Looking Forward: The Stuff of Legends.

Pat Hessman: This week, for Looking Forward, we’re trying something new. Yes, “we” indicates there is more than one writer on this column now. YeOldeJacob is joining me this weekto turn this column into a dialogue about the upcoming fifth generation. And now, the topic at hand: Legendary Pokémon, and their seemingly endless escalation.

I made passing reference to this topic during my first column, but we’ll elaborate further this week. We’ve only seen three of Pokémon Black and White’s legends, but the very nature of the mascots, Reshiram and Zekrom, as a Yin and Yang coupling concerned me. The creator of the world, Arceus, is based heavily on the Chinese creation legend of Pangu, the first man who emerged from a cosmic egg when the forces of Yin and Yang balanced. Read that last part again. This, plus the games’ trend of an ever escalating cosmology since Generation III, has me worried. 

If the White Yin and the Black Yang Pokémon are going to be above the creator of the world (and possibly the universe), where does it all stop? What would we be looking at come Generation VI? I’m worried we could be looking at some kind of omniscient inter-dimensional overlord Pokémon before long, and I do not want the franchise headed for such lofty destinations.

YeOldeJacob: While the "omniscient inter-dimensional overlord Pokémon" is most likely where they are headed, I don't mind that. I'm one of those who is a fan of Pokémon at a base level, and I tend to take the outlandish legendary escalation in stride. Well, as long as it doesn't mess with the core game experience, anyway.

Though I do have my own ideas as to where the Legends, and therefore what drives the story (little of which there is) within the games should go. I would love to see them jump to a completely new artistic tone. Something that would encompass the entire design of the game. What I would really like to see is Nintendo/Game Freak drawing from mythology, religion and architecture from India. Using a color palette similar to what is seen in Wes Anderson's 2007 film The Darjeeling Limited. Sure, it's a stretch, and it isn't exactly an obvious move, but I really think something like this would blend seamlessly with Pokémon. And hey, aren't long shots and less-than-obvious moves the essence of speculation?

Pat: That’s not speculation, that’s Fan Wank. Trying to make sense of the universe get’s more and more difficult with each escalation of the pantheon. I mean, could we be looking at something as sprawled out and unorganized as the DC Comics Universe by Generation XI or XII? I’m all for new Legends, it’s impossible to imagine a new game without them, but is it too much to ask for something more like Mewtwo than Dialga for my 680 base stat total uber? It’s much easier to stomach genetic Frankensteins than deities of primal universal forces. Good Lord, I sound like a Generation I purist.

YOJ: Well, I certainly think "fan wank" is a bit of an exaggeration when it comes to the idea of themes drawn from India (I mean, it isn't like I'm correcting Nintendo/Game Freak. Nor do I hold the pretense that I'm a better game designer.), but it certainly isn't the worst exaggeration of my opinion I've read of heard.

While I do dig the earlier Legends more than I do the current ones, this comes out of a personal taste in the artistic style of the monsters. I don't so much mind the Legends' origins being attached to the creation of the Pokémon universe as I do their designs becoming more 'complex' (see: muddled). I don't feel that to look all-powerful the subject has to be exceptionably large or have a multitude of gaudy physical features. The latter not existing in Reshiram's and Zekrom's designs is something I've already become somewhat fond of.

Pat: That’s something I’ll agree with you on. Going back to Mewtwo again, it has a relatively simple design (especially compared to the likes of the Dragon Trio), but its appearance is still very cool and sleek. Simplicity of designs was very prevalent in the first generation, but that’s a topic for another time.

But, as for the discussion of Legends, perhaps my objection is simply boiling down to trying to dredge too much plot up from a very story-light series. Perhaps the new Legends should be judged in the context of their own game, and not how they affect the entirety of the Pokémon universe.

YOJ: Exactly. There is no real need to scrutinize the Legends as they progress because this isn't a series that demands deep analysis. Going any further than looking at the games and everything within them as singular pieces of entertainment (while still using the previous games as benchmarks, obviously) is only going to result in one finding oneself lost in a jumbled mess full of plot-holes, inconsistencies and the like. Trying to analyze the 'story' of the Pokémon universe is like trying to analyze mindless Hollywood action movies. You aren't supposed to turn on your brain when you watch Die Hard. In the same vein, you aren't really meant to have your brain turned on when you play or watch Pokémon. It is usually fantastic for what it is (mindless entertainment), but they aren't exactly weaving a delicate narrative here.

Pat: And we’ve run out of space. There is still much to be revealed about the myths of the Isshu region, and there could be something we never imagined lurking in the depths of this new region. A special thanks to YeOldeJacob for his input, and we’ll be glad to hear what you all think of the direction of the Generation IV Legends in the comment section.

Looking Forward can also be read at BulbaNews.

Pokémon Haikus, Part 1

Mence is now Uber.
But Rayquaza outclasses.
Mence we will forget.

Reshiram, yin.
And Zekrom is the black yang.
Third version is gray?

Breloom is mighty.
The mushroom of your nightmares.
Spore-punch for the win.

The old man wonders,
Where are Pokémon eggs from?
Forget what sex is?

The new grass starter.
Smugness in his eyes and heart.
Yet you’ll be most loved.

That poor sea otter.
Flamed by the fanboys so much.
Surely not deserved?

And lo, fire pig!
Surely the best idea yet!
Flames and pigs, is win.

There’s no Bug legends?
I must disagree with you.
Introducing Scizor.

Breeding for natures.
I have bred fifty Swinubs.
And still no Jolly.

Ditto is magic.
It’ll breed with anything.
Little omni-whore.

His Golbat evolved!
Silver, this is a big change.
You’ve learned how to love.

Oak is senile.
Sent kids out to the wild.
Irresponsible.

Great Cyrus aims high.
Universal destruction.
Rockets put to shame.

Attack Rattata?
Focus Sash and Endeavor.
And who’s laughing now?

Kanto, then Johto.
And then Hoenn, next Sinnoh.
Now off to Isshu!

About Lopunny…
Does she have any purpose
Sans pleasing furfags?

The anime sucks.
Ash is a major tool.
Needs new main hero.

This is my attempt
Writing Pokémon haikus.
Hope you enjoyed it. 

Mini-Rant: No Hat Hair in the Movies

The American motion picture industry is responsible for misrepresentation of many things, from a gross understatement of the power of explosions to portraying horses as emotionless automatons, and yet today I have stumbled onto something else that they misrepresent: no one ever has hat hair in the movies.'

I purchased a fedora yesterday at Wal-Mart, and after less than an hour of wearing it, my hair was as flat as an independent film’s protagonist’s personality. Why is Leo DiCaprio’s hair magically still fluffy and curly when he takes off his hat, and yet mine looks like I ironed my scalp?

So Hollywood, you’ve thrown us another falsehood. The reality is simply that we must choose between fluffy, shapely hair or a stylish hat atop our heads. We can’t have it both ways in the real world. Stop trying to convince us otherwise.

Looking Forward: It Isshu What It is

Setting is, obviously, one of the most important aspects of fictional media. A setting is what can separate two stories from being seemingly identical. What is Star Wars without that galaxy far, far away or Lord of the Rings without Middle Earth? Locales are as much characters as the cast. Pokémon is no different. Each generation, clearly much work is put into bringing to life the world the monsters and their trainers inhabit. Before I move forward to talk about the setting of Pokémon Black and White; Isshu, I’ll take a moment to look back on the evolution of setting in the Pokémon games since the beginning.

I’m committing a cardinal sin and faulting the original games on something: Kanto was a bland region. There is little to spice the generic towns and cities up aside from a few unique areas such as Pokémon Mansion and Pokémon Tower, though to be fair this can be blamed largely on the limited capabilities of the Game Boy. Gold and Silver later remedied Kanto’s blandness by having a blackout put half the region out of power and having a volcano eruption decimate Cinnabar Island and the Fuschia City coastline. With the improved graphical capabilities of the Game Boy Color, Gold and Silver brought us the much more interesting Johto region; filled with ruins, lakes, icy caves, lighthouses, and other landmarks not seen in the first game, making the rural and forested Johto region a very distinct setting from the industrial and urban Kanto.

Move forward to the hyper eco-friendly region of Hoenn, with many towns built seamlessly into the natural environments they inhabit. While I still found Johto to be the more interesting region, Hoenn definitely holds the prize for the most imaginative region. Nothing in Generation IV compares to the likes of Fortree City, Pacifidlog Town, and Sootopolis City. Sinnoh I like to place only above Kanto overall. It has a few interesting features such as Snowpoint City, Mt. Coronet, and the ever cool Sunyshore City, though overall I feel it simply wasn’t as imaginative as the Hoenn region had been. These are simply my own opinions though, and feel free to start a flamewar in the discussion thread about which ones you think were the best instead.

Now we look forward to the setting of Pokémon Black and White: the Isshu region. We’ve seen a few locations in screenshots, and it has been described as being very far away from the other 4 regions, very technologically advanced, and quite different in appearance geography wise compared to the settings to come before it. The statement of it being far away from the others is an interesting comment. It’s common knowledge that all of the handheld games’ locales are based on places in Japan, but if Isshu is indeed far away from Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh, could it possibly not be based on a region in Japan at all? It wouldn’t be the first, after all the hellish Orre region of Pokémon Colosseum and XD were based on the state of Arizona. Perhaps Isshu is to the west, and could be based on Shanghai or Hong Kong. Or, to the east! Those skyscrapers of Hiun City almost look evocative of Toronto or perhaps Seattle and the desert lying north of the city could be evocative of Californian metropolises.

One more thing I’d like to touch on about Isshu is something particularly brilliant revealed: the region will be different between the two versions, featuring different aesthetics and exclusive areas. White version will have more rural looking towns and cities, and has an exclusive area known as White Forest. Black on the other hand has more urbanized looking areas and has an exclusive area known as Black City. Kudos to you GameFreak for finally making version differences that go beyond a few Pokémon and which mascot Legend you catch.

If early screenshots and videos are any indicator, GameFreak is outdoing themselves with the Isshu region. I’m feeling optimistic Isshu will be just as vibrant and interesting as any of the regions before it. No adventure is complete without a place to adventure in, and this looks like it will fit the bill.

How to Not Get Caught

Trainers step into tall grass, Pokémon appear, battles ensue, Poké Balls are thrown, and monsters are captured. It’s our world’s circle of life. Except, some of us get caught in this circle more than others. My parents told me it was a blessing to be one in eight thousand, but considering how many Great Balls I’ve dodged over the years, it’s anything but. Take this shiny Scyther’s advice, and you can avoid rotting away in Box 12 of Bill’s PC stuck in between a Bidoof and a Muk.

Step one: avoid the roads. You know who use the roads? Trainers. This sounds obvious, but I don’t know how many naïve Caterpies I’ve seen become a newbie’s first capture because they didn’t have the sense to stay away from the National Park’s trails. I don’t care if the humans leave food behind as they walk, that half-eaten rice ball is not worth an eternity in the storage system.

Step two: Know a trap. I know it may seem like a blessing from Arceus when you find sweet, precious honey slathered on the bark of a tree; but that sweet nectar is a poison in disguise. As soon as you sink your paws into that delicious honey, you’ll be Thunder Waved before you know it. Anything that seems out of the ordinary is not just too good to be true, but too risky to even be considered.

Say you couldn’t resist the Sweet Scent, or their Squirtle’s headbutt gives you the rudest awakening of your life, and you have to fight. All is not lost! Even if you can’t whirlwind the wide eyed novice back to New Bark Town, you can still run! Kick up a cloud of dust, jab their Chikorita in its huge doe eyes, screech so loud you wake up the forest for all I care. Any dignity you lose fleeing is certainly not worth having to suffer tentacle rape from a high leveled Tentacruel because you have a valuable Egg Move.

Step four: fight the Poké Balls. Sometimes you can’t get away, I know that. Chances are, this unprepared dolt of a trainer only has a limited supply, so drain the Balls Pocket and make him think twice about getting this page in his Poké Dex. If you really want to rub salt in the wounds, shake your would-be prison four times before you bust out, their reaction is worth it every time.

Step five, and this works every time: fling poo at them. No trainer is going to want to have a prolonged battle when their target is drenching them in Poké Excrement. As an added bonus, spicy flavored berries make the smell worse.

Good luck my fellow wild Pokémon. Follow these steps, and you’ll never be captured. Stay wild, stay free.

SCYTHER was captured by a challenger from Sinnoh by the name of Frank mere minutes after this interview.

Looking Forward: Three on Three

A few weeks ago, another trailer for Black and White was released on the Japanese website, and naturally, the trailer soon spread like a brushfire to fans the world over. Seriously Nintendo, why do you even try keeping one region in the dark in this digital age? This trailer showed off a few more new Pokémon, some new online features, more shots of the Isshu region, and one thing that was possibly the most radical new feature yet shown to us in the forthcoming generation: triple battles.

We’ve all loved double battles ever since Twins Gina and Mia first challenged us to fight with two Pokémon instead of one back in 2003. Generation III introduced many tweaks and additions to the battle system, but this was the most notable. This was something new, something different, something exciting. For Ruby and Sapphire, double battling was a major selling point of the game. Many trainers would challenge the player to double encounters, and even a (particularly frustrating) Gym battle showed off this new feature. Pokémon Colosseum took this even farther: every single battle in the game was a double battle.

Double battling dipped in prominence though in Generation IV, it wasn’t nearly as important or widely used as it had been in the Advance era. A few double encounters littered the map, and the option remained to use in the Battle Tower and multiplayer, but little else. An interesting advance came in tag team battling with partners (either in-game NPCs or another player via wireless or WiFi), and a few rules were changed, such as fainted Pokémon being replaced at the end of the turn rather than immediately as they had been in the previous generation of games.

And now, multiple Pokémon fighting is posed to make a comeback, in a big way. Now, half your traveling team is on the field at once. Some immediately dismissed this idea, claiming it was just another instance of the games’ ever escalating nature and situations. Some embraced it for the very same reason.

One poster I saw had a legitimate concern: How is this supposed to be kept from being more of the same of what double battles brought? Would it simply be the same with an extra two moves per turn? Could half of a full team be demolished in a single turn because Earthquake or Surf demolishes the entire field? There needs to be significant enough differentiation from double battles to justify this feature’s presence. Otherwise, it seems to be posed to become just another shallow and unnecessary feature to the game. Triple battling needs to justify its presence, or it should not be promoted as a selling point of the game.

This feature needs thorough implementation; with numerous in-game trainers using it and a Gym Leader or Elite Four member challenging the player to a triple battle as well. Moves that cater to triple battling specifically should be added to the move sets of Pokémon. Yet the fact that you have three possible moves per turn could at the same time open up new possibilities for strategies. Three turns worth of set up for stealth rock, light screens, etc. can be accomplished at once, leaving room to proceed directly into whatever else is planned the next turn. Again, it all depends on how well this is integrated and constructed.

With that in mind, I’m reserving judgment on triple battles until I send out my three monsters for the first time. It may not be the most original idea to add onto the series, but it is a new idea nonetheless, with possibilities all its own if done right. It may come and go as quickly as the link cable minigames in FireRed and LeafGreen, or it may cultivate its own dedicate niche in the fan community. Only time will tell.

Set Apart This Dream

Hey everyone. When I saw Flyleaf in concert in June, it blew my mind. The song Set Apart This Dream, off of their Memento Mori album, wasn't one of my favorites, until Lacey Moseley (the lead singer) explained its meaning and did an amazing live rendition of the song. It inspired me to tinker with animation and after a month of chipping away at it bit by bit, I made this little music video. Enjoy!