Nintendo today officially announced that Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon are the names of the two brand new Pokémon games that will be releasing this holiday though the company didn’t reveal much else in regards to what we should expect to see from them.
But that doesn’t matter because we’ve got our own list of things that we want to see in the next generation of Pokémon games, which could potentially make Pokémon Sun & Moon the best games in the series ever if developer Game Freak actually pays attention to us.
While that’s incredibly unlikely, it’s certainly worth a shot, so here are the five things we want to see in the seventh generation of the Pokémon series.
1. 3D battles that work
The Nintendo 3DS’ 3D capabilities is hardly the handheld console’s most alluring feature, with 3D gaming now being looked back upon as though it were a weird fever dream, but those who tried flicking on the 3D switch in order to stage a battle in the third-dimension in Pokémon X & Y were forced to suffer through horrendous frame rate drops.
This is a shame, because the 3D actually looked great in the game, though crippled the performance of both games drastically. Hopefully Pokémon Sun & Moon will allow those of who like to play in 3D from time to time to do so freely, without having to wait for 5 minutes for Lucario to do his thing due to performance issues.
2. More varied locations
A key part of Pokémon‘s continued success is that developers Game Freak refuse to reinvent the wheel they’ve so carefully fine-tuned. However, one facet of the series that could really do with a shake-up is the lack of variety in its locations.
Each new entry in the Pokémon series follows the same formula, where players are tasked with first venturing along a path, complete with wild Pokémon to capture and other trainers to fight, before landing in a town/city equipped with little more than a Gym Leader and a Pokémon Center. There are a few deviations from this course, and although Pokémon X & Y featured the biggest alterations to the series yet, there was still a notable lack of diversity in the things you could do in each new location. There’s a good reason why Pokémon‘s most memorable locations are the ones that actually have something to do in them outside of battling and healing, and why the sprawling landscapes of Lumiose City and Castelia City proved to be such exciting oddities when we were first introduced to them.
Mere design alterations aren’t enough to help the locations in these games linger in the mind of the player after they’ve bested their respective Gym Leaders, and hopefully Pokémon Sun & Moon will feature a greater level of variety in this regard.
3. A new take on the Mewtwo formula
The capturing of Mewtwo has been a recurring theme throughout the Pokémon series, with the legendary Pokémon requiring no small degree of effort in order to obtain him in Pokémon Red & Blue, Pokémon HeartGold & SoulSilver and Pokemon X & Y. But while many Pokémon players regard him as one of the very best of the bunch, it’s time for a new legendary to take up Mewtwo’s mantle and grant us with a new, unique adventure to embark upon after the credits of the game have begun rolling.
The issue with Mewtwo is that, like the Pokémon series itself, capturing him now follows a predictable formula. You complete the game, then you go into a dungeon or a cave that was previously inaccessible, stage a battle with him and lock him into a Master Ball. In Pokémon Red & Blue the Internet was still in its infancy, meaning that you couldn’t just look up the methods for capturing him online, leading to the assumption that those who had claimed that they’d captured him were lying – until we captured him for ourselves, of course.
A new legendary Pokémon filling Mewtwo’s shoes should be even more secretive, avoiding the typical promotional material Nintendo puts forward for new creatures added to the series, making its discovery and eventual capture an event that would be shrouded in a similar degree of mystery as Mewtwo once was.
4. Intelligent A.I.
Pokémon has served as an entry point for younger gamers into the RPG genre, with it being notably simplistic compared to the majority of its more convoluted peers. This is no bad thing, and has greatly contributed to the series’ success, but there would be no harm in Game Freak introducing A.I. trainers that actually follow the tactics trainers are supposed to employ.
Far too often in Pokémon games do battles become routinely easy, as trainers fail to take advantage of the strengths of their Pokémon and the weaknesses of the player’s, meaning that once you have leveled up your monsters enough you’ll be able to take down pretty much everyone with relative ease regardless of what type they favor. There’s no reason why a trainer should be sending out their fire type against your water type when they’ve got other Pokémon up their sleeve, but this is an issue that has plagued the series since Red & Blue. While this change would certainly up the difficulty level, it would only make sense that trainers in the game’s world would be a teensy bit more logical.
5. A story that we care about
Pokémon X & Y started off well, introducing us to a group of friendly NPCs with distinct characteristics who would accompany the player-character on their journey, but it quickly devolved into the same old predictable routine that the series typically follows. While Pokémon is intended for a younger audience, considering that it’s a single-player RPG it would be great if the series could finally lock in a compelling plot for us to enjoy while we’re catching those little critters.
Pokémon Black & White managed to deliver the most interesting plot of the series to date, with it revolving around the moral ambiguity of whether it’s actually right to force these Pokémon to fight one another. Unfortunately, the progress made by this game was undone by its sequels Black & White 2, which ascertained that, yes, it absolutely was fine to force them to fight one another, and anyone who argued otherwise was plain wrong. In many ways it was a lot like the first Pokémon movie, which spent its entirety working towards the conclusion that Pokémon battling was actually pretty damn twisted, until everyone forgets about it at the end and carry on as though nothing had happened.
While Game Freak shouldn’t necessarily revisit this plot line, they will hopefully provide us with a story this time around that will prove to be as enjoyable to experience as catching and battling those monsters.
