Tag: Pokémon

Anonymous asks:

What do you think the in-universe justification for the national pokedex is? like why is kanto first, then johto, and so on. Is it because Oak created the pokedexes?

I think maybe the better question is “why is there an order at all?”  

They’re not physical books; they don’t need to be printed, so there’s no need for the entries to actually exist in any sort of canonical order.  The user can just ask for one specific entry, or for a list of entries arranged alphabetically, or by type, or by geographical distribution, or whatever.  In-universe there is no obvious reason why, for instance, the Pidgey line should come immediately after the Weedle line.  And then, of course, the one clear ordering principle – the fact that evolutionary families go together – is then violated apparently at random (again, from an in-universe perspective) by Pokémon like Pichu or Kingdra.  

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vikingboybilly asks:

Okay, listen to this: What if, instead of breeding eggs, pokemon trained each other by playing at the day care, giving their IVs, egg moves, or abilities to the other pokemon, and your pokemon can reach it’s full potential by learning and growing from the other pokemon at the day care instead of ridiculous egg breeding chains? This could be controlled with the power items and everstones and such, but it might work a little differenty (The power bracer’d pokemon get the attack IV from the other

You know, I think I like that, or something along those lines anyway.  I talked a bit in one of these old things about expanding the complexity and interactivity of Pokémon storage, placing a bit more emphasis on what your Pokémon are getting up to when they’re not actually with you, and this kind of thing might play into that kind of aim really well.  I think it reinforces the sense you get of Pokémon as individuals if they help each other to learn and grow, rather than just keeping it as the sole responsibility of the trainer.  There’s a lot of scope there for, say, the combinations of Pokémon’s natures having different effects on each other, or for abilities that (in addition to their battle effects) alter the way Pokémon can interact with each other in the day care.  Maybe Pokémon that have trained together will be more effective in double or triple battles together?  Lots of different directions you could take it.

Anonymous asks:

What are your feelings in the whole Pika close thing? Like that fact that they keep making them, and do any of them really stick out to you?

Urrrrrrrgh.  Eh.  I don’t know.  Like, it used to really annoy me, because I’ve been sick of them essentially reusing the same concept since generation III, but I’ve kinda moved past that now, not because I’ve come to think it’s any less dumb, more because I can’t be bothered getting annoyed about it anymore.  Clearly they’re going to keep doing it, so maybe it’s a more productive use of my time trying to figure out why on earth it’s so bloody important to them that every generation have a small cute rodent or lagomorph with electrical powers, and try to look at them in isolation with a view to what is neat about each of them.  I liked that they tried to do something different with Emolga, I suppose, by going with a flying squirrel.  That was somewhat redemptive.  I think they must do it, more than anything else, because they want someone to “carry the torch,” as it were, to say “no matter how much things change, this is still Pokémon.”  And this is hardly the only or best way they have of doing that, but clearly it matters to them a great deal.