I firmly believe that Pokemon must pave the way for the future by reflecting on the past. The franchise is too successful to do away with annual entries, as the games now have to fit into a strict release schedule that includes the TCG, anime, and thousands of merchandise releases every 🃏y🥂ear.
This means that a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Breath of the Wild-esque Pokemon game is off the cards. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Game Freak simply won’t be afforded the time to make such a revolutionary iteration of Pokemon. So I think the developer should look back to its origins and cash in on the trend of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:HD-2D RPGs that have been so successful in recent years.
I’m not suggesting that 2D RPGs are easier to make than their 3D counterparts, but Game Freak is being very ambitious with its Pokemon goals considering the tight time restraints on any one game. It’s like Pokemon wants to become Breath of the Wild but has to cut so many corners because of the time pressure. Instead of jumping in the deep end and constantly trying to create a living, breathing open world that runs well on the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Nintendo Switch, perhaps it sho🅰uld return to tried and tested waters.
If you look at the most successful Pokemon games on streaming sites righ🦩t now, they’re all 2D. There are a few players streaming their Scarlet & Violet shiny hunts or competitive battles, but as soon as everyone’s meagre DLC content was published, they returned to Nuzlockes of Pokemon Emerald and streaming ROM hacks like Radical Red. Gen 3 is a particular favourite for Pokemon creators at present, likely because of the easy mods and randomisers you can add to the games, but their popularity shows a hunger for old school Pokemon.
Now look at the success of recent RPGs like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Live A Live and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Octopath Traveler 2. These take the 2D pixel art formula and give it another half a dimension or so with an art style that has become known as HD-2D. These games are real lookers, and it’s 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:perfect for Pokemon.
There’s a world where Pokemon works as a 3D open world game, but I don’t think it’s this world. It’s time to admit that this experiment hasn’t worked, and the developers don’t have the time to craft something that even works, let alone is an accomplished game. Redirecting those efforts to a less groundbreaking formula for the series might allow the other elements to shine. It might let us have a more complex battle system inspired by competitive VGC,🅰 it might allow the writers the opportunities to make more interesting stories (even if they’re more linear), it might allow the devs the bandwidth to implement a hard mode. Or it will do none of those things, but it’ll be a retro blast from the past that fans will still shower with love.
Even without the modernised HD-2D aesthetic, pixel art games are moving up. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dave the Diver and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Sea of Stars were two of 2023&rs❀quo;s runaway hits, both of which used pixel art to draw players in. But Pokemon going 2D is about mor♛e than just aesthetic, it’s about making the games more linear once again, it’s about rejecting the modern trappings of 3D open worlds, because – let’s face it – Pokemon isn’t up to that challenge.
The most popular Pokemon games I mentioned earlier, hacks like Kaizo and Radical Red, aren’t just popular because they’re 2D. But the linear formula of 2D Pokemon presents far more opportunities for innovative game mechanics than a mediocre open world. Whether that’s making Pokemon into a roguelike, implementing challenge modes, or switchi♛ng things around to subvert expectations, fan games are happy to take big risks because they’ve got that solid 2D base to fall back on. Game Freak can’t take those risks or try to innovate when all of its power is directed to making sure the open world doesn’t crash.
I’d still love a good open-world Pokemon game, but I’ve given up on thinking it’s possible. Sword & Shield felt like a stepping stone to that goal in many ways, and its DLC was another leap on the journey. But Scarlet & Violet have proved that Game Freak i♍sn’t capable of pulling off an open world Pokemon game, so it should return to somethingꦡ it knows it can do well. Let’s return to the 2D formula and make Pokemon great again.
