Played with BertKnot.
With each new iteration of Pokémon comes another wagon of this train headed for indignity and turpitude. Year after year, one could point out the structural roots of this situation – the inability to scale up after the extraordinary operational profits made since 2016 or the need to constantly release games for the sake of cross-media –, but none of this makes the end result any more palatable. The result is an abysmal technical polish, which we're getting used to. As soon as the game was released, thousands of comments pointed out the horrible graphics and bugs, which are still not fixed to this day. I won't go into this at length, but it's worth bearing in mind. Pokémon Scarlet seems to be heading in the same experimental direction as Pokémon Legends: Arceus (2022), whose goal was to make the world more dynamic and immersive. Critics were generally very positive about it, highlighting the attempt at innovation and forgiving its shortcomings – technical or game design-wise. This reception was matched by its sales, an exceptional start with 6.5 million copies sold in a fortnight. One might have feared that this situation would lead Game Freak to continue in this direction, brandishing their commercial successes and the totem of immunity that the community has so graciously granted them. But generally speaking, for corporate philosophy reasons, Game Freak is unlikely to make radical changes to their development process, especially as their cycles become shorter and shorter.
In this opus, the player explores the region of Paldea in the company of the legendary Koraidon, as part of a treasure hunt organised by the Naranja Academy. The great innovation is the non-linear aspect of the adventure, made possible by an open world and a division of the objectives into three different storylines. It is possible to follow Nemona to triumph over the classic arenas and the League, but the title also proposes to help Arven hunt Titans and find Mystic Herbs to give back strength to his Mabosstiff; or Cassiopeia to confront Team Star, responsible for bullying in the Academy. However, every one of these plots is a narrative failure.
The open world structure is mostly reminiscent of the Ubisoft formula, which the industry has started to turn away from in recent years, under the influence of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017). This throwback is staggering and breaks the pace of the adventure by sequencing it into an exploration that never manages to charm. The game's technical problems are paired with lacklustre environments. If Pokémon Scarlet is inspired by the Iberian Peninsula, it's only on paper. The layout of the biomes makes no sense and, like Pokémon Legends, the title fails to create realism in the Pokémon biodiversity. At best, the game forms a few groups of creatures, but they never interact with each other. In Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (2022), carnivores can be seen in packs hunting other animals: the absence of such elements in Pokémon Scarlet is surprising and very underwhelming.
On the other hand, the game never manages to create relationships between the protagonist and the different characters. All of their development is done in the last region, where their lives, families and dreams are discussed. It is unfortunate that this information is never present in the first twenty hours. It is only possible to appreciate their presence in the last hour of the game. Nemona, Arven or Penny never accompany the protagonist, which would be the best way to dynamise an open world, through dialogues interjected in the exploration. Such an approach would surely have worked to introduce the backgrounds of Nemona and Penny, who are completely independent from the main plot. Some may have said that the three narrative threads converge in the last act, but this is hardly true: it is purely and simply Arven's story and the presence of the other characters is artificial, even superfluous.
This narrative failure is saddening given that the game shows in its final section that it understood what could have worked. Unfortunately, the first twenty hours are riddled with aberrant flaws and poor design choices. The Team Star bases are a miserable piece of gameplay, sort of pseudo-Pokémon Warriors, that make Musou games look like Devil May Cry. The arena challenges never manage to energise the progression: for example, the auctions are reduced to their strict minimum and give a false impression of interactivity, whereas they only blow smoke. They are not even contextualised as a mini-game, as was the case in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2002). The rest is equally forgettable and futile: the descent of the mountain only highlights Koraidon's poor controllability.
Sometimes it is the technical realisation that violently bruises these various quests. Before the duel against Larry, the restaurant changes completely, obviously murdering all the customers who were enjoying their meal. Some triggers don't work at all and it was necessary to restart the game several times to activate some essential cutscenes. The lack of clear markers or the impossibility to change the day and night cycle are other shortcomings that contribute to an unpleasant experience. This lack of attention to detail is both a testament to a development team under the pressure of an overly severe deadline and a general lack of concern for such matters: Game Freak understands that the game continues to break sales records anyway. So why put any effort into the details?
The most blatant evidence of this lack of respect is surely found in the cultural representation of the Iberian Peninsula. Pokémon Sword/Shield (2019) was already weak in this respect, but the duels in the stadiums operated in the spirit of English football matches. Here, the world is empty and incoherent. While the beginning of the game charms with a nice set-up – the short walk to Nemona's house is really lovely, with beautiful vegetation – the edifice quickly crumbles as the player approaches Mesagoza. The smooth textures contrast horribly with the city's gaudy mosaics, just giving the whole thing a muddled look. The buildings all appear similar and it's no longer possible to enter the houses. Instead, the game lines up a dozen or so similar restaurants, which offer the same menu. The player can choose to eat sandwiches or Chinese food, in a restaurant with a clichéd façade. Iberian Peninsula, mind you. The other cities follow the same approach and are sorely lacking in identity. The Pokémon themselves share this misrepresentation. Quaquaval is inspired by the Rio carnival, while Garganacl looks like a ziggurat or a pre-Columbian pyramid. These confusions show a particularly regrettable disregard from Game Freak. The cleaning lady in Nemona's mansion is another unfortunate example: she is a Black character – the first one to be seen – which is a particularly cruel and tasteless irony, regardless of whether it was intentional or not.
The gameplay remains largely unchanged. The main mechanic in this game is the Terastal Transformation, which is generally irrelevant. When it prevents the opposing Pokémon from using certain attacks, the mechanic becomes more interesting, but it doesn't go beyond being a simple end-of-battle expedient, growing more tiresome than anything else with the time it wastes. The title feels much easier than its predecessors, at least in terms of progression. Since the arenas and various objectives never scale with the player's level, adversity is non-existent, except for a few rare fights. The very artificial splitting of the areas does not help this. Even if the player fails, the fact that each objective is placed within a few meters of a Pokémon Center nullifies any dramatic tension. As a result, the game remains consistently flavorless in its gameplay phases. The Academy lessons are a good reflection of this fact: they are a sort of contextualised tutorial that drags on and teaches the player mechanics that they would have already seen for themselves. Besides, their non-ergonomic aspect never encourages the player to do them.
Despite these lengthy criticisms, the game is not without merit. Nemona carries the cast single-handedly: as a solid interpretation of the rival, after the era of antipathetic characters, she has a great chemistry with the protagonist – this is an observation I make with the girl protagonist; I think that with the boy counterpart, the result would be more of a very angsty heterosexual dynamic. Game Freak also gives a lot of space to non-binary characters, without insisting on their gender: this is very satisfying and is clearly a step in the right direction. Again, the last area and the discussions between the characters about their lives should have been the whole game. It shows that Game Freak is able to come up with good concepts, but it is infuriating that they never integrate them organically into the adventure, whose formula is, inevitably, always the same.
Pokémon Scarlet appears as this deceptively lighthearted adventure. The treasure hunt ends with the classic observation that the friends made along the way are what matters. Why not, this is a perfectly workable theme for children. But the hypocrisy lies in the fact that the protagonist never travels with their friends during the dozens of hours of gameplay, unlike the manga or anime. The other themes are treated with the same carelessness, while ignoring them in the core of the game design. This muddled feeling can be found everywhere, from the gameplay to the technical execution, from the music to the cultural representation. For a company that boasts hundreds of millions of dollars in operating profits, these failings are inexcusable. As much as one appreciates the franchise – and I admit I have no particular nostalgia or affection for it –, it seems to me that it is appropriate to be uncompromising about the quality of titles the community religiously buys every year. It is clear that this is still not the case: Game Freak and the Pokémon Company have no reason to change a development strategy that, for the worse, works.
With each new iteration of Pokémon comes another wagon of this train headed for indignity and turpitude. Year after year, one could point out the structural roots of this situation – the inability to scale up after the extraordinary operational profits made since 2016 or the need to constantly release games for the sake of cross-media –, but none of this makes the end result any more palatable. The result is an abysmal technical polish, which we're getting used to. As soon as the game was released, thousands of comments pointed out the horrible graphics and bugs, which are still not fixed to this day. I won't go into this at length, but it's worth bearing in mind. Pokémon Scarlet seems to be heading in the same experimental direction as Pokémon Legends: Arceus (2022), whose goal was to make the world more dynamic and immersive. Critics were generally very positive about it, highlighting the attempt at innovation and forgiving its shortcomings – technical or game design-wise. This reception was matched by its sales, an exceptional start with 6.5 million copies sold in a fortnight. One might have feared that this situation would lead Game Freak to continue in this direction, brandishing their commercial successes and the totem of immunity that the community has so graciously granted them. But generally speaking, for corporate philosophy reasons, Game Freak is unlikely to make radical changes to their development process, especially as their cycles become shorter and shorter.
In this opus, the player explores the region of Paldea in the company of the legendary Koraidon, as part of a treasure hunt organised by the Naranja Academy. The great innovation is the non-linear aspect of the adventure, made possible by an open world and a division of the objectives into three different storylines. It is possible to follow Nemona to triumph over the classic arenas and the League, but the title also proposes to help Arven hunt Titans and find Mystic Herbs to give back strength to his Mabosstiff; or Cassiopeia to confront Team Star, responsible for bullying in the Academy. However, every one of these plots is a narrative failure.
The open world structure is mostly reminiscent of the Ubisoft formula, which the industry has started to turn away from in recent years, under the influence of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017). This throwback is staggering and breaks the pace of the adventure by sequencing it into an exploration that never manages to charm. The game's technical problems are paired with lacklustre environments. If Pokémon Scarlet is inspired by the Iberian Peninsula, it's only on paper. The layout of the biomes makes no sense and, like Pokémon Legends, the title fails to create realism in the Pokémon biodiversity. At best, the game forms a few groups of creatures, but they never interact with each other. In Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (2022), carnivores can be seen in packs hunting other animals: the absence of such elements in Pokémon Scarlet is surprising and very underwhelming.
On the other hand, the game never manages to create relationships between the protagonist and the different characters. All of their development is done in the last region, where their lives, families and dreams are discussed. It is unfortunate that this information is never present in the first twenty hours. It is only possible to appreciate their presence in the last hour of the game. Nemona, Arven or Penny never accompany the protagonist, which would be the best way to dynamise an open world, through dialogues interjected in the exploration. Such an approach would surely have worked to introduce the backgrounds of Nemona and Penny, who are completely independent from the main plot. Some may have said that the three narrative threads converge in the last act, but this is hardly true: it is purely and simply Arven's story and the presence of the other characters is artificial, even superfluous.
This narrative failure is saddening given that the game shows in its final section that it understood what could have worked. Unfortunately, the first twenty hours are riddled with aberrant flaws and poor design choices. The Team Star bases are a miserable piece of gameplay, sort of pseudo-Pokémon Warriors, that make Musou games look like Devil May Cry. The arena challenges never manage to energise the progression: for example, the auctions are reduced to their strict minimum and give a false impression of interactivity, whereas they only blow smoke. They are not even contextualised as a mini-game, as was the case in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2002). The rest is equally forgettable and futile: the descent of the mountain only highlights Koraidon's poor controllability.
Sometimes it is the technical realisation that violently bruises these various quests. Before the duel against Larry, the restaurant changes completely, obviously murdering all the customers who were enjoying their meal. Some triggers don't work at all and it was necessary to restart the game several times to activate some essential cutscenes. The lack of clear markers or the impossibility to change the day and night cycle are other shortcomings that contribute to an unpleasant experience. This lack of attention to detail is both a testament to a development team under the pressure of an overly severe deadline and a general lack of concern for such matters: Game Freak understands that the game continues to break sales records anyway. So why put any effort into the details?
The most blatant evidence of this lack of respect is surely found in the cultural representation of the Iberian Peninsula. Pokémon Sword/Shield (2019) was already weak in this respect, but the duels in the stadiums operated in the spirit of English football matches. Here, the world is empty and incoherent. While the beginning of the game charms with a nice set-up – the short walk to Nemona's house is really lovely, with beautiful vegetation – the edifice quickly crumbles as the player approaches Mesagoza. The smooth textures contrast horribly with the city's gaudy mosaics, just giving the whole thing a muddled look. The buildings all appear similar and it's no longer possible to enter the houses. Instead, the game lines up a dozen or so similar restaurants, which offer the same menu. The player can choose to eat sandwiches or Chinese food, in a restaurant with a clichéd façade. Iberian Peninsula, mind you. The other cities follow the same approach and are sorely lacking in identity. The Pokémon themselves share this misrepresentation. Quaquaval is inspired by the Rio carnival, while Garganacl looks like a ziggurat or a pre-Columbian pyramid. These confusions show a particularly regrettable disregard from Game Freak. The cleaning lady in Nemona's mansion is another unfortunate example: she is a Black character – the first one to be seen – which is a particularly cruel and tasteless irony, regardless of whether it was intentional or not.
The gameplay remains largely unchanged. The main mechanic in this game is the Terastal Transformation, which is generally irrelevant. When it prevents the opposing Pokémon from using certain attacks, the mechanic becomes more interesting, but it doesn't go beyond being a simple end-of-battle expedient, growing more tiresome than anything else with the time it wastes. The title feels much easier than its predecessors, at least in terms of progression. Since the arenas and various objectives never scale with the player's level, adversity is non-existent, except for a few rare fights. The very artificial splitting of the areas does not help this. Even if the player fails, the fact that each objective is placed within a few meters of a Pokémon Center nullifies any dramatic tension. As a result, the game remains consistently flavorless in its gameplay phases. The Academy lessons are a good reflection of this fact: they are a sort of contextualised tutorial that drags on and teaches the player mechanics that they would have already seen for themselves. Besides, their non-ergonomic aspect never encourages the player to do them.
Despite these lengthy criticisms, the game is not without merit. Nemona carries the cast single-handedly: as a solid interpretation of the rival, after the era of antipathetic characters, she has a great chemistry with the protagonist – this is an observation I make with the girl protagonist; I think that with the boy counterpart, the result would be more of a very angsty heterosexual dynamic. Game Freak also gives a lot of space to non-binary characters, without insisting on their gender: this is very satisfying and is clearly a step in the right direction. Again, the last area and the discussions between the characters about their lives should have been the whole game. It shows that Game Freak is able to come up with good concepts, but it is infuriating that they never integrate them organically into the adventure, whose formula is, inevitably, always the same.
Pokémon Scarlet appears as this deceptively lighthearted adventure. The treasure hunt ends with the classic observation that the friends made along the way are what matters. Why not, this is a perfectly workable theme for children. But the hypocrisy lies in the fact that the protagonist never travels with their friends during the dozens of hours of gameplay, unlike the manga or anime. The other themes are treated with the same carelessness, while ignoring them in the core of the game design. This muddled feeling can be found everywhere, from the gameplay to the technical execution, from the music to the cultural representation. For a company that boasts hundreds of millions of dollars in operating profits, these failings are inexcusable. As much as one appreciates the franchise – and I admit I have no particular nostalgia or affection for it –, it seems to me that it is appropriate to be uncompromising about the quality of titles the community religiously buys every year. It is clear that this is still not the case: Game Freak and the Pokémon Company have no reason to change a development strategy that, for the worse, works.