Thoughts On: Sun & Moon's Potential

by Brandon Sultana

May 1, 2016

I’ve made it no secret that overall, I am lukewarm on Generation 6 as a whole. While the two games in this generation, XY and ORAS are by no means bad, both left quite a bit to be desired. However, with Sun and Moon ushering a new Generation by the end of the year, and with so little knowledge about these titles, I thought I’d give a couple reasons as to why I have a LOT of faith in these games.

Reused Assets + Not Rushed

With the lack of any gameplay (at the time of writing), we can’t, with 100% certainty, say this game will reuse assets, but I believe it is a pretty strong possibility. Pokemon is no stranger from using tweaked versions of previous engines for new generations, doing so in Gens 2 and 5. Additionally, other games on the 3DS have recently been doing the same, such as Kirby: Planet Robobot, Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam, Fire Emblem: Fates, and more. Reusing the engine and models allows GameFreak to focus on the new stuff. I’ve always been an advocate of the theory that XY were rushed games, and I think a big reason for that was that a huge chunk of development time was spent crafting the engine, creating 3D Models and animations for all the Pokemon, making cinematics for all the moves, etc. The leap to 3D was likely a massive hurdle, and why I believe it was pulled off exceptionally well, with the exception of minor frame-rate issues, I believe the relatively short development time made it difficult to truly flesh out the games outside of that. With the engine, models, and more likely being ported over (with minor alterations) from Gen 6, GameFreak has plenty of time to focus on the new stuff. We know these games have been in development for a long time, as even XY contained teases about the existence of Gen 7. With this in mind, I thoroughly believe that these games will be incredibly fleshed out and well thought out.

Not Overhyped

While Generation 6 was probably my least favorite to play overall, it was probably my favorite to discuss. Both XY and ORAS gave us mountains of details that made the hype period for the game incredible. Each month gave us new Pokemon, Megas, features, and more. While this certainly made the hype for these games sky high, when the final products were released, there wasn’t much to discover. For XY, there was an incredibly tiny amount of new Pokemon in the game that hadn’t already been revealed, and all of the features and most of the characters had also been shown off. Combined with early leaks that blew everything else open, and there wasn’t any sort of discovery to be had. ORAS were remakes, so there already wasn’t much to discover, and every single new Mega introduced in that game was revealed in the pre-release build up.

Sun and Moon looks like it’ll change things, going with a more conservative approach. The game was revealed two months ago, and we still know absolutely nothing except for the most important thing: The game will be playable in Chinese!!!1. While it isn’t impossible that they could still show us a bit too much in the months coming up, I believe GameFreak are consciously trying to keep their cards closer to their chest this time, and while it might make the buildup tougher and more frustrating, it may ultimately lead to a more gratifying release.

Competition

Recently, GameFreak has had very little competition when it comes to Pokemon. Sure in the early days there were many competitors, but Pokemon pretty convincingly won that battle, and ever since around Gen 3, Pokemon has been king… until now. In Japan, Pokemon has a competitor for the first time in a long time, being Yo-kai Watch. This franchise has stormed Japan, and as it stands right now, is actually beating Pokemon. While I don’t think this presents a long term issue, since Yo-Kai Watch is already starting to slow down in Japan thanks to an overabundence of releases, while also bombing in terms of an international release, the short term does present concern. With this new competition, perhaps GameFreak will be heavily motivated to make a game that blows everything else out of the water. This idea could end up being a long shot, but I think it holds some merit.

I know I haven’t been very kind to Gen 6 throughout this article. Keep in mind that I truly don’t hate these games. I just… like other entries in the series more… far more. Gen 6 felt like a stepping stone, a test, a proof of concept of what 3D Pokemon could be. And I think it did its job very well. And honestly, I’ve probably logged more time in Gen 6 than any other Gen, between alternate playthroughs, WonderTrading, IV Breeding, and Shiny Hunting. There is a lot of content here for people who enjoy that kind of stuff, but I feel the main story of these games, particularly XY were lacking. I’m going to try and tone back my hype for Sun and Moon, not because I have no faith, but so that I don’t let the hype machine shoot my expectations higher than the games could ever hope to reach.