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Since we've also got the Battle Frontier poll right now, I thought this would be fitting.
Lately, I've been sort of loosely replaying Emerald, since I haven't actually touched the original Hoenn games in years. To my surprise, I can almost seem to tolerate them more than the Gen 4 games; the lack of a physical/special split is extremely disorientating for me, but the engine seems to run faster (I don't know if it actually does, but it feels like it). But anyway. One of the things I started to think about when I visited it was the Abandoned Ship. It is a very unique location in the series; every game features some kind of abandoned manmade structure that has been left to decay, but in every other instance, these structures have been terrestrial buildings (and Hoenn even has one of those as well; two, if you count the Sky Pillar). No other region has a wrecked cruise liner that Trainers have turned into a secret hangout. It's even set up to entice you and pique your interest from a very early point in the game, by way of being visible in the overworld when Mr. Briney ferries you to Slateport. But we're never told much about the ship, except that it's from an older era, that it used to be called the S.S. Cactus, and that it contains the rare Scanner item.
One of the more curious alterations made in ORAS is the conversion of the Abandoned Ship into the half-sunken oil rig-turned-artificial reef known as Sea Mauville. Some of the reasons for this change are apparent, and make sense. An artificial reef is arguably more appropriate in the context of ORAS's increased environmentalist themes, and it also serves as an homage to and replacement for Navel Rock, in that it is a Hoenn game's way of making Ho-Oh and Lugia available, within a location that on one end pierces the sky, and on the other plunges down into the depths. But it does a lot more than that - as has been often noted, Sea Mauville is given a fairly dark backstory, describing an era in the Hoenn region that was dozens of years ago, during which Sea Mauville was an energy farm that was built with noble intentions, but became corrupted by greedy managers who imposed harmful working conditions on their employees. This backstory is communicated to the audience through scattered, cryptic notes and objects that you can find lying around the facility's interior. But even more than that, Sea Mauville also exists to tie together various other elements in the story. It links Wattson and the Mauville projects to Professor Cozmo (detailing his rather sad childhood and relationship with his father), the Slateport Shipyard crew, as well as the Devon Corporation, who stretch things even further by way of establishing that Sea Mauville itself was inspired by the energy used to power AZ's ultimate weapon. There are a few other Easter eggs - it is implied that the "man with no power" who becomes Mr. Bonding later in the game was an administrator at Sea Mauville, and there is also an encounter with a Spiritomb due to the presence of an Odd Keystone that was donated by the Oreburgh Mine, which is likely a savvy reference to Sea Mauville's position on Route 108.
For somebody like myself who gets very interested in the games' worldbuilding and the history of the regions, Sea Mauville was a unexpected boon of information. And yet... as I am going back and playing Emerald, I feel that the near-wordless presentation of the Abandoned Ship provides a certain kind of worldbuilding of its own. No, it certainly doesn't offer as much expositional meat to chew, but by saying nothing about the Ship and simply letting it exist on its own, it shades it in a fog of mystery and leaves the details of its backstory up to the power of one's own imagination. And I definitely find myself thinking that such an approach has its own kind of appeal.
So which version do you prefer? Sea Mauville with its cryptic tragedy and density of worldbuilding references, or the imminent mystique of the Abandoned Ship? And how do you feel about the change? And whether your prefer Sea Mauville or not, do you wish that ORAS had included some sort of reference to the Abandoned Ship? If so, how would you have featured it or called back to it?
Personally, Sea Mauville just manages to edge out the Abandoned Ship in my opinion, although I really do like the Ship, and especially how we get an early glimpse of it when we're sailing on Mr. Briney's boat. Unfortunately, ORAS do not offer any such peek at Sea Mauville, since sailing with Mr. Briney in those games is presented as a simple fade-to-black on the screen as we're warped to the beach of Slateport.
Lately, I've been sort of loosely replaying Emerald, since I haven't actually touched the original Hoenn games in years. To my surprise, I can almost seem to tolerate them more than the Gen 4 games; the lack of a physical/special split is extremely disorientating for me, but the engine seems to run faster (I don't know if it actually does, but it feels like it). But anyway. One of the things I started to think about when I visited it was the Abandoned Ship. It is a very unique location in the series; every game features some kind of abandoned manmade structure that has been left to decay, but in every other instance, these structures have been terrestrial buildings (and Hoenn even has one of those as well; two, if you count the Sky Pillar). No other region has a wrecked cruise liner that Trainers have turned into a secret hangout. It's even set up to entice you and pique your interest from a very early point in the game, by way of being visible in the overworld when Mr. Briney ferries you to Slateport. But we're never told much about the ship, except that it's from an older era, that it used to be called the S.S. Cactus, and that it contains the rare Scanner item.
One of the more curious alterations made in ORAS is the conversion of the Abandoned Ship into the half-sunken oil rig-turned-artificial reef known as Sea Mauville. Some of the reasons for this change are apparent, and make sense. An artificial reef is arguably more appropriate in the context of ORAS's increased environmentalist themes, and it also serves as an homage to and replacement for Navel Rock, in that it is a Hoenn game's way of making Ho-Oh and Lugia available, within a location that on one end pierces the sky, and on the other plunges down into the depths. But it does a lot more than that - as has been often noted, Sea Mauville is given a fairly dark backstory, describing an era in the Hoenn region that was dozens of years ago, during which Sea Mauville was an energy farm that was built with noble intentions, but became corrupted by greedy managers who imposed harmful working conditions on their employees. This backstory is communicated to the audience through scattered, cryptic notes and objects that you can find lying around the facility's interior. But even more than that, Sea Mauville also exists to tie together various other elements in the story. It links Wattson and the Mauville projects to Professor Cozmo (detailing his rather sad childhood and relationship with his father), the Slateport Shipyard crew, as well as the Devon Corporation, who stretch things even further by way of establishing that Sea Mauville itself was inspired by the energy used to power AZ's ultimate weapon. There are a few other Easter eggs - it is implied that the "man with no power" who becomes Mr. Bonding later in the game was an administrator at Sea Mauville, and there is also an encounter with a Spiritomb due to the presence of an Odd Keystone that was donated by the Oreburgh Mine, which is likely a savvy reference to Sea Mauville's position on Route 108.
For somebody like myself who gets very interested in the games' worldbuilding and the history of the regions, Sea Mauville was a unexpected boon of information. And yet... as I am going back and playing Emerald, I feel that the near-wordless presentation of the Abandoned Ship provides a certain kind of worldbuilding of its own. No, it certainly doesn't offer as much expositional meat to chew, but by saying nothing about the Ship and simply letting it exist on its own, it shades it in a fog of mystery and leaves the details of its backstory up to the power of one's own imagination. And I definitely find myself thinking that such an approach has its own kind of appeal.
So which version do you prefer? Sea Mauville with its cryptic tragedy and density of worldbuilding references, or the imminent mystique of the Abandoned Ship? And how do you feel about the change? And whether your prefer Sea Mauville or not, do you wish that ORAS had included some sort of reference to the Abandoned Ship? If so, how would you have featured it or called back to it?
Personally, Sea Mauville just manages to edge out the Abandoned Ship in my opinion, although I really do like the Ship, and especially how we get an early glimpse of it when we're sailing on Mr. Briney's boat. Unfortunately, ORAS do not offer any such peek at Sea Mauville, since sailing with Mr. Briney in those games is presented as a simple fade-to-black on the screen as we're warped to the beach of Slateport.
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