The Blue City

On World Building and why SWSH sucks

Hey guys,

It's been a while but I honestly have been dying. Like legitimately. The burnout and depression have hit me like a freight train this semester and it's honestly been kinda hard just to function. Like I put out work earlier this semester (surprise surprise) but it was a story that I was gonna go nuts holding in my head so I just kinda had to expel it. That story is Dark Side of the Moon, by the way. I was really proud of it, especially because I finally managed to write something decent about Sinnoh (since Linkage just doesn't cut it in my opinion) and I've been experimenting with trying to make my characters more complex so I think it came out pretty well.

But this post isn't about that. This post about the new diamond and peal remakes that came out. Those things have been so, so enjoyable to play and have honestly kind of restored my sanity after I kinda lost it. Enough so that even just seeing some of my favorite locations has made me kinda cry with nostalgia.

Nostalgia aside though, for purposes of improving my writing skills I tried to take a good, earnest look to see if there was any merit to why I love Sinnoh so much. And for some reason, while I was kinda reflecting on it and thinking about my fascination in the first place, I found myself comparing the game to sword and shield. My mind would be like "well SWSH definitely did this where Sinnoh didn't" or "SWSH didn't do this while Sinnoh did". Which then caused me to ask myself — why? Why have I been comparing these two so vigorously? More on that later.

In addition to all of that  a recent visit to an anime convention has had me kinda reinvigorating some of the flames I feel towards the Avatar the Last Airbender franchise. I've been trying to plan and write a redemption arc and it just so happens Zuko is one of the most well mentioned redemption arcs out there. I've spent a while analyzing the franchise as a whole to get an understanding of what works, what doesn't work which has essentially taken me to the topic of worldbuilding. More too on this later.

Lastly, I recently happened to stumble upon a great video about Mauville/Sea Mauville/New Mauville in ORAS. I honestly was kinda hooked and fascinated and went down a small rabbit hole into the lore behind these things which is really, really cool. If you haven't — you should either visit these locations and look around and talk to the NPCs or watch some videos. ORAS in general was a very well done game.

So, then, what do these three things have to do with each other?

After watching all that stuff about the Mauville stuff for ORAS and playing BDSP I realized — SWSH has bad worldbuilding. And because it has bad worldbuilding, it kind of sucks as a game, especially a Pokémon game.

Now, at the end of this I'll give you some other reasons about things that don't help SWSH's case, but honestly I think (at least for me) this a big reason that SWSH was bad. Yes, Alola and Kalos had scaled down difficulty, but they were still semi-enjoyable because of the worldbuilding within. More on this later.

So why is worldbuilding so important?

At its core, Pokémon is a game about exploration and mystery.

I mean, it might seem counterintuitive at first, considering the point of the game is to go get your 8 badges and win the league, but if you look beneath the surface you'll understand. The 8 badges are a mechanic to get you to travel, and the league is really kind of a means to an end and a way to show you that you've grown throughout it all. But really, Pokémon is all about the pokedex, because you've gotta catch em all, right? And, in order to catch em all you have to travel, talk to people, and clear the obstacles in your way. It's about a journey. Not the destination. Because remember, each and every Pokémon you've ever seen or caught was brand new to you at one point. And I'm sure there are memories you have where you were fascinated with the Pokémon you caught and raised and wanted to know more about them.