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White 2 Playthrough Journal, episode 6: The Plot Thickens

Team Plasma in their new trendy get-up.I hurry through the streets of Virbank City towards the ferry terminal, my eyes darting left and right, ever-watchful for Stu Deeoh’s accountants, whose wrath shall surely follow me to the ends of the earth.  As I safely draw near to the docks, however, I am confronted with an obstacle: a six-way Pokémon battle in the open streets.  To my surprise, Jim, Hugh and Roxie are all involved, and are being pressed hard by a trio of ginger ninjas.  No, really; I mean actual ninjas who happen to be ginger.  I realise that I know one of the ginger ninjas – the fellow who lobbed a DVD at me back on Floccesy Ranch – and reason that this must be Team Plasma.  I briefly weigh up in my mind the relative importance of following Pokémon League rules, helping my friends, my distaste for Roxie, fighting crime, and my own massive laziness and apathy.  Eventually I realise that Hugh, Jim and Roxie are battling with Pignite, Falk the Magby and Whirlipede, respectively, and that Pignite and Falk will be absolutely fine if I tell Barristan to scorch the area.

When they realise they’re outnumbered, the Team Plasma goons quickly recall their Pokémon and scatter.  Hugh, not missing a beat, chases after one of them, screaming something about never forgiving them.  Hmm.  Forgiving them for what, exactly?  Come back, Hugh; I think we’re on the verge of a real breakthrough here!  No, never mind, he’s gone.  Well, now that that’s taken care of with absolutely no negative consequences, I guess we’re off to Castelia City now, right?  No… no, Jim wants to help Hugh look for Team Plasma.  Come on; are we running a charity here now?  I elect to wait at the ferry terminal for him to get bored.  Jim, meanwhile, pursues the Team Plasma goons out of Virbank City into Route 20.  He manages to track down one of them, about halfway back to Floccesy Town, and knocks him to the ground with Elisif’s Thunder Wave.  As he flops around helplessly, Jim manages to extract a little information – the man was trying to come around and head back to the coastline.  Unfortunately, the Team Plasma grunt manages to flail onto a hillside and starts rolling before Jim can get anything else out of him.  He disappears into the bushes at the bottom of the hill, and has recovered from the Thunder Wave and scarpered by the time Jim gets down there.  Still, he and Hugh agree that the man’s comment can only mean Team Plasma are travelling by ship.  They return to the ferry terminal and are met there by Roxie.  Roxie thanks both of them on behalf of Virbank City and presents them with a pair of Cut HMs.  She presents me with a death glare and a silent threat to break her guitar over my head if I ever return to her city again, then departs.  Well, it’s not like I wanted that particular HM anyway.  The three of us board the ferry at last, and reach Castelia City before the day is out.

 Castelia City, in all its glory.

Castelia City is as absurd and wonderful as I remember from Black and White – the largest city in Unova, possibly in the entire Pokémon world, teeming with people and packed with businesses as absurd as they are numerous.  I pay a visit to the Battle Company, a huge corporation whose workers are devoted entirely to having Pokémon battles with each other and with visitors to their building, and Passerby Analytics, a group whose name, I can only assume, comes from the fact that they do absolutely no work themselves, but instead enlist random volunteers to conduct surveys for them.  We indulge in a few battles in the city, and little Tyrion evolves into a Whirlipede.  Eventually Jim suggests that maybe we should try to hunt down Team Plasma, and decides to seek the assistance of the Castelia Gym Leader.  I grudgingly agree and we head for the Gym – only to find it closed for business.  Luckily, help is at hand, in the form of… good grief, is that Iris?  The Opelucid City Gym Leader from White version?  What on earth is she doing here?  Is she after Team Plasma too?  Oh, whatever.  Iris confidently explains that she knows exactly where everything shady goes down in Castelia City (I can only presume she’s involved in half of it) and leads us to the easternmost pier of the city docks, where one can enter…

…the sewer level.

Why is there always a sewer level?

I refuse, point blank, to enter the sewer level.  The Virbank Gym was bad enough.  Jim and Hugh can muck around down there with the rats and the sludge monsters and goodness knows what else; I am going to the Café Sonata for antipasto and a glass of sweet white.  Iris doesn’t want to enter the sewer level either but she tries to hide it by claiming she’s standing guard on the surface, the sneaky little brat, so I do not invite her to join me.

 The Sewer Level.

Jim and Hugh enter the sewer level and, in fact, find Team Plasma remarkably quickly.  There are only two grunts in the area, who fall very quickly under their joint assault and flee the scene.  Burgh, the Castelia Gym Leader, emerges from the tunnel near where the goons were standing and declares that there are no other suspicious characters in the area.  Hugh’s thirst for vengeance is slaked for now, and he leaves, as does Burgh, who is returning to his Gym – well and good, but it leaves us no closer to finding their damn ship.  What kind of Bug Pokémon Master doesn’t keep a String Shot or Spider Web handy for just this kind of situation?  Immediately after Burgh leaves, having declared that there are no other suspicious characters in the tunnel, an extremely suspicious character steps out of the tunnel – the blonde white-coated scientist fellow who appeared in the games’ title sequence.  He reveals that he had been watching Jim and Hugh battle, and was impressed by their power, but slips away before Jim can call out a Pokémon to detain him for further questions.  Since Burgh has now been revealed as just about the most incompetent Gym Leader in the history of ever, Jim elects to remain in the sewer level for a while to make absolutely sure there’s no one else suspicious down here.  In fact, he finds that there are a great many suspicious people in the sewer level, though none of them seem to be affiliated with Team Plasma.  The tunnel, which is known as the Relic Passage, turns out to have been built by an ancient civilisation and links up to… somewhere, but Jim isn’t able to get very far inside.  He does find an extremely dodgy scientist who asks him, apparently in total seriousness, whether he is part of the sewer.  As fascinated as Jim is by the Relic Passage, he leaves as quickly as possible to search the sewers, making a mental note to report the scientist to the nearest asylum.

The sewers turn out to be full of Pokémon trainers, one or two of whom appear to have legitimate reason to be down there, though most of them just like hanging around in sewers.  Jim finds no trace of Team Plasma, although in one room, he finds a female scientist who claims to be attempting to create medicines from the venom of Poison Pokémon and other substances from the sewers.  She proclaims her day’s experiment a minor success, and hands Jim an oddly murky-looking Potion to test.  Jim smiles charmingly at her, saying that he’ll try it out later, leaves the room as quickly as possible, and promptly tips the Potion back into the sewer water from which most of it probably came.  He elects to get the hell out of this hive of madness and returns to the surface, where Iris congratulates him on whatever it was he just did and wanders off.  Jim scrapes the sewer muck off his shoes and decides to find me.  I have just finished my meal, and meet him on Narrow Street as I head back towards the Pokémon Centre.  We take a moment to discuss recent events before turning in.  Team Plasma is back, clearly, and they seem to have discarded their former facade of a movement for social change and Pokémon rights; now they’re just perfectly standard Pokémon thieves.  That’s fine by me; it makes them someone else’s problem.  Let the police deal with them.  Jim points out, not unreasonably, that teenaged Pokémon trainers are the closest thing this universe has to a police force.  I mutter that this is clearly the public’s own fault and the inevitable price of their low taxation, and propose returning to Aspertia as soon as we can use Fly to bypass Virbank City.  For now, though, we’re in Castelia… so we may as well stay long enough to take on that cloud cuckoo of a Gym Leader…

Are there any pokemon from the original Unova project that you would now change rescind your final verdict on, whether pass or fail?

Probably several… there are quite a few that I was indecisive about the first time, you see.  For most of them, there are good points and bad points – I believe I even had one or two positive things to say about Emolga.  I think you can probably tell by reading the entries which ones I was sure about and which ones I could have gone either way on, but… hmm…

I may have been too soft on Liepard, Haxorus, Cinccino, Stoutland and maybe Emboar.

Conversely, I may have been too hard on Druddigon, Krookodile, Musharna, Stunfisk and the Musketeer quartet.

And then there’s Garbodor, whom I still haven’t changed my mind about, though I grudgingly concede that he may not have deserved quite the level of vitriol I hurled at him in ‘11 (dear gods, I can’t say ‘last year’ anymore when talking about my Unova reviews…).

I almost think it may have been a mistake to use the ‘final verdict’ structure, since it detracts attention a little from the fact that, again, there are good points and bad points (well, for most of them anyway).  Heatmor, for instance, has a wonderfully mad design, but happens to be terrible at fighting.  Conversely, I’m not going to deny that Conkeldurr is strong, but I still don’t think we needed Conkeldurr and Machamp, and I remain convinced that the clown nose thing is appallingly stupid.  It also fails to highlight just how much worse, say, Maractus is than Klinklang or Cryogonal.  If I review every Pokémon in X and Y (do I have a choice?) I might choose a somewhat different format.

I’ve recently came up with a theory regarding the capture of pokemon. One of pokemon’s greatest questions is why you can’t capture a wild pokemon once it has “fainted”. What I’m thinking, though, is that it’s not that you can’t catch them, but that capturing a fainted pokemon is considered unethical in the pokemon universe. Probably because they’re in no condition to resist capture in that state which robs them of whatever rights people give pokemon. How solid would you say this theory is?

I think it’s so solid I wrote about it in October.

http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/34093585438/the-ethics-of-pokemon-training

I like Mawile’s design a lot but it also equally confuses me… I’m assuming the feminine side with the yellow… fur? Is that where her head is… or is the brain in the plant-trap looking thing? And why Steel Type when it looks plant-like? Anyway, my point is to ask what do you think about her history/biology? (is it biology when its a Steel Type?)

I actually really like Mawile as well.  She’s one of the Pokémon I lump with Farfetch’d, Dunsparce and the like, where they’ve taken a really clever design, made it awful at everything, and then forgotten about it.  Poor Mawile…

Anyway.  I am led to understand that Mawile is probably based on an obscure Japanese monster – a woman with a second mouth growing out of the back of her head.  Game Freak seem to have adapted the idea by combining it with the concept of an animal which uses markings or unusual appendages to appear larger or more threatening than it really is (unlike, say, Girafarig, Mawile doesn’t actually have two mouths; according to the Pokédex the extra ‘jaws’ are really horns).  It’s a very fun, creative design, and I think it’s a shame Mawile had to… y’know… suck so much.  In answer to your question, then, just ignore the big jaws – that’s what she wants you to focus on.

As for why they decided to make her a Steel-type… you know, I honestly have no idea.  Her origins seem to fit with her being a Dark-type, and she’s portrayed consistently as a deceiver.  The Pokédex very insistently describes her jaws/horns as being made of steel, but that seems like it was a later choice to justify the typing, not the reason for it.  Quite aside from that, she has few typical Steel-type powers.  I guess you could interpret it as Mawile deliberately cultivating the appearance of one type when she actually belongs to another, thus continuing the theme of deception and making it more difficult for her enemies to attack her.

( my grammar might suck sorry ) what do you think of qwilfish? i know this is rota odd but do you think he is at all horrible i think he is one of the most boring pokemon ever i ask this because….well just because

What do I think of who?

Heh.  Sorry, couldn’t resist.

Qwilfish is, quite honestly, one of the few Pokémon I have ever just forgotten about completely.  Jim and I were looking through my Pokédex on Diamond a couple of years back and we found this empty spot and just stared at for about ten minutes before admitting we had no idea what the hell was supposed to go there.  I don’t know that this is entirely Qwilfish’s fault.  I think it’s largely because Game Freak have a tendency to hide him.  He doesn’t evolve, he’s too strong to be available early, and too weak to be useful later on, so he kinda winds up being one of those random Easter Egg Pokémon that most people only go looking for because they notice an empty space in the Pokédex and can’t figure out why.

I mean, I know he’s, like, supposedly a really good (if somewhat bizarre) Spiker/Toxic Spiker on a rain team or whatever, but is there really anyone, anyone in the world, who has an empty spot on their team and their very first thought is “Qwilfish would be awesome here”?

The sad thing is that he’s actually based on a comparatively interesting fish; it’s just that Game Freak have fallen into the typical Water-type trap of simply translating a real animal into Pokémon game mechanics and then going no further with it.  I don’t think he’s actually a Pokémon based on a porcupine fish at all; I think he’s legitimately just a porcupine fish.  So I suppose he wins badass points for being usable at all, right?

White 2 Playthrough Journal, episode 5: That’s Showbiz

Last time on Black and White 2, Jim and I had just managed a stunning defeat of Roxie, only to learn that we have apparently attracted the attention of some movers and shakers in the Unova film industry.  A talent scout approaches us as we leave the Virbank Gym, and explains that Pokéstar Studios needs kids like us.  Bemused, we follow him to the northern quarter of Virbank City, where the opulent palaces of Poké-Hollywood sprawl across vast tracts of land like great golden toads squatting on their lilypads, peering goggle-eyed at the hapless water insects swimming beneath them.  There, we are introduced to the eccentric golden-haired master of this place – Stu Deeoh.

Get it?  Stu Deeoh?  Because he owns a studio?  It’s a pun!  Oh, Game Freak, you kill me.

 It's difficult to show what the whole place looks like from a screenshot, so the anime's vision of Pokéstar Studios will have to do.

Stu conducts us to the great Pokéstar theatre to show us what he and his minions do in their palace of golden dreams.  Their most recent release, in fact, happens to be the debut appearance of Roxie’s father, the erstwhile captain of the Virbank-Castelia ferry service: an action-packed blockbuster entitled Brycen-Man.  The title character, to our immense shock, is played by none other than Brycen, the Icirrus City Gym Leader, returning to the silver screen after a long absence.  His luridly-costumed supervillain is opposed by Pop Roxie’s character, the similarly embroidered Riolu Man, in an epic battle set in an amusement park full of innocent bystanders.  Jim and I happily accept the complimentary tickets offered by Stu Deeoh, grab some popcorn, and settle in to watch the movie.

Afterwards, as we leave the theatre, Pop Roxie approaches us and nervously asks what we thought of his debut appearance.  I enthusiastically launch into a glowing encomium of Brycen-Man, proclaiming the film a work of comedic genius, with particularly high praise for Pop Roxie’s hilarious portrayal of the film’s antagonist, Riolu Man, a bumbling, stuttering goof whose ill-advised attempts to thwart the brilliant and unbelievably handsome title character provide riotous laughs from beginning to end.  Pop Roxie appears to be squirming and looking at his feet, no doubt from his modesty, so I tone it down a little and move into a discussion of the film’s clever inversion of the standard hero/villain paradigm that has us cheering for the title character even as he gleefully cuts a swathe of destruction through the innocent patrons of the amusement park.

At this point, Jim murmurs in my ear that we were supposed to be rooting for Riolu Man.

I pause in mid-sentence, my mouth hanging open.  By the time I manage to close it, Pop Roxie has slunk away through the shadows, forlornly muttering something about not quitting his day job.

Well.  Whoops.

 Remember this dude? So, you might or might not have picked this up from Black and White, but he was totally a famous actor before becoming a Gym Leader, and now he's had a mid-life crisis and gone back to his old (ludicrously highly-paid) job.

Stu Deeoh soon tracks us down to ask how we would feel about joining the crew for his next cinematic masterpiece.  Jim declares that he has better things to do and suggests we return to the Virbank Complex for some level grinding, but I am intrigued by Stu’s offer.  If Brycen-Man is anything to go by, there’s clearly room in Pokéstar Studios for some exciting new talent – and who better than I?  Anyone can see, just to look at me, that I was born to be in the movies – perhaps in a sci-fi epic featuring a great interstellar empire and a reclusive order of mystical knights.  With visions of my future career all but materialising in front of me, I follow Stu Dio to his studeeoh to begin work on our first great project: a remake of Brycen-Man.  Apparently the movie was just such an appalling flop at the box office that Brycen is demanding we burn the film, eradicate all evidence of it, shoot the director, and start from scratch.  I protest that remaking a work of cinematic genius like Brycen-Man would be nothing short of sacrilege, but change my tune soon enough when I see the rewritten script, in which I have been cast as the spunky young heroine, Riolu Girl.  I stride onto the soundstage, take possession of the rental Pokémon who has been cast as my partner, and begin filming opposite Brycen.  Within a few short days, we have repurposed all of the original props and sets for Brycen-Man into a new blockbuster that brings both renown and profits to Pokéstar in spades… and so begins my movie career.

Everything I touch turns to gold.  Every director I work with proclaims my acting flawless, my interpretation of their characters genius, my delivery of key lines nothing short of divine.  I star in such acclaimed masterpieces as the Timegate Traveller trilogy, Mystery Doors of the Magical Land, and Red Fog of Terror, performing immaculately choreographed Pokémon battles alongside actors like Brycen and the mesmerising Kanto psychic, Sabrina, as well as some of the most highly trained Pokémon in showbusiness and a crew of the finest performance capture actors and CG artists in the industry.  My renown grows, and soon I am surrounded by fans, day and night, attempting to curry my favour with extravagant gifts.  I develop a crippling Rare Candy habit, and eat mainly poffins imported from Sinnoh at tremendous cost.  I take up Tai Chi to keep myself in shape, but quickly decide that it is too much work and hire someone else to take up Tai Chi for me.  One day, in one of my more lucid moods, I track down Stu Deeoh and ask him when I can expect to get paid for my work.

“Oh, dah-ling, we do not pay you!  That is so, ‘ow do you say, last season!  You are workink for us for ze sheer joy of your aaaht, are you not?”

 Pokéstar's costume designers are very well looked-after, and kept fully supplied with all the food, conveniences, entertainment and LSD they could ask for.

In fact, it turns out I actually owe Pokéstar a tremendous sum of money for the expensive food, clothing and massage treatments I’ve been purchasing through the company account on a daily basis.  This sum is known exactly to only a few of Stu Deeoh’s most trusted financial advisors, but is rumoured to exceed the GDP of Botswana.  Naturally, I do the honourable thing and book a ticket on the first ferry to Castelia City, instructing my Growlithe, Barristan, to set the company records office on fire as we leave.

Pokéstar Studios is an… interesting addition to the game.  As my experiences prove, it is exceptionally silly, but I have come to feel that it actually serves a legitimate and quite interesting purpose.  In concept it is reminiscent of Pokémon Contests and Musicals, in that your goal is to leverage your Pokémon’s ‘star power,’ as it were, but in practice it is strikingly different, since its central mechanic is essentially that of a choreographed Pokémon battle.  You are given a rental Pokémon and asked to fight one or more Pokémon belonging to another actor – but your aim is not simply to win, but to win in a particular fashion that suits the needs of the script.  Since you have a copy of the script, this is not especially challenging for an experienced player, even if the stage directions are often a little cryptic.  For a new player, however… well, obviously I don’t have the perspective required to evaluate it on those terms, but I think these scripted battles are actually a fantastic way to introduce new players to a wide variety of obscure moves and their effects.  The option to use your own Pokémon in place of rental Pokémon to shoot a film also puts a neat ‘puzzle-solving’ twist on the traditional Pokémon battle – the script has certain needs, and you have to prepare a Pokémon capable of fulfilling them.  Actually, I think the whole thing might have been more effective if it didn’t give the option of using a rental Pokémon after the initial screening of Brycen-Man and forced players to evaluate the requirements of the script for themselves, starting from very basic Pokémon and moves that can be obtained in and around Virbank City – but perhaps that would be too overwhelming for an inexperienced player?  In any case, frivolous though it may be, seen in the right light Pokéstar Studios is a great little diversion that puts a fascinating new spin on the central mechanic of the Pokémon games.  It also takes the unprecedented step of having your Pokémon battle against things that aren’t Pokémon.  Since most of Pokéstar’s movies use ridiculous amounts of computer animation, during filming these props are always seen as square slabs of green metal with icons on the front, though you can see the machines and monsters they represent when you watch the completed films.  They act as Pokémon in all respects, but have whatever stats, moves, abilities and elemental properties are demanded by the script.  This strikes me as a fascinating little ‘proof of concept,’ showing that the games can very effectively stage battles between Pokémon and objects to serve the needs of a plot.  I anticipate seeing more of this – in a less theatrical context – in future games.

Next time, I’ll be making a break for the ferry terminal… just as soon as I can find Jim.

Do you think that the X and Y legendaries could be based off on Norse Mythology? Look at the deer lookalike, the eagle lookalike, for the two realms. The third realm the underworld is a snake. MAybe Z = serpentine?

I feel I should make a general statement that my answer to any question of this kind about X and Y is going to be along the lines of “eh, whatever.”

I guess Yveltal, with the initial vocalic Y, does kinda sound like it could be Germanic or Nordic, but Xerneas doesn’t – I mean, I don’t really know anything about that language family but I’m not sure they even have an X sound, let alone words with an initial X.  Honestly it feels like a Greek name to me.  Also I just don’t think Yveltal looks like an eagle.  Something in the shape of the head, and the feathery collar, just screams ‘vulture’ to me.

EDIT: Another reader adds the following:

“There aren’t two realms in Norse mythology what? There is an eagle on the world tree, but there were actually four deer and also a dragon and a raven. It’s likely not Norse-related just because there’s a deer and an eagle.”

I think the first person was referring to the old division of the universe into heaven, earth and the underworld, which is common across many cultures, although from what I recall of Norse mythology, they actually had *several* realms, including two heavens, at least two underworlds, and possibly more than one earth… although I’m very much a Greco-Roman fellow and it has been a long time since I read anything on the subject.

Also I’m sure I remember something about a squirrel that used to carry insults up and down the World Tree between the eagle and Nidhogg…

You know what comes next, right?

So!  We have a winning concept for our Water/Fire Pokémon: the one proposed by Chewiana Jones, which I shall repeat here:

“What if we had an enormous squid/oil lamp hybrid that lived deep in arctic oceans, getting most of its nutrients from volcanic vents and small deep-sea Pokemon prey and burning oil (for warmth) in small amounts inside its body, which could look somewhat steampunk furnace-ish structure with more organic parts like the eyes and mouth mixed in and a body made of translucent, durable membrane with golden light shining through, supported by a skeletal framework. However, when it starts to run low on oil, it flares up its flames and rises like a hot air balloon to closer to the surface. There, it hunts pokemon like Walrein and Dewgong by expelling oil like squid ink and then lighting it on fire, then eats them and uses the oil for more power.”

Next step: art!  I need people to draw this thing!  Let your imagination go wild!  I’ve just created a new e’mail address for the blog – pokemaniac.chris@gmail.com – which you can use to send me pictures.  Alternatively, you can just use an image hosting site or something.  Just make sure you give me the name you want me to use to credit you!

Once we have a few submissions, we can vote on those and pick the best one.  Don’t feel you have to stick to the letter of the original concept – just as long as you keep to the spirit of it.  If anyone wants to suggest adjustments to the concept in the comments or whatever, please do so.  There’s already been one problem suggested with this idea – that this creature surfaces to hunt when it runs low on oil, and then… uses more oil to hunt.  Who can think of a way to fix that?

Do you think there’s some sort of in-joke with Froakie in X and Y? What I’m getting at is, Froakie is a frog, and the new region seems to be mostly based around Paris, France. And there’s a certain delicacy in France that Froakie just happens to be related to. You see where I’m getting with this? |3 So yeah, do you think that was intentional? (It’d be especially hilarious if Froakie’s later evolutions just happened to be chef themed. XD)

Well, not really, no.

I mean, don’t get me wrong; it’s far from impossible.  I just think that the announcement of a new generation of Pokémon is invariably accompanied by an absurd amount of speculation based on remarkably little evidence, and I prefer to stay out of it.  I suppose it would certainly be amusing.  I think the French themselves find being called ‘frogs’ offensive (understandably enough) so they might have to be careful how they spin something like that.  Also we don’t want to be tempting kids to eat their starters because that’s just bad for business.