What Should The Next ‘Pokemon’ Game Be?

Tabletop Games

Dec 21

For anyone not paying attention to gaming trends, there’s a little-known game series called Pokemon. You might have heard of it. With twenty games, not including some recent DLC, and an estimated 30 billion gross, the third highest of all time behind only Mario and Tetris, it’s had some mild success, to say the least.

A large part of its success is doubtless because of its simplicity. Whether you were born in the nineties when the series became popular, or you just picked up one of the games on the Switch, there is nothing complicated about it. You are a child of indeterminate exact age, probably ten to fifteen depending on the game, who is going around your region catching as many Pokemon as you can. Along the way you fight other trainers, a rival of some sort, an evil team who is trying to do something bad, and beat all of the gym leaders to gain the right to battle the Elite Four and become the ultimate champion of the region.

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And for the vast majority of the games, that’s pretty much it. It’s a simple formula that’s worked over and over again and largely continued in Violet and Scarlet. However, in 2022 we were introduced to Pokemon Legends: Arceus and it was actually… pretty good. It takes place long before any of the other games in the series, to the point where Pokeballs haven’t even been invented yet. Your character is born in the modern era but falls through a rift in time and space to the past. It’s interesting, and a welcome relief to the usual formula.

Of all of the Pokemon games that have come out, several of them have just been remasters such as Heart Gold/Soul Silver. Yes, it’s nice to see some of the old games you grew up with brought into the modern era, especially when they add modern mechanics or even new ones. So, that leaves the Pokemon series with three options: 1. remaster another game. The Black and White games haven’t gotten an update. That would be fairly ridiculous and is probably the least likely option. 2. an entirely new generation. This could happen. It would take a ton of work, as making video games tend to do, though there is always the fear that it would just be a copy/paste of the formula, which, even though there might be an update to mechanics, a new story and a hundred new Pokemon, would be a bit disappointing.

The third option? Go back again. Make another game like Arceus. This has the most potential to it thanks to one word: legends. Game Freak wouldn’t even need to make the game canon to the main series. It would be a game showcasing the legends that characters that you’ve played as before tell their friends around the campfire. Maybe that could even be the framing device of the game. A group of trainers in the modern era (ideally the Kanto region for simplicity’s sake) are sitting around the campfire and one of them starts telling a story, then you take control of the main character in the past. It would add a ton of depth and excitement to the story of the game. How much is true? What kind of history will we discover? What was the first Team like Team Rocket? What’s the history of the gyms and Pokemon league? Would any of what is being said be true or a tall tale for a group of friends? It would be groundbreaking in the Pokemon franchise.

Overall, we’ll have to wait and see what we get. A remaster or next-gen is more likely, which is unfortunate, given what can be done. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get some more legends.

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