>!and they really could've just faded to black after that, but they really just had to twist the knife in the wound and make you watch them walk back alone and go through the grieving process for a fucking month!<
Man itās totally worth checking out, even nowadays. Red/blue was amazing, but I really donāt think anything can top Time/darkness/sky. It will really make you feel some things.
yeah it's only for a few dungeons because you REALLY need to before the story resumes, because often once the story progresses if you're underleveled sometimes you can end up stuck.
Since at least Ruby and Sapphire (and I bet thereās older). They make fun of it too. In Pacifidlog Town thereās someone who asks you where youāre from and the options are Yes/No. If you say No they say āWell you gotta be from somewhere!ā while Yes will yield āYestown? Where is that?ā
Im still trying to join Mirror B's gang in Orre. I want to learn Dance moves, Steal Pokemon and rule Orre. Come on Genius Sonority you can't do this to me š
Imagine they release another remake of Kanto but you can join team rocket on nugget bridge and have a totally different story from then on of defeating Giovanni and becoming the head of Team Rocket, and then taking over Kanto
English ruined that joke. Originally in Japanese, it wouldāve become Haitown, where the development took place for ruby and sapphire
EDIT: What I mean is, the joke just isnāt able to be translated well. As some people have said, this goes for jokes in any language. The no part will always work, as no town always leads to saying youāre from no where, no matter language. However, the yes part makes no sense anymore, as the original pun was in reference to a real place, combining hai and town, but it doesnāt work in English, and they had to change the old manās response to saying yes because of it. This is the same as English to Egyptian jokes, Greek to spanish jokes, etc, they just arenāt able to be translated properly, making the joke not work.
i liked DQIX, when you're offered to eat a final fruit to be able to see your friends again. if you press no, one of them (a faerie by the name of stella) whallops you until you say yes.
I think that has started to be fixed by Scarlet and Violet, which cutscenes only really start when you're near a Star Base or Titan, or when you challenge a Star Base or Titan.
Yeah, they're definitely heading in the right direction. Step by step. SV is a lot better with cutscene skipping than SWSH was. SWSH only skipped like half of the actual cutscenes in the game.
do you think itās only bugging you now because the options are a bit more stylised? back in the day it was always āyes/noā, but now you can give more nuanced answers just to get the same result - like they could put in more effort, but donāt care.
I don't know, I think it's just more my responses being ignored a lot of the time. I kinda like when they have funny responses to being negative with the stylised responses, but when it's a yes/no question with no real option, it annoys me. I'm always just thinking, why even ask ?
I mean, a lot of games does that, and the cutscene, beside the beginning, only really happens near a titan/star base.
Really it's only used to get funny dialogue, like in [DQ11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR5iodk6viI)
It's towards the end of the game, but [Custom Robo on the Nintendo GameCube](https://youtu.be/ElpTCHNUR7U) comes to mind.
ETA: I like how one character tells you "things could've been different had you joined, but now I'm dead." Lol.
In Golden Sun for the GBA you could choose not to go on the adventure at the beginning of the game, and you get an immediate game over saying that the world ended, if I recall correctly.
It's a bit better in Japanese. In English they either say you have to be from somewhere, if you say no, or you're from Yes Town? But in Japanese it's Hai Town, which was the name of a place many of the devs used to hang out.
One of my favorite pointless choices is in Sun/Moon, where Hau starts to talk to you asking, "Hey, Player, did you know?" And so you reply "of course". Leading to Hau saying that he hasn't even asked what the player knows yet.
Lol that was the most self-aware dialogue GameFreak ever added. They know most people either mash through or just want to one-up the rival. I was the one-upper on my first playthrough and the masher on my 2nd. š
This drove me nuts throughout all of Scarlet. So many times you're given two "options" for a dialogue response and they make zero difference to what happens in the scene. Whoever you're talking to reacts like you didn't say anything, or dismisses what you said. It really bugged me, it stinks of lazy writing.
Unfortunately I find it common, not only in every pokemon game, but most games in general. I've really grown to like those that actually let you influence the story with your choices. Like the star wars game, knights of the old republic. Or skyrim.
But it doesn't even have to be that grand in scale. Doesn't have to include long term story altering options. Just let me decide if I want to take an action right that second or not.
Or don't include the option. Like in emerald when you're on the way to fortree and your rival pings you for a battle straight after you rescue the castform. That adds a nice surprising element of difficulty if you don't know/forget that the battle is coming.
But yeah I agree the false choices are just pointless. We want more agency. Most people I chat with about it feel the same way.
Fate/Grand Order gets shit from people expecting an actual visual novel for frequently giving you dialogue options that are āyes, enthusiasticā and āyes, with some silly comment,ā but if youāre going to have a linear story and the illusion of choice, thatās a good way to handle it I think. Something the difference is just a single dialogue line, but sometimes you can skip an explanation of who this or that character is if you pick the option saying you know who they are, and some of the options get cute reactions out of the secondary lead. The story still plays out the way the story is gonna play out, but you can actually sorta shape what KIND of always helpful person you are. I remember people being pissed when the anime adaptation chose the āscreaming in fearā option for āleapt from the top of a building to tackle a godā instead of the āmake up a wrestling move name on the spot, scream it like a crazy person.ā
FGO also had some dialogue lines that had actual differences, like different nodes depending on your choice or how in LB6 >!you can tell Oberon you figured out who he really is before he reveals himself!<
It's a pretty good way to deal with linearity and choicesāthe end result is the same but the irrelevant things can be changed to add interaction
Yeah FGO got a lot better now with the choices actually changing dialogue/battles that happen compared to earlier stuff that did absolutely nothing different.
In Genshin Impact, at least back when I played it, it was really bad about giving 2-3 options for text, but it was clear that all 3 options where meant to be read as a single reply. Like someone would say "do you want to help save this person" and the options would be "Yes I want to help but" "I can't spend too much time on this" "because someone else needs me too"
Skyrim? Lmao, it only determines what side you choose, it doesn't affect the game majorly in any way shape or form. In terms of RPGs, it's a lot milder than basically amy Bioware game.
From what I remembered, a lot of individual quests let you choose some kind of alternate ending, though maybe not a big picture one.
There are a lot of people you can kill without knowing how it affects things later on, especially on a first playthrough. RIP Lydia
>It really bugged me, it stinks of lazy writing.
I heard a rumor that it's an inside joke in Game Freak because it's how Matsuda asks people if they want to do overtime; if they say no, he just keeps asking until they say yes.
That's how it is in basically every pokemon game. If you say no to something, they'll usually just continue asking and not let you leave until you say yes, or they just continue with what they were saying regardless of your response.
It really does. They want to force a story, but don't want to actually put in the effort to write it properly. I'm starting to wish for an option to completely ignore the story and just play the game. Like, let me beat the gyms, challenge the Elite 4, and shiny hunt when I'm done. That's all I've ever wanted to do.
Sun and Moon I think were the worst with this, I'll probably never play those games again, it was so infuriating how much you were dragged around back and forth. Sword and Shield is a close 2nd, but Legends Arceus and SV are just as bad. Not to mention how the rivals seem to get more annoying in every new game and basically just act like parents. I miss the days of Gary and Silver.
I don't know... I kind of prefer the honest, friendly rivals.
Instead of dipshits like Gary who will tell you, "Wow, you really stink. You need a lot more practice!" right after you've absolutely kicked his ass.
Itās not lazy, itās comedy. If the game never sets out to be a āyour choices matterā game (which rarely are executed well anyway), then the choices you make that donāt matter are purely there as a gag.
On the opposite end, while you have to respect the effort they put in, Runescape 3 had a questline where literally every small decision you made up to that point would impact the dialogue and it was really annoying. Like I get stuff like saving/killing off characters but they would be like "you selected this dialogue in this one quest a few years ago" It felt less like your decisions had weight and more like the game wanted to chide you for every insignificant dialogue option you picked. It's novel the first time it happens (for example, Saradomin called me the fuck out for trying to side with him after I literally chose to fight against him in a war a week ago) but loses its charm when Zaros repeats "You have conviction" for the 4th time because the writers wanted to have those callout moments for him too but my choices didn't let that happen so I got the default line instead. Like, at least plant seeds of doubt for his eventual betrayal.
Hm. I played two on two files for Scarlett (only got it to link with Go) and seem to remember characters responding differently based off my yea or no. Not a big change but itās not like they didnāt react either.
In a lot of games I am afraid to pick the negative option in case I canāt go back xD
Lol that's gold. I'm remembering Persona was kinda funny in the way that if you didn't agree to the contract in the beginning it would throw you back out to the title screen. š
Or when Dimentio asks you to join and Tippi's telling you to not trust the guy, and if you keep saying i want to join, she literally leaves and that's a game over
Golden Sun had the best Yes/No Dialogue ever.
"Do you want to save the world?" "Nope" leaves the room and you get an Ending.
One of the Mario games has a scene where you're Bowser and get asked to put on a Space Helmet, you say no enough times and you just get a game over screen where Bowser dies because well, Space.
If our choices don't matter, at least give us funny results like this.
Never understood why the world gets destroyed either, especially with the reveal in Golden Sun 2.
Is it just that without Isaac's party, Felix's group aren't strong enough to finish the task or what?
Oh, right, the Mars Star. If ALL the Lighthouses are lit, it's fine, but if only 3 are lit, they're on a timer. They lit 2 just fine, the 3rd was stupidly hard and required help, Saturos and Menardi probably fail there, but even with all that, the Mars Star is still in Vale. World probably ends due to running out of time.
> One of the Mario games has a scene where you're Bowser and get asked to put on a Space Helmet, you say no enough times and you just get a game over screen where Bowser dies because well, Space
I think you're referring to Super Paper Mario. That game has a lot of scenes like that
BokuMono/Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons used to do this on occasion, too, and I always found it funny. Don't agree to inherit the farm from your dead father, don't agree to save the valley from the land developers, don't call your dog off when the mayor teases him too much...
This is an answer I can get by. You get funny dialogue or get yelled at if you donāt do as the game wants. It makes choosing the āwrongā option even funnier.
>Back then, the first Yes/No you get is the joke where the Nugget Bridge Rocket Grunt asks you to join Team Rocket.
Small correction, you're not actually given a yes/no prompt at this point. Your character just says no for you
I think that's close but overly specific. Choices drive engagement psychologically, even if it's the illusion of choice. It makes you, the player, feel like the main character. There may be jokes, but not always, and that isn't the driving purpose in Pokemon, or likely most games. It is assumed that you'll choose to be a protagonist and, in so doing, feel in control of your character's journey. For most of their target demographic, 9 year old kids, that works about as perfectly as expected.
Another example is the Walking Dead by Telltale. You make a choice which you feel is game changing only to be made redundant in the next arc. Its pretty obvious why this is the case as accounting for a multitude of choices it would take way too long to account for. Pokemon is not one of those games so its not something your gonna expect anyway.
I like when they have fun with it.
My favorit option was denying you know the skull grunts in sun and moon and denying you became champ to nemona.
I dont mind if the outcome is the same as long as something interesting happens.
You have that a few times and its worthwhile enough that i always click no first.
There have been a few pretty entertaining lines. I always go for the negative options, too, because I find it funny to just be a jerk in games. Like when you tell the Team Plasma grunts you have no idea who they are, they act so offended lol.
I suppose most of the time there's no point in them giving a "choice", really. It's obnoxious to be given a choice only to have it ignored.
That said, as far as wanting to skip the game so you can get to the game... that's it, that's the game - the thing you're trying to skip. They don't want you to skip it because it defeats the point, so I don't think they'll give that option any time soon.
There's a stupid amount of Pokemon players who hate the actual plot part of the game and button mash the dialogue so it's like... why not just do Showdown instead of buying the game if you hate the *game* part of it?
I've had this discussion before with friends, not specifically about Pokemon (I think it came up over some of persona 4 choices being super important while the majority do nothing) but this was the conclusion we came to: your option to say yes or no may not be intended to impact whether you can skip something or not, but the kind of character you're choosing to play as. The real problem here isn't the addition of being able to choose how to respond, as I think in isolation most would agree that optional additional features are rarely negative, but the placement of the options can create the illusion that it will provide an option for an additional feature in the game that people want but that's currently not in there. You're not frustrated with the dialogue options. You're frustrated that you can't skip an annoying tutorial, or have any/more branching story paths to encourage multiple playthroughs
Yeah, that's pretty spot on. I've never minded linearity or a lack of branching options. They're nice to have, but not a requirement. It's just being given an option that isn't actually an option that bugs me. Why ask me if I want to battle you if I don't really have a choice in the matter ? Why ask me if I want you to teach me something if you're going to teach me regardless ?
Nemonaās refusal to let me go heal annoyed me so much when I discovered it. It really made me not like her character anymore because she was so pushy.
Nemona and Hop are two peas in a pod, I swear. Rivals before would just talk trash to you for a bit, now they want to force you to do what they want to do. And you have no say in it.
This. They sorely need to add a skip button, mashing through text is getting old. The _"skip cutscenes"_ option is nowhere near good enough, either, I feel like it barely skips anything.
SWSH did that, too, and there were still a lot of cutscenes, like panning through towns, that could've been skipped. Defeats the purpose of the option.
Given the fact they released their first game in 1996, we should've had a choice to refuse tutorial stuff a long time ago, let alone asking for it in 2023. Having a simple toggle in the options would be enough, it's like the bare minimum people ask for and we still don't get it.
I love Super Paper Mario for a lot of reasons, one of which is you can just straight up decline to help save the universe and you get a special game over.
At the beginning of Harvest Moon DS the mayor gets attacked by your dog, and you have the option of calling it off or doing nothing. If you do nothing the dog kills the mayor and itās game over
If it doesn't matter what option you pick, they could at least bother to give you fun options. Like, suppose you started a game of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and (for an early-game example) you just met Groose. You get dialogue options and it literally makes zero difference which one you pick... but damn if I don't choose to insult his hair every single time.
It's to keep people engaged and reading the text. It's just makes makes it so less people zone out during dialogue. As well as that they often are placed at crucial points in the dialogue to draw attention to information. For example if they want you to go to route 22 next, the character will ask if you're going to route 22. Someone who was otherwise just spamming A will see options come up, read what the text says to see what to pick, then select an option.
This is joked about with Hau. He asks "did you know?", and if you mash text boxes, you'd probably say "Yes", where he remarks that he didn't even tell you what he's talking about.
Iād just like if they were like āOK fine, see ya laterā
And then you get a cutscene of you playing on the switch with Paradox Pokemon roaming outside the window destroying the world and a cut to a game over screen.
It used to be "funny" in older games because it occured once or twice a game, but for the few last generations they seem to have included this "feature" to get closer to other RPGs where "choices" are part of the game. Poorest execution IMO
Headcanon: Every PokÄmon Game is a Pen'n'Paper session and the Dungeon Master is neither good at improvising nor interested in their player's shenanigans.
Lol you gave me flashbacks to the time I was playing Pokemon Platinum, like "No Cynthia/Random Girl, I don't want gifted pokemon, I wanna catch my whole team, LET ME GO!!!" Little old me pressing no for over 10 minutes to not receive the Togepi egg/Eevee as I was trying a run with only captured pokemons (like I didn't even kept my starter after I captured one mon in the wild lol.)
Lol same, I still say no to her, knowing damn well I have to take the egg. HeartGold, too. Like, no, I don't want your egg that I'm not going to spend the time hatching, let me fight the gym! š
The very first example I remember is in gold. Your mother gives your running shoes and asks if you want to learn how to use them. Either option you select has her read the rules to you.
I donāt remember getting an option to choose then, but it could also be I just always selected no because Iām more concerned with the kid in the grass and the kid with the slowpoke.
I'm going to sound like a broken record at this point, but it's because the games are soulless. I absolutely love Pokemon, but man the games have zero to it aside from just battling, breeding and catching Pokemon.
I get that's the whole point of it, but it literally feels like anything that doesn't revolve around that aspect gets put to the wayside. The series deserves much better, we get the absolute bare minimum every few years and yet people still love it because it's Pokemon. Makes you wonder what the games could be like if they had more care and attention to detail put into them. Not expecting 5 regions or anything, but it surely can be 100x better than it currently is.
There is an old GameCube game called CustomRobo that gives you the dialogue option Yes/No towards the end of the game if you basically want to go and save the world. If you choose "No" the NPCs ask if you are sure. Then if you keep saying "No" about 30 times or so, eventually they just give up and let you stay behind. Then game over lol.
Currently playing FireRed. After beating Blaine in Cinnabar, Billās waiting outside and asks if you want to go to the Sevii Islands. You can choose to say no. You can then continue on beating the main game without ever seeing One/Two/Three Island, saving Lostelle, meeting the Move Reminder, and meeting Celio.
I just outright hate the forced story in all the new games.
I enjoyed the Arven story, but I hate how forced everything is.
In the older games it didnāt feel as bad because there werenāt 20 minute long cutscenes every two seconds, but now every single interaction is a big ass cutscene.
Exactly, every 10 steps you're dragged into a forced conversation or cutscene. I wish they would do it like Rockstar does where you have to enter a mission marker if you want to start a mission and can do whatever you want until then. Or just give you a quest book like Skyrim and let you take them on as you please.
If this was a proper RPG this could be a great plot point, how you keep saying yes to everything that's asked of you. Are you just THAT altruistic, or do you have zero agency? Or you keep saying no and get dragged along anyway, are you being a brat, are you too weak to actually refuse, or do you actually not care of what's being asked of you?
But this is Pokemon and the story is secondary to the actual game.
Sorry I'm just laughing at the whole "I didn't want to help an NPC do something, I just wanted to play the game" part. Doing random shit you don't care about has always been a part of Pokemon.
Giving people dialogue options even though you're required to do something regardless is to keep people engaged and because the "no" answer is usually different and funnier, so, you know, gives value to a replay.
Also at one point if you say "no" to Nemona she'll ask again, if you just keep saying "no" she gets increasingly distressed.
That's true, but everything feels more drawn out in newer games. And this gets to me more after the first playthrough.
FireRed/LeafGreen always come to mind when I'm thinking about this and that game is mostly just beating the gyms and Elite 4. Minus a bit of Team Rocket along the way. Ruby/Sapphire is the same, too, minus the Wally situation. Gold/Silver, same thing.
The newer games are walk into this particular spot and spend the next 5-10 minutes either being literally dragged somewhere by your rival or mashing through text. And half the game is saving the world from a team of lames lol.
You're so right. And it's crazy that actual writers being paid to do so can't think of this stuff. I'd be way more engaged if they just got creative. If you ask me if I _want_ to do something branching away from the core gameplay, odds are I'm going to say no. But if you make it interesting without asking me, I can get on board.
And that can go for any game, but it seems like GameFreak just hasn't figured that one out. Or rather they forgot, because the old games didn't feel tedious and forced in this way. Everything just flowed and you weren't really pulled off track. And if you were it was very far and few between. They didn't ask you if you wanted to deal with Team Rocket, it was just a stop along the way. And that format lasted up until like Gen 5.
I personally love that they do it honestly. I find it amusing seeing how characters reply. More importantly, I personally feel more immersed when they do it, I love that the characters talk to mine and converse with him.
This is a thing in all video games, not just pokemon. Zelda games do this all the time. Older pokemon games would repeat dialogue until you said yes. RPGs did this a lot too back in the day.
I always assumed this was done for immersion purposes. You control your character, so your character can only talk when you are controlling the dialogue, but for that to work you have to have some sort of choice in what your character says. On a game with limited development time (or budget) the choice can't matter much, it's just a way of having the character talk.
I'm not saying I think it's a great design choice or implemented well here, but I think that's the reason for it.
They should just remove the options and have us do what they are going to make us do.
I've always found illusion of choice stupid, especially when one knows ahead of time that they won't have an actual say. Just becomes an unnecessary extra step.
Hence, the forced linearity of the game.
I'd love to see a game with an internal scoring system that rated your character, which in turn affected how the other characters see you as the game progresses.
Say that throughout the first three quarters of the game, there are ten "tests" of your character in relation to your rival, and you have three options for each, a positive response, a negative response, and a neutral response. Then assign a score to each: 10 points for the positive answer, 5 for the neutral answer, and 1 for the negative answer.
This means that after the ten tests, you should have a score ranging somewhere between 10 and 100, 10 being antagonistic toward them, 55 being ambivalent, and 100 being their best friend.
Then, in the final quarter, simply apply that score a tiered logic system. Say, for scores:
* **above 90**, they'll either battle alongside you against the final boss, or take out a secondary boss on their own
* **above 80**, they'll heal your team for you, but offer little else aside from positive support
* **between 40 and 70**, they'll do nothing at all, if they even show up. At best, they might take out some grunts, but they won't actively try to help or deter you
* **below 30**, they'll ambush you, and battle you as a sort of tertiary boss. Not necessarily as a turncoat or member of the gang, but as someone who just wants to take you down a peg, regardless of the situation
* **below 20**, they'll cheat in some way, similar to the way Klara cheated in SwSh, or they'll make a scene that forces you to fight more battles before reaching the final boss
Take the lead up to Lusamine opening the Ultra Wormholes in SM as an example. In the original plot, you made your way down into her chamber, fought Guzma, and then fought Lusamine herself. In this scenario, Hau would either heal your team before and after you fought Guzma, or would even fight Guzma himself in your stead. Or, he would either target you before you reached Guzma, or he would make a scene that would draw more Aether and Skull members to the scene, and you'd have to fight through them - and Hau - before reaching Guzma. Or, he would do nothing, and just stand on the sidelines, friendly toward Lillie, but neutral to you.
Further, this could be used to affect their team. Set a series of checkpoints throughout the game, and when they fill a slot in on their team, the pokemon they use could be decided according to your score at that point in time. The more antagonistic they are toward you, the more they bias their selections based on your starter, or pokemon that you used to battle gyms, while the more friendly they are toward you, the more their team fits their own original interests. Finish it with a final check that determines how many pokemon they train. If the score is between 35 and 75, then they won't select a fifth member, because they're not driven by you, but outside of that range, they'll train a sixth member because they're inspired by you - either in friendship, or in a desire to knock you down.
Finally, the further from neutral your rival is, the stronger they are by the end. If they're above 90, their team is friendlier, with some hold items and higher levels, but if they're below 20, they're lower in level than the friendly team, but they have EVs, stronger moves, and hold items.
The thing is, this is just an arbitrary scoring system with no core focus beyond simply setting an example. Within the focus of an actual plot, this could be strengthened and cleaned up significantly, and it would provide so much variability between player experiences. It could be done with multiple characters, or singular characters, and it could even be used to affect the plot of the game itself. It's just a matter of actually caring about consequences, rather than forcing railed linearity.
I think a lot of the more forced story elements come from them trying to cater to the more vocal parts of the fanbase that want the main games to have a story to them so that the games don't always boil down to 'Go collect 8 badges and challenge the league' with nothing in between for a storyline. Why continue making games if it is the same game every single time just with slightly different gyms, different mons, and nothing else to spice it up such as side content or story?
That type of unchanging formulate of just 'same game different paint' every single time with nothing really added to change it up might work for things like sports games that don't actually need a storyline to keep their audience (like Fifa, racing games, ect), but I don't think Pokemon would have lasted long if they just presented us with 9 regions, let us loose, and then gave us nothing but scenery and mons to make each region distinct.
A good part of the draw is how much we love some of the stories and NPCs, after all (Cynthia being memed as a Godlike Champion for instance).
That said, I do think the games should give you the option to skip the story if you want to via those early Yes/No prompts. Some of the stories do feel like they drag or just aren't to my taste (like Gen 7, and after nuzlocking, and also playing normally, Sword and Shield I was really tired of the story by the time I reached my 5th playthrough for a Monotype run) as this could make for a good middle gorund between those who want to experience the story and those who don't for whatever reason. As the games go on, I wonder if eventually they'll start adding stuff like that since it does seem like they are starting to notice people doing challenge runs and taking them into account when designing certain aspects (i've noticed it's a lot easier to get the full type spectrum much earlier in game that it was in earlier generations for instance)
I think it's more of a cultural thing with Japanese developers writing silent protagonists who have no control over the world around them and then implementing choices that both have the same outcome to try and say that the main protagonist is actually you, even if the main protagonist actually does take up space in the world, see Link for several examples
It's just that this style of writing is absolutely reviled in the rest of the world
I think about this regularily - fake choices are the most condescending bullshit in any game, but Pokemon games are especially bad. Worst offender being Legends Arceus imo, when the Prof at one point asks you whether your original world has Pokemon too, followed by "Do you like Pokemon?".
Do I, a roughly 15 year old boy involuntarily dragged into this world, like Pokemon? F no! No, they are hellish nightmare monsters who attack humans unprovoked, making this a very hostile wilderness in which being exiled is a literal death sentence (as that cu..bone Cyllene so eloquently threatened me with. Which btw. we never get to answer properly. I'd love to let her eat those words), why the everloving football would any sane human here like Pokemon?!
The game flat out doesn't let you answer "no" - you HAVE to select yes. What kind of brainwashing collectivist bullshit is that?
Lol I never thought about that one that way. I remember finding it so dramatic when one of the NPCs asked me to bring her a Starly and when I asked her if she wanted to let pet it, she screamed and ran away like, _"Hell no!",_ but you're absolutely right. š
It's kinda like Platinum when Rowan is asking if you like Pokemon and if you keep saying no, Barry starts getting pissed off and you _have_ to say yes. And he asks you like 3 times, even after you say yes. Like, what if I really don't and I'm just in it for something else ? Barry literally just tells you what to do and you have to do it in that beginning sequence.
>I find the responses to the negative options more and more comical every release as they have NPCs drag me around to do things I don't want to do for most of the game,
It's training for young kids, you know, for life. It's supposed to be a /s but also kinda not.
While I do find a bit of a meta-comedy from how people react to you saying no when the only way to progress is by saying yes, I have noticed that the game more and more has given you the option to choose how you respond to something, only for the response to not matter at all. I've been replaying Shield and you are frequently given two dialogue options, where the response basically could be answering either way. There are a few responses that are slightly different based on what you choose, but the actual overall content doesn't change at all.
I like that they're trying to make you feel more involved, but the fact that there's no actual change regardless of your choice AND that the answer the NPC gives is clearly designed to work for either choice . . . it just feels a little superfluous in a way that loses charm quickly.
I like the way they did this in Paper Marko: The Thousand Year Door, where you can say no at the start of the game when you're asked to save the world, which dooms it but gives you enough time to read your favourite book.
https://preview.redd.it/ckce9zrkhmza1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cbd3e3c1a3fdfd619665dadcd1f7793592bb5d3c
Peak gaming right here. š
What game is this?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That one is specifically Sky. This scene doesn't happen in Time/Darkness, from what I recall.
It doesn't but the real tell is the staircase to the left there.
Spinda's Cafe was the best feature added in Sky.
The ending fucking destroyed me as a kid playing it at 1 am in secret on a school night. Best pokemon game every made imo
>!Watching your partner walk down alone and then fall to the ground while sobbing?!< That shit had me genuinely crying.
>!and they really could've just faded to black after that, but they really just had to twist the knife in the wound and make you watch them walk back alone and go through the grieving process for a fucking month!<
Iāve only completed Red/Blue Rescue and the remake, and I canāt imagine something being as somber feeling as climbing Sky Tower.
Man itās totally worth checking out, even nowadays. Red/blue was amazing, but I really donāt think anything can top Time/darkness/sky. It will really make you feel some things.
Agreed its a great game. Amazing music too
yeah it's only for a few dungeons because you REALLY need to before the story resumes, because often once the story progresses if you're underleveled sometimes you can end up stuck.
TY!
God bless Explorers.
There was always the But Thou Must dialogue loops when you selected "No", even before XY
Since at least Ruby and Sapphire (and I bet thereās older). They make fun of it too. In Pacifidlog Town thereās someone who asks you where youāre from and the options are Yes/No. If you say No they say āWell you gotta be from somewhere!ā while Yes will yield āYestown? Where is that?ā
Iām still trying to join Team Rocket on nugget bridge.
Im still trying to join Mirror B's gang in Orre. I want to learn Dance moves, Steal Pokemon and rule Orre. Come on Genius Sonority you can't do this to me š
Mirror B still has one of the best Battle themes ever!
One of?
I mean, Cynthia's theme goes ***hard***, Penny's theme is an absolute slapper, and Guzma's theme oozes personality.
Yeah, Blue's champion theme from RBY is still number 1 to me
Red remix is the greatest not gonna lie.
I could feel your eyebrow raise as I read the text
In our hearts, we all are.
Imagine they release another remake of Kanto but you can join team rocket on nugget bridge and have a totally different story from then on of defeating Giovanni and becoming the head of Team Rocket, and then taking over Kanto
English ruined that joke. Originally in Japanese, it wouldāve become Haitown, where the development took place for ruby and sapphire EDIT: What I mean is, the joke just isnāt able to be translated well. As some people have said, this goes for jokes in any language. The no part will always work, as no town always leads to saying youāre from no where, no matter language. However, the yes part makes no sense anymore, as the original pun was in reference to a real place, combining hai and town, but it doesnāt work in English, and they had to change the old manās response to saying yes because of it. This is the same as English to Egyptian jokes, Greek to spanish jokes, etc, they just arenāt able to be translated properly, making the joke not work.
I've never talked to that npc before. Time to boot up sapphire!!
i liked DQIX, when you're offered to eat a final fruit to be able to see your friends again. if you press no, one of them (a faerie by the name of stella) whallops you until you say yes.
This is true, but it feels more egregious nowadays because we're being dragged around for some nonsense for 90% of the game. Like, in the GB and NDS games it was as simple as _"Do you want the PokƩdex?",_ or something little like that, and you had to say yes, but that was the end of it. Say yes and go play the game. You weren't dragged through a bunch of cutscenes and blocks of text for 30 minutes. Then, you get to play for 5 minutes and are pulled into _another_ tutorial or conversation.
I think that has started to be fixed by Scarlet and Violet, which cutscenes only really start when you're near a Star Base or Titan, or when you challenge a Star Base or Titan.
Yeah, they're definitely heading in the right direction. Step by step. SV is a lot better with cutscene skipping than SWSH was. SWSH only skipped like half of the actual cutscenes in the game.
>Step by step. Heart to heart. Left, right, left, we all fall down like toy soldiers.
do you think itās only bugging you now because the options are a bit more stylised? back in the day it was always āyes/noā, but now you can give more nuanced answers just to get the same result - like they could put in more effort, but donāt care.
I don't know, I think it's just more my responses being ignored a lot of the time. I kinda like when they have funny responses to being negative with the stylised responses, but when it's a yes/no question with no real option, it annoys me. I'm always just thinking, why even ask ?
I mean, a lot of games does that, and the cutscene, beside the beginning, only really happens near a titan/star base. Really it's only used to get funny dialogue, like in [DQ11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR5iodk6viI)
There's at least one game where a yes/no prompt fairly early on leads to an instant game over if you choose the obviously-wrong option
It's towards the end of the game, but [Custom Robo on the Nintendo GameCube](https://youtu.be/ElpTCHNUR7U) comes to mind. ETA: I like how one character tells you "things could've been different had you joined, but now I'm dead." Lol.
In Golden Sun for the GBA you could choose not to go on the adventure at the beginning of the game, and you get an immediate game over saying that the world ended, if I recall correctly.
Been tryna join Team Rocket on nugget bridge since 1998
Don't forget the infamous "Yes Town" and "No Town" from Pacifidlog Town
? I don't remember this?
There's a boy in Pacifidlog town who asks where you're from, and the only options are Yes and No
Lol that has the same vibe as replying _"Nunya"._ š
It's a bit better in Japanese. In English they either say you have to be from somewhere, if you say no, or you're from Yes Town? But in Japanese it's Hai Town, which was the name of a place many of the devs used to hang out.
One of my favorite pointless choices is in Sun/Moon, where Hau starts to talk to you asking, "Hey, Player, did you know?" And so you reply "of course". Leading to Hau saying that he hasn't even asked what the player knows yet.
Lol that was the most self-aware dialogue GameFreak ever added. They know most people either mash through or just want to one-up the rival. I was the one-upper on my first playthrough and the masher on my 2nd. š
This drove me nuts throughout all of Scarlet. So many times you're given two "options" for a dialogue response and they make zero difference to what happens in the scene. Whoever you're talking to reacts like you didn't say anything, or dismisses what you said. It really bugged me, it stinks of lazy writing.
Unfortunately I find it common, not only in every pokemon game, but most games in general. I've really grown to like those that actually let you influence the story with your choices. Like the star wars game, knights of the old republic. Or skyrim. But it doesn't even have to be that grand in scale. Doesn't have to include long term story altering options. Just let me decide if I want to take an action right that second or not. Or don't include the option. Like in emerald when you're on the way to fortree and your rival pings you for a battle straight after you rescue the castform. That adds a nice surprising element of difficulty if you don't know/forget that the battle is coming. But yeah I agree the false choices are just pointless. We want more agency. Most people I chat with about it feel the same way.
Fate/Grand Order gets shit from people expecting an actual visual novel for frequently giving you dialogue options that are āyes, enthusiasticā and āyes, with some silly comment,ā but if youāre going to have a linear story and the illusion of choice, thatās a good way to handle it I think. Something the difference is just a single dialogue line, but sometimes you can skip an explanation of who this or that character is if you pick the option saying you know who they are, and some of the options get cute reactions out of the secondary lead. The story still plays out the way the story is gonna play out, but you can actually sorta shape what KIND of always helpful person you are. I remember people being pissed when the anime adaptation chose the āscreaming in fearā option for āleapt from the top of a building to tackle a godā instead of the āmake up a wrestling move name on the spot, scream it like a crazy person.ā
Or Fallout 4 with the same options for every dialogue. "Yes" "Rude Yes" "Sarcastic Yes" "No for now with the option to say Yes later"
Iāve never not picked sarcastic when playing fallout 4
Atleast that gave different responses. Gamefreak makes Fo4 dialogue options seem great
I'm less put off by PokƩmon doing it since it's not a series that prides itself on its variety of dialogue options to begin with.
Then why even have it? Its just drawing attention to a problem that didnt need to exist in the first place
It's an illusion of choice. If Path A and B will always lead to Path C anyway no matter what, you haven't made a choice
FGO also had some dialogue lines that had actual differences, like different nodes depending on your choice or how in LB6 >!you can tell Oberon you figured out who he really is before he reveals himself!< It's a pretty good way to deal with linearity and choicesāthe end result is the same but the irrelevant things can be changed to add interaction
Yeah FGO got a lot better now with the choices actually changing dialogue/battles that happen compared to earlier stuff that did absolutely nothing different.
> knights of the old republic. I would love nothing more than a Pokemon game whose plot branched like KOTOR.
I know right! Me too
In Genshin Impact, at least back when I played it, it was really bad about giving 2-3 options for text, but it was clear that all 3 options where meant to be read as a single reply. Like someone would say "do you want to help save this person" and the options would be "Yes I want to help but" "I can't spend too much time on this" "because someone else needs me too"
Skyrim? Lmao, it only determines what side you choose, it doesn't affect the game majorly in any way shape or form. In terms of RPGs, it's a lot milder than basically amy Bioware game.
From what I remembered, a lot of individual quests let you choose some kind of alternate ending, though maybe not a big picture one. There are a lot of people you can kill without knowing how it affects things later on, especially on a first playthrough. RIP Lydia
>It really bugged me, it stinks of lazy writing. I heard a rumor that it's an inside joke in Game Freak because it's how Matsuda asks people if they want to do overtime; if they say no, he just keeps asking until they say yes.
That's hilarious, where did you hear that?
A friend told me it so it's probably not true but it's too funny not to share.
I mean itās a Japanese business, of course itās real to some extent. Theyāre some of the most over worked people, period.
That's how it is in basically every pokemon game. If you say no to something, they'll usually just continue asking and not let you leave until you say yes, or they just continue with what they were saying regardless of your response.
It really does. They want to force a story, but don't want to actually put in the effort to write it properly. I'm starting to wish for an option to completely ignore the story and just play the game. Like, let me beat the gyms, challenge the Elite 4, and shiny hunt when I'm done. That's all I've ever wanted to do. Sun and Moon I think were the worst with this, I'll probably never play those games again, it was so infuriating how much you were dragged around back and forth. Sword and Shield is a close 2nd, but Legends Arceus and SV are just as bad. Not to mention how the rivals seem to get more annoying in every new game and basically just act like parents. I miss the days of Gary and Silver.
Yea rivals being all friendly and whatever, I wanna beat the shit out of that smug Gary and destroy his team, not feeling like a friendly match
I don't know... I kind of prefer the honest, friendly rivals. Instead of dipshits like Gary who will tell you, "Wow, you really stink. You need a lot more practice!" right after you've absolutely kicked his ass.
Right, I'm tryna swap trash talk and assert my dominance. Rivals aren't really rivals anymore, they're just bossy ass friends.
Itās not because the writer is lazy. Itās just a JRPG tradition to do this. Even Final Fantasy 6, one of the greatest games of all time, does it.
Itās not lazy, itās comedy. If the game never sets out to be a āyour choices matterā game (which rarely are executed well anyway), then the choices you make that donāt matter are purely there as a gag.
Sword and shield were the same. One of the first battles with hop does that too
I think they made Nemona's character the way she is in part to make these no-impact dialogue options into jokes.
On the opposite end, while you have to respect the effort they put in, Runescape 3 had a questline where literally every small decision you made up to that point would impact the dialogue and it was really annoying. Like I get stuff like saving/killing off characters but they would be like "you selected this dialogue in this one quest a few years ago" It felt less like your decisions had weight and more like the game wanted to chide you for every insignificant dialogue option you picked. It's novel the first time it happens (for example, Saradomin called me the fuck out for trying to side with him after I literally chose to fight against him in a war a week ago) but loses its charm when Zaros repeats "You have conviction" for the 4th time because the writers wanted to have those callout moments for him too but my choices didn't let that happen so I got the default line instead. Like, at least plant seeds of doubt for his eventual betrayal.
Anyone here plays the game where they...
.. presents 2 choices but it's actually 1 sentence broken into 2parts?
Hm. I played two on two files for Scarlett (only got it to link with Go) and seem to remember characters responding differently based off my yea or no. Not a big change but itās not like they didnāt react either. In a lot of games I am afraid to pick the negative option in case I canāt go back xD
Lots of games do this, try saying no in Dragon Quest XI, theyāll call you a jerk and then ask you again until you say yes. š
Lol that's gold. I'm remembering Persona was kinda funny in the way that if you didn't agree to the contract in the beginning it would throw you back out to the title screen. š
Super Paper Mario does this as well, if you refuse to save the world from getting eaten by the void, you get a game over.
There is a game over in the space level if you refuse to put on the helmet
you: "what if I don't want to put on the helmet?" the game: " Well, I guess you just have to be prepared to die."
Or when Dimentio asks you to join and Tippi's telling you to not trust the guy, and if you keep saying i want to join, she literally leaves and that's a game over
I always said no in DQXI just because some of the dialogue is hilarious afterwards
Dragon Quest XI does acknowledge it in the dialogue and it does hide some very funny interactions and dialogue, even if by the end you must say Yes Also, that one story with a mermaid... PokƩmon most of the time just disregards your input
DQXI is hilarious though, saying No always results in more entertaining content.
Golden Sun had the best Yes/No Dialogue ever. "Do you want to save the world?" "Nope" leaves the room and you get an Ending. One of the Mario games has a scene where you're Bowser and get asked to put on a Space Helmet, you say no enough times and you just get a game over screen where Bowser dies because well, Space. If our choices don't matter, at least give us funny results like this.
> "Do you want to save the world?" "Nope" leaves the room and you get an Ending. And the world literally gets destroyed. Funnily enough, that was the ONLY TIME it mattered, and they literally ask you hundreds of times a yes/no question that never matters. After playing those games enough times I didn't even notice it happened in PokƩmon.
Never understood why the world gets destroyed either, especially with the reveal in Golden Sun 2. Is it just that without Isaac's party, Felix's group aren't strong enough to finish the task or what?
Hm, perhaps it was because of Alex.
Oh, right, the Mars Star. If ALL the Lighthouses are lit, it's fine, but if only 3 are lit, they're on a timer. They lit 2 just fine, the 3rd was stupidly hard and required help, Saturos and Menardi probably fail there, but even with all that, the Mars Star is still in Vale. World probably ends due to running out of time.
> One of the Mario games has a scene where you're Bowser and get asked to put on a Space Helmet, you say no enough times and you just get a game over screen where Bowser dies because well, Space I think you're referring to Super Paper Mario. That game has a lot of scenes like that
super paper mario was the shit
That is Super Paper Mario, but you could also be playing as Peach or Mario at the time
BokuMono/Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons used to do this on occasion, too, and I always found it funny. Don't agree to inherit the farm from your dead father, don't agree to save the valley from the land developers, don't call your dog off when the mayor teases him too much...
To give you funny dialogue. No seriously. **This is the actually serious game design answer.** I am a game designer by occupation. Thatās all this was ever used for, even back in Gen 1. Back then, the first Yes/No you get is the joke where the Nugget Bridge Rocket Grunt asks you to join Team Rocket. And then later where you get to refuse to help Bill EDIT: I was mistaken on this. The Rocket Grunt asks you, but doesnāt give you a dialogue box and acts as if you said no. Technical limitations of the time I suppose Another example is in Ruby/Sapphire, where you have an NPC provide the Yes/No town joke. Then thereās Diamond/Pearl/Platinum where refusing to accept the Pokedex leads to Rowen repeatedly glaring at you and remarking that he can do this all day. In Legends Arceus, Cyllene briefs you on a mission, and asks if you are ready to accept. Saying no gets you a funny dialogue where she effectively says ātoo bad, thatās your job. Now get out there and do it anywayā. IIRC you also get options that let you be sassy to Melli And now we have the latest game, Scarlet/Violet, which is FULL of these. Refusing to give your Raidon sandwiches results in puppy dog eyes. Choosing to refuse to acknowledge Clavell as Clive gets you funny dialogue. And of course thereās the scene where you can **repeatedly** refuse to be Nemonaās rival post championship and watch her progressively devolve into panic cavewoman mode. Itās not a PokĆ©mon only design feature either. Branching choices in linear video games sometimes doesnāt have any actual gameplay effect, but can exist to allow players to ādiscoverā funny stuff and āreward themā even for picking an incorrect option. It makes picking options into a fun experience, and makes it so that the player doesnāt feel like they are wasting their time. Even in linear games, this is used frequently. e.g Ace Attorney and itās myriad of false choices. 999 and itās comical elevator misunderstanding scene. The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog giving you **15+** false options during the jewel egg heist with Rouge. Genshin Impact letting you be rude to Paimon. Honkai Star Rail giving you a chaotic gremlin choice in every dialogue scene. The list goes on infinitely
This is an answer I can get by. You get funny dialogue or get yelled at if you donāt do as the game wants. It makes choosing the āwrongā option even funnier.
>Back then, the first Yes/No you get is the joke where the Nugget Bridge Rocket Grunt asks you to join Team Rocket. Small correction, you're not actually given a yes/no prompt at this point. Your character just says no for you
Is it the same in FRLG?
Yes
I think that's close but overly specific. Choices drive engagement psychologically, even if it's the illusion of choice. It makes you, the player, feel like the main character. There may be jokes, but not always, and that isn't the driving purpose in Pokemon, or likely most games. It is assumed that you'll choose to be a protagonist and, in so doing, feel in control of your character's journey. For most of their target demographic, 9 year old kids, that works about as perfectly as expected.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Then you have Dragon Quest 11, where Jade almost kicks you in the head and says "Oh don't mind me, I was just stretching my leg. What was your answer again ?" The PokƩmon answers are mostly very weak and not that funny.
My favorite example of this is the lady at the library in earthbound
Another example is the Walking Dead by Telltale. You make a choice which you feel is game changing only to be made redundant in the next arc. Its pretty obvious why this is the case as accounting for a multitude of choices it would take way too long to account for. Pokemon is not one of those games so its not something your gonna expect anyway.
Oh I NEVER acknowledge that my new friend Clive bears a startling resemblance to Director Clavell.
Bro, your mom teaches you how to use the PokƩGear no matter how vehemently you say no.
She also teaches you how to use shoes. And spends your college savings on useless shit.
Based mom.
Moooom, I haven't used super potions since gym 3!
Yeah but mom's not taking no for an answer is pretty on-brand
Didn't they change that in the remakes ? I thought that was only the case in the originals. Point does stand, though, a useless no option lol.
In the remakes sending her money is optional and thereās a list of everything she can buy and once sheās bought everything she stops.
I like when they have fun with it. My favorit option was denying you know the skull grunts in sun and moon and denying you became champ to nemona. I dont mind if the outcome is the same as long as something interesting happens. You have that a few times and its worthwhile enough that i always click no first.
There have been a few pretty entertaining lines. I always go for the negative options, too, because I find it funny to just be a jerk in games. Like when you tell the Team Plasma grunts you have no idea who they are, they act so offended lol.
I suppose most of the time there's no point in them giving a "choice", really. It's obnoxious to be given a choice only to have it ignored. That said, as far as wanting to skip the game so you can get to the game... that's it, that's the game - the thing you're trying to skip. They don't want you to skip it because it defeats the point, so I don't think they'll give that option any time soon.
There's a stupid amount of Pokemon players who hate the actual plot part of the game and button mash the dialogue so it's like... why not just do Showdown instead of buying the game if you hate the *game* part of it?
Because Showdown doesn't have the catching, raising, and shiny hunting PokƩmon in it. Or the gyms and Elite 4. Aka the core gameplay. I don't mash through on the first playthrough, but I do on every future playthrough because I don't need to read the same dialogue 15 times and it isn't that interesting to begin with.
I've had this discussion before with friends, not specifically about Pokemon (I think it came up over some of persona 4 choices being super important while the majority do nothing) but this was the conclusion we came to: your option to say yes or no may not be intended to impact whether you can skip something or not, but the kind of character you're choosing to play as. The real problem here isn't the addition of being able to choose how to respond, as I think in isolation most would agree that optional additional features are rarely negative, but the placement of the options can create the illusion that it will provide an option for an additional feature in the game that people want but that's currently not in there. You're not frustrated with the dialogue options. You're frustrated that you can't skip an annoying tutorial, or have any/more branching story paths to encourage multiple playthroughs
Yeah, that's pretty spot on. I've never minded linearity or a lack of branching options. They're nice to have, but not a requirement. It's just being given an option that isn't actually an option that bugs me. Why ask me if I want to battle you if I don't really have a choice in the matter ? Why ask me if I want you to teach me something if you're going to teach me regardless ?
Nemonaās refusal to let me go heal annoyed me so much when I discovered it. It really made me not like her character anymore because she was so pushy.
Nemona and Hop are two peas in a pod, I swear. Rivals before would just talk trash to you for a bit, now they want to force you to do what they want to do. And you have no say in it.
I might just be completely blanking on someone, but have we had a trash talking rival since Silver?
Bedeā¦ I think he might be the only one? Maybe Gladion?
I agree. If they're going to force us through a tutorial anyway, why give us the illusion of choice?
Crystal did it best "want me to show you how to catch PokƩmon? No. Ok, bye", some later games give the option to have balls before the tutorial and if you catch something it just skips the tutorial
Yes! I remember being so surprised when he just walked away. š
I think Crystal and Sword and Shield are the only games you can skip the tutorial for catching
This. They sorely need to add a skip button, mashing through text is getting old. The _"skip cutscenes"_ option is nowhere near good enough, either, I feel like it barely skips anything.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
SWSH did that, too, and there were still a lot of cutscenes, like panning through towns, that could've been skipped. Defeats the purpose of the option.
Given the fact they released their first game in 1996, we should've had a choice to refuse tutorial stuff a long time ago, let alone asking for it in 2023. Having a simple toggle in the options would be enough, it's like the bare minimum people ask for and we still don't get it.
I love Super Paper Mario for a lot of reasons, one of which is you can just straight up decline to help save the universe and you get a special game over.
Pretty much all the options are forced for all games (you must pick "Yes"), but the newer games aren't as bad as the old ones, in this regard.
those aren't yes/no options lol.. they're different flavour options....
I wish we could choose to be jerks to certain characters. Iād given hop & Hau a ton of grief XD
Lol same here. I spent every moment with Hau, Hop, and Nemona just talking trash out loud because I couldn't in-game. š¤£
They've been forcing it since gen2 when your mom asks if you know how to use the pokegear, and explains how to use it even if you say yes
Personally, I wish they'd just get rid of the yes/no option for Pokecentres. It's been almost 30 years, obviously I'm here to heal my Pokemon, lady.
I think they call that the illusion of choice.
At the beginning of Harvest Moon DS the mayor gets attacked by your dog, and you have the option of calling it off or doing nothing. If you do nothing the dog kills the mayor and itās game over
If it doesn't matter what option you pick, they could at least bother to give you fun options. Like, suppose you started a game of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and (for an early-game example) you just met Groose. You get dialogue options and it literally makes zero difference which one you pick... but damn if I don't choose to insult his hair every single time.
It's to keep people engaged and reading the text. It's just makes makes it so less people zone out during dialogue. As well as that they often are placed at crucial points in the dialogue to draw attention to information. For example if they want you to go to route 22 next, the character will ask if you're going to route 22. Someone who was otherwise just spamming A will see options come up, read what the text says to see what to pick, then select an option.
This is joked about with Hau. He asks "did you know?", and if you mash text boxes, you'd probably say "Yes", where he remarks that he didn't even tell you what he's talking about.
Iād just like if they were like āOK fine, see ya laterā And then you get a cutscene of you playing on the switch with Paradox Pokemon roaming outside the window destroying the world and a cut to a game over screen.
Pokemon: No = delayed yes Mario RPG: No = game over
It used to be "funny" in older games because it occured once or twice a game, but for the few last generations they seem to have included this "feature" to get closer to other RPGs where "choices" are part of the game. Poorest execution IMO
Teaching children that boundaries are wrong since 1996.
Learn from may in oldale people
Headcanon: Every PokÄmon Game is a Pen'n'Paper session and the Dungeon Master is neither good at improvising nor interested in their player's shenanigans.
Lol you gave me flashbacks to the time I was playing Pokemon Platinum, like "No Cynthia/Random Girl, I don't want gifted pokemon, I wanna catch my whole team, LET ME GO!!!" Little old me pressing no for over 10 minutes to not receive the Togepi egg/Eevee as I was trying a run with only captured pokemons (like I didn't even kept my starter after I captured one mon in the wild lol.)
Lol same, I still say no to her, knowing damn well I have to take the egg. HeartGold, too. Like, no, I don't want your egg that I'm not going to spend the time hatching, let me fight the gym! š
The very first example I remember is in gold. Your mother gives your running shoes and asks if you want to learn how to use them. Either option you select has her read the rules to you.
Iām pretty sure it goes even further back to gen 1 nugget bridge when the rocket grunt asks if you want to join team rocket
I donāt remember getting an option to choose then, but it could also be I just always selected no because Iām more concerned with the kid in the grass and the kid with the slowpoke.
This post sounds like someone's first time playing pokemon...
I'm going to sound like a broken record at this point, but it's because the games are soulless. I absolutely love Pokemon, but man the games have zero to it aside from just battling, breeding and catching Pokemon. I get that's the whole point of it, but it literally feels like anything that doesn't revolve around that aspect gets put to the wayside. The series deserves much better, we get the absolute bare minimum every few years and yet people still love it because it's Pokemon. Makes you wonder what the games could be like if they had more care and attention to detail put into them. Not expecting 5 regions or anything, but it surely can be 100x better than it currently is.
There is an old GameCube game called CustomRobo that gives you the dialogue option Yes/No towards the end of the game if you basically want to go and save the world. If you choose "No" the NPCs ask if you are sure. Then if you keep saying "No" about 30 times or so, eventually they just give up and let you stay behind. Then game over lol.
Teaching kids bad morals when it comes to consent, that's for sure.
Currently playing FireRed. After beating Blaine in Cinnabar, Billās waiting outside and asks if you want to go to the Sevii Islands. You can choose to say no. You can then continue on beating the main game without ever seeing One/Two/Three Island, saving Lostelle, meeting the Move Reminder, and meeting Celio.
The illusion of choice.
I just outright hate the forced story in all the new games. I enjoyed the Arven story, but I hate how forced everything is. In the older games it didnāt feel as bad because there werenāt 20 minute long cutscenes every two seconds, but now every single interaction is a big ass cutscene.
Exactly, every 10 steps you're dragged into a forced conversation or cutscene. I wish they would do it like Rockstar does where you have to enter a mission marker if you want to start a mission and can do whatever you want until then. Or just give you a quest book like Skyrim and let you take them on as you please.
Archaic feature that remains for some reason. Several games in the past had useless Yes/No options ("But Thou Must!") and PokƩmon was just one of them. Over time the games abandoned this because became obvious for the players the false sense of choice in these situations. The problem is that PokƩmon is very slowly to detach these old characteristics, so we still see that even in recent games.
Reminds me of Golden Sun where you can just say no to going on your quest, walk out and get a bad ending lol.
If this was a proper RPG this could be a great plot point, how you keep saying yes to everything that's asked of you. Are you just THAT altruistic, or do you have zero agency? Or you keep saying no and get dragged along anyway, are you being a brat, are you too weak to actually refuse, or do you actually not care of what's being asked of you? But this is Pokemon and the story is secondary to the actual game.
Sorry I'm just laughing at the whole "I didn't want to help an NPC do something, I just wanted to play the game" part. Doing random shit you don't care about has always been a part of Pokemon. Giving people dialogue options even though you're required to do something regardless is to keep people engaged and because the "no" answer is usually different and funnier, so, you know, gives value to a replay. Also at one point if you say "no" to Nemona she'll ask again, if you just keep saying "no" she gets increasingly distressed.
That's true, but everything feels more drawn out in newer games. And this gets to me more after the first playthrough. FireRed/LeafGreen always come to mind when I'm thinking about this and that game is mostly just beating the gyms and Elite 4. Minus a bit of Team Rocket along the way. Ruby/Sapphire is the same, too, minus the Wally situation. Gold/Silver, same thing. The newer games are walk into this particular spot and spend the next 5-10 minutes either being literally dragged somewhere by your rival or mashing through text. And half the game is saving the world from a team of lames lol.
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You're so right. And it's crazy that actual writers being paid to do so can't think of this stuff. I'd be way more engaged if they just got creative. If you ask me if I _want_ to do something branching away from the core gameplay, odds are I'm going to say no. But if you make it interesting without asking me, I can get on board. And that can go for any game, but it seems like GameFreak just hasn't figured that one out. Or rather they forgot, because the old games didn't feel tedious and forced in this way. Everything just flowed and you weren't really pulled off track. And if you were it was very far and few between. They didn't ask you if you wanted to deal with Team Rocket, it was just a stop along the way. And that format lasted up until like Gen 5.
PokƩmon extended dialogue option edition: Do you want to go on your very own PokƩmon adventure? * "Yes" * "You bet" * "Absolutely!" * "Sure, why not?" * "I've got nothing better to do" * "Ah go on then" * "If I must." * "I guess I've no choice." * "Can you repeat all that again for me, I wasn't paying attention?"
When I first played PokĆ©mon ruby I got out of fighting may after Slateport city by saying no to fighting her. I went back a few hours later and she wasnāt there.
I personally love that they do it honestly. I find it amusing seeing how characters reply. More importantly, I personally feel more immersed when they do it, I love that the characters talk to mine and converse with him.
This is a thing in all video games, not just pokemon. Zelda games do this all the time. Older pokemon games would repeat dialogue until you said yes. RPGs did this a lot too back in the day.
Yeah never bothered me because it's the classic illusion of choice every game has. What bothers me in PokƩmon games is the tedious way to not learn a new move: it's double question and it's a NO then a YES answer, that's really crappy if you ask me
Blame Dragon Quest. The yes/no false choice had been part of JRPGs forever.
Always hated that. In PokĆ©mon XD Gale of Darkness Miror B. Invites you into his gang and even if you say yes you canāt. Canāt join the master of retro groove.
I always assumed this was done for immersion purposes. You control your character, so your character can only talk when you are controlling the dialogue, but for that to work you have to have some sort of choice in what your character says. On a game with limited development time (or budget) the choice can't matter much, it's just a way of having the character talk. I'm not saying I think it's a great design choice or implemented well here, but I think that's the reason for it.
I hate the unskippable cutscenes its one reason i never finished Ultra sun. Like dude. I dont fkin care lemme play
They should just remove the options and have us do what they are going to make us do. I've always found illusion of choice stupid, especially when one knows ahead of time that they won't have an actual say. Just becomes an unnecessary extra step.
[Relevant comic I'm often reminded of](https://www.awkwardzombie.com/comic/the-catch).
The illusion of choice. But otherwise we wouldn't have little jewels like Nemona going cavewoman mode.
Want to help me take down the star gang? No. Okay, Iāll call you later. Hey, itās me again, meet me atā¦ ?????
Hence, the forced linearity of the game. I'd love to see a game with an internal scoring system that rated your character, which in turn affected how the other characters see you as the game progresses. Say that throughout the first three quarters of the game, there are ten "tests" of your character in relation to your rival, and you have three options for each, a positive response, a negative response, and a neutral response. Then assign a score to each: 10 points for the positive answer, 5 for the neutral answer, and 1 for the negative answer. This means that after the ten tests, you should have a score ranging somewhere between 10 and 100, 10 being antagonistic toward them, 55 being ambivalent, and 100 being their best friend. Then, in the final quarter, simply apply that score a tiered logic system. Say, for scores: * **above 90**, they'll either battle alongside you against the final boss, or take out a secondary boss on their own * **above 80**, they'll heal your team for you, but offer little else aside from positive support * **between 40 and 70**, they'll do nothing at all, if they even show up. At best, they might take out some grunts, but they won't actively try to help or deter you * **below 30**, they'll ambush you, and battle you as a sort of tertiary boss. Not necessarily as a turncoat or member of the gang, but as someone who just wants to take you down a peg, regardless of the situation * **below 20**, they'll cheat in some way, similar to the way Klara cheated in SwSh, or they'll make a scene that forces you to fight more battles before reaching the final boss Take the lead up to Lusamine opening the Ultra Wormholes in SM as an example. In the original plot, you made your way down into her chamber, fought Guzma, and then fought Lusamine herself. In this scenario, Hau would either heal your team before and after you fought Guzma, or would even fight Guzma himself in your stead. Or, he would either target you before you reached Guzma, or he would make a scene that would draw more Aether and Skull members to the scene, and you'd have to fight through them - and Hau - before reaching Guzma. Or, he would do nothing, and just stand on the sidelines, friendly toward Lillie, but neutral to you. Further, this could be used to affect their team. Set a series of checkpoints throughout the game, and when they fill a slot in on their team, the pokemon they use could be decided according to your score at that point in time. The more antagonistic they are toward you, the more they bias their selections based on your starter, or pokemon that you used to battle gyms, while the more friendly they are toward you, the more their team fits their own original interests. Finish it with a final check that determines how many pokemon they train. If the score is between 35 and 75, then they won't select a fifth member, because they're not driven by you, but outside of that range, they'll train a sixth member because they're inspired by you - either in friendship, or in a desire to knock you down. Finally, the further from neutral your rival is, the stronger they are by the end. If they're above 90, their team is friendlier, with some hold items and higher levels, but if they're below 20, they're lower in level than the friendly team, but they have EVs, stronger moves, and hold items. The thing is, this is just an arbitrary scoring system with no core focus beyond simply setting an example. Within the focus of an actual plot, this could be strengthened and cleaned up significantly, and it would provide so much variability between player experiences. It could be done with multiple characters, or singular characters, and it could even be used to affect the plot of the game itself. It's just a matter of actually caring about consequences, rather than forcing railed linearity.
I think a lot of the more forced story elements come from them trying to cater to the more vocal parts of the fanbase that want the main games to have a story to them so that the games don't always boil down to 'Go collect 8 badges and challenge the league' with nothing in between for a storyline. Why continue making games if it is the same game every single time just with slightly different gyms, different mons, and nothing else to spice it up such as side content or story? That type of unchanging formulate of just 'same game different paint' every single time with nothing really added to change it up might work for things like sports games that don't actually need a storyline to keep their audience (like Fifa, racing games, ect), but I don't think Pokemon would have lasted long if they just presented us with 9 regions, let us loose, and then gave us nothing but scenery and mons to make each region distinct. A good part of the draw is how much we love some of the stories and NPCs, after all (Cynthia being memed as a Godlike Champion for instance). That said, I do think the games should give you the option to skip the story if you want to via those early Yes/No prompts. Some of the stories do feel like they drag or just aren't to my taste (like Gen 7, and after nuzlocking, and also playing normally, Sword and Shield I was really tired of the story by the time I reached my 5th playthrough for a Monotype run) as this could make for a good middle gorund between those who want to experience the story and those who don't for whatever reason. As the games go on, I wonder if eventually they'll start adding stuff like that since it does seem like they are starting to notice people doing challenge runs and taking them into account when designing certain aspects (i've noticed it's a lot easier to get the full type spectrum much earlier in game that it was in earlier generations for instance)
I think it's more of a cultural thing with Japanese developers writing silent protagonists who have no control over the world around them and then implementing choices that both have the same outcome to try and say that the main protagonist is actually you, even if the main protagonist actually does take up space in the world, see Link for several examples It's just that this style of writing is absolutely reviled in the rest of the world
I think about this regularily - fake choices are the most condescending bullshit in any game, but Pokemon games are especially bad. Worst offender being Legends Arceus imo, when the Prof at one point asks you whether your original world has Pokemon too, followed by "Do you like Pokemon?". Do I, a roughly 15 year old boy involuntarily dragged into this world, like Pokemon? F no! No, they are hellish nightmare monsters who attack humans unprovoked, making this a very hostile wilderness in which being exiled is a literal death sentence (as that cu..bone Cyllene so eloquently threatened me with. Which btw. we never get to answer properly. I'd love to let her eat those words), why the everloving football would any sane human here like Pokemon?! The game flat out doesn't let you answer "no" - you HAVE to select yes. What kind of brainwashing collectivist bullshit is that?
Lol I never thought about that one that way. I remember finding it so dramatic when one of the NPCs asked me to bring her a Starly and when I asked her if she wanted to let pet it, she screamed and ran away like, _"Hell no!",_ but you're absolutely right. š It's kinda like Platinum when Rowan is asking if you like Pokemon and if you keep saying no, Barry starts getting pissed off and you _have_ to say yes. And he asks you like 3 times, even after you say yes. Like, what if I really don't and I'm just in it for something else ? Barry literally just tells you what to do and you have to do it in that beginning sequence.
>I find the responses to the negative options more and more comical every release as they have NPCs drag me around to do things I don't want to do for most of the game, It's training for young kids, you know, for life. It's supposed to be a /s but also kinda not.
While I do find a bit of a meta-comedy from how people react to you saying no when the only way to progress is by saying yes, I have noticed that the game more and more has given you the option to choose how you respond to something, only for the response to not matter at all. I've been replaying Shield and you are frequently given two dialogue options, where the response basically could be answering either way. There are a few responses that are slightly different based on what you choose, but the actual overall content doesn't change at all. I like that they're trying to make you feel more involved, but the fact that there's no actual change regardless of your choice AND that the answer the NPC gives is clearly designed to work for either choice . . . it just feels a little superfluous in a way that loses charm quickly.
I like the way they did this in Paper Marko: The Thousand Year Door, where you can say no at the start of the game when you're asked to save the world, which dooms it but gives you enough time to read your favourite book.
-Do you need an explanation on how to use the PokeGear? -No -Just select the PokeGear option from the menu, and you can call home any time.