I actually completely agree. I don't think open-world works for Pokémon, largely because I don't think the devs are capable of making a *good* open world in the time, and with the tech, they have access to. Everything in Paldea feels empty. Towns, locations, and landmarks in previous games feel special and memorable, but with Paldea, everything looks the same because,,, it kinda IS all the same - isolated areas surrounded by fields and cliffs of (almost) the same colours. Like look at the sea, sure you CAN go to it all, but what is the point, it is literally just open water with nothing to look at. Make routes and cities more open, more explorable than they ever were, but an open world isn't feasible at the current pace the devs need to move at.
Hisui does open-world better than Paldea does in that time frame, because it's a series of smaller, but still open hubs - each a very different location, but all clearly part of the same region. It would be cool if we could somehow make a series of "open zones" like that while still being able to go through different quests in any order like Paldea, but I'm not entirely sure how that would go.
I disagree completely. Those things have been becoming less immersive for generations since they peaked in Gen 5 and ORAS. It's not the game's fault they became less interesting. That was already true in Gens 7 and 8.
Definitely has a bunch of rushed problems, there's ways they could make it work. It's just that none of the devs for Pokemon won't or can't (regardless of who's at fault) realized the potential that an open world Pokemon game could be
most people think of open world when it comes to exploration... i think, a well designed route,caves,buildings,etc. that offers a lot of exploration would be a better option than a wide open world space of grassy fields and mountains that doesn't have a lot of things/structures to it. Paldea is a good region, it just doesn't seem like a region where people can really live...
I think souls games have a great 3d exploration. Thought I think that open world would work(if we get a game that's well done ofc). Games like xenoblade have great open worlds. The caves are very explorable and the open world is interesting and vast. An open world game should have 1. A very vast place with forest, secrets and caves. Cities should ne lovely and HAVE CARS. 2. Level scaling that doesnt apply to everything because you want to see your development. 3. There should be pokemons with abilities. These abilities should give you the ability to get secrets. Like you go under water to find an under water cave.
I think the pandemic has made our collective zeitgeist lean towards open world games and sandboxes after being stuck inside for almost 2 years. I don't know how long it's going to take for that fever to break, but I'm inclined to agree with you. I miss things like forests and bridges, underwater routes and, well, routes, in Pokemon games instead of "over there" for the entire thing.
kinda have to disagree, that sandbox/openworld mind trend came started longe before the pandemic. Actually feels more like people slowly realizing that open world does not equal better game. Or at least I saw at least 7 "why video games are not fun anymore" videos this year and all the problems came down to AAA games with mostly openworld mechanics.
I think a good middle ground would be like have the game be linear, but the routes are quite expansive. Like PLA or Xenoblade 3 but maybe on a slightly smaller scale.
In short, like Sinnoh routes. The level design has become worse and worse, and it all started in Sun/Moon because gen 6 has lots of branching paths in their routes.
The fact the different areas of Paleda are named Area 1-10 is what stopped the immersion for me. Usually people give names to things of importance which this doesn’t have. So I just think of Paleda as one big Bio Dome with people and Pokémon living inside as a big scientific experiment.
I definitely agree with you that Pokémon doesn’t suit an open world game play style since the devs just cant seem to find a way to make the game see beautiful and immersive,for instance in black and white wherever you walked something was happening in the background like trees rustling or leaves falling and even those small details make you feel part of the game while scarlet and violets bland fields and blocky cliffs ruin that immersion since the world seems empty.
I think something like Xenoblade 1 is a good middle ground, where you have a good chunk of level to explore, but you can't explore literally everything, like cliffs that signify the end of the map, or just a drop into the abyss.
A lot of what I heard is really just Gamefreak and the Switch not being good enough to make it work, though it's more of a developer problem than a hardware problem, because Breath of the Wild, while not perfect, at least ran competently on the Switch's hardware, and honestly a freaking pokemon game should be LESS demanding than that. Pokemon as a concept suits an open world design, but they keep cutting too many corners. The people making the decisions at the top are hamstringing the games and leaving us with half-baked products. They couldn't even give us simple level-scaling of the gyms even though we had more freedom to pick the order we did things in than ever. A simple mini-game involving collecting a mere 10 sunflora tanked the game's frame rate. It would work just fine with competent people at the helm who were willing to put in the time and effort. Or at least a lot better than what we got. To be slightly less negative for a moment, I think Sword and Shield might be a better direction than pure open world. If we got something like we had in Generation 1 and 2, where even with the route system we could tackle certain gyms "out of order" and then threw in the wild area from Sword and Shield, but preferably much nicer looking, we'd have something dynamic and fun. Actually include proper level scaling of gyms and it might actually be great. Every game has introduced a new puzzle piece that's really cool. For some reason they're actively resistant to just taking all those pieces and finding a good way to fit them together in a polished, competently built game. Putting Pokemon on a full-fledged console, even one so relatively under-powered as the Switch, has highlighted Gamefreak's shortcomings as a game developer. The games are glitchy, lacking polish, and can't even take advantage of even the Switch's hardware to its full potential. So, you say that as things are, Pokemon shouldn't be open world. I agree. They've proven that, right now, they aren't capable of pulling it off. As for the question in the title of "should they be" well... there's no correct answer. Because if we ask instead "can they be" yes, of course, the concept of Pokemon screams for a proper open world game. However, we have multiple generations of Pokemon games that excelled without being open world, and there's no reason that HAS to change either. It would just be nice if we could say that the open world idea was given a proper go, instead of the mess we got. . . . no one's reading all that, are they? Oh well, I was inspired to rant for a bit. We'll call it venting.
Gen 1 (and, to a lesser extent, Gen 2) struck a good middle ground. Plenty of exploration and you could tackle the mid-game in almost any order, but there was still a linear progression. In Paldea, you're theoretically even more free, but in practice, doing things out of order is a bad idea as the levels of opposing Pokémon varies too drastically from one area to the next. You're always either underleveled or overleveled for the area with no in-between.
Scarlet and Violet found a good middle-ground; the choice to explore an open world, but a clear linear choice available to traverse the landscape at a reasonable pace.
i think Wild Area is good middle ground. In Sw/Sh it was made pretty badly with rapidly changing enviroment, but If game had linear story but some routes where open world with lots of thing to discover it would be just right.
The region just feels so EMPTY. The fact that some areas have no areas towns also bug me. Why is their no town near the fall area or in the northeast? It just feels so empty!
Cassette Beasts is a perfect example of an open world pokemon style game that feels actually fun to play and travel through. It is rooted in the curiosity and exploration and doesn't feel forced like it does in the recent pokemon games. Honestly it goes to show Pokemon is really losing touch with their own brand and image and it is sad.
I feel like legends was a better example of what an open world Pokémon game could be. Don’t get me wrong, textures and rendering still isn’t very good and the there’s the whole foggy radius around the player in the distance thing. But I think visually it was executed better than scarlet and violet
I feel you in every words. I often share something like these on Twitter but among the big Poketubers I subscribed~YOU ARE THE VERY FIRST PERSON WHO SPEAKS THIS OUT.
I feel like this rebuttal is good, the only issue is it’s assuming it’s a 3D open world vs a Top down open world. If the game was 2D and they didn’t have skylines and horizons, would it be nearly as bad of an experience if you could access the entire map off the jump?
Personally, I hate how games in the 6th and 7th generations were starting to become huge beautiful hallway simulators with amazing backgrounds and invisible walls.....as much as I understand your point about leaving something to the imagination, I do prefer how things are done now.....we just need to get better at filling out worlds. Still, I didn't have an issue with Scarlet because I enjoyed finding Pokemon and items, and there were some cool caves. Also, you only get access to more and more areas as you defeat titans.
SV still has an inaccessible area that shows on the map: the northeast corner. Now geographically this is southern Kalos, and I wouldn't be surprised if this opens up as bonus content when PLZA comes out. But for now, it sits there taunting us. I think my issue with "open world" is from a gameplay perspective it's not fully open. There's clearly still a guided path simply based on the levels of the wild Pokemon and trainers. Sure you can go almost anywhere on the map and battle any gyms or titans in whatever order you decide from the beginning, but you won't have much success unless you do it in a particular order. Getting to Casseroya Lake 15 min after you've started the game won't help because you'll get steamrolled by all the Pokemon 30-40 levels higher than you. I'd really like to see a true open world game where the Pokemon (wild and trainers') levels scale as you make story progress. We got a little taste of this with the Wild Area in SwSh where the Pokemon all are higher level after beating the main story. Imagine being able to save Iono for later in the game when she has a Kilowattrel and Luxray or battle Grusha early when none of his Pokemon have evolved yet. Yes that would balloon the game size, but we haven't even got to half the max size of a cartridge yet on the Switch. I definitely don't want COD size games, but I can't imagine full level scaling would do more than double the current largest games (~12GB for SwSh). Plus for adding more detail (like houses you can enter), I can see a game like this clocking in around 25GB. Remember that BOTW in all its beauty is only 14GB. However, I do like linear games because I don't have to do much guessing on where to go next to progress the story.
Open World always sounds nice on paper but fails with implementation. Yakuza's "open world" is tiny but feels alive. Major's Mask world manages to have npcs with their own schedules. Size was irrelevant.
To be fair; I think open world Pokémon CAN work, it’s just that Gamefreak by some miracle of god didn’t consider the idea of a world that scales to the player, something that should have been an addition back in sword and shield; ‘‘twas great fun to run into a level 50 machamp just after beating Kabu,
I think you make a lot of sense, I really enjoyed violet when I first played it but honestly the thought of dealing with all that empty space again really puts me off replaying it, where sword and shield, legends arceus and even bdsp I still get excited about revisiting, I honestly feel like legends nailed it in terms of how to do a more open world by having fully open but separate areas of the map, of course I don't think it helped scarlet and violet to have gotten rid of the legends capture mechanics
To me it comes down to 2 things: The artstyle, and the design of the open world itself. Scarlet and Violet's artstyle at least for the landscapes, feels unpolished a lot of the time, and the region itself features WAYYY too many fields. It often feels a little too open. I'm no expert but what I would proably do is add a little more variation of landscapes across the entire region.
In my opinion sword and shield was a lot better in the exploration part because you have all these beutiful places like glimmwood tangle, every town and the mines andthe thing that makes them so pretty is the forced perspective and lighting that makes your imagination run wild but you still had the vast wild area to explore and to interact with other players
Even when not considering the world design, and even when you and I love Paldea's stories, we can tell that when it comes to story, the majority of fans want it like the old days - progressing through the world in strength, an EVIL evil team that blocks your way through the region and gives you a climactic save-the-world showdown with their boss near the end of the game, an epic final battle against the Champion as the final boss of the story (Geeta _not_ being that is the biggest reason people can't accept her.) And needless to say... all of those beats require a very linear region and story.
It's weird, as I could swear only a few years back, people wanted something significantly different than that formula... Was probably a different group of people, realistically.
I couldn't agree more. The most difficult part of the game was answering which gym in which town I had the most difficulty... none of these towns are memorable. Aside from Mesagoza, I cannot list a second one because they just aren't memorable for me.
I've been playing Pokemon since Red and Blue back in 1999. To tell you the truth, I think the open-world transition has been the best thing to happen to the series. I didn't think much of it at first, and I honestly thought it would be a terrible idea for a pokemon game, but to tell you the truth, I actually enjoy running around and exploring now, and I enjoy the map and its locations, which are far more memorable, to me now. I find myself revisiting old locations just to see what I've missed, and to admire attention to detail, and even just to romp around and climb on things. And this is all coming from an old-school 30+ y/o fan. I feel it would be devastating if they took away the open world game style in future titles.
6:00 I also sort of want to mention that the POV when you're outside of a town and it looks puny like that I think is more of a critique aimed at the wrong thing. Have you flown in a plane? Or hiked up a nearby mountain in the outskirts of town? It's normal to look at our huge cities are realize just how easily they can be dwarfed in perspective - and how our cities are few and far between against the vast landscape. We are immersed and trapped in a single perspective in day-to-day life, but you can really get a new perspective looking out the window of a plane, or from the mountains. We really do make isolated 'settlements' that look small and puny. It isn't until you get in there and adjust the camera close that you'll see the perspective you're used to. I think they did a fabulous job of capturing this
For me I’m the complete opposite. Linear and contained environments work WAY better than open world. Sure maybe if the developers actually got more then a year of two of development time open world can work but the amount of emptiness between cities and towns and the majority of the map being empty fields with the overall lack of immersion makes it feel like they wanted to release it as soon as possible and call it a day. That and it doesn’t help just calling routes/areas of the map “area 1-10”. Nothing is memorable. At least with the linear and contained environments it felt like you could make an extremely memorable area/city regardless. Having actual gyms would be a major help as well
I feel like at the very least you shouldn't be blocked off from progression as much as Pokemon games usually do. I think you should be able to go through a route or two after a gym you haven't beaten yet.
Would be cool if they went to the classic style of world design but with different optional branching pathways. That's probably what the fans wanted anyway.
When you make the order of events not matter, you strip them of their uniqueness. specificity imbued things with character. Open World and/or Non-linear gameplay is typically achieved by removing specificity so that less context is required to do X or Y thing.
Honestly, I think the Wild areas were a good middle ground. If routes were more expansive like the Wild Areas, you'd definitely get that good balance between linear path that would still encourage exploration. On your way to the next town? Why not check out that what's over there in corner. It's a skate park with avid trainers. Is that a small forest? Yes and there's a ranger giving guided tours. That person looks familiar so let's go talk to them. Oh, it's Bugsy from Johto and he wants you to catch him some bug types for a book he's writing. That was all fun. Right, let's get to the next city we have a 3rd badge to claim.
An open world could work in Pokemon if the development time was longer and the developers are able to fill the world with interesting things to do. As it stance, there could be a nice middle ground struck if the games have smaller but more dense maps while giving the player some choice on which gym they want to tackle.
If Pokemon were to go fully open world, I'd like it to be in the classic top-down grid based style. That way, you still get an open world game with a lot more polish and detail due to it being more smaller-scale. Theres a reason why LGPE are the best-looking mainline games on the Switch. I also enjoyed how PLA handled the open world with there being separate areas to explore that you unlocked as you progressed. Not everything needs to be a BOTW clone.
I don't see anything about previous games like galar or alolas routes that was more detailed. They where just empty grass fields/water routes most of the time with borders around the routes that felt very articficial and restricting and made me enjoy those games less. Paldea is basically just the previous games just without artificial borders. There weren't much details in the routes in the non-open world regions to begin with, so there is nothing lost from making it open world. 4:09 exactly because nothing was acessable and just background, it was not fun to play those games. It felt pretty cheap and outdated, it felt even a step backwards to alola and the other previous games because there we didn't have unacessable places in the background (except the power plant in X/Y) and most of the things we saw where visitable. Galar just felt like sightseeing, not like adventuring. Paldea feels like adventuring.
i strongly prefer routes and grass encounters over open world and overworld and static encounters just being able to go around any obstacle and b-line to a new pokemon isn't fun i want a reason to explore other areas and buildings so i can progress and discover pokemon through chance just going around and defeating set bosses raids or gym leaders that are marked on a fully drawn map just isn't fun
I think that open world could work if the formula was altered to fit the new open world by having more complex systems like level scaling based on what is completed no matter what gym you're taking on. I think having routes would work still just add in dangers for going off the beaten path with harder encounters like how Arceus has alpha pokemon you could have Pokemon that are trade exclusive or higher level than you can normally catch or legendaries you can pocket for later
I agree that the game does have a lot areas where the idea of exploring just seems tedious. Some areas would be empty or for me personally hard to trace my steps, so I would lose track and forget where I've been when I'm trying to explore. In my personal experience it made the game last longer but felt like there was little payoff for those times. I got lost in an area
Pokemon should 100% be open world. That was our dream as kids. Thats why Pixemon became so popular then replaced by cobblemon. That’s why Legends Arceus outsold expectations while taking a huge risk. This is why Pokemon GO has gotten incredibly popular after covid. The greatest fantasy for pokemon fans is an open world game. This why Pal World is succeeding so rapidly. Open world is GameFreak’s gateway to eternal success for Pokemon.
I think that the open world style of legends works best for current Pokemon. I will admit i prefer the older games routes designs, i believe B/W and X/Y have the best route design, a short road/path to get from a to b or the rest of the route where you explore on a winding path. Please note i said route design not map design, not a fan of the circle map design. I think a game where you have a main hub where you live and has the lab, then have Nine to Ten different small to medium maps, with a gym in each map. they can just do the map like in legends, implying areas we don't get to explore. Having different maps can make each area feel different because of what you can do in them, such as cave diving, underwater diving, mountain climbing, have one be a vast meadow of flowers and tall grass making pretty but some areas to see where your going, a actually jungle map which just a giant dense jungle with only one path way and if you step of it its easy to get lost. this also stops the weird way areas just kinda stop and lead into another area in Paldea whilst there isn't really much new to do or see in them. But saying all this, what i truly want is a return to sprites for at least on game.
I totally feel the same, I think the fields are just huge and full of nothing, I would prefer a very little world with high details, also I dont like Pokemon showing up in to many different areas... What I mean it would be nice to have only one location for Riolu for example, just like inside of a little hole of a hidden tree.. or something like that
Being able to choose from multiple routes > being able to make your own route, at least in the sense of pokemon. If you want to do an open world game it has to be like RDR2 or Fallout4, where pretty much every area has its entire story to tell, and that there aren't too many long periods of silence. If you're gonna let player go anywhere than stuff needs to be... well, everywhere; if players have access to the waterfall then something needs to be behind it.
I have always thought that while possibly making a game more immersive, making a game open world completely kills any narrative pacing. Village being raided, I'll get to it later, building on fire, eh, it can wait till later. Etc. For Scarlet and Violet it made the game slump a lot of I didn't go in the "level order" of the gyms, titans and bases.
I agree that there's evidently not the development time to fill the regions with enough detail to make open-world a really positive experience, but I guess my takeaway from this is that the development effort needs to change. They can hire more developers, and wait a little longer before releasing new games.
I thought the open world of Paldea was very enjoyable at the time, but now I don't have any interest in replaying it. The focused experience helped so much with storytelling.
They just need to actually put time into making a playable game that has every region they have a huge world if they made a game where you take control of the pokemon in real-time combat and if they added a tease for future regions off in the distance, instead of releasing a new game every year make an expansion every year
Yes. Everybody SHOULD be able to create their own path to being Champion. And that spices up the gameplay a bit by making u have to be more strategic and making u pay for bad decisions.
I agree with everything you have pointed out. I think that if Game Freak is intending to make the main games in an open world setting they need to invest more time. You see GTA o Zelda games they take 5+ years for each delivery and they usually never disappoint. I understand as well that they also want to sell something every year, but I they could rely on a spin off for that. I'm convinced that if they invest enough time and money in making a a great pokemon game they will sell millions of copies every year, until they release the next one.
I sadly have to agree. As someone who’s played other open world games like Minecraft & Fallout 4, SV feels very empty & generic. They could’ve just add some in-route stuff like abandoned houses, small dungeons & people doing small quests. This would make the game feel more alive.
i dont think pokemon doesnt work as an openworld, its probably the biggest candidate for open world, its just that 400 pokemon only, and a tiny region with miniscule small biomes and barely any landmarks just doesn't cut it, especially without having gym leader lvl scaling. Pokémon Crystal Clear was actually good although limited by being a GB game. On the nintendo switch, so much more could have been done...
So... What you're saying is basically that you're a city slicker? That you don't like exploring the countryside because it's "too open" for your taste? To each their own. But I like both the cities/ towns, and the open wild areas. They both have their pros and cons. It's all a matter of perspective. If you don't want to train your pokemon, stay in the city where you feel safe until you're feeling adventurous enough to go into the great beyond! Also known as, the countryside. You'll be amazed as to what you can find out there! It would be great if we could explore more buildings in these games and get to talk to the NPCs to get some more lore on the region, but we got what we got. And we can't really complain due to time constraints. They did the best they could. It's a good game, it's just lacking content/ depth.
I think anyone saying pokemon sucks as open world would probably be singing a different tune if the devs had the time to actually make the world instead of rushing it due to stupid deadlines. Imagine a world like BoTW in a pokemon context, and then realise the reason they can't do that is due to the gaming industry being taken over by corporate suits and shareholders ruining everything they touch.
I think a good Pokemon open world game won't be possible before it is possible to use an AI to generate coherent map fillings and move around plotpoints to get the story to the player in a tailored manner. I hope they stick to boundary worldbuilding for the time being
And even taking away the open world aspect you are still given enough freedom in other aspects of the game I feel most Open World Bros take for granted and one being the obvious focal point of the pokemon games: the pokemon. You are still given the choice to which pokemon you want to use on your team for the story progression, breeding, and competitive battling as well.
Mostly agree. Ive never been one to care much about things like graphics and whatnot, so long as the game leaves room for your imagination to fill in the gaps. Like you could actually just put a png skybox around every city that depicts it as way bigger than just the playable area, and id love it. When every square inch of the world is accessible... that means your seeing the world as it actually is, and if thats the case, how tf does paldea operate? The biggest city is like 20 buildings and has no roads to or from.
They should not be open world. There is no immersion, no feeling of the “magic” of exploring routes (especially that they’re just called area 1-10). It doesn’t help that nothing is in order, youan go freely from one area to the next with pokemon having to drastic of a level change, always over levelled or under levelled. Releasing pokemon games every year or two doesn’t help either, looks really rushed. If they did something like unova/kalos’s giant open area (ish) cities with the OG linear route layout i would be much more willing to play the new titles.
Using Sword and Shield towns as an example was a very weird choice, considering that (apart from the aesthetic), these towns were worst in the series (apart from scarlet anf violet). The general criticsm was that most of these cities had very little to do in them with a lot of buildings that you cannot access and the same copy and pasted house interiors. With very boring NPCs who tell you nothing interesting about the towns. The best towns in the series were in Unova and Hoenn.
I think open world for Pokemon could work in theory, but Gamefreak is currently not up to the task because of their lackluster technical programing knowledge and severe lack of time. We also have to remember Pokemon at it's core is a SRPG game and not an open world game like Zelda. It wasn't that long ago that Gamefreak was forced to abruptly transition away from 3D's games to console and it's clear they don't have enough time to restructure the company to develop teams with new tech and modern programing skills. I believe Pokemon needs time to regroup and take tips from games like Honkai Star Rail on being a well crafted semi linear game full of passion that everyone could enjoy. The Pokemon magic is still alive!
I like the idea of an open world but in my opinion what ruined the whole thing was the fact that they gave you a Pokémon right away with the possibility to traverse distances like nothing and climb and swim, leaving nothing for you to really explore and even consider before choosing a direction. The raidons ruined the game in my opinion.
I want the creatures to interact with their environment more. I hate how the newer games just have them pop up and aimlessly wandering around. Essentially I want pokemon snap but fun (kidding)
It's call, the grass always looks greener on the other side. You want what you don't have. Then when you get it you have buyers remorse. So yes the grass is greener on the other side and wants you are over there you learn it's because it's been fertilized with BS.
We need it to be linear so that we can enjoy the plot. People think PALDEA is empty, it’s actually lively, because of the big areas, like mesagoza. That stuff was so old when you were born, basic modern technology is about 100 years old. Yeah you explore to quickly. Sv is underrated. Yeah it’s so big and expansive, but to expansive. No we should be able to go to all the towns and cities, we should be able to explore the entire region. The anime isn’t canon to the games. All they need to add is to put some boundaries for story restraints.
I don’t think Pokémon, as much as it wants, fails to benefit the open world thing. I think it needs to return to being liminal and top down, which can it benefits it.
In my opinion, open world does not equal better game. Take spiderman shattered dimensions, one of the few spiderman games that is not openworld but linear, almost episodic, and it allows for so many different and interesting local than just the usual new york. For me personal, in some games open world can be a huge demotivator. Like I tried play horizon zero dawn at least two times now but never got very far cause the world just seems too huge and it feel annoying to constantly stop for a sudden side mission or some shit.
Sword and Shield did it best. Not really confined but not too expansive and boring. The wild area felt like a big playground and the towns/ cities felt familiar to previous contained places in Pokémon.
Galar was literally the worst region though (before Paldea). The towns were empty and the routes were boring. The Wild Area was poorly designed. No complex dungeon design like in Unova, Sinnoh, Hoenn or Johto.
@@dwarasamudra8889 I respect your opinion, but damn you’re wrong. Routes were more complex and the cities were huge (which is what an open world Pokémon games should have. The wild area isn’t perfect but it was better than other things like that.
nice insight and topic i just found this game Pokemmo online a retro graphics can you review this game and give some insight i heard is a 10 year game or almost anyway my last original pokemon game was black and white and just watched stream to see new pokemon games not really interested to play it
Pokemon should not do open world. They can't even just make a 3D version of the classic linear Pokemon games that isn't a buggy disaster, whether it's time, lack of ability, whatever, they cannot pull it off. Making the world a giant empty sandbox just waters down a series that was already struggling to keep up, for no reason, and without level scaling there is actually no point because the game is effectively still linear, just because you can go to a high level area doesn't mean you can take anything on there until you've played past a certain point, especially when high level Pokemon don't listen until you have badges already and even if you skipped ahead, all challenges you skipped are now beyond too low level for you. The open world serves no purpose.
Super unpopular opinion but S/V is the first mainline Pokemon game I did NOT finished. Well ok there's White 2 but that was more of an expansion for me. The main reason was for it being an open world. Aslo ignoring the bugs but I also dislike the new Pokemons in terms of typing. I couldn't make my ideal team and making it balance at the same time but that's a me problem! Can't have a balance team if you used two Pokemon with the same fire/ ghost typing! As a disclaimer, I don't really played modern games anymore meaning I never really played a proper open world game before (closest would be Xenoblade Chronicle). Even then I am so used to with Pokemon game that you go to point A to point B cos the path lay it out with you and trying to go to point D for example cannot be done cos you haven't got the HM or the Pokemon assist like in Sun and Moon! So being given the option to go anywhere in a Pokemon game was kinda surreal to me! Also for an open world game, it wasn't properly balance in that the Pokemon, Trainers battle and Gym leader levels did not scale to your actual level. With that in mind, depending on your play style (want it to be challanging or not) it felt redundent to go anywhere were technically you were retricted on some location. Example, I read about the new ice draon is the new peusdo legendary so I rushed all the way to the ice region to capture it but I was underlevel in that area so I had to be careful with the encounter. Also another one is learning the bug gym leader was the first gym to encounter but by then my team were around level 30 so I floored her when I head to her location!
It needs more than just gym I really tired of the gym taking on gym leaders it not for me I would a opening would game that have fashion show and contest and gym or pokemon showcase other stuff to do it don't have be l around battling
if your point is that an open world pokemon game is not possible with the current development cycle i agree.But i really feel like your framing this wrong and the comments of this video dont seem to understand why that caveat is so important they make it seem like open world pokemon is flat out not possible . My problem with your arguement is why are you blaming the open world aspect when the real problem is the development cycle. If anyone thinks that this development cycle is good in anyway shape or form for an open world game then i think your delusional. Pokemon only comes out every 3 years with a new gen for 1 reason PROFIT. How is your complaints about the open world aspect when the real issue is that gamefreak is a bit too greedy and needs that holiday season new generation boost for every game. If the development cycle is fixed then oh shit WERE COOKING. Just look at successes of other copycat games like palworld for example its open world is beautiful and the concept of a pokemon-like monster collecting game really made it take off (of course its also got that ark survival aspect to it but there are literally 100's of those games already the thing that made it stand out is its monster collecting aspect) . With the resources gamefreak has and there sheer talent for making great citys and routes it could be transferred into a open world game and will create a game like no other. Thats why palworld took over for a hot minute because they were starting to break into that open world pokemon niche that pokemon shouldve been in in gen 8. And what i find funny about gen 9 is that it reminds me of the first problems that arose when games went to open world. These things have been issues in the past like the emptiness and the sameyness of towns and villages and the out of bound effect when you look at towns from the wrong perspective. They arose because noone really knew how to make open world games at the time but guess what pokemon has the advantage of learning from its predecessors on how to fix these problems.And i feel gamefreak is not using this valuable resource on how to fix these problems but then again they are constraint (totally by there own greed) to a short time schedule and this is there first try at open world so i cant know if these problems will persist or theyll evolve but who knows whats in for the future. I have hope due to the large backlash to gen 9 quality will be of higher priority and theyll actually take there time to develop the damn game. And we have good reason to be on that copium rn as we FINALLY dont have a new pokemon installment this yr weather thats a new gen or remake or DLC which is a good sign the hell era of pokemon might be gone soon.
Many fans dreamed a Pokémon game open world, until when they saw how open world Pokémon games are made. That's it. I really miss 2D Pokémon games and the real explorations and dungeons of the third, fourth and fifth generation games...
Should Pokemon Games be Open World? Yes, they should. Open Worlds are much better then closed-off linear games. Sure Scarlet and Violet is a bit lackluster, but we'll give them a break as it was their first game with an open world. They might be better in future games. Look at the Wild Area, it was basically the prototype for Paldea's open world, so next game, they might improve it even more.
I disagree that the open world doesn't work for pokemon. I absolutely love the paldea region and running around through it. I have been playing pokemon since gen one and I have never enjoyed playing after the story was done...except in paldea. I am still playing, catching pokemon and gathering items. The open world makes it more enjoyable for me. Also there is a valid reason why paldea seems so empty, Spain is sparsely populated outside of the cities. As the region is based on the Iberian peninsula(Spain and Portugal) it makes perfect sense. I think people don't realize this about Spain. I don't get the hate that the open world has been getting. We(the fandom) have been asking for an open world for a long time. Pokemon finally gave us what we asked for and they are getting flack for it. Haven't we ever heard the idea of don't bite the hand that feeds you? Or don't look a gift horse in the mouth. If the pokemon company getting hate for the open world causes them to get rid of it, I'm going to be really upset as it's my favorite thing about scarlet and violet. Giving us an open world set in a sparsely populated region makes total sense, and makes the games more enjoyable for me. Especially now that I can choose when to battle pokemon and trainers. Honestly I have always found the forced battles to be the most infuriating part of the old games. I can't stand trying to get from one place to another and being stuck in a battle every few steps. For the most part I find the battles boring. I often fall asleep in the middle of long battles. I never fall asleep while exploring the world. My apologies if this came across as argumentative, that is not my intention. I'm autistic and sometimes things don't come across as I intend them. I just wanted to share my thoughts on this topic.
Gonna have to hard disagree on this one. Whether or not you liked the execution of PLA or S/V’s open worlds, the franchise was always supposed to be this way. Everything from Gens 1-8 were trying to approximate the feel of an open world, without ever delivering. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, but I’m shocked at how many people seem to have instantly forgotten that linearity was one of the biggest complaints fans had about the franchise. To cite towns and routes like the ones from Sw/Sh as a positive is baffling to me. I had WAY more fun exploring the “nothingness” of Paldea than the “nothingness” of Galar. I was able to have unique experiences, not planned by the game. I wasn’t railroaded into a scripted series of events, I was able to create my own stories. A lot of this also comes off as “it would look prettier if they narrowed their scope.” Which is probably true, but now we’re sacrificing content on the alter of graphics, and that always bums me out. Don’t let GF off the hook like that. “They’re not good at open world, so they should just go back to what they’re good at” is literally just another way of saying “GF shouldn’t have to work harder, put more money into their products, or learn new skills.” Fuck that, GF should have been doing those exact things *LONG* before now, and to have so many people immediately give them an out is beyond frustrating. Pokémon *should* have been open-world for at least a decade, and GF’s worst tenure as a company (in my opinion) was from Gens 6-8, when every single thing was old, tired, repetitive, and uninspired. They’re *FINALLY* getting their shit together and making games that actually push the series forward for once, and it’s kind of embarrassing how many “fans” are too weak to ride out the growing pains, immediately wanting to go backwards after our first real step forwards. I love your content, but this one ain’t it.
Open world is the best thing for pokemon. That old linear way is not fun. All of those extra animations are no fun. Plus this is one game. Gotta give them the same time like the rest of the franchise.
I actually completely agree. I don't think open-world works for Pokémon, largely because I don't think the devs are capable of making a *good* open world in the time, and with the tech, they have access to. Everything in Paldea feels empty. Towns, locations, and landmarks in previous games feel special and memorable, but with Paldea, everything looks the same because,,, it kinda IS all the same - isolated areas surrounded by fields and cliffs of (almost) the same colours. Like look at the sea, sure you CAN go to it all, but what is the point, it is literally just open water with nothing to look at. Make routes and cities more open, more explorable than they ever were, but an open world isn't feasible at the current pace the devs need to move at.
Hisui does open-world better than Paldea does in that time frame, because it's a series of smaller, but still open hubs - each a very different location, but all clearly part of the same region. It would be cool if we could somehow make a series of "open zones" like that while still being able to go through different quests in any order like Paldea, but I'm not entirely sure how that would go.
I disagree completely. Those things have been becoming less immersive for generations since they peaked in Gen 5 and ORAS.
It's not the game's fault they became less interesting. That was already true in Gens 7 and 8.
It’s not empty it’s lively.
Sword and Shield weren't open world but they had the worst towns and routes in the franchise. But yeah, Scarlet and Violet are a new low.
Definitely has a bunch of rushed problems, there's ways they could make it work.
It's just that none of the devs for Pokemon won't or can't (regardless of who's at fault) realized the potential that an open world Pokemon game could be
most people think of open world when it comes to exploration... i think, a well designed route,caves,buildings,etc. that offers a lot of exploration would be a better option than a wide open world space of grassy fields and mountains that doesn't have a lot of things/structures to it. Paldea is a good region, it just doesn't seem like a region where people can really live...
I think souls games have a great 3d exploration. Thought I think that open world would work(if we get a game that's well done ofc). Games like xenoblade have great open worlds. The caves are very explorable and the open world is interesting and vast. An open world game should have
1. A very vast place with forest, secrets and caves. Cities should ne lovely and HAVE CARS.
2. Level scaling that doesnt apply to everything because you want to see your development.
3. There should be pokemons with abilities. These abilities should give you the ability to get secrets. Like you go under water to find an under water cave.
I think the pandemic has made our collective zeitgeist lean towards open world games and sandboxes after being stuck inside for almost 2 years.
I don't know how long it's going to take for that fever to break, but I'm inclined to agree with you. I miss things like forests and bridges, underwater routes and, well, routes, in Pokemon games instead of "over there" for the entire thing.
kinda have to disagree, that sandbox/openworld mind trend came started longe before the pandemic. Actually feels more like people slowly realizing that open world does not equal better game. Or at least I saw at least 7 "why video games are not fun anymore" videos this year and all the problems came down to AAA games with mostly openworld mechanics.
I think a good middle ground would be like have the game be linear, but the routes are quite expansive. Like PLA or Xenoblade 3 but maybe on a slightly smaller scale.
I was thinking more like a metroidvania game where you have some areaa open but are unlocked overtime as a reward for completing story objectives
In short, like Sinnoh routes. The level design has become worse and worse, and it all started in Sun/Moon because gen 6 has lots of branching paths in their routes.
The fact the different areas of Paleda are named Area 1-10 is what stopped the immersion for me.
Usually people give names to things of importance which this doesn’t have.
So I just think of Paleda as one big Bio Dome with people and Pokémon living inside as a big scientific experiment.
I definitely agree with you that Pokémon doesn’t suit an open world game play style since the devs just cant seem to find a way to make the game see beautiful and immersive,for instance in black and white wherever you walked something was happening in the background like trees rustling or leaves falling and even those small details make you feel part of the game while scarlet and violets bland fields and blocky cliffs ruin that immersion since the world seems empty.
I remember when OR/AS came out, and the grass and trees blew in the wind. That was mind-blowing for someone who grew up with Red/Blue/Yellow
I think something like Xenoblade 1 is a good middle ground, where you have a good chunk of level to explore, but you can't explore literally everything, like cliffs that signify the end of the map, or just a drop into the abyss.
A lot of what I heard is really just Gamefreak and the Switch not being good enough to make it work, though it's more of a developer problem than a hardware problem, because Breath of the Wild, while not perfect, at least ran competently on the Switch's hardware, and honestly a freaking pokemon game should be LESS demanding than that. Pokemon as a concept suits an open world design, but they keep cutting too many corners. The people making the decisions at the top are hamstringing the games and leaving us with half-baked products. They couldn't even give us simple level-scaling of the gyms even though we had more freedom to pick the order we did things in than ever. A simple mini-game involving collecting a mere 10 sunflora tanked the game's frame rate.
It would work just fine with competent people at the helm who were willing to put in the time and effort. Or at least a lot better than what we got.
To be slightly less negative for a moment, I think Sword and Shield might be a better direction than pure open world. If we got something like we had in Generation 1 and 2, where even with the route system we could tackle certain gyms "out of order" and then threw in the wild area from Sword and Shield, but preferably much nicer looking, we'd have something dynamic and fun. Actually include proper level scaling of gyms and it might actually be great.
Every game has introduced a new puzzle piece that's really cool. For some reason they're actively resistant to just taking all those pieces and finding a good way to fit them together in a polished, competently built game. Putting Pokemon on a full-fledged console, even one so relatively under-powered as the Switch, has highlighted Gamefreak's shortcomings as a game developer. The games are glitchy, lacking polish, and can't even take advantage of even the Switch's hardware to its full potential.
So, you say that as things are, Pokemon shouldn't be open world. I agree. They've proven that, right now, they aren't capable of pulling it off. As for the question in the title of "should they be" well... there's no correct answer. Because if we ask instead "can they be" yes, of course, the concept of Pokemon screams for a proper open world game. However, we have multiple generations of Pokemon games that excelled without being open world, and there's no reason that HAS to change either. It would just be nice if we could say that the open world idea was given a proper go, instead of the mess we got.
. . . no one's reading all that, are they? Oh well, I was inspired to rant for a bit. We'll call it venting.
Gen 1 (and, to a lesser extent, Gen 2) struck a good middle ground. Plenty of exploration and you could tackle the mid-game in almost any order, but there was still a linear progression. In Paldea, you're theoretically even more free, but in practice, doing things out of order is a bad idea as the levels of opposing Pokémon varies too drastically from one area to the next. You're always either underleveled or overleveled for the area with no in-between.
Scarlet and Violet found a good middle-ground; the choice to explore an open world, but a clear linear choice available to traverse the landscape at a reasonable pace.
i think Wild Area is good middle ground. In Sw/Sh it was made pretty badly with rapidly changing enviroment, but If game had linear story but some routes where open world with lots of thing to discover it would be just right.
The region just feels so EMPTY. The fact that some areas have no areas towns also bug me. Why is their no town near the fall area or in the northeast? It just feels so empty!
Cassette Beasts is a perfect example of an open world pokemon style game that feels actually fun to play and travel through. It is rooted in the curiosity and exploration and doesn't feel forced like it does in the recent pokemon games. Honestly it goes to show Pokemon is really losing touch with their own brand and image and it is sad.
I feel like legends was a better example of what an open world Pokémon game could be. Don’t get me wrong, textures and rendering still isn’t very good and the there’s the whole foggy radius around the player in the distance thing. But I think visually it was executed better than scarlet and violet
I feel you in every words. I often share something like these on Twitter but among the big Poketubers I subscribed~YOU ARE THE VERY FIRST PERSON WHO SPEAKS THIS OUT.
I feel like this rebuttal is good, the only issue is it’s assuming it’s a 3D open world vs a Top down open world. If the game was 2D and they didn’t have skylines and horizons, would it be nearly as bad of an experience if you could access the entire map off the jump?
Personally, I hate how games in the 6th and 7th generations were starting to become huge beautiful hallway simulators with amazing backgrounds and invisible walls.....as much as I understand your point about leaving something to the imagination, I do prefer how things are done now.....we just need to get better at filling out worlds. Still, I didn't have an issue with Scarlet because I enjoyed finding Pokemon and items, and there were some cool caves. Also, you only get access to more and more areas as you defeat titans.
SV still has an inaccessible area that shows on the map: the northeast corner. Now geographically this is southern Kalos, and I wouldn't be surprised if this opens up as bonus content when PLZA comes out. But for now, it sits there taunting us.
I think my issue with "open world" is from a gameplay perspective it's not fully open. There's clearly still a guided path simply based on the levels of the wild Pokemon and trainers. Sure you can go almost anywhere on the map and battle any gyms or titans in whatever order you decide from the beginning, but you won't have much success unless you do it in a particular order. Getting to Casseroya Lake 15 min after you've started the game won't help because you'll get steamrolled by all the Pokemon 30-40 levels higher than you. I'd really like to see a true open world game where the Pokemon (wild and trainers') levels scale as you make story progress. We got a little taste of this with the Wild Area in SwSh where the Pokemon all are higher level after beating the main story. Imagine being able to save Iono for later in the game when she has a Kilowattrel and Luxray or battle Grusha early when none of his Pokemon have evolved yet. Yes that would balloon the game size, but we haven't even got to half the max size of a cartridge yet on the Switch. I definitely don't want COD size games, but I can't imagine full level scaling would do more than double the current largest games (~12GB for SwSh). Plus for adding more detail (like houses you can enter), I can see a game like this clocking in around 25GB. Remember that BOTW in all its beauty is only 14GB.
However, I do like linear games because I don't have to do much guessing on where to go next to progress the story.
Open World always sounds nice on paper but fails with implementation. Yakuza's "open world" is tiny but feels alive. Major's Mask world manages to have npcs with their own schedules. Size was irrelevant.
To be fair; I think open world Pokémon CAN work, it’s just that Gamefreak by some miracle of god didn’t consider the idea of a world that scales to the player, something that should have been an addition back in sword and shield; ‘‘twas great fun to run into a level 50 machamp just after beating Kabu,
I think you make a lot of sense, I really enjoyed violet when I first played it but honestly the thought of dealing with all that empty space again really puts me off replaying it, where sword and shield, legends arceus and even bdsp I still get excited about revisiting, I honestly feel like legends nailed it in terms of how to do a more open world by having fully open but separate areas of the map, of course I don't think it helped scarlet and violet to have gotten rid of the legends capture mechanics
To me it comes down to 2 things: The artstyle, and the design of the open world itself. Scarlet and Violet's artstyle at least for the landscapes, feels unpolished a lot of the time, and the region itself features WAYYY too many fields. It often feels a little too open. I'm no expert but what I would proably do is add a little more variation of landscapes across the entire region.
Yes like a big forest
@@JpokeWmcu85 Yeah, or just more variations in the terrain from route to route.
In my opinion sword and shield was a lot better in the exploration part because you have all these beutiful places like glimmwood tangle, every town and the mines andthe thing that makes them so pretty is the forced perspective and lighting that makes your imagination run wild but you still had the vast wild area to explore and to interact with other players
Even when not considering the world design, and even when you and I love Paldea's stories, we can tell that when it comes to story, the majority of fans want it like the old days - progressing through the world in strength, an EVIL evil team that blocks your way through the region and gives you a climactic save-the-world showdown with their boss near the end of the game, an epic final battle against the Champion as the final boss of the story (Geeta _not_ being that is the biggest reason people can't accept her.) And needless to say... all of those beats require a very linear region and story.
Also, the rival needs to be insufferable, like Gary
It's weird, as I could swear only a few years back, people wanted something significantly different than that formula...
Was probably a different group of people, realistically.
I couldn't agree more. The most difficult part of the game was answering which gym in which town I had the most difficulty... none of these towns are memorable. Aside from Mesagoza, I cannot list a second one because they just aren't memorable for me.
I've been playing Pokemon since Red and Blue back in 1999. To tell you the truth, I think the open-world transition has been the best thing to happen to the series. I didn't think much of it at first, and I honestly thought it would be a terrible idea for a pokemon game, but to tell you the truth, I actually enjoy running around and exploring now, and I enjoy the map and its locations, which are far more memorable, to me now. I find myself revisiting old locations just to see what I've missed, and to admire attention to detail, and even just to romp around and climb on things. And this is all coming from an old-school 30+ y/o fan. I feel it would be devastating if they took away the open world game style in future titles.
6:00 I also sort of want to mention that the POV when you're outside of a town and it looks puny like that I think is more of a critique aimed at the wrong thing. Have you flown in a plane? Or hiked up a nearby mountain in the outskirts of town? It's normal to look at our huge cities are realize just how easily they can be dwarfed in perspective - and how our cities are few and far between against the vast landscape. We are immersed and trapped in a single perspective in day-to-day life, but you can really get a new perspective looking out the window of a plane, or from the mountains. We really do make isolated 'settlements' that look small and puny. It isn't until you get in there and adjust the camera close that you'll see the perspective you're used to. I think they did a fabulous job of capturing this
For me I’m the complete opposite. Linear and contained environments work WAY better than open world. Sure maybe if the developers actually got more then a year of two of development time open world can work but the amount of emptiness between cities and towns and the majority of the map being empty fields with the overall lack of immersion makes it feel like they wanted to release it as soon as possible and call it a day. That and it doesn’t help just calling routes/areas of the map “area 1-10”. Nothing is memorable. At least with the linear and contained environments it felt like you could make an extremely memorable area/city regardless. Having actual gyms would be a major help as well
I feel like at the very least you shouldn't be blocked off from progression as much as Pokemon games usually do.
I think you should be able to go through a route or two after a gym you haven't beaten yet.
I 100% agree, and something I'll add is that while the game is open-world there's no reason to explore since you get nothing worthwhile
I think that we should go back to routes but instead of narrow pathways they should be long open zones sort of like Legends Arceus
Would be cool if they went to the classic style of world design but with different optional branching pathways. That's probably what the fans wanted anyway.
When you make the order of events not matter, you strip them of their uniqueness. specificity imbued things with character. Open World and/or Non-linear gameplay is typically achieved by removing specificity so that less context is required to do X or Y thing.
Honestly, I think the Wild areas were a good middle ground. If routes were more expansive like the Wild Areas, you'd definitely get that good balance between linear path that would still encourage exploration. On your way to the next town? Why not check out that what's over there in corner. It's a skate park with avid trainers. Is that a small forest? Yes and there's a ranger giving guided tours. That person looks familiar so let's go talk to them. Oh, it's Bugsy from Johto and he wants you to catch him some bug types for a book he's writing. That was all fun. Right, let's get to the next city we have a 3rd badge to claim.
An open world could work in Pokemon if the development time was longer and the developers are able to fill the world with interesting things to do. As it stance, there could be a nice middle ground struck if the games have smaller but more dense maps while giving the player some choice on which gym they want to tackle.
If Pokemon were to go fully open world, I'd like it to be in the classic top-down grid based style. That way, you still get an open world game with a lot more polish and detail due to it being more smaller-scale. Theres a reason why LGPE are the best-looking mainline games on the Switch. I also enjoyed how PLA handled the open world with there being separate areas to explore that you unlocked as you progressed. Not everything needs to be a BOTW clone.
I don't see anything about previous games like galar or alolas routes that was more detailed. They where just empty grass fields/water routes most of the time with borders around the routes that felt very articficial and restricting and made me enjoy those games less. Paldea is basically just the previous games just without artificial borders. There weren't much details in the routes in the non-open world regions to begin with, so there is nothing lost from making it open world.
4:09 exactly because nothing was acessable and just background, it was not fun to play those games. It felt pretty cheap and outdated, it felt even a step backwards to alola and the other previous games because there we didn't have unacessable places in the background (except the power plant in X/Y) and most of the things we saw where visitable. Galar just felt like sightseeing, not like adventuring. Paldea feels like adventuring.
i strongly prefer routes and grass encounters over open world and overworld and static encounters just being able to go around any obstacle and b-line to a new pokemon isn't fun i want a reason to explore other areas and buildings so i can progress and discover pokemon through chance just going around and defeating set bosses raids or gym leaders that are marked on a fully drawn map just isn't fun
I think that open world could work if the formula was altered to fit the new open world by having more complex systems like level scaling based on what is completed no matter what gym you're taking on. I think having routes would work still just add in dangers for going off the beaten path with harder encounters like how Arceus has alpha pokemon you could have Pokemon that are trade exclusive or higher level than you can normally catch or legendaries you can pocket for later
I agree that the game does have a lot areas where the idea of exploring just seems tedious. Some areas would be empty or for me personally hard to trace my steps, so I would lose track and forget where I've been when I'm trying to explore. In my personal experience it made the game last longer but felt like there was little payoff for those times. I got lost in an area
Thank you. I wish more people would acknowledge these things.
Ik I’m just one person but you just earned yourself a like and a sub :3
Pokemon should 100% be open world. That was our dream as kids. Thats why Pixemon became so popular then replaced by cobblemon. That’s why Legends Arceus outsold expectations while taking a huge risk. This is why Pokemon GO has gotten incredibly popular after covid. The greatest fantasy for pokemon fans is an open world game. This why Pal World is succeeding so rapidly. Open world is GameFreak’s gateway to eternal success for Pokemon.
I think that the open world style of legends works best for current Pokemon.
I will admit i prefer the older games routes designs, i believe B/W and X/Y have the best route design, a short road/path to get from a to b or the rest of the route where you explore on a winding path. Please note i said route design not map design, not a fan of the circle map design.
I think a game where you have a main hub where you live and has the lab, then have Nine to Ten different small to medium maps, with a gym in each map.
they can just do the map like in legends, implying areas we don't get to explore.
Having different maps can make each area feel different because of what you can do in them, such as cave diving, underwater diving, mountain climbing, have one be a vast meadow of flowers and tall grass making pretty but some areas to see where your going, a actually jungle map which just a giant dense jungle with only one path way and if you step of it its easy to get lost.
this also stops the weird way areas just kinda stop and lead into another area in Paldea whilst there isn't really much new to do or see in them.
But saying all this, what i truly want is a return to sprites for at least on game.
I totally feel the same, I think the fields are just huge and full of nothing, I would prefer a very little world with high details, also I dont like Pokemon showing up in to many different areas... What I mean it would be nice to have only one location for Riolu for example, just like inside of a little hole of a hidden tree.. or something like that
Being able to choose from multiple routes > being able to make your own route, at least in the sense of pokemon. If you want to do an open world game it has to be like RDR2 or Fallout4, where pretty much every area has its entire story to tell, and that there aren't too many long periods of silence. If you're gonna let player go anywhere than stuff needs to be... well, everywhere; if players have access to the waterfall then something needs to be behind it.
I have always thought that while possibly making a game more immersive, making a game open world completely kills any narrative pacing. Village being raided, I'll get to it later, building on fire, eh, it can wait till later. Etc. For Scarlet and Violet it made the game slump a lot of I didn't go in the "level order" of the gyms, titans and bases.
I agree that there's evidently not the development time to fill the regions with enough detail to make open-world a really positive experience, but I guess my takeaway from this is that the development effort needs to change. They can hire more developers, and wait a little longer before releasing new games.
Open world games are tricky to develop. I would be satisfied with routes and cities in 2.5d
I thought the open world of Paldea was very enjoyable at the time, but now I don't have any interest in replaying it. The focused experience helped so much with storytelling.
They just need to actually put time into making a playable game that has every region they have a huge world if they made a game where you take control of the pokemon in real-time combat and if they added a tease for future regions off in the distance, instead of releasing a new game every year make an expansion every year
Yes. Everybody SHOULD be able to create their own path to being Champion.
And that spices up the gameplay a bit by making u have to be more strategic and making u pay for bad decisions.
Thank you! Finally, someone gets it! If anything good hm moves need to return.
I agree with everything you have pointed out. I think that if Game Freak is intending to make the main games in an open world setting they need to invest more time. You see GTA o Zelda games they take 5+ years for each delivery and they usually never disappoint. I understand as well that they also want to sell something every year, but I they could rely on a spin off for that. I'm convinced that if they invest enough time and money in making a a great pokemon game they will sell millions of copies every year, until they release the next one.
I sadly have to agree. As someone who’s played other open world games like Minecraft & Fallout 4, SV feels very empty & generic. They could’ve just add some in-route stuff like abandoned houses, small dungeons & people doing small quests. This would make the game feel more alive.
Great points but I think it’s a hardware problem more than a game freak problem. Could be both tho.
Pokémon needs to be HD-2,5D, that seems like a step backwards…but it's just the good pokémon feeling for me.
i dont think pokemon doesnt work as an openworld, its probably the biggest candidate for open world, its just that 400 pokemon only, and a tiny region with miniscule small biomes and barely any landmarks just doesn't cut it, especially without having gym leader lvl scaling. Pokémon Crystal Clear was actually good although limited by being a GB game. On the nintendo switch, so much more could have been done...
So... What you're saying is basically that you're a city slicker? That you don't like exploring the countryside because it's "too open" for your taste? To each their own. But I like both the cities/ towns, and the open wild areas. They both have their pros and cons. It's all a matter of perspective. If you don't want to train your pokemon, stay in the city where you feel safe until you're feeling adventurous enough to go into the great beyond! Also known as, the countryside. You'll be amazed as to what you can find out there! It would be great if we could explore more buildings in these games and get to talk to the NPCs to get some more lore on the region, but we got what we got. And we can't really complain due to time constraints. They did the best they could. It's a good game, it's just lacking content/ depth.
I think anyone saying pokemon sucks as open world would probably be singing a different tune if the devs had the time to actually make the world instead of rushing it due to stupid deadlines. Imagine a world like BoTW in a pokemon context, and then realise the reason they can't do that is due to the gaming industry being taken over by corporate suits and shareholders ruining everything they touch.
I think a good Pokemon open world game won't be possible before it is possible to use an AI to generate coherent map fillings and move around plotpoints to get the story to the player in a tailored manner. I hope they stick to boundary worldbuilding for the time being
Without watching, I'll say YES. SV was only a taste of how they could do this, and it's my favorite official Pokemon game ever.
And even taking away the open world aspect you are still given enough freedom in other aspects of the game I feel most Open World Bros take for granted and one being the obvious focal point of the pokemon games: the pokemon. You are still given the choice to which pokemon you want to use on your team for the story progression, breeding, and competitive battling as well.
Mostly agree. Ive never been one to care much about things like graphics and whatnot, so long as the game leaves room for your imagination to fill in the gaps.
Like you could actually just put a png skybox around every city that depicts it as way bigger than just the playable area, and id love it.
When every square inch of the world is accessible... that means your seeing the world as it actually is, and if thats the case, how tf does paldea operate? The biggest city is like 20 buildings and has no roads to or from.
They should not be open world. There is no immersion, no feeling of the “magic” of exploring routes (especially that they’re just called area 1-10). It doesn’t help that nothing is in order, youan go freely from one area to the next with pokemon having to drastic of a level change, always over levelled or under levelled. Releasing pokemon games every year or two doesn’t help either, looks really rushed. If they did something like unova/kalos’s giant open area (ish) cities with the OG linear route layout i would be much more willing to play the new titles.
Using Sword and Shield towns as an example was a very weird choice, considering that (apart from the aesthetic), these towns were worst in the series (apart from scarlet anf violet). The general criticsm was that most of these cities had very little to do in them with a lot of buildings that you cannot access and the same copy and pasted house interiors. With very boring NPCs who tell you nothing interesting about the towns. The best towns in the series were in Unova and Hoenn.
I think open world for Pokemon could work in theory, but Gamefreak is currently not up to the task because of their lackluster technical programing knowledge and severe lack of time. We also have to remember Pokemon at it's core is a SRPG game and not an open world game like Zelda. It wasn't that long ago that Gamefreak was forced to abruptly transition away from 3D's games to console and it's clear they don't have enough time to restructure the company to develop teams with new tech and modern programing skills. I believe Pokemon needs time to regroup and take tips from games like Honkai Star Rail on being a well crafted semi linear game full of passion that everyone could enjoy. The Pokemon magic is still alive!
I like the idea of an open world but in my opinion what ruined the whole thing was the fact that they gave you a Pokémon right away with the possibility to traverse distances like nothing and climb and swim, leaving nothing for you to really explore and even consider before choosing a direction.
The raidons ruined the game in my opinion.
So you want pokemon to be like temtem. A linear path with a conga line of trainers because that's what Temtem is. and You should try Cassette beasts.
Ah really? May have to give it a go!
@@aokcraig it’s on Xbox game pass
I want the creatures to interact with their environment more. I hate how the newer games just have them pop up and aimlessly wandering around. Essentially I want pokemon snap but fun (kidding)
It's call, the grass always looks greener on the other side. You want what you don't have. Then when you get it you have buyers remorse. So yes the grass is greener on the other side and wants you are over there you learn it's because it's been fertilized with BS.
We need it to be linear so that we can enjoy the plot. People think PALDEA is empty, it’s actually lively, because of the big areas, like mesagoza. That stuff was so old when you were born, basic modern technology is about 100 years old. Yeah you explore to quickly. Sv is underrated. Yeah it’s so big and expansive, but to expansive. No we should be able to go to all the towns and cities, we should be able to explore the entire region. The anime isn’t canon to the games. All they need to add is to put some boundaries for story restraints.
I don’t think Pokémon, as much as it wants, fails to benefit the open world thing. I think it needs to return to being liminal and top down, which can it benefits it.
In my opinion, open world does not equal better game. Take spiderman shattered dimensions, one of the few spiderman games that is not openworld but linear, almost episodic, and it allows for so many different and interesting local than just the usual new york.
For me personal, in some games open world can be a huge demotivator. Like I tried play horizon zero dawn at least two times now but never got very far cause the world just seems too huge and it feel annoying to constantly stop for a sudden side mission or some shit.
Sword and Shield did it best. Not really confined but not too expansive and boring. The wild area felt like a big playground and the towns/ cities felt familiar to previous contained places in Pokémon.
Galar was literally the worst region though (before Paldea). The towns were empty and the routes were boring. The Wild Area was poorly designed. No complex dungeon design like in Unova, Sinnoh, Hoenn or Johto.
@@dwarasamudra8889 I respect your opinion, but damn you’re wrong. Routes were more complex and the cities were huge (which is what an open world Pokémon games should have. The wild area isn’t perfect but it was better than other things like that.
nice insight and topic i just found this game Pokemmo online a retro graphics can you review this game and give some insight i heard is a 10 year game or almost anyway my last original pokemon game was black and white and just watched stream to see new pokemon games not really interested to play it
Pokemon should not do open world. They can't even just make a 3D version of the classic linear Pokemon games that isn't a buggy disaster, whether it's time, lack of ability, whatever, they cannot pull it off. Making the world a giant empty sandbox just waters down a series that was already struggling to keep up, for no reason, and without level scaling there is actually no point because the game is effectively still linear, just because you can go to a high level area doesn't mean you can take anything on there until you've played past a certain point, especially when high level Pokemon don't listen until you have badges already and even if you skipped ahead, all challenges you skipped are now beyond too low level for you. The open world serves no purpose.
Gamefreak can do an open world, the only issue is the time, that's it. Give them 5 years or more and done
Super unpopular opinion but S/V is the first mainline Pokemon game I did NOT finished. Well ok there's White 2 but that was more of an expansion for me. The main reason was for it being an open world. Aslo ignoring the bugs but I also dislike the new Pokemons in terms of typing. I couldn't make my ideal team and making it balance at the same time but that's a me problem! Can't have a balance team if you used two Pokemon with the same fire/ ghost typing!
As a disclaimer, I don't really played modern games anymore meaning I never really played a proper open world game before (closest would be Xenoblade Chronicle).
Even then I am so used to with Pokemon game that you go to point A to point B cos the path lay it out with you and trying to go to point D for example cannot be done cos you haven't got the HM or the Pokemon assist like in Sun and Moon! So being given the option to go anywhere in a Pokemon game was kinda surreal to me!
Also for an open world game, it wasn't properly balance in that the Pokemon, Trainers battle and Gym leader levels did not scale to your actual level. With that in mind, depending on your play style (want it to be challanging or not) it felt redundent to go anywhere were technically you were retricted on some location. Example, I read about the new ice draon is the new peusdo legendary so I rushed all the way to the ice region to capture it but I was underlevel in that area so I had to be careful with the encounter. Also another one is learning the bug gym leader was the first gym to encounter but by then my team were around level 30 so I floored her when I head to her location!
I made it here before you reached 1,000 subscribers
would be good if pokemon was being developed by a competent team and had better hardware
It needs more than just gym I really tired of the gym taking on gym leaders it not for me I would a opening would game that have fashion show and contest and gym or pokemon showcase other stuff to do it don't have be l around battling
Imo: open world is a no, open map is a yes
if your point is that an open world pokemon game is not possible with the current development cycle i agree.But i really feel like your framing this wrong and the comments of this video dont seem to understand why that caveat is so important they make it seem like open world pokemon is flat out not possible . My problem with your arguement is why are you blaming the open world aspect when the real problem is the development cycle. If anyone thinks that this development cycle is good in anyway shape or form for an open world game then i think your delusional. Pokemon only comes out every 3 years with a new gen for 1 reason PROFIT. How is your complaints about the open world aspect when the real issue is that gamefreak is a bit too greedy and needs that holiday season new generation boost for every game. If the development cycle is fixed then oh shit WERE COOKING. Just look at successes of other copycat games like palworld for example its open world is beautiful and the concept of a pokemon-like monster collecting game really made it take off (of course its also got that ark survival aspect to it but there are literally 100's of those games already the thing that made it stand out is its monster collecting aspect) . With the resources gamefreak has and there sheer talent for making great citys and routes it could be transferred into a open world game and will create a game like no other. Thats why palworld took over for a hot minute because they were starting to break into that open world pokemon niche that pokemon shouldve been in in gen 8. And what i find funny about gen 9 is that it reminds me of the first problems that arose when games went to open world. These things have been issues in the past like the emptiness and the sameyness of towns and villages and the out of bound effect when you look at towns from the wrong perspective. They arose because noone really knew how to make open world games at the time but guess what pokemon has the advantage of learning from its predecessors on how to fix these problems.And i feel gamefreak is not using this valuable resource on how to fix these problems but then again they are constraint (totally by there own greed) to a short time schedule and this is there first try at open world so i cant know if these problems will persist or theyll evolve but who knows whats in for the future. I have hope due to the large backlash to gen 9 quality will be of higher priority and theyll actually take there time to develop the damn game. And we have good reason to be on that copium rn as we FINALLY dont have a new pokemon installment this yr weather thats a new gen or remake or DLC which is a good sign the hell era of pokemon might be gone soon.
Many fans dreamed a Pokémon game open world, until when they saw how open world Pokémon games are made. That's it.
I really miss 2D Pokémon games and the real explorations and dungeons of the third, fourth and fifth generation games...
Fantastic video.
Should Pokemon Games be Open World?
Yes, they should. Open Worlds are much better then closed-off linear games. Sure Scarlet and Violet is a bit lackluster, but we'll give them a break as it was their first game with an open world. They might be better in future games. Look at the Wild Area, it was basically the prototype for Paldea's open world, so next game, they might improve it even more.
I disagree that the open world doesn't work for pokemon. I absolutely love the paldea region and running around through it. I have been playing pokemon since gen one and I have never enjoyed playing after the story was done...except in paldea. I am still playing, catching pokemon and gathering items. The open world makes it more enjoyable for me.
Also there is a valid reason why paldea seems so empty, Spain is sparsely populated outside of the cities. As the region is based on the Iberian peninsula(Spain and Portugal) it makes perfect sense. I think people don't realize this about Spain.
I don't get the hate that the open world has been getting. We(the fandom) have been asking for an open world for a long time. Pokemon finally gave us what we asked for and they are getting flack for it. Haven't we ever heard the idea of don't bite the hand that feeds you? Or don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
If the pokemon company getting hate for the open world causes them to get rid of it, I'm going to be really upset as it's my favorite thing about scarlet and violet.
Giving us an open world set in a sparsely populated region makes total sense, and makes the games more enjoyable for me. Especially now that I can choose when to battle pokemon and trainers. Honestly I have always found the forced battles to be the most infuriating part of the old games. I can't stand trying to get from one place to another and being stuck in a battle every few steps. For the most part I find the battles boring. I often fall asleep in the middle of long battles. I never fall asleep while exploring the world.
My apologies if this came across as argumentative, that is not my intention. I'm autistic and sometimes things don't come across as I intend them. I just wanted to share my thoughts on this topic.
I enjoyed SWSH more than SV kill me
Gonna have to hard disagree on this one.
Whether or not you liked the execution of PLA or S/V’s open worlds, the franchise was always supposed to be this way. Everything from Gens 1-8 were trying to approximate the feel of an open world, without ever delivering. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, but I’m shocked at how many people seem to have instantly forgotten that linearity was one of the biggest complaints fans had about the franchise.
To cite towns and routes like the ones from Sw/Sh as a positive is baffling to me. I had WAY more fun exploring the “nothingness” of Paldea than the “nothingness” of Galar. I was able to have unique experiences, not planned by the game. I wasn’t railroaded into a scripted series of events, I was able to create my own stories.
A lot of this also comes off as “it would look prettier if they narrowed their scope.” Which is probably true, but now we’re sacrificing content on the alter of graphics, and that always bums me out. Don’t let GF off the hook like that. “They’re not good at open world, so they should just go back to what they’re good at” is literally just another way of saying “GF shouldn’t have to work harder, put more money into their products, or learn new skills.”
Fuck that, GF should have been doing those exact things *LONG* before now, and to have so many people immediately give them an out is beyond frustrating. Pokémon *should* have been open-world for at least a decade, and GF’s worst tenure as a company (in my opinion) was from Gens 6-8, when every single thing was old, tired, repetitive, and uninspired. They’re *FINALLY* getting their shit together and making games that actually push the series forward for once, and it’s kind of embarrassing how many “fans” are too weak to ride out the growing pains, immediately wanting to go backwards after our first real step forwards.
I love your content, but this one ain’t it.
I think linear in story but like a Spider web shsoed baths like the souls games had would ne otettu perfect. Open world is good too tho.
Open world is the best thing for pokemon. That old linear way is not fun. All of those extra animations are no fun. Plus this is one game. Gotta give them the same time like the rest of the franchise.
Only if they’re built well.
Now let me sit down and listen to this video 🪑