Thursday, September 7, 2023

Paldea in Pokémon Go: Catching Up, Skipping Out

A bit of a breakthrough has occurred for Pokémon Go. In the past couple of days, Trainers might have noticed a certain medley of starter Pokémon species that hail from a region that is representative of the number 9; it's the happening I noted at the beginning of this new season. No, that's not an illusion; those are indeed Pokémon from the Paldea region and therefore of the ninth generation. They're part of an event, with details to be explained later on in the month as usual. But what is important right now is that the happening, also as I've noted, is a bold move that turns heads because of what it means for the approach of including Pokémon in the game.

That ties in to the matters of "catching up" and "skipping out" as indicated in the title of this post, and it's wise to start explaining with the first of these. The inclusion of the Pokémon species as above means that Pokémon Go has caught up with the current generation, notwithstanding the gaps from previous generations that still need to be filled in, including the one for the second matter to be explained shortly. That's a significant thing, because it means the game can become current if it needs to be; eventually, there might be a point where the game only needs to be updated with mostly new Pokémon rather than old ones, and that is an interesting prospect, to have a currently competitive Pokémon game (roughly) on par with the main series games in content and scope.

But then there is the matter of "skipping out". With the above, it becomes clear that the starter Pokémon of the previous (eighth) generation has been skipped, which is the first - and possibly the only - time this will happen, since it seems a trivial matter to add them whenever it becomes appropriate to do so. At that point, the scenario of roughly equal content and scope will likely be on the horizon and the matter of "skipping out" becomes moot. For a game that has had all previous starters in sequence, it seems like such a big deal, but in the end, it's just an optional formality. Pokémon Shuffle and Unite skip starter Pokémon around due to them needing adaptive content more than sequential content, though in more recent times, Pokémon Go may be argued to be needing this as well.

In any case, it seems that the second matter has been blown out of proportion and the first matter is the only one that matters. The addition of any new Pokémon to Pokémon Go is certainly appreciable, especially with the above (the starters from Paldea) being some of the more recent ones known to Pokémon in general. Though the addition does seem "out-of-band" given how things have always been in Pokémon Go, that is much less of a concern compared to the concern of Trainers having something to experiment and battle with. That too is rightfully not an illusion, and it's the reality of things in the game, no matter how old or new the Pokémon are.

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