Pokémon Scarlet and Violet

 There are no strings on me

Spain. It was Spain, I'm a dumbo. Let that be a lesson to everyone not to trust me when it comes to identifying the visual culture of a new video game world. I think Spanish is Italian; I'm a failure in the eyes of visual art design. And picking 'Spain' makes so much more sense too. In Game Freak's journey to map out the entirety of the human world within the Pokémon universe the team have already done England and France, it's only natural they hit on Spain and maybe even Germany next time. (What's the DLC going to be, I wonder? Catalonia?) But, of course, we musn't forget that when the time comes for the inevitable mainline Pokémon (MMO?) in Russia, the frozen northern wastes must be known as Siberia. They cannot change it. They can't 'Pokémon' it up. They've backed themselves into a corner. We will never forget Game Freak's explicit screw-up in naming Siberia; there's no taking it back now; buddy!

So Pokémon is flying back at us with a full new era of legendaries, professors, rivals and a thinly veiled marketing ploy to sell twice as many games that we all just seem to accept now because it's the way that Pokémon have always done it and I guess always will. Seriously, it's become more than a little weird that the whole 'dual game' thing still holds any water, and now we've getting to the point where certain characters are becoming version specific. Sword and Shield had two Gym trainers that switched up completely depending on your copy of the game and Scarlet and Violet is going to shove two impressive young professors in our face that are thematically dressed around what I can only assume is the alchemically-linked theme of this era; past and present. Sada is the female professor with her rural barbaric garb under her lab coat and Turo is the male professor with his futuristic torn-style shirt. Apparently Sada is derided for 'Pasada' which is Spanish for Past whilst 'Turo' is from 'Futuro' which is self explanatory.

This theme of 'past and future' bleeds into the designs of the legendary Pokémon themselves which appear to be these different breeds of gecko lizards. Koraidon, the fire dragon from Scarlet, boasts big plumes and large flowing eyebrows, somewhat indicative of old mythical Chinese Wyverns, whereas Violet's Miraidon, the water dragon, doesn't even have legs, but rather two jet engines that compliment the lighting wisps of hair and neon chest highlights. (I suspect this may be a mythical tri-type legendary, Electric, Water, Dragon; which would make it absolutely busted for competitive play what with all those resistances!) We can't say whether or not this is going to tie in which some sort of time influencing story, perhaps wherein we even travel to the distant past, but we'll certainly get to explore the concepts of looking behind and ahead in our story. Similar to the depiction of the roman god Janus, to look back and forth to inform the present, I'm sure there's some sort of alchemical context mixed in there somewhere.

And perhaps in a meta sense that reflects on the spirit of the game itself, keeping the traditionalist Pokémon set-up of young kid going on an adventure around their home country, and mixing it with the future that the series is heading for; open world and multiple players! Leading off from Legends, we're going to be able to explore this new map with little to no overarching restrictions on how we traverse the land and how we position our camera; which sounds a little embarrassing to get all giddy about in 2022, but us Pokémon fans take whatever wins we can score. There's also apparently going to be proper 4 person co-op which seems to allow players to explore the game world independently from one another and meet up in order to, presumably, battle their finds against each other. There's no word yet on what actual functionality this will provide. Is the game built to accommodate four people and will the narrative actually recognise them or is this just a lazy feature to slap on to the box? Do the four players join another game or just sync their game world up with three others? So many variables and you can take none of them for granted when dealing with the traditionally backwards developers at Nintendo. (I think you really have to strain yourself to call Nintendo the 'best game company' in the world, what with how they hold themselves and their partners back so often.)

These are all great steps for a Pokémon game but there are still considerable more considerations I need for a truly next generational experience that needs to be met. For one, I hope that Game Freak have learnt from their experiences with the Isle of Armor and know that they need to create recurrent content that validates all the play space. Give players a reason to travel up and down the open world throughout all their playtime, rather than just funnel themselves where all the newer levels are as has been typical for their Pokémon games in the past. They could have different breeds of Pokémon move across the map with time of day or year, or throw in collectable nodes that respawn periodically and are placed all across the map. Those are basic requirements and there really should be more reasons to visit this whole map with the same enthusiasm at level 1 that I do when all my team are level 100.

The frame of the narrative should reflect this open world design philosophy too. The old school set-up of 'child travels from gym to gym to beat them all' works fine with the old design, but it needs to be cut short here. I propose there needs to be a central institution which calls the player back to it regularly such as a school or academy, and major boss events are either held there or get dynamically introduced across the world. The mystery of discovering the secret of some powerful new creature is far more alluring than 'kid wants to become the champion' anime plotline we've seen recycled from the past two and a half decades; so Legends Arceus really needs to rub itself off here on the new game. I'd love to have a cast of characters I get to know beyond their one character trait and the static element they've decided to base their entire life philosophy around.

That's about the high and low of what we need from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, although if I were to throw in my own two cents I think a cameo wouldn't hurt that much. We saw Sonia become a travelling professor at the end of Sword and Shield, it would be cool to have her show up in this land to study these new powerful legendaries, give these games some narrative consistency to them without turning them into some sort of Marvel property wherein you have to watch years worth of back content to know what's going on. World building works better when it's culminative in my experience. Scarlet and Violet doesn't necessarily have it's work cut out for it, and there's still some evidence that this game might fall flat on it's face and has been destined to from the start, but it's hardly the Pokémon spirit to be a pessimist, now is it? Welcome to the fold, Gen 9; here's hoping you're everything you need to be.