Tag: legendary birds

Dosidicus Giygas asks:

There’s an interesting parallel in Gen I between Eevee’s three original evolutions and the three Legendary Birds in terms of typing. Fire, ice, and lightning are common elemental distinctions in RPGs with magic/energy/psionics/whathaveyou, so it makes sense that Pokemon would draw from this tradition for inspiration, though it’s a little odd that there is a discrepancy between Vaporeon (Water Type) and Articuno (Ice Type). Any thoughts on why that is? Furthermore, why didn’t Game Freak apply this logic to the starters, who are halfway there anyway? For something more varied/interesting? For a better justification of type balance?

Type balance isn’t exactly right, because I don’t think it’s about fairness, or at least not entirely, but it’s something like that.  Grass/Fire/Water has this nice rock/paper/scissors relationship that serves as an easy and intuitive introduction to one of Pokémon’s core mechanics, which is a pretty valuable thing for new players.  It doesn’t really work if you try to shoehorn Electric in there, because thematically there just isn’t an obvious relationship between Electric and Fire.  Other games that use Fire/Ice/Lightning don’t usually have “type advantages” in the same way as Pokémon does; several iterations of Final Fantasy, for example, have Fire and Ice being strong against each other, with Lightning doing its own thing (often being strong against mechanical enemies); Final Fantasy X adds Water as a fourth element to form another opposed pair with Lightning.  Pokémon just has different needs to those games.

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Anonymous asks:

What’s your favorite Legendary Pokémon, and why? We all know it’s not Rayquaza (because of Emerald) or Arceus (because of The Jewel of Life), but which one’s your favorite (or favorites, in the case of duos or trios)?

That’s a hard one… You’re right that it’s not Arceus because Jewel of Life can rot in hell, and also because the whole “god Pokémon” thing just does stuff to the setting that I don’t really like, and which I’m not convinced anyone ever thought through.  It’s also not Rayquaza, although I actually feel that Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby quite satisfactorily redeem the mess that was made of Rayquaza’s involvement in Emerald (though Deoxys is just a total Giant Space Flea from Nowhere).  I like the designs of Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres, but I’m less keen on the fact that (in the games at least) they have nothing to do with anything.  Similarly, I’m fond of Cobalion, Virizion and Terrakion’s backstory, which I think is really interesting, but I was incredibly underwhelmed by how little they had to do with the story of Black and White, considering how directly invested they are in the ideological conflict behind the plot.  You know, all things considered, I actually might go with Xerneas and Yveltal as joint winners; the designs are really evocative, they enabled an interesting story with some cool themes in X and Y, and the way they’re described hits a good spot on the “cosmic power” scale, where you can appreciate that these things might have region-wide significance, but they don’t necessarily place the power to unmake the universe in the hands of a ten-year-old trainer the way Dialga and Palkia do.