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Oh boy, here we go again...Quackles posted:Heck, for Paper Mario - a generally easy RPG series - people make difficulty hacks. People named "Quackles" as of fairly recently. Best wishes on the project BTW. And your note about fanworks and what and why people make them is extraordinarily on point. I'll have to steal that from you.
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Jan 13, 2021 07:46
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 14:04 |
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Fedule posted:I think it's, just, like, sometimes a thing really catches people's imaginations even when the thing isn't really in and of itself much of a rich story experience. Building on this, when it comes to fandom I tend to distinguish between a thing as it is and the DREAM of a thing. This is something I think I understood for a long time but only really formulated coherently years back during the excellent Avalon Code LP (Christ, that was nearly a decade ago now) where the game had an incredible pitch that the actual gameplay and story didn't even come close to living up to. And yet that game had a small but very dedicated fan base who were truly enamored of it. The game was nothing special, the DREAM of the game, however, was absolutely fantastic and there were people willing to love it not for what it was but for what they imagined it could have been. There is something in the process of the willing suspension of disbelief where a property can be more than it physically is. Look at Japanese tokusatsu like Super Sentai for an instance of this: you know during the action scenes what you're really watching is really a bunch of actors dubbing over stuntmen wearing goofy spandex costumes doing fake fights with plastic weapons, but you also are watching a superhero show where larger-than-life characters with superpowers and magic weapons are fighting to defend the earth. Or look at tokusatsu's American counterpart, pro wrestling. Pro wrestling makes no sense in absolutely any way as a competitive sport, and it's been no secret for decades that the personalities on screen are functionally actors performing staged fights, but when it's working pro wrestling is still this exciting spectacle of heroes and villains battling it out for dominance in the ring. And Pokémon is one of those properties, like Avalon Code, where the distance between the thing and the dream of the thing is especially palpable. Pokémon as a game property is fascinating because in many respects it's very retro, if you think about it the core gameplay has not changed in 25 years. There have certainly been many quality-of-life improvements to the game over the years (I for one do not miss HM's) but it is STILL a turn-based RPG with the same hard and fast limits, one action per turn, four moves per Pokémon, six Pokémon per player. It doesn't matter how many Pokémon they create, how many types there are, or how many moves exist, it is still by default a one-on-one with four moves and six Pokémon. And I don't mean to say this is necessarily a bad thing, but it's one of the reasons why this LP even exists in the first place. Outside of Pokémon's very simple 8-bit style of gameplay there is an entire massive world with hundreds and hundreds of incredibly varied animal things in all shapes and all sizes and that means further setting ramifications. If something is true then it is true in its consequences and that means even along with all of their various cute monster friends there must be an entire world of humans and human characters and human stories to parallel with the Pokémon. Is it really a surprise that Pokémon has as much fanfiction as it does? Something hugely popular naturally draws fans and fan works, especially if it has a world ready to be tapped, a big old dream of a thing ready to be dreamed. Over the course of the games, and the anime, and the manga, and the toys, and the TCG, and the failed TFG, and the merchandise, and the promo videos, and the movies the world of Pokémon became vast indeed, it may be one of the largest settings ever created. And so in a series where the core gameplay has always stayed the same but the world has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that there are dozens of fan games all itching to fill out the world in their own way with their own writing and their own themes. Of course there's an irony in all this it's in the fact that these starry eyed dreamers so often choose to create fan games to try and embody the world they imagine. Again, I do think part of the reason why Pokémon is such a ripe field for derivative work is BECAUSE the games have such specific restrictions. There is a certain irony, therefore, to creating a Pokémon game to try and do things that aren't done in Pokémon game. There's also a danger in it, if your motivation is to do what the official games don't there is a real chance you'll fall flat on your face. In the worst case you end up with Pokémon Reborn, which was a profoundly disgusting catastrophe that fails both as a game (who remembers The Quest to Push One Rock?) and as a story (who here remembers the psueicide lesbians?) Anyways, Madoka
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Jan 13, 2021 20:10
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Space Kablooey posted:Rival named Filler and Gible named Nibbles Going to Nth this because it's great.
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Jan 14, 2021 00:41
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It all comes down to how the information is presented. The fact that the game talks about game mechanics in terms of how we as players would discuss them instead of speaking as you would imagine they would "in universe" is why they look bad. There is no feasible way that in the continuity of Pokémon you would have people discussing IVs and EVs because those are not natural words to use when talking about what are in the universe natural thing. Honestly if the game just had IV and EV values built into the status screen and was done with it it would work better than getting them by talking to an NPC. If you think about it the status screen is not exactly a diegetic thing itself so there's no tonal issues. Alternately you could have talking to the NPC give you the S through E rankings for IVs and just not show them at all by the default status screen. Or alternately have getting exact values be an unlockable thing, they're studying Pokémon genetics and epigenetics so if you help them out by doing [thing] they can progress their research and give you better information.
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Jan 16, 2021 03:21
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This is starting to feel like another possibly alright fangame where the edge is a pointless and unfortunate side element rather than the main course of badness.
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Jan 17, 2021 18:47
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Well that was a pretty excruciating little segment.  I was pulling for you game! And what do you do? You bring in drek that wouldn't feel out of place in Pokemon Uranium. Thanks for that.
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Jan 19, 2021 23:48
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LiefKatano posted:Nest Balls are still decently useful, I guess - for level 15~18 Pokemon it'll have a catch rate of 2.6~2.3. Thank you for pointing this out actually, I was confusing Nest Balls for Level Balls. And that fact makes me think giving them to you early is another pretty good decision.
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Jan 21, 2021 03:41
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On one hand this game earns big points for actually letting you fight and beat the bad people and send them scurrying. On the other hand it's not exactly fun when victory doesn't stop them from succeeding. On the third hand I don't actually hate this dungeon, these trainers, and the fact you actually have a partner who helps out and provides Gen 4 style heals and isn't a sexpest. Once again I feel like saying that this game would probably be fine if you just smoothed out all the edge and ejected some of the lame fangame faff. I'm actually interested in future updates for reasons beyond disaster tourism.
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Jan 21, 2021 22:50
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Quackles posted:Maybe there's a Final Fantasy 6 'World of Ruin' style twist. I honestly wouldn't mind that if they kept to the usual tone of Pokémon. "Well crap, the continent went all Cinnabar Island all of a sudden, but if we all work together with our magical animal friends we can get through this!" You know, roughly the opposite of every edgy fan game this franchise has ever spat out.
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Jan 22, 2021 05:01
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 14:04 |
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hopeandjoy posted:It also just feels lovely any time a video game shoves you in front of a boss you're expected to beat, and then when you win you lose in the plot anyway. It just feels like your work has been undone. If your Pokémon game leads to asking those last two questions then something has gone wrong. The simple answer should be that it doesn't happen because it's not interesting and it's against the spirit of the game. Quibble about realism or setting or narrative or however you like it, but if you draw attention to it you are breaking the hypothetical player's willing suspension of disbelief. Because the scene as it played out was absolutely a huge failure, and it's an absolutely huge failure that keeps coming up in these fan games. And it's not even hard to figure out, if the player wins they should win. It's as simple as that, you beat the bad guys and even if they progressed their plot they should still stay "I'll get you next time PC, next time!" And run away because they lost. This is how Pokémon has done it before, the bad guys got whatever MacGuffin they were at the place for, but they had to flee and try again because you kicked the crap out of them. As for the items being in the narrative, it's cackhanded. The game probably didn't actually need to name drop the Master Balls as a thing, you could just say that they intercepted a shipment of valuable and rare Pokeballs the professor wanted for research or something and let the target audience (i.e. us) say to ourselves "oh those must be Master Balls". And then after we beat the evil team we get the last one and we get to keep it and that is your once per game guaranteed Master Ball. Clean and simple, no name dropping necessary, same effect on the storyline. Meanwhile those Max Revives? gently caress that poo poo. The bad guy goes "you even defeated Houndoom? Curse you trainer lady, don't think this means you've won! I'll get you next time!" And then they run away. Is it necessary for Hoopa to randomly pop in and teleport you somewhere? If so then it happens anyways because why not? It's not like it's in the established lore that Hoopa loves to screw around or something, oh wait. And if it happens, it resolutely should NOT happen to save you from the person you just beat.
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Jan 29, 2021 06:09
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