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Why did Game Freak foreshadow Sun and Moon in X and Y?

To that point, I disagree that Zygarde's moves in the code indicate a "rushed" Gen VI or an "unplanned" Gen VII. I think they represent a rough endgame that would invariably be reached some way or another. I very much doubt that they completed work on XY and then thought, "Oh shit, the 20th anniversary is in two years! Scrap the plans for Z, everybody!" If the Backpacker is talking about the region in SM, then they knew the general direction that they were headed in. Zygarde's moves don't preclude that possibility.
Agreed.

Dummied out events, items, and moves happen all the time. After all, the gen I games were supposed to have some of the gen II pokemon in them but that inevitably ended up causing MissingNo. and other glitches. Then there's the skateboard and the item badges. Jumping ahead, there's also the Hoenn Shellos and Gastrodon that still exist as back sprites in DP. Unused things shouldn't be used as examples or used as a point that they completely ditched Z just to get a new gen by the 20th anniversary. If the Zygarde formes actually showed up in the code, even if they were just frame work or textures, then that would have been actual proof that they ditched Z. Having unused moves are just unused moves that they'll probably give it later in another game.
 
I don't really think this means a whole lot. Implying there are more regions isn't a surprise to anyone, the world is bigger than 6 regions. Its just like how they stopped saying there are only 151 Pokemon once they decided there would be new generations and now it is implied there are many more to be discovered. They intend to continue the series thats all the hints meant
 
If my understanding is correct, then pokemon games are actually commonly being developed concurrently, meaning while one is in a particular stage of development another is in an earlier stage at the same time, etc. This is one of the 'excuses' that Game Freak commonly sites along side the "giving each region its own flavor" for why every gen/region has it's own mechanics and devices and facilities instead of carrying them over. It's extremely likely that the planning stages of gen 7 were more or less finalized as XY was wrapping up, and adding in little easter eggs like the mysterious totem thing would have been simple and very likely does reference the new gen, IMO. On the other hand, while I do think the hiker was referring to the region we're going to, I don't think it's particularly important to the new game. Although it would be cool if you were able to trade the item into the new one and unlock something special, like a legendary.
 
@NoirGrimoir, I was thinking about how what if the backpacker is or is related to one of the major NPCs. Maybe you talk to a gym leader and they mention their brother who's off exploring the world. Maybe the professor might mention that their son is off exploring while doing research on the side. Maybe one of the E4 or the champion mentions how you remind him of somebody. Or the most likely scenario the backpacker just might just show up in the background mentioning how he met this nice kid in Kalos and told them all about his home region.

You bet there's going to be some off handed reference to meeting the backpacker. There just has to be one especially with all the rumors and discussion surrounding the mystery region. I mean even if the backpacker himself doesn't show up there's probably a gift shop somewhere full of Strange Souvenirs (They're hold items this time) just to bring it full circle despite being incredibly troll-ish.
 
I concur. Pokemon games are fond of those kinds of little references to other main games.
 
I actually hope that this is a case of Sun and Moon being set in Italy or Spain (or any other region bordering Northern France), being able to return to Kalos in Gen 7. If they could do that in addition to keep the new region as another accurate cultural portrayal of its real-life counterpart like XY was, then I would be really stoked.
 
we have a 20year anniversay and you still ask why?
Have fun and celebrate.
Hope this gen will be big and good like gen I, III and a better V, a great amount of well designed pokemon.
 
I don't think a lot of the so-called "references" were strictly speaking about Sun/Moon simply due to how vague they are - everything that was somewhat alluded to has been the standard for every new region since Johto. They were likely just little nods that the franchise will continue. If Sun/Moon end up having a legendary with an appearance resembling the odd souvenir then things will obviously be different, but right now? Nothing really to go on. After all, it's likely that development of Sun/Moon didn't start until after the release of X/Y; so if any game had dedicated hints, it would have likely been Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire.
 
off topic: Hey Josh, how's it been?

On topic:

I don't think that it's entirely impossible what some others have suggested, anniversaries tend to be a big deal so I could see at least some outlines of it existing by then and some of this stuff being intentional. Probably not full steam ahead until ORAS was nearer completion though, I imagine.

I don't think Gen 6 was a 'filler' generation, but the first attempt on the 3DS, which gets fine tuned with every other game they make for the system, as has happened before.

To specifically answer the title though, probably to assure players that we'd still get whole new generations after 6 possibly, at least especially for the anniversary coming up 3 years after X&Y's release.
 
I definitely feel the colors on Zygarde 100%'s chest far too similar to X/Y/S/M logos to be coincidence. The orange-ish and silvery blue looking colors are identical to that of the S/M logo's.

Some people theorize that Zygarde will be the master of the life/death duo, and whatever duo we get in S/M and I'm inclined to believe that.

This is the really generic theory that's been said like 100 times before, but bottom line is I think Sun and Moon are foreshadowed so much in X/Y because they will act as a sequel generation like Gold and Silver did.
 
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I think that because of the amount of time they spent learning the new hardware and creating all the game's assets, including all the old pokemon, from scratch they new they wouldn't have time to make everything as good as they wanted, but with that groundwork in place they are confident they will have time to make the next generation great. They say kalos is ok but this new region is awesome because they want to assure everyone that the next generation will be better.
 
This is actually kind of what I've been thinking as well. I don't mean to call gen 6 a "filler" gen, but surely they must have known years in advance that they wanted to debut a generation on the 20th anniversary, which arguably would have the potential to be something they'd want to go a bit more all out on.

This is just me being hopeful but I feel like X/Y was them trying to renew general interest for the series with older fans, and 3DS owners in general (visual overhaul, megas, nostalgia, etc). It worked, and a ton of people returned to the franchise, and now that everyone's interested in it again, while riding off of the anniversary hype, they're going to aim to "wow" us with s/m.

This is more or less how I look at it in retrospect. The whole X&Y period feels like sort of a "pre-Anniversary". The Origins special, the outright retreading of Kanto with Not!Viridian Forest/Unknown Dungeon/Bird Trio/Starters, etc., [potentially] foreshadowing this Generation in-game, and like you said, drawing in as many people as possible with their huge marketing efforts.

The one thing that kicks at my nerves though is that now Kalos feels less definitive in its own right. Between its own missing elements, the big nostalgia, and implying to us almost out of the gate that next Region is gonna be way cooler anyway...I just get this 'eh' after-taste (despite how much I enjoyed it). This is what makes my mind jump to the word "filler" myself. Like this was merely the appetizer to the 20th.

Although, the positive side of this to me is that the aesthetic and technical advancements were easily some of the best we've seen. And because the bulk of working with the 3DS has been done, they can put more time into polish and ironing out problems to make this one more robust. From that standpoint its an exciting precedent.
 
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I really don´t think it would have taken experimented developers like Game Freak THAT long to become experienced with the new engine. I imagine they would learn everything about it during the first year- year and a half of using it. And XY were developed in 3 years. I really doubt they would need 3 years of testing to master the 3DS engine. I think one year, or a year and a half, would have been enough. And, therefore, the second year and a half of XY development, they would have known everything they want to know. And by the time they started developing ORAS, they would have mastered it completely already.

I really doubt they would need an entire generation of "learning" to become familiar with a new handheld. Also, let´s not forget Pokedex 3D pro, and Dream Radar. Those would have been the real testing grounds of the 3ds engine, and added extra experience before starting XY.

So, calling Gen VI filler is wrong, imo. If that was the case, then Gen II, III and IV would also be filler, cause they started on a new engine each. And peoplecalled Gen V filler too, although it wasn´t the first generation of the DS era. So yeah, no generation must be called filler, or a testing experiment. It´s stupid, and a bit offensive towards GameFreak´s hard work.

In short, people are jumping to conclusions and grasping at straws because they didn´t get Z. But this is more likely due to Game Freak deciding to make generatons shorter:

Gen V was 3 years long. Gen VI will be 3 years long. Gen VII will probably be 2 years long.
 
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I really don´t think it would have taken experimented developers like Game Freak THAT long to become experienced with the new engine. I imagine they would learn everything about it during the first year- year and a half of using it. And XY were developed in 3 years. I really doubt they would need 3 years of testing to master the 3DS engine. I think one year, or a year and a half, would have been enough. And, therefore, the second year and a half of XY development, they would have known everything they want to know. And by the time they started developing ORAS, they would have mastered it completely already.

I really doubt they would need an entire generation of "learning" to become familiar with a new handheld. Also, let´s not forget Pokedex 3D pro, and Dream Radar. Those would have been the real testing grounds of the 3ds engine, and added extra experience before starting XY.

So, calling Gen VI filler is wrong, imo. If that was the case, then Gen II, III and IV would also be filler, cause they started on a new engine each. And peoplecalled Gen V filler too, although it wasn´t the first generation of the DS era. So yeah, no generation must be called filler, or a testing experiment. It´s stupid, and a bit offensive towards GameFreak´s hard work.

In short, people are jumping to conclusions and grasping at straws because they didn´t get Z. But this is more likely due to Game Freak deciding to make generatons shorter:

Gen V was 3 years long. Gen VI will be 3 years long. Gen VII will probably be 2 years long.
As far as I can tell no-one ever said that they spent the whole generation learning to master the 3ds engine, just that it was something they had to do that took up time in their production schedule. Even if they mastered the new system after only one year that is still one year that they weren't able to work as quickly as they normally would. There is also the time that they spent creating all the 3d assets from scratch. Now that they are experienced with the new system and have existing 3d assets that they can either reuse or alter to create new assets they should be able to make gen 7 much better than gen 6 in the same amount of development time.
 
As far as I can tell no-one ever said that they spent the whole generation learning to master the 3ds engine, just that it was something they had to do that took up time in their production schedule. Even if they mastered the new system after only one year that is still one year that they weren't able to work as quickly as they normally would. There is also the time that they spent creating all the 3d assets from scratch. Now that they are experienced with the new system and have existing 3d assets that they can either reuse or alter to create new assets they should be able to make gen 7 much better than gen 6 in the same amount of development time.
Even if GF needed a year and a half to get used to the 3DS engine, and therefore XY had a slow start, they surely recieved an extra help boost from Nintendo during the second and third years of development. Nintendo, or other external companies, were surely hired to speed up the process. That's how modern development companies work. There is no reason to assume XY turned out to be less than Game Freak intended it to be, unless Masuda states the opposite, which he hasn's.

And as for ORAS, Masuda already stated in an interview: "We learned a lot from developing XY, so for ORAS, we had a lot more time to develop extra content and postgame content, because the core work was already done during XY." So for ORAS, they had already mastered the engine during XY's development period.

In conclusion, Gen VI was not filler, or a testing ground. The first year of XY development was surely a testing ground, but it's the same for GS, RS, DP, and they ain't fillers either.

People just try to justify their own expectations, because they can't believe Z was skipped.

The funny thing is, people used to say Gen V was a filler generation, so that GF could prepare for Gen VI on the 3DS. And now people say Gen VI is a filler generation, so that they could prepare for Gen VII and the anniversary. When will people realize that no generation or game is filler?
 
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Well, you could argue that the optimization issues in XYORAS are an example of inexperience ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Frame-rate has a tendency to dip just because of [X number of] Pokemon appearing on-screen, and in 3D Battle mode it gets worse. Oh, and Trevenant Hordes. Just *shudder*. I know it has something to do with the high poly-count of the models, but still...It does beg for greater quality, and other 3DS games can pull of 60FPS just fine.
 
Well, you could argue that the optimization issues in XYORAS are an example of inexperience ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Frame-rate has a tendency to dip just because of [X number of] Pokemon appearing on-screen, and in 3D Battle mode it gets worse. Oh, and Trevenant Hordes. Just *shudder*. I know it has something to do with the high poly-count of the models, but still...It does beg for greater quality, and other 3DS games can pull of 60FPS just fine.
We don't know if 3DS Pokemon games can be better in terms of optimization, than XYORAS. We will see if Gen VII games are any better in terms of the frame rate than Gen VI, but until then, I am inclined to think XY ORAS are as optimized as possible.
 
I definitely feel the colors on Zygarde 100%'s chest far too similar to X/Y/S/M logos to be coincidence. The orange-ish and silvery blue looking colors are identical to that of the S/M logo's.

Some people theorize that Zygarde will be the master of the life/death duo, and whatever duo we get in S/M and I'm inclined to believe that.

This is the really generic theory that's been said like 100 times before, but bottom line is I think Sun and Moon are foreshadowed so much in X/Y because they will act as a sequel generation like Gold and Silver did.
while i wouldn't say it's impossible, i don't think it's all that likely that Zygarde would play a relevant role in a game outside its original generation. not to mention, as it currently stands at least, the similarity between the oranges and blues used for Sun and Moon and Zygarde's chest is coincidental.

ultimately given that tangible ties to a previous region (and tech limitations) is the biggest cause of nearly all of Johto's weaknesses, i think that they probably wouldn't want to repeat a RBY-GSC situation again.
 
This is the really generic theory that's been said like 100 times before, but bottom line is I think Sun and Moon are foreshadowed so much in X/Y because they will act as a sequel generation like Gold and Silver did.
That would be weird considering that they made a point of saying that the Strange Souvenir region is far from Kalos.
 
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