Restructuring Pokémon Swish

[soc_puppet]

I'm sure I've mentioned here before that I feel like Sword and Shield put the final boss and the post-game boss in the wrong order. I think I might have a more comprehensive fixed storyline for that now:

Though the game's been out for more than a year now, I don't know how spoiler-averse I really need to be...

Anyway. Team Yell is effectively gone. Marnie is still one of your rivals, but she snuck out of town and is trying to keep a low profile. Trainers from her hometown/her brother's gym are looking for her, and occasionally ask if you've seen her/that sort of thing, but mostly she manages to keep out of their sight and stay ahead of them. (I know we just did a "runaway kid" storyline in Sun and Moon, but repeating that would still be better than Team Yell. Plus, it could be more from a perspective of "I want to do this on my own, not with help from you/I want to make my own name as a trainer, not be constantly compared to you" than Lillie and Gladion's thing.)

The "evil team" you're up against is one that's trying to reinstate the monarchy and put Swordward or Shieldbert on the throne. (Hopefully with better designs for both of them, good grief...) The main plotline for them becomes "monarchy vs democracy", and there should be stuff about how heroes aren't infallible, and even if a hero comes really close, that's no reason to base a system of government around them.

Meanwhile, in the background there's still all that stuff with Chairman Rose being super concerned about renewable energy and dynamaxing and stuff, but we don't get the payoff until the post-game.

Working in the legendaries might still need some tweaking, but probably not too much.

Anyway, opinions on Pokémon storytelling, I haz them.

Comments

[soc_puppet]

God damn I love this so much. I wish I had the energy to make a Pokémon hack that retold the story this way, because it deserves to be played. It deserves to exist.

[eastofthemoon]

The hero legacy could be really fun as a theme too considering Leon had a big hero worship with people and course we got Hop his younger brother as the rival. Probably nothing too deep but be fun to poke at.

[soc_puppet]

Right? There's so much potential! Nintendo/Gamefreak really dropped the storytelling ball on this installment of the franchise.

[gullwhacker]

The thing that gets me is that the storytelling isn't universally bad. I love Hop's character arc - of the games I've played, he has the most development of any Main Rival character and the postgame conclusion for him is solid. Marnie and Bede are less developed, admittedly - but in a way Hop is the 'main' rival and I honestly think they did him right.

And as much as it felt a little frustrating, it was kind of nice to have acknowledgement of 'look, we're not putting the world's problems on a kid's shoulders, the adults should take care of this'. Main Character and Hop going legend-chasing comes across as feeling like they should do something - it just happens to be that their idea was better than Leon's.

(Actually, one minor tweak I'd have made is to have Eternatus show up at less-than-full HP - implying that while you might need Zacian and Zamazenta helping to take it on properly, Leon's efforts had some impact.)

There's parts of the story that work well, but it's...scattered. It's the player's agency, honestly, that stands out - you never really stop anything Team Yell is doing, they just kind of serve as a Gym Challenge in Spikemuth then get chewed out. Effectively, the only main-story actions you take are the gym challenge, the tournament, then oops time to save the world all of a sudden. It's pacing as much as content.

(Maybe part of the answer is to move the Macro Cosmos bit earlier in the game. Same setup - you want to have dinner with Leon, he's late, Impatient Hop suggests chasing him, challenge Rose Tower, get the implications of plot - but Rose agrees to put things off for now and the whole episode gets semi-forgotten.)

Ah, for a Sword/Shield Rewrite...