The recent release of the hit spinoff series Pokemon Legends Z-A has me thinking back to older Pokemon changes, mainly because of how much they’ve evolved (no pun intended). From balancing decisions like the fact Prankster can’t affect dark Pokemon or grass types unable to be spored to sleep, to one of the biggest changes in Pokemon’s gameplay: the shift to an open world, something that was on the wishlist of many Pokemon fans since the early days of the franchise.
With all that being said, I’m here to tell you, be careful what you wish for because we did get the open-world Pokemon game we thought we wanted, but it really hasn't lived up to the hype.
Sometimes, Less is More
There’s no hiding it, Pokemon games have been taking a major dip in quality ever since Sword and Shield, and the open-world setting isn’t really helping their case.
The Pokemon world is beautiful and all about adventure, so it makes sense to show players this vast view of Pokemon running around. However, what we got instead was a draw distance of nothing. Pokemon disappear if you look far enough, textures aren’t as fluid as you make them out to be, and the windmills become a crisp 5 fps. Of course, you could attribute these graphical failures to the switch being a bit on the weaker side, but we’re talking about a console that was also able to run Breath of the Wild, and that game was beautiful.
What I’m trying to say here is that if you’re already aware that the system or program you have has hardware or software limitations, then maybe you should stop broadening your horizons. Instead of making this huge open world that players can explore with fully rendered Pokemon roaming the fields, maybe we could instead get smaller and more contained environments that don’t overwhelm the system and the player. Going back to enclosed routes wouldn’t only make the game less overwhelming for players, but you’d be doing your dev team a huge favor too. Basically, taking all the energy used for making these grand environments and using it to instead make quality of life changes. If I have to see overused Pokemon attack animations again, I’m gonna freak.
False Sense of Exploration
Pokemon is an adventure game, so it makes sense that you’d want to wander around big open fields to see the interesting sights that the region has to offer. This was one of the primary motivations that led to Nintendo even attempting to do an open world, because they wanted to give this grand scale.
All that the exploration is a hoax and can start to feel tedious after a while. When Fallout New Vegas first released, players were complaining that traversing the atomic wastelands was boring because, well…it’s a wasteland. Fast forward a few years and see the huge world that Pokemon Scarlet and Violet gave us, it's hard not to be hit by that same feeling of emptiness.
I remember stepping out into the wild plains of Paldea, amazed (initially). After roaming around the world for a few hours, the exploration just felt tedious. Every long stretch of land just felt like it had nothing going for it. There were no distinct themes, encounters, no interesting routes that you could take to get cool rewards. The game does reward you for exploring the vast Pokemon wasteland, just not with anything worthwhile. There’s the occasional TM and berry, but really nothing to write home about. Even the environments aren’t enticing to explore because there aren’t any unique Pokemon habitats, just some copy-paste landmarks littered throughout the map. You’re not exploring, you’re just walking around looking for your next encounter until you reach the next city or town.
Classic Vs. Modern
I know I’ve ragged on Nintendo and the open-world setup of Pokemon quite a bit now, but I’m also a firm believer that not all is lost. The truth is, I do still think that an open-world Pokemon game could work, but just not within the immediate future. There are too many hardware limitations and crunch time demands from Nintendo itself to make a really good open-world Pokemon game.
Until that problem’s fixed, I really think they should just step off of open-world Pokemon entirely, or ´perhaps there is another solution.
My dream solution for this is to split the Pokemon mainline and Legends even further. Mainline would be the Pokemon we know and love, keeping all the fancy gameplay changes that Game Freak has introduced with recent titles, but with a more restricted and focused world to explore. The open-world aspects of the game could instead be moved to the Legends series, where it could make room for more experimental gameplay and tons of replayability. The only worry I have about this, and probably why this isn’t the case right now, is that it’ll most likely split the development team even further.
All in all, I think an open-world game is still possible and sounds like the makings of a perfect Pokemon game. But at the current level of polish and love the game has, it might just always turn out to be a disappointment.
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