When you jump into a new Pokémon game, your first point of contact is invariably your starter Pokémon – often, in fact, before you even play the game; the starters always get a lot of publicity before the games themselves are released, and plenty of people choose their starters well in advance of the release date (as for me, my permanent love affair with the Grass type makes Chespin pretty much non-negotiable for when I first play X or Y).  For many of us, the starters are what defines a game’s character; on-and-off fans may decide whether or not to buy a game based on the designs of the starters, some players go so far as to use only their starters for battle with a couple of utility Pokémon on the side, and Charizard’s flame still sparks nostalgia in people who last played Pokémon in the 1990’s.  This makes them very powerful ideas, and Game Freak, bless their little hearts, know that, which is why the starters have for a long time now been some of the most intensely scrutinised Pokémon of the lot during the pre-release design process, second only to plot-relevant legendary Pokémon.  I spent a great deal of time early last year discussing the starter Pokémon of the past and present; I will refer you in particular to the last entry in that series, which discussed many of the concepts I’ll continue to play with now, though hopefully I’ll pin down something a bit more concrete today, given the nature of this series.  Now, without further ado – how would I handle starter Pokémon in this hypothetical game I imagine myself directing?

The strange thing about Pokémon is that not all of us are playing the same game.

There’s the game put in front of us by Game Freak and Nintendo, where we accumulate a team of six Pokémon and wander around a region fighting AI trainers, getting stronger, gaining levels, learning more powerful moves and evolving our partners… and then there’s the game of our own making, the world of competitive Pokémon, where the only worthwhile opponents are other players, all Pokémon are assumed to be at their maximum level with their optimum movesets before you ever use them, and effort training is considered essential, breeding to get good genes highly advisable, and using a poor nature suicidal.  Moderately interesting, you might think, but what makes this a problem that needs to be addressed by an ‘If I Were In Charge’ rant?  Well, call me crazy, but I actually believe that a lot of arguments and misplaced vitriol in the Pokémon community stem from the fact that the people on opposite sides of those arguments are playing two different games, and that one or both parties are unwilling or unable to recognise that.  Possibly the greatest part of these problems relate to which Pokémon are ‘good’ or ‘usable’ and which ones are not, which is not what I plan to address today – that gets another rant all of its own – what I want to address now is what defines these ‘two games,’ what makes them so different, why I feel the gap should be narrowed, and how that can best be done.

Part of what I’m trying to do in writing this series of articles is illustrate possible ways of giving more time and attention to aspects of the Pokémon world that the core games tend to marginalise.  Battles are the heart of the Pokémon series; I’m not going to pretend they aren’t.  Without battling, Pokémon is a game about a kid who walks around the country listening to people talk and telling his pets to move rocks (now that I write that, I wonder whether someone could make an interesting game out of it…).  As I’ve suggested more than once already, though, there’s no reason we need to be battling just for the sake of battling – which, let’s face it, is what the game is really all about once you’ve defeated the villains of the day.  You go to the Pokémon League and become the very best, like no one ever was.  Then you go to the battle tower and fight other battling enthusiasts to hone your craft.  Your only real aim from that point is to become better at battling and, perhaps more importantly, achieve recognition for being good at battling.  Given that the whole point of Cheren’s character arc in Black and White is that these things aren’t all that important, I think it makes sense that we should look into this structure a little.  Why do we battle?  Why is defeating Gyms so important to us, why is becoming a Champion such a central ambition, and what else can we do with Pokémon Gyms?

…and oh, how it does need defending.  I’ve discussed all of Pokémon’s past villains before, long ago, but it can’t hurt to summarise… The scale of villainy in the Pokémon universe has swelled considerably since its early days in Red and Blue, when Team Rocket’s dastardly plans nearly brought down one of Kanto’s most important corporations, Silph, to give them control of the prototype Master Ball and its blueprints.  Their return in Gold and Silver nearly reduced all the Pokémon of the nation to servitude through the mind controlling radio signal developed by their scientists.  Ruby and Sapphire saw Teams Magma and Aqua send the very balance of nature into chaos, risking the safety of the whole world to bring about their utopian visions.  Things came to a head with Diamond and Pearl, when Cyrus’ machinations nearly wiped out the entire universe, before Black and White (very sensibly) took a step back and a deep breath, thought about it, and toned it down.  As I am fond of saying, I think Black and White have, hands down, the best plot of the core series so far (and that includes Black and White 2), primarily because of the somewhat ambiguous nature of the villains.  Team Plasma’s stated goals – the goals which most of their members believe they are working for – can conceivably be seen as perfectly noble.  N is a genuinely good person, in spite of his somewhat… unusual upbringing, and he has one of Unova’s legendary dragons to prove it.  Many, if not most, of the Seven Sages are similarly enlightened.  Even some of the grunts appear entirely sincere in their desire to ‘save’ Pokémon from human oppression – and even at the end of Black and White 2, N still has a vision for a new world; a world where humans and Pokémon live together, but without Pokéballs.  It’s only Ghetsis, with his lust for power, who is truly irredeemable (well, and possibly Zinzolin, but I have an unaccountable soft spot for Zinzolin; so sue me).  Ambiguity like this is good.  There are very, very few people in the real world who do things for no other reason than ‘because I’m evil, damnit.’  People who do bad things very often believe they have good reasons – from time to time, they’re even right.  Maxie and Archie in Ruby and Sapphire flirt with similar ideas, but their plans are so far-reaching and so insane that, although they believe they’re working for the good of all, it’s difficult to sympathise (although it’s worth acknowledging that they were a clear step forward).  What I’m going to do here – or try to – is create quick sketches of two villainous factions, not entire storylines, but enough to give some idea of how they might work, what their goals might be, and what kind of conflicts might feature in a game that included them.

Pokémon are our friends; this we know.  “They are our wonderful partners,” N tells Ghetsis at the conclusion of Black and White 2.  This is not to be contested; these ideas have been part of how Pokémon has presented itself since the very beginning.  However, many of us catch Pokémon by the dozen, and will often barely interact with them after that.  It is almost required of us, given the nature of the games.  The more Pokémon you have, the closer you get to completing the Pokédex, and the more varied your breeding stock, which is important for obtaining Pokémon with the most effective possible movesets.  The games simply do not portray the player character as having a meaningful relationship with most or even many of his or her Pokémon.  Auxiliary applications like Heart Gold and Soul Silver’s Pokéwalker, Black and White’s Dream World, and the upcoming Pokémon Amie (of which I am dimly aware, despite my efforts to ignore everything about X and Y until they’re actually released) seem intended to correct this, but these don’t really go far enough.  Is it even possible, given the nature of the games, to construct representations of actual personal relationships with each and every individual Pokémon in a player’s possession?  I am forced to concede, in advance, that it may not be – but that isn’t going to stop me for trying.

I want to begin with a little aside – I love the double meaning of the phrase “the power that’s inside.”  On the one hand, it can be understood in the same sense as another phrase Pokémon quite likes, “the power that’s in your hand,” referring to the fact that Pokémon trainers quite literally hold incredible power in their hands, inside their Pokéballs, while on the other, of course, in the context of the line itself it can be taken to refer to a Pokémon’s inner potential, which it is a trainer’s job to nurture and hone.  It’s the latter of these meanings that I really want to talk about today, though, with particular reference to some of my old favourite subjects: the ethics of Pokémon training, and the mutually beneficial aspects of the relationship between humans and Pokémon.

What do Pokémon get out of being with humans anyway?

(It is rapidly becoming clear to me that many entries in this series are going to be prohibitively long.  You have been warned.)

As we travel across the land, searching far and wide, players of the Pokémon games have always had to deal with a set of annoying little restrictions – the need for ‘hidden’ moves that help us navigate through the overworld.  These moves can be taught to compatible Pokémon using Hidden Machines, HMs, and once learned cannot be forgotten except with the aid of a specialist move deleter.  They are also, for the most part, absolutely terrible.  Let’s look at their history.