Cassidy Arnold asks:

how do you feel about the new region being based on Spain?

it also seems like it has a “past” / “Future” motif which you may be interested in.

I am going to continue to insist on saying “Iberia” rather than “Spain” because, y’know, there is a name for that whole region Paldea is based on, which actually contains countries not called Spain – not that anyone’s told either Game Freak or the fandom that.

Although, on the other hand, I do think it would be extremely funny if Scarlet and Violet somehow recognised Andorra but not Portugal, and would be prepared to endorse this course of action.

Anyway. I’m not sure that it occurs to me to feel one way or another about it. I don’t think it’s a bad choice, nor is it exactly what I would have chosen. If the last few generations are any indication, we can expect a significant fraction of Paldea’s Pokémon to draw inspiration from Iberian flora and fauna, as well as regional history and culture; we’ve already seen Smoliv (can’t have a Mediterranean region without olives, after all) and Lechonk (the black Iberian pigs that produce ibérico ham). I suppose I am also curious how the games’ depiction of Paldean culture might be influenced by the history of Iberia. I think in general the Pokémon games tend to reference real-world history in ways that are pretty oblique and allegorical, on account of how actual history is so often a bit of a downer. They’ll put a little Roman soldier Pokémon in Galar and give Circhester the same Georgian neoclassical architecture as Bath, but they won’t imply the existence of a Roman Empire, if you see what I mean. If there are any references to the role of Spain and Portugal in colonising the Americas, for instance, we can expect them to be heavily sanitised; there might be some pretty buildings here and there inspired by Moorish architecture, but only vaguest possible allusions to the religious conflicts that have characterised so much of Spain’s history. I do wonder whether they might somehow work in a Galarian connection with Gibraltar (and even if they don’t, there are plenty of vacation spots in Spain and Portugal beloved by British holidaymakers); Pokémon does like implying historical links between different regions, like the Kantonian cultural influence on Alola. Speaking of Alola, actually, the malasada is originally a Portuguese dish, and one of Oricorio’s forms is a flamenco dancer – I’d be interested to know whether there’s a Paldean connection in either of those.

Past/Future does seems like something that would interest me, but “that seems like something that would interest me” is kinda all there is to say about it so far. I’m of the opinion that Past/Future (or its cousin, Tradition/Innovation) is at least a minor theme of almost every Pokémon game in the “core” series, so when Scarlet and Violet say explicitly that it’s going to be a primary theme… well, yes, I’m interested, but that’s because I’m usually interested whenever it comes up in a Pokémon game, which happens pretty often, and the fact that these games are labelling it as a core aesthetic motif doesn’t necessarily mean much. X and Y have some interesting things to say about tradition, lineage, individual responsibility, collective good and redemption, but they don’t really say anything particularly insightful about life and death – nor, in my opinion, are the merits of Diamond and Pearl’s story in their ideas about space and time, nor are Black and White at their best while talking about “truth” and “ideals” (words which are, in those games, close to meaningless). So I guess what I’m saying is “we’ll see when we see,” which is something I try to say about every Pokémon game, but seems to get harder and harder every time.

Further Opinions are to be found here and here, in case you haven’t already seen those.

Camper Smoke asks:

I know you have said India is ideal, but how would you feel if game freak made a Pokemon region out of scandinavia?

I guess predominantly “fine”? Like, I have multiple preferences ahead of that, and particularly if we’re thinking generation IX – that is, immediately following another northern European region – I don’t think it makes a lot of sense in sequence. But I’m not sure I can think of any place on Earth that I’d be offended or upset or even really disappointed to see as the setting of a Pokémon game. Scandinavia’s got a lot of affluent multilinguals who are part of Pokémon’s global community, it’s got distinctive modern aesthetics that fit in well with Pokémon’s distinctive blend of tradition and techno-utopia, it’s got Vikings, it’s got fjords, and what else do any of us really need in life, when we’ve got fjords?

Jim the Editor remarked on this that it could be interesting to have a very cold region, and it certainly would. On the other hand, the cynic in me says that Game Freak would shy away from creating a region with very few habitats for desert and tropical Pokémon, and especially from having to deal with the polar day-night cycle, in favour of just putting in a few more snowy areas than most games in the series, and otherwise keeping the climate mostly temperate. Which… I think is an issue not just with this idea in particular but more generally. There are things that the Pokémon games like to keep formulaic – say, having a variety of biomes to slot a large number of existing Pokémon into, or having a certain ratio of small towns to big urban centres – and if a region doesn’t obviously have those things, I kind of suspect they would get shoehorned in anyway, potentially at the expense of its unique character. Not that it wouldn’t be great just to see Poké-Stockholm and Poké-Copenhagen, but… y’know, I think if you want to have a Scandinavian region, you want the northernmost areas to experience midnight sun and polar night, and you want that to be mechanically and narratively significant somehow; you want big parts of the map to be sparsely populated like the Crown Tundra, and you want the player spending a lot of time in those areas and thinking about them; you want the ocean to be important as something you explore and learn about, not just travel through. Honestly, now that I’m saying all this, can we have, like… a sprawling Pokémon region based on the whole Arctic Ocean, something with big environmental themes, maybe some light survival mechanics? Can we just put that one on the list, after India and Brazil? I’ll just pop over and let Shigeru Ohmori know that I want that on the list.

H20 asks:

What would your dream pokemon region be based off of?

I’ve answered basically this exact question a couple of times before, so I’m going to incorporate it with another question about Pokémon regions and go through some thoughts I have about this:

The Dag asks:

Which region so far do you think has best incorporated the history, mythology, geography, and biosphere of its real-world inspiration?

My traditional standard answer for “where do I want a region based on?” is India, just because it gives you so much to work with, in terms of environment, climate, fauna, history, culture, mythology, everything. The feel of that region would also be distinctive and recognisable to an international audience, but still leave a lot of room for incorporating material that would be new and interesting to players in both Japan and the Anglophone “West.” But let’s talk about that second question a bit.

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The original dragon from Unova asls:

I know remakes are going to be a thing forever, but what are your thoughts on games using the same region, but with an entirely different plot, and entirely new Pokemon. For example, before Let’s Go P/E was revealed, there were all these wild rumors about a Kanto Region in the future with all new Pokemon, Gorochu, submerged Pallet Town, a snake legendary, etc.

I dunno that I have “thoughts” on it, exactly. It’s a thing you could do. I mean, it’s a thing Black and White 2 did, and those games are pretty well regarded in the fan community, from what I’ve seen (there probably isn’t much merit in using an existing region and deliberately keeping no connections at all to the previous plot – if you’re not using the background, then the freedom of a new setting is probably more valuable). I don’t think it’s necessarily better or worse than setting a game in a completely new region; the latter gives you a blank slate for developing new ideas and themes, and the former emphasises continuity. I honestly do think there is a lot to be said for the blank slate, but sometimes having a pre-existing developed setting with dense lore and history can also be useful for storytelling – that’s why fan fiction is a thing. I probably wouldn’t do a whole new generation’s worth of Pokémon designs for a new game set in an existing region, though.

Ace Trainer Fox asks:

What pokemon do you want to get future regional forms? If you need a basis, for a region based on say, greece?

This is a tricky question to answer, because yeah, it really does kinda depend on the region. To my mind, the best thing about regional forms is that they illustrate the region’s identity and culture, or the way Pokémon have adapted to the particular challenges of living there. There are no Pokémon that I think should get regional forms, because that’s the opposite of how I think about the question. But then again, despite being an archaeologist who works in Greece, I’ve also never been enthusiastic about the idea of a Pokémon region based on Greece, either; I just think there are other choices that would be more interesting. When people ask, I usually say that I’d like a region based on India. There are a few obvious choices for regional variants there that could incorporate references to Indian history and culture into their designs, although I don’t have any specific ideas for how to do that off the top of my head: Arbok, because cobras are Indian. Copperajah, because elephants are Indian. Medicham, because Buddhism started in India. Raikou, because tigers are Indian (and we may as well drag Suicune and Entei into it). Machamp, because divine beings in Indian art are so often human-shaped with extra pairs of arms. Miltank, because cows are symbolically important in Hinduism. Do something with Claydol that uses motifs from the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilisation. You get the idea.