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[NaDannMaGoGo]

Yup, completely true.

It really is just incredible insipid. The world building in Pokemon games is just about the lamest thing imaginable. It's ALWAYS "look how Pokemon are our friends and how they work with us!" It's the most basic 'happy co-existence' setup that's regurgitated to no end. The villain are usually some generic twats who do want to abuse Pokemon for their purposes and the primary legendary Pokemon (from the cover) have their usual world-forming role. Each MCs generic story path needn't even be mentioned.

It's just so devoid of creativity and no thematic depth that would be beneficial to children even if the younger ones don't actively notice that.

The idea that it's for kids and should henceforth be utmost trite writing is laughable. Even when I was very young I vastly preferred the Digimon anime series over the Pokemon one because it had so much better storytelling and all.

 

[Toxi]

It's probably the most horrifying location in a Pokemon game. But it nails so many things about telling an engaging story without distancing from characters and delving into exposition dumping. It's even got a great and somewhat (and also understated) tragic conclusion.

The best part about Sea Mauville is how it's not some outlandish villain guy who wants to take over the world or whatever; it's just the age old story of humanity destroying itself and the environment through greed, arrogance, and stubbornness, until all that's left is a rotting useless tribute to mankind's hubris.

It's a big-ass middle finger to Pokemon's usual optimism about technology and coexistence.

 

[MuchoMalo]

Have you considered that, maybe, Pokemon just isn't for you anymore? It's never been a series known for its writing, and frankly expecting it to have as much of a focus on writing as movies and TV shows that kids are going to likely watch with their parents (which the writers of those shows have to account for) doesn't make sense. Better writing certainly wouldn't hurt, but it's not the biggest problem with the series unless you're someone who just can't enjoy a game without great writing.

 

[Neoleo2143]

The best part about Sea Mauville is how it's not some outlandish villain guy who wants to take over the world or whatever; it's just the age old story of humanity destroying itself and the environment through greed, arrogance, and stubbornness.

And it all ends with a giant rotting tribute to mankind's hubris. A big-ass middle finger to Pokemon's usual optimism about technology and coexistence.

And this is why I want my damn Slice of Life Pokemon game. They're so clearly more capable of writing small things that all tie together in large webs. A small story in pokemon can be quite powerful as we've seen many times.

This isn't to say that I dislike the optimism of the pokemon games, but it really seems Gamefreak's writers and scenario creators are desperate to create interesting Stories. Even Looker's sidequest turned him from just a quirky detective into a multifaceted character with views on justice, generosity and inspiration.

One thing I wish in Sun and Moon is that theme of Family is explored. No villains trying to take over the world, just small stories across the islands. And it'd likely be great because that's what pokemon's consistently done well.

 

[ArchedThunder]

There are moments in Pokemon games (at least older ones) where you can feel the adult writer pressing against the demands of a "kid's game," with little jokes that might go over the average kid's head. There was also some occasionally "harsher" themes in, say, Gold or Silver, like cutting off Slowpoke tails and selling them on the black market. I mean, that's not exactly "kid friendly."

I don't think smart writing is beyond Pokemon, but it's an audience problem. Pokemon is aimed at children, but played by far more than children. Game Freak's stance is probably just that adults will still play the games even if they're written to be accessible to kids, but writing them for adult players would likely alienate a lot of the kid players.

You want to talk about darker stuff in Pokemon and don't even bring up that Black and White is all about the ethics of the Pokemon world and XY deals with things like death, war and even genocide.

 

[nintendoman58]

Are you reeeeally sure that my post is about Pokemon? After all, the way the rest of your post goes, you'd think I was talking shit on you and NeoGAF, and not the game.

Well yes, you were specifically talking about those who buy Pokemon games in your post.

That's not what I said. I said that it's possible to write dialogue for children that isn't braindead, and that those were examples of such. Not that Pokemon needs to become Toy Story or whatever you want to twist my words into.

The dialogue in the Pokemon games is not braindead. It's straightforward. It's simple. It's as good as it needs to be in order for everybody to understand and play the game.

You mean like in the restaurant video I posted? My main complaint there is that every single last bit of that scenario is written in a weird and alien manner, from beginning to end, and that it's representative of a lot of the game's dialogue. I care because as I had mentioned earlier, reading dialogue is sort of what you do in these games when you're not battling. It's not like I can ignore it like the irreverent fluff nonsense Battle Frontier trainers would say because the whole game is teeming with the kind of strange ass comments you'd see reserved for Battle Frontier trainers in earlier titles.

It really is not. You're just making it out to be that way. It absolutely is easy to ignore if you're having lots of fun with the game mechanics. If you're not having fun, then yes I can see why you would specifically point-out simple dialogue examples like those.

Are you seriously gonna take that shit personally? I wasn't calling you stupid

When you start your thread off with "You're stupid if you bought the new Pokemon game" then of course I'm going to take it personally. You straight-up insulted the entire fanbase over something completely harmless with that first sentence.

 

[E_Darkness]

Just because it is aimed at children doesn't mean the writing has to be trash. X/Y killed me because the writing was so bad.

 

[Regiruler]

Pokemon has a lot of problems these days.

Writing is way, way down on the list.

 

[Lumination]

When you start your thread off with "You're stupid if you bought the new Pokemon game" then of course I'm going to take it personally. You straight-up insulted the entire fanbase over something completely harmless with that first sentence.

Insult is stretching it. It's at most an insult directed at GF (if even that), not the entire fanbase. You do understand that, right?

 

[Slamtastic]

when will we get the RBY prequel that shows the war Lt. Surge was in

 

[WiiRevolution1]

I 100% agree. I'm playing Yokai Watch now and it doesn't treat you like a complete idiot like Pokemon does. And they are both children's games.

My main beef is that the "story" is basically the exact same each game that its just gotten old. Something like Mario has this problem too, but Mario is all gameplay where story doesn't interrupt your progress. Plus each of the newer Pokemon games are a chore to play through since the only good thing is the online multiplayer for me. I enjoy playing through gen 1-4, and even gen 5 since it had all new Pokemon with no old ones, but gen 6 having the same braindead story plots and writing just have gotten old for me. Tho I'll still get Pokemon Moon for its new online and megas (especially since I skipt ORAS) I am not looking forward to trudging through the same plot again. Its just gotten boring.

 

[TwiztidElf]

The writing is dumb, but it knows it. Pokémon is very self-aware in its writing.

I believe it is self-aware, and it's a bit of self-referential cliche at this point. It's also part of its innocent charm.

 

[madp]

There's a grain of truth in the OP that Pokemon games can be at times frustratingly didactic for the adult player, but the disproportionate expression of personal insult at this is silly.

I'm also having difficulty perceiving the fault in the examples of dialogue provided in the OP, or how they create a specific argument about why Pokemon dialogue is "bad" or "written by crazy people". NPC dialogue has become increasingly idiosyncratic, but, for instance, what isn't there to get about overhearing a fragment of someone else's conversation as you pass by or hearing a jumble of words from a noisy crowd? Modern Pokemon games are good at balancing their obligatory "chosen one" aspects with NPC scenarios that make you feel like just another ordinary person in the world.

 

[BluePikmin11]

It's a game designed for all ages, yet it treats older gamers as if they were kids with the writing. Gonna have to agree with the OP.

 

[Vibranium]

I'd like to see the franchise return to its roots of having a real douche for a rival, I remember not caring much about the story and the like, the idea of facing the trash talking rival you had and beating him just to make him regret facing me was motivation enough to my kid self to keep on going forward with the game

Spoiler

and to spend time power leveling my monsters just to be sure to win

They also need to bring back Team Rocket, make it a HYDRA thing where they build themselves back through a shell company and then strike out of nowhere. It would be pretty cool if they were revealed to be manipulating the player actually.

 

[SomeRandomWeirdGuy]

I love Pokemon, but this is totally true. 90% of NPC's have nothing else to say except "Pokemon are amazing!" There's a huge dearth of world building. I personally enjoy story in games, but even for those that don't want a big main story, they could have a bunch of world building and not compromise the simplicity of the main game.

 

[dreamlongdead]

Pokemon has a lot of problems these days.

Writing is way, way down on the list.

This is exactly how I feel.

 

[SolicitorPirate]

They also need to bring back Team Rocket, make it a HYDRA thing where they build themselves back through a shell company and then strike out of nowhere. It would be pretty cool if they were revealed to be manipulating the player actually.

"Hail Rocket"

 

[Obscuritas]

Does anyone feel that Pokemon is going the direction the Sonic franchise is at right now? Just curious.

That's quite a stretch.

 

[Huge Succeeded]

Does anyone feel that Pokemon is going the direction the Sonic franchise is at right now? Just curious.

Nah, Pokemon is genuinely better than its ever been. I just don't like a lot of the writing, and there's a billion avenues Game Freak could choose to freshen up the series with, mix things up with, but they just don't because they don't have to, which is disappointing to me.

 

[Foxxsoxx]

The writing is definitely tiring at this point. Obviously it needs to be easy to understand for children but you can't really defend how badly the writing is.

You don't immediately battle someone starting with a sentence about how comfy and easy to wear your shorts are. But somehow Pokemon finds a way. The story is also just regurgitated game after game that I just lost interest because it will never change the same happy-go-lucky approach it always does. It's funny that RBY seemed more mature decades ago than what they put out now.

 

[Vibranium]

"Hail Rocket"

Have a normal-looking character accidently let slip "blast off at the speed of light" to tease it too.

 

[Sou Da]

Pokemon has a lot of problems these days.

Writing is way, way down on the list.

Pretty much.

 

[mullet2000]

Brandon Jones from Easy Allies (ex-Game Trailers) has been playing blue for the first time and making weekly videos about it, and it's reminded me that red/blue had a bit more of an edge to it than, say, X/Y (last one I played). I tend to agree with you sentiment, OP. X/Y was a bit grating to me.

 

[Sou Da]

Brandon Jones from Easy Allies (ex-Game Trailers) has been playing blue for the first time and making weekly videos about it, and it's reminded me that red/blue had a bit more of an edge to it than, say, X/Y (last one I played). I tend to agree with you sentiment, OP. X/Y was a bit grating to me.

I can't possibly see RBY having more of an edge to it at all.


I say this as someone who hates XY.

 

[Eumi]

Just because there exist things aimed at children with good writing doesn't mean everything aimed at kids needs good writing. When I was seven I didn't care at all about the writing of Pokemon, I just liked making the monsters fight one another. I still enjoy Pokemon, but I'm well aware that I am not the primary demographic, and as such thinking it should cater to me seems kind of egocentric. I mean, stuff like adventure time, which people often point to as being good writing for kids, is constantly burned by its duality of being simultaneously simple and complex, light and heavy etc. If Pokemon wants to keep it simple, why the hell shouldn't it?

 

[Gospel]

The writing is whack and it'll never get better so make your peace with it my dude.

 

[ghibli99]

Who knows if where in the series you started matters, but my first one was XY, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was 40 at the time.

 

[PaulloDEC]

I'd agree with the OP, and I feel this is an area in which Nintendo could stand to improve across the board.

I'm sure others have done it over the last six pages, but I also feel like I need to address a few of the popular complaints in this thread.

1) "I don't want to sit through forty pages of dialogue from Professor Oak!"

Good writing has nothing to do with word count. Having better writing doesn't mean characters suddenly start dropping novels on you during each conversation.

2) "It's for kids, so it has to be simple!"

Good writing doesn't necessarily mean complicated writing, nor does it mean tossing in big words for the hell of it. I daresay a lot of writers would tell you that good writing should specifically not be overly complicated.

3) "The writing doesn't need to be good in Pokemon!"

This might be the most baffling one of all. Any game that includes writing in it should be striving for that writing to be good. No developer should ever be thinking along the lines of "Well, the writing in this multi-million dollar creative endeavor kinda sucks, but it's Pokemon, so it doesn't need to be good".

 

[mullet2000]

I can't possibly see RBY having more of an edge to it at all.


I say this as someone who hates XY.

Maybe edge isn't quite the right word.

But from how he's been talking about it there definitely seems to be more there than friendship tropes. From what he's been saying it actually has better world-building than I remember. He was talking about the tower of ghost/dead Pokemon and the stuff that happens there in the last episode, and I had forgotten about that part. Apparently Team Rocket straight up kills some old guy's Pokemon off-screen? I haven't played red/blue since release, so I can't comment really comment on it personally though.

 

[volcarona]

Those quotes are all from one of the worst games in the series

 

[Slamtastic]

To be honest though, the writing is up there for me, but I'd still say linearity and reuse of the same formula from the first games are bigger problems.

But we can always complain about them all!

 

[Daft Punk]

It's not even the story that's the main problem honestly. It's Game Freak's reliance on a child's manic drive to have the perfect Pokemon with the best stats etc. that has led to a ridiculous amount of grind (or really lack thereof) just to get perfect IV and EV stats. I'm a grown ass adult. I don't have time to sit there and grind out Pokemon breeding, natures, sex, etc. just to have a viable Pokemon I could take to a tourney or what have you and use it. When almost half of the reps from Japan get banned from the World Championship for hacking perfect Pokemon into the game, you have a problem.

 

[Mr. Wonderful]

Yup. The overall story and world-building is awful. A decent story/world-building would make the close to identical and dated gameplay close to irrelevant to me.

 

[Sou Da]

Maybe edge isn't quite the right word.

But from how he's been talking about it there definitely seems to be more there than friendship tropes. From what he's been saying it actually has better world-building than I remember. He was talking about the tower of ghost/dead Pokemon and the stuff that happens there in the last episode, and I had forgotten about that part. Apparently Team Rocket straight up kills some old guy's Pokemon off-screen? I haven't played red/blue since release, so I can't comment really comment on it personally though.

There's straight up a war that was fought between two countries and a Pokemon nuclear graveyard in XY.

 

[ArchedThunder]

Brandon Jones from Easy Allies (ex-Game Trailers) has been playing blue for the first time and making weekly videos about it, and it's reminded me that red/blue had a bit more of an edge to it than, say, X/Y (last one I played). I tend to agree with you sentiment, OP. X/Y was a bit grating to me.

I feel like everyone forgets that XY's plot deals with war, death and genocide.
To be fair that all comes in out of nowhere at the end.

 

[SolicitorPirate]

Have a normal-looking character accidently let slip "blast off at the speed of light" to tease it too.

You know what? Initially I didn't take the op seriously, but you're right. Pokemon would be better if it was basically Captain America 2

 

[BluePikmin11]

I've seen scarier stories in Yo-kai Watch, where a cat dies from a truck only for his owner to call the cat lame.

 

[DannyDanger]

think about the first time you played pokemon OP

how the hell would you understand any of that sh** as youngin without the writing the way it is?

 

[EvilRedEye]

The Pokemon franchise has racked up double the game sales of its closest JRPG-megafranchise competitor, Final Fantasy, and over a shorter timespan. I think there are legitimate arguments that can be levelled against the writing in the Pokemon series but at the same time to a certain extent if you're looking at a game series in a text-heavy game genre and it's clearly resonating to a far greater extent across demographic and cultural groups than other games in the genre, then it's kind of looking for failure to set up metrics for quality or success in areas where the franchise might have to compromise to maintain the kind of wide appeal it has. When Disney made Frozen, they ensured the lyrics to the songs were not dependent on word-play in order to ensure the film worked across other languages and it seems likely that similar compromises occur with the Pokemon series.

When you look at the franchise, it's clearly localised comprehensively, judging by its wide global appeal. It's avoided being labelled as a niche anime/manga/Japanese culture thing (despite having an anime and manga and sometimes being recognisably Japanese). It isn't off-putting to kids. It meets the criteria for success that it's meant to.

The writing could obviously be better by our subjective standards as adult JRPG fans but there is genuinely a limit as to how much the writing could change before becoming too complicated for kids, too recognisable as being from a foreign culture and storytelling tradition for non-Japanese people not wishing to be too intellectually challenged by their silly monster-catching game, or too JRPG-like (in terms of tropes/clichés etc.) for non-JRPG fans. We all know that 'good' and 'popular' don't always correlate and I really do think that 'better' writing would quite likely narrow the appeal of the Pokemon franchise.

 

[afternoon delight]

To be fair to your examples, who else writes Pixar-tier children's material?

Also, do you think its primary audience gives a flying fuck? I'd wager no. Unless you count the actual Pokedex entries, people get heated about them two sentences.

 

[The Lamp]

The game is marketed to children, but it also has complex af game mechanics and depth for older fans, so don't anybody try to pretend it's aimed exclusively at children.

Mind you, reading is difficult for small children, so I can understand trying to keep the text simple.

I built my reading skills as a kid by reading strategy guides, which always seemed to be written for older people. What the fuck was a ledge? Shimmying? Words like this littered strategy guides and as a 7 year old I had to learn it lol.

 

[Gator86]

sees thread title, agrees

thinks to self: I bet all the Pokemon goobers are going to say nonsense like "it's for kids"

enters thread

Yep. Never fails.

There's a defense force for everything. If something is bad enough, it actually becomes a positive. Look at Bethesda games - people rant about how much they love the jank. "It's part of the charm, you guys!"

 

[The Lamp]

It's not even the story that's the main problem honestly. It's Game Freak's reliance on a child's manic drive to have the perfect Pokemon with the best stats etc. that has led to a ridiculous amount of grind (or really lack thereof) just to get perfect IV and EV stats. I'm a grown ass adult. I don't have time to sit there and grind out Pokemon breeding, natures, sex, etc. just to have a viable Pokemon I could take to a tourney or what have you and use it. When almost half of the reps from Japan get banned from the World Championship for hacking perfect Pokemon into the game, you have a problem.

You don't need to do a lick of EV or IV to take a viable Pokemon on the single player journey, wtf

Edit: oh TOURNEY, I misread haha

 

[Daft Punk]

You don't need to do a lick of EV or IV to take a viable Pokemon on the single player journey, wtf

Notice I was talking about the competitive part of Pokemon.

 

[The Silver]

think about the first time you played pokemon OP

how the hell would you understand any of that sh** as youngin without the writing the way it is?

the same way I understood everything else I watched and played and read that was meant for people older than me, I wasn't a dumb fuck as a kid.

 

[213372bu]

And not that the games after X you can brute force with ineffective Pokemon types with little to no over-leveling?

 

[Kai Ozu]

The anime had great writing the first few years, it went hand and hand with the game. Now it's all about the battles. And people saying its for kids, is such a lame ass excuse. Pokemon was and could be so much more if they put a little more effort into it.

 

[yanipheonu]

Shrugs. I find it charming, it's a simplistic futuristic world where everyone, save the odd gang who can be stopped by a child with some Pokemon, gets along. I like it for its simplicity, the strange way everyone is just sorta nice. Makes me feel like a kid again.

 

[Cday]

The worst parts are not having difficulty levels that modify what pokemon trainers have and how linear they are.