Why did Pokemon shift away from being an adventure and more towards

>>32435969
During gen 4 Japanese parents complained that the games were were to convoluted for children, and so gamefreak responded by making Pokemon games more linear.

I know of at least one RPG that has a fairly linear plot progression and no one ever complains about it because the story is that good. Pokemon's problem is that the story was shit from the get go.

>>32435969
I never liked Kanto and Johto exactly because of this. I don't want a game where everything that happens in the story is up to chance. I want s proper story where it makes sense to go from A to B to C and so on. Even if it's not linear and you can go from A to C to F to B. I just don't want the story to be 100% "you just happened to be in the right place at the right time" like in Gen 1 and Gen 2. And to some extent Gen 3.

>>32435969
Why do people act like thid shit even matters? Who fucking cares if the story progresses linearly when you after the league still have a third to a half region left to explore on your own. And it's not like linearity destroys exploration. You can have a feeling of exploration even if the game is linear. It all comes down to level design.

>>32439040
Too bad they also took a big fat dump on level design

>>32439040
>after the league you still have a third to half a region left to explore on your own

This is only the case in Sinnoh and Unova, and it's not even a third in those. Kanto has one dungeon, Johto has nothing, Hoenn has one dungeon and the boat, Kalos has one new town, and Alola has the last bit of Poni Island.

>>32435969
>exiting meteor falls on the rustburo end
>not heading back to kickass fallabor town
Pretty gay, OP.

>>32435969
Do we have an updated version of this image with the Alola islands included?

Also,
>Going to Cinnabar via Fuchsia

File: 1485040467761.jpg (174KB, 1229x1031px) Image search: [Google]

174KB, 1229x1031px

>>32435969
Because people wanted to something to fucking happen. It's go in one town, win badge, move on for the first 2 Gens. Nothing happens. That's why Blue being a Champion or Red being the final boss are seen as such great moments. Because something happened for once in those otherwise empty games.
You called that "adventure". I would call that more of an uneventful walk in a park. The new games feel a lot more like an adventure, even if they do go a bit overboard with cutscenes.

>>32439301
An uneventful walk through the park is a better adventure than hours of shitty shounen anime plot.

>>32439315
For you. Not everyone has a taste as shit as yours. Including GF, who changed that.

>>32439319
I dunno about you, but I'd rather go on a stroll a new park I've never been to before than watch a bad TV show, and I'd certainly not want to watch the bad TV show while walking through the park.

I've never felt the linearity was ever an actual issue, since the games have always been as such to begin with and obstacles has always been related to plot one way or another.. What does bother me is how many cutscenes there are like in Gen 7 and to a lesser extent, Gen 6 and partially Gen 5. You can have a linear as fuck game and still have it feel like an adventure.

>>32439301
/thread

>>32439326
Too bad for you, then. If given a choice between walking in a wasteland for 12 hours, or having that wasteland come to life and be full of all kinds of things, most would pick the latter.
Even in this park analogy, in one case you're walking through a park for hours all alone with nothing happening, and in other there's a lot of others joining you to with a lot of nice breaks along the way. Latter still sounds more fun.

>>32439335
I'm not going to complain about the amount of cutscenes myself, as I enjoyed most, if not all of them, but I will admit SM went quite overboard with it. Especially in the beginning and the end. It was fun to watch, but if you don't want to watch it, you're kind of stuck for about half an hour there.

>>32435969
>Then gen 5 set the standard of having a region where you can only go forwards or backwards
Every single region in your pic has a single unbroken line to mark your progress. Every single one of them have you go on a set linear route, some just hide it.

File: 1489099697671.png (39KB, 159x163px) Image search: [Google]

39KB, 159x163px

>>32435969
Wish the cutscenes were skippable. SM will probably be the only games I never restart due to that alone.

>>32435969
OP you know that every region in your pic is always one straight line, the difference is that in gen 1-4 you backtrack and the others you don't?

>>32439301
>It's go in one town, win badge, move on for the first 2 Gens

The games are still this. Exist now there are NPCs railroading you at every fucking corner and you're told everything. It doesn't add anything meaningful. It's possible to tell a story through gameplay instead of a NPC dumping text on you or with the dumb cutscenes they littered in SM.

>>32439351
>>32439378
honestly this. I tried to spend as much time in a single route/area as possible just because I didn't want to progress and have to play dialogue simulator for 10 more minutes.
>you can just press A the whole time and skip it all! you don't have to read it!
You kind of do have to read it if it's your first play through the game. The cut scenes and dialogue alone are the reason I haven't begun my Pokemon Moon yet. It's fucking atrocious.

>>32435969
I'd agree with you if it really were true for the early gens, but in all the games you're still very limited with what you can do and where you can go. You can't stray very far from the prescribed path in any of them save for a few optional side areas, there's just no annoying rotom dex reminding you where to go to progress the story before Alola. You never could just go out and explore a new area without fulfilling the required story task. I'd love it if they cut that shit out but we're never getting an open world pokemon game.

Non-linearity is just an illusion

>>32435969
Linear region design is probably the best option for a game like Pokemon that has set levels.

In WRPGs, the enemies usually change their levels to match yours, so that they're always somewhat of a threat no matter how far into the game you've progressed. That's why free-roaming and a non-linear story work so well in WRPGs. In games like Pokemon it's different. You go through a cave, and once you've exited it the mons inside are no longer a threat. They're just an annoyance. A linear stoey for Pokemon works because the devs can make it so (for the most part) the mons in a given area are always somewhat of a threat to you.

Games nowadays is just a race to the finish, where you then read min/max guides and finally play the game with all doors open.

>>32439373
The thing is that backtracking in the older games are usually handled in a way that you can explore a new route while you reach an old destination. Hoenn in particular is a good example of it since it had quite a few shortcuts between Western Hoenn and Central Hoenn. When you have to go back to Mt Chimney after visiting Meteor Falls, you can take Rusturf Tunnel. When you beat Norman and have to head to Fortree, you can either take the shortcut above Oldale or explore the Sea Route that goes via Dewford (which you couldn't do previously since you didn't have Surf). When you have to fly back to Slateport to watch Team Aqua/Magma steal the ship, you can either just fly straight there or ride the currents near Pacifidlog.

It's not like they needed to do this, they could have easily just placed the towns in a straight line. But making a connected world means that it feels like more of a real place and it makes it feel like you're actually exploring it rather than just going from one place to the other. It is an illusion but its effective.

>>32440622
There's a difference between linear progression and linear region design. I agree that Pokemon should continue to have linear progression but I still feel that the region's layout should feel more connected like the older games.

>>32439301
You don't need to be the chosen one while being bombarded with dialogue from shitty characters to be on an adventure. The older games had a sense of adventure despite having a much less intrusive story. The entire point of Pokemon is that you're going on your own adventure to explore the region with your team of Pokemon. It was never about stopping the evil team, that was just something that got in the way and had to be dealt with. It's clear that Game Freak can't write a good story to save their life, so they should focus on telling a simpler story that's more interactive rather than just dumping exposition on the player at every corner.

>>32439220
>johto has nothing
except for about the whole of kanto

>>32435969
Nevermind the plot railroading the whole game into one fixed route, I miss the urban adventure vibe they had. Hoenn was the beginning of the end with the bullshit generic JRPG biomes and meaningless gimmick locales. Suddenly everything region needed a fucking desert and its own set of copy paste elemental zelda temple bullshit

>>32441774
True, but if a game was just Johto, no fancy second region, then it would be boooringgg.

>>32435969
>tfw /vp/ is finally figuring it out
Shit and Poo really were the final nail in the coffin for the series if it made you guys finally realize that Nu-Pokemon is irredeemable shit
>worst story
>worst characters
>worst selection of Pokemon
>worst music
>no postgame
>silky smooth 10fps
Gen 7 was a flop.

File: generic alola route.png (21KB, 925x1199px) Image search: [Google]

21KB, 925x1199px

>>32435969
I made this out of memory. How accurate did I get it?

>>32435969
Gamefreak thinks they are expert story tellers even though the story is the last thing that people play Pokemon for.