoleonProd]

Unless you're doing a Nuzlocke or something, it's not difficult at all to mostly or exclusively use Pokémon that were introduced in Gen VI. I myself have done numerous playthroughs of XY and rarely have I ever even touched the Pokémon from older generations, specifically because I wanted to try the new ones out.

To support this statement, my team in Y version was exclusively new Pokemon with the exception of the Kanto starter being my mega, otherwise I had Greninja, Talonflame, Goodra, Aegislash, and Sylveon. I'd say Kalos did a plenty good job of introducing strong and usable Pokemon instead of giving us 150 like Unova with like 100 of them being irrelevant copies of older Pokemon or just weak and not viable to be used. But I can see why some might think this, if you catch your favorites or similar/same Pokemon every game you're bound to have a stale team. I try to only catch Pokemon of the region's origin when I play games and fully intend to at least try to do the same in SM. I wouldn't mind if they threw a BW1 and made it so only new Pokemon are available to start with, although that already seems unlikely considering the Rotom in the Pokedex being a Sinnoh Pokemon (Sinnoh confirmed btw, someone may as well say it now).

 

[Icy Wind]

The region itself is what is really incomplete.

I'll repeat what I said earlier then:

and not to mention that whether or not a game is "complete" or not is a highly subjective matter to begin with so yeah.

You're free to dislike Kalos for whatever reason you want Kallyle, but just because Kalos didn't meet your personal criterias of what a ''memorable'' region is to you doesn't mean that everybody is going to think that it's a ''forgettable'' one.

Could a hypothetical ''Z'' have fixed the situations you consider as flaws? No one will ever know. But there's no point in continuing arguing about this. Gen 7 is coming in 5 months, and no amount of complain from you or any other fan are going to change that.

*Sigh*

Look, I understand being disappointed that you didn't get to see Kalos being improved, I myself was on the pokemon "Z" train before sun and moon were announced, but you can't get always what you want in life. Just accept the fact that gen 6 didn't get a sequel/third version/whatever and move on with your life.

 

[Arceus the Dragon]

Kalos is a region to remember for me. It would be interesting if we can go to Kalos in post game. However I will be alright with just Alola region. Besides, the very first games of a new generation has never gotten two regions since GSC. XY games were excellent and was made the way the very first pair of games in a gen was made. Some expect first new games of a gen to have lots of content but it makes more sense for the final games of the gen to have the most content. ORAS had the most because it was the final pair of games in the gen and that makes sense for me.

 

[Joltfox]

OLD GUY RAMBLE ALERT

X/Y tl:dr
- Too easy
- 5m exp share
- Skates blazing fast
- Lvl capped until having right badge
- Lvl capped again
- Rinse , Repeat
- Went back to Gen 1
- Cry , Eat , Sleep , Repeat

Its anoying , nothing poses a challenge , the only thing I have going as a veteran player ( 27 old geezer ) is the battlemansion and online ... and I hate online for how its all " I need this one pokemon with this ability and this nature and I'll breed 100000 of them to get it all perfect , then I'll EV train it to perfect with 6 perfect IV's "

 

[Lufenium]

I've discussed this at length before so I'll keep this brief and to the point.

"Cut short" implies that something was cut off, or removed. This is not the case. No other main line Gen VI titles were promised. We can bounce around theories and arguments about ghost girls and locked doors all we like, but no Kalos sequel/expansion were ever promised, or seemingly in development. So, no. I don't think Gen VI was cut short. It was a short gen, yes. But looking back at Gen VI titles I think it was planned out that way. And after seeing how incredibly good Sun/Moon look, I'm glad for that.

On Alola:
I doubt they will be connected anymore than Kalos & Unova were, or Kanto & Hoenn were. References and in-jokes, yes, but I doubt there will be a big connection.

 

[Felly]

I think it'd make sense considering how few new Pokemon we got in XY. If we get about the same amount of Pokemon in Sun and Moon that we got in Kalos, it'd make sense since the total Pokemon from those regions would make up the total of one whole region (and then some). I wouldn't really call gen 6 as a generation that was cut short, unless you consider the lack of a 3rd version for XY cutting it short, but it was still a complete generation. They'd have to balance everything out to make the Kalos trainers be strong enough to give the players a bit of a fight once they get that far in the game though. Kalos is small in terms of how many new Pokemon it gave us; there has to be some sort of reason for it, and this could be it.

 

[Silktree]

it'd make sense since the total Pokemon from those regions would make up the total of one whole region (and then some).

They're clearly two separate regions corresponding to different generations. If you feel that Generation VI had too few new Pokemon, Sun and Moon can't do anything to fix that.

 

[Felly]

They're clearly two separate regions corresponding to different generations. If you feel that Generation VI had too few new Pokemon, Sun and Moon can't do anything to fix that.

I mean, Kanto and Johto were clearly two separate regions corresponding to different generations, but that didn't stop Game Freak from putting them together in GSC (or in the remakes, HGSS). Admittedly, that was about 5 generations ago and times have changed since then, but if they've done it once before, who's stopping them from doing it again?

Yes, I'll admit I feel that gen 6 had too few new Pokemon, and I'm sure there's other Pokemon fans that feel the same way. However, I'm not expecting Sun and Moon to fix that. Gen 6 is done and over with, we're not going to get any new Kalos Pokemon (unless Game Freak pulls out some kinda surprise on us, but that's unlikely) unless they're different forms of already existing Pokemon. Perhaps my post was unclear about that. I'm merely speculating that maybe if Alola does connect to Kalos, it could be a factor as to why Kalos introduced so few new Pokemon. Gen 6 was, in my eyes, complete. I'll admit I wasn't very fond of it for reasons I won't go into here because it's not the place for it, but it was a complete generation. We were never guaranteed Z or anything similar; the third version was just something that we had come to expect over the 20 years Pokemon has been around because in gens 1 through 4, there was a third version and gen 5 gave us sequels, so it was natural that fans would come to expect that Game Freak would continue to follow that formula. I'm merely saying that perhaps, while Kalos and Alola are of different generations, they could be connected and the small amount of new Pokemon released in Kalos is for that reason. We got 72 new Pokemon in gen 6. If Alola also released 72 new Pokemon, between those two regions, it would give us a total of 144 Pokemon, give or take depending on how many new Pokemon are actually released in gen 7. That would just about equate to one whole region instead of two separate ones.

It's possible that Game Freak is just trying something new here. Gen 1 gave us 151 Pokemon, and gen 2 gave us 100 more. Kanto and Johto were linked, though they each had their own gym system; they just shared an Elite Four that changed in the three years that spanned between RBYG and GSC. It's possible that Game Freak only released 72 Pokemon in gen 6 to release 72+ more in gen 7 to give a reason as to why the two are linked in the first place. It wouldn't be the first time they've tried something new considering we got sequels in gen 5 and no third version in gen 6.

This is all just a possibility though based on the number of new Pokemon introduced in the Kalos region; it's all just speculation, which is what this thread was meant for. I'm merely speculating based on what's been shown in Kalos and what could possibly happen with Alola, considering we don't know a whole lot about the region just yet other than what little has been revealed. Sun and Moon won't fix the fact that gen 6 had too few new Pokemon, but it could explain it. The only thing that'll fix the fact that gen 6 had too few new Pokemon is some sort of third version or continuation or whatever of XY that just happens to be in gen 7 or a patch to XY, and both of those seem extremely unlikely considering they're releasing gen 7 content and not gen 6 content.

We won't truly know what's going to happen in these games until they release more content over the next few months leading up to the November release date, but we can speculate all we want until official content proves these speculations otherwise.

 

[Vulcanos]

Personally, I don't see a return to Kalos.

If they are going to prioritize by having detailed enviroments, then there's a quality > quantity perspective here. Kalos was massive, but the story was so confusing (it went from an adventure with friends to this weird sci-fi story with ancient weapons, a 3,000 year old guy who's 11 feet tall, and a very forgettable antagonist), and there wasn't much to do. You can ride Pokemon, you say? Well, you can only ride a Rhyhorn & a Mamoswine in a specific region. The place is supplied with energy from four different power plants? Then why do you have 3 entrances you can never get into?

To me, Kalos is just a step above Sinnoh as the worst region in Pokemon history, and I am only saying that becuase Kalos had some interesting landmarks. Sinnoh was just a big mountain.

I'm hoping Alola, in spite of being small, will incorporate massive exploration of deep jungles, active lava tubes, and deep-sea trenches.

 

[Icy Wind]

If they are going to prioritize by having detailed enviroments, then there's a quality > quantity perspective here. Kalos was massive, but the story was so confusing (it went from an adventure with friends to this weird sci-fi story with ancient weapons, a 3,000 year old guy who's 11 feet tall, and a very forgettable antagonist)

You know, having a small region doesn't necessarily guarantee a good storyline.

Both Kanto and Johto are signifintly smaller than Kalos, and yet their plotline are just as bad, or even worse than Kalos.

Besides, the team that makes the games' plotline are different from the ones that design the regions.

There is no correlation between the size of a region and the plotline folks.

 

[RileyXY1]

Alola might connect together with Kalos, but I'm not sure.

 

[Arceus the Dragon]

As far as I am aware, gen 6 is a complete generation since Game Freak sees it as one otherwise they would not have moved onto Sun and Moon. I don't think gen 6 was cut short, at least not anymore. When I stopped and thought about, I realized that this is how Game Freak planned gen 6 and we should be happy about how it turned out. Game Freak make the games the way they want them to be and not what we want them to be.