Pokemon Weekends: Evolutionary Dead-Ends

I read this opinion piece about Pokemon Black and White at Games Abyss earlier in the week, and while there's some interesting ideas presented, I have to disagree with the direction that Ryan Hauser thinks the series should take. I wrote a little bit about it there, but I'll try to expand on it here.

Primarily I have to disagree with Hauser's assertion that the super-deep aspects of Pokemon that the game "hides" are its true colors. They are part of the spectrum, but so is the friendly, fluffy exterior that allows children to enjoy the game. In fact, I don't think we should forget that children are likely Nintendo and Gamefreak's target audience for the game. But if that is true, which I assume it to be, it's to their credit that so much lies under the surface of Pokemon- unlike an awful lot of "kiddy" games, Pokemon rewards reading and math skills, and expects interested players to rise to the challenge*. Likewise, the deeper game of Effort Values and the like are there if you want them, but if you don't, you can just play the surface game, a friendly little RPG with entertaining social elements. To throw away the surface game and make a super-deep, carefully tuned Pokemon experience exclusively for hardcore gamezorz would be a disservice to the other 75% of Pokemon players- and thus also Nintendo and Gamefreak's bottom line. The existing format is a game with a gentle learning curve and a game that can grow with you.

Pretty much I feel the same way about the suggestions that Gym Leaders need to have uber Pokemon and more intelligent strategy. But you know what would be nice, and is well within the scope of a game of this type? A Second Quest. If you wanted to see if you could get more players to play the deeper game that's always been there, a Second Quest or Hard Mode would be ideal: the player restarts their Pokemon journey with all their original Pokemon intact, and new menus and dialogue would instruct the player in EVs and how to use them.

If you were going to try and elaborate on the Pokemon formula- and I still have doubts that anybody involved with the making of the game even thinks it's necessary -this would be the way to do it.


*Have you noticed that you don't hear grumpy old people- and I was one of them -say "Kids just aren't reading as much anymore" as frequently as they did in the `90s? It's pretty hard to say that now, and the internet, Pokemon, and Harry Potter (and even, Primus help us, Twilight) have all contributed to at least changing the perception that kids don't read. And all it took was for companies- the people who create markets while claiming defensively that they only cater to existing ones -to stop assuming that kids and people in general were dumber than they are.