It’s not every day that thePokemonfranchise breaks from its own formula. On the contrary,Pokemongames cling to a lot of traditional approaches to combat, plot, and new game mechanics. That’s what makesPokemon Legends: Arceusso exciting. In a franchise that’s so obsessed with its own conventions,Pokemon Legends: Arceusis a breath of fresh air. It’s a vastly open world that lets players explore at their own pace, it uses a historical period largely unfamiliar to thePokemonworld, and its central plot sounds like it’s very different fromPokemontradition.Pokemon Legends: Arceusplays totally different from its predecessors, which a lot of fans find exciting.
While it’s great thatPokemon Legends: Arceusis so unique, what may be more important is whether or not Game Freak makes this approach toPokemongames the standard.Pokemon Legends: Arceusisa more liberatedPokemongame than most, but it’s also more dangerous, putting the protagonist in the front line in a way that mostPokemongames have not. At a glance, putting the player character in danger seems like a drastic deviation from the franchise’s usual model, but it could actually be the best thing that Game Freak does forPokemon’s Generation 9. There’s a lot that the franchise would gain out of preservingPokemon Legends: Arceus' approach to danger.
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Pokemon’s Relationship with Danger
In mostPokemongames, the player character really never has to worry about being in danger themselves. Only the player’s team of Pokemon take or deal damage in combat, no matter how explosive or calamitous a particular fight gets. While that approach matchesPokemon’s central themes of teamwork and sportsmanship, it doesn’t quite make sense in a world with so many powerful and dangerous creatures running amok. What’s more, thePokemonworld suffers from a wide range ofvillainous groups like Team Rocketwith little regard for the rest of the world. It’s surprising that none of these teams seem selfish or callous enough to attack the protagonist with Pokemon, choosing to engage in standard, honorable Pokemon battles instead.
Pokemon Legends: Arceustotally turns that on its head. In this game, stealth is crucial, because many wild Pokemon will attack the human protagonist without a second thought. Akin to open-world games likeHorizon: Zero DawnandThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild,players sometimes need to carefully slip past dangerous creatures rather than sprinting through their territory or facing them head-on. In other situations, players have to put themselves in danger to complete an objective. In the newly revealed Kleavor encounter, it seems that players have to dodge Kleavor’s attacks all alone and throw balm at the Noble Pokemon until it can be battled.
The contrast here is stark. In mostPokemongames, the protagonist blacks out and runs away when their Pokemon are all unconscious, but inPokemon Legends: Arceus,players blackout when they’re the ones who’ve taken too much damage. The contrast shows the value ofPokemon Legends: Arceus' approach, though. Players might feel a little sad or guiltywhen their Pokemon get knocked out, but there’s a lot more tension and immersion involved when the player’s own character is at risk of getting hurt. If this stance on danger seems to work so well forPokemon Legends: Arceus,then it could work wonders for the rest of thePokemonfranchise.
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How Player Damage Could Improve the Pokemon Series
There’s a lot of ways that the next generation ofPokemongames could build onPokemon Legends: Arceus' damage mechanic. For instance, it could expand on situations where the player has to choose to be in danger.Pokemon Legends: Arceus’s Kleavor fightasks players to approach the enranged Pokemon all alone, rather than leaping into a Pokemon battle all alone. It’d be great to see a Generation 9Pokemongame with some similar situation where players are trapped all alone in some sort of arena with an angry and powerful Pokemon. Players might have to activate some devices or collect some objects while dodging the Pokemon or even setting off other devices that buy the player time.
If futurePokemongames carry over these confrontations between humans and Pokemon, then there’s room for a new category of tactical items. Player characters might develop battle statistics like Defense and Speed that they can modify with special pieces of equipment, increasing their defenses and letting them tough it out through more attacks. Certain equipment could even havePokemon-style type affinities, giving players resistances to certain types and some weaknesses to others, encouragingPokemonfans to weigh the costs and benefits of their equipment.
ThePokemonnarrative would benefit from putting protagonists in danger too. It’d be great to seea truly menacing Pokemon villain teamwho isn’t afraid to attack humans with their Pokemon. Players might need to dodge certain attacks in combat with villainous Pokemon trainers, or alternatively, certain villains might use their Pokemon to take cheap shots at players before a battle starts. In a time wherePokemonstories face mounting criticism for weak plots, it’d be great to see a villain team that behaves like this because they’d actually feel like a threat. The nextPokemongeneration’s villains should be dangerous and intimidating. Even if thePokemonworld is generally lighthearted, there need to be some stakes, or players will hardly feel motivated to vanquish evil.
Pokemon Legends: Arceus Strikes Gold
Pokemon Legends: Arceus' ideas about danger and player damage might not make it to the mainlinePokemongames. As the name suggests, Game Freak, Nintendo, and The Pokemon Company could have plans in mind for a long-formPokemon Legendsseries of games that usesArceus' open world, damage mechanics, and so on. If that’s the case, the ideas will probably remain separate from the corePokemongames to preservePokemon Legends' unique identity. While it’d be great to see morePokemon Legendsgames following in the first title’s wake, it’d also be a shame for the mainPokemonseries, which could really use a shakeup.
For now, though, hope remains. Game Freak has been busy enough with otherPokemonprojects thatthe Generation 9Pokemongamesare probably still far away, so there’s still time to incorporate new ideas fromPokemon Legends: Arceus.A new sense of danger could really make the next games engaging. So many recentPokemongames have experimented with new combat mechanics to feel unique, but many of those mechanics were met with mixed reception. Maybe it’s time forPokemonto experiment with the player’s side of combat rather than the Pokemon’s side.
