As some of you may or may not know I have recently become addicted to pokemon again after so many years, the last being with Crystal version. Anyways the addiction got to me hard and just playing pokemon like I usually do was not enough. No, I needed to catch them all. The urge to become the ultimate pokemon trainer was too much to resist I'm even rewatching the pokemon series as I *obtain* them.
Yesterday morning as I was taking my morning shower I had some time to contemplate why there hasn't been a full 3d action adventure RPG of pokemon and what it would be like if I was to design it and heres what I basically had it mind:
The world of pokemon is a vast and dangerous land filled with creatures of various shape and size and ability and if this was to be brought to life on the next gen console I think it would be something like the overworld in Zelda TP and FF. A large central hub with trees, mountains, and lakes which lead to instanced areas such as towns and any dungeons and forest deemed too large to be connected with the hub without loading.
Traversing the world of pokemon can be done on foot or on bike and with the aid of tools such as scaling ropes and climbing instruments, diving gear it is possible to navigate through almost any situation the world can throw at you.
Catching pokemon is retained from the handheld games where you can only carry 6 at anytime with any changes made at a PC and fighting is where it gets interesting. Keeping with the 1v1 battles with wild pokemon which can appear as random battles like in FF games or like .Hack ( one of my favourite RPGs of all time) have enemies which spawn with your within a certain proximity so you can see where they are before hand and plan ahead. The latter allows for the game to have almost infinite 'spawning gates' without the annoyance of too many random battles and making the world feel more alive than just having mobs roam the map like in FF12 which can severly reduce the amount of creatures on at the one time.
Battles are done in real time and the environment is at your mercy to utilise. Meaning that fights will no longer be turn based but instead will be reminecent *ripped-off* of zeldas free combat. but the twist is that at the start of the battle you will have full control of the pokemon trainer but once you have chosen which of the 6 pokemon you want to fight, control is shifted to that pokemon with the trainer watching from behind. Of course for the the most accurate and intense portrayal of pokemon battles it is neccessary for the pokemon to be able to manuver in the battle such as running, jumping, climbing and dodging attacks. The handheld restricted each pokemon to only know 4 abilities but I think this is too limiting but instead they can incoporate systems of combat from games such as Folklore ( fantastic ps3 RPG) where a folk (ranging from cute to kickass looking creatures each having 1 specific function in battle) is mapped onto the 'shapes' buttons on the ps3 controller and in the case of pokemon moves and abilities can be mapped onto the c stick or direction pads ( which may also be used to control the pokenav or are hotkeys to the selection menu which you can use on the fly in battle. Folklore allowed the player to map any folk which they caputre onto the buttons at anytime so you must choose from your library of folk but in pokemon it is possible that this is adapted so that each pokemon has a database of moves which they have learnt and you change it from there. Of course this will require immense amount of data but at the rate of our gaming development it may well be possible sooner than you think. I have also thought about comboing moves but that will really gimp on the amount of skills avaliable in the game.
As i mentioned earlier that the battle field is in real time so there would be some unfair advantages for say flying pokemon in open areas but this keeps with the more realistic aspect of battle, you need a pokemon which can fight in the sky or know ranged attacks. How well fights involving aerial combat on this scale would play out but alot of games atm contain flying enemies which must be knocked down before going into melee.
My proposed idea for this game entails large amounts of data set aside for each pokemons character mesh and articulation as well as their move sets along with a vast and populated enough evironment to do the world of pokemon justice ( not just the fields but believably sized towns and npcs inhabiting them). If this game was to become a reality I would not be surprised if only the first 151 or not even and only a fraction but diverse enough variety of pokemon to be avaliable ingame.
All that in a short 20min wake up shower naturally I'm just incorporating ideas other games which I enjoyed so no doubt if they ever make an action RPG for pokemon it would be very different but if its similar you heard it from here first =P
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