GameFreak! A HIDDEN Ending? | Pokemon Scarlet and Violet | SPOILERCAST ft.  

Always a downright pleasure 💙 so excited for the epilogue! I'm almost done tying up all the loose ends from the base game and DLC! (Imagine drayton thinking emoji)

TASTE. He was so refreshing haha. Lacey is great too, especially with how she put the rich man in his place at the beginning of the dlc, but Drayton felt like such a breath of fresh air with his calm, laid back demeanor where he cared about all the right things and brushed off all the right things

I totally get that! I literally couldn't play the game before the memory leak got fixed. And while I'm still sad about many of the PLA QOL improvements being missing, I'm still very happy with this game from a traditional RPG standpoint. Here's to hoping the next games cook a little longer!

This was one of the most memorable elite 4 in Pokemon history for me. If not THE most memorable actually

Drayton doesn't use just dragons, he has a Sceptile

You're too too kind 🥰 So glad we agree on so much! And yes we are friends no matter the distance!

THANK YOU for clearing this up for me!

Happy new year, Marina!!! Let's make this an AMAZING year!

Happy new year! We're gonna dominate this year AT ALL COSTS! Let's go! *chants in Bayonetta*

I honestly very much am too. Waiting for the memory leak to be fixed was the equivalent to me waiting on a new Pokemon game anyways lmao. Just extra long for me compared to most people who just played it with the memory leak issues 😆 it was such an unplayable mess for me before that but gosh the game behind that barrier was SO GOOD! Now it's going down as one of my favorites in the series! S Tier for sure

That we WILL! Conquering and communing over Pokemon 😆

Couldn't word it much better than you did! I'm very happy with their recent work and I hope we have more quality to come 😁 this is def in my top 5 as well!

I totally get your points. Personally I think SV really is one of the first (alongside maybe Legends Arceus) games where your protagonist really is a daring hero. We actively choose to tackle the challenges the game throws at us (3 treasure stories plus the area zero and 2 dlc's). On the point of us lying to Keiran at one point during the story (one which I agree with you was lame how they gave us no choice) I think they wanted to show that your character also makes mistakes (while, admittedly, creating a plot device for Keiran to start changing towards us) and that it's about how we deal with our mistakes afterwards. Regardless, I can see both sides to all of this and I'm not really sure either side wins in an argument (though perhaps I can be convinced otherwise. Who knows)

@@johtojonny There's another point I would say I disagree with, we do not choose to tackle these challenges when it's an intrinsic part of progressing the game any more than in any previous title. Any video game comes with agency as part of the experience, a player could tackle the challenges the game puts in front of them, or they could run around fighting wild Pokemon on route 1 for 30 years. The game explicitly tells you that these are specific objectives that need to be done to progress the video game. Even if you can choose the order in which to do them it is still a binary choice of whether or not to engage with them in the first place, same as in a linear game, especially considering the lack of meaningful side content to be doing instead which is essentially just raids or picnics. It's not like something like Minecraft where the player can choose to have fun living a comfortable easygoing life in the overworld, or trek into other dimensions and face down greater challenges, there's plenty of players who do both, like I have the most fun doing the former. Scarlet/Violet I doubt there's going to be all that many players who choose not to engage with the main objectives, because raids, picnics, and Pokemon catching are enough for them (plus the main game locks pokemon listening to you behind gym badges and koraidon abilities behind arven's questline, so it's not like the game really gives you much of a choice to not engage with it). But that's what brings us into another point of that, which is "Game Essence". Masahiro Sakurai defines Game Essence as "the fun of taking risks to gain rewards". This is something that Scarlet/Violet doesn't really have all that much, risk taking for greater rewards that is, and in the instances it does the rewards are no different than tackling an easier challenge at this point (ie. if you defeat the 8th gym as your first gym, congratulations, Pokemon of up to level 25 will now obey you, or if you take a risk and manage to catch a super high level Pokemon, the thing won't listen to you until you've collected enough badges where if you caught the same Pokemon now it wouldn't even be considered an early underlevelled risk to go for). The story objectives even in something completely linear like the Scarlet/Violet DLC come with no real risk, it's not like Legends for example where trekking into dangerous territory can see you attacked and losing your satchel. Sure the game may tell us "it's a dangerous place for the player to go to", but we're not going to believe them unless there's some degree of ludonarrative harmony, and parallel between the gameplay and the story; the game tells us it's dangerous, so it's the role of the designers to create some level of genuine risk here, and ideally some reward as an incentive for players to take that risk Take for example some other level based RPGs, Assassin's Creed Origins I played last year and Odyssey I just started playing 3 days ago. The games have very lucrative rewards for levelling up, amazing skills to unlock on a skill tree that are super fun to use (ie. a kick I had to get ASAP in Odyssey I've been using to kick all the guards off cliffs that makes me laugh so much to use). You can stick in areas the game expects you to be in and gain an average amount of exp for progress, OR you can trek into insanely high level areas where things will probably one shot you, and where it's going to be super hard to complete objectives, but if you do it you get a butt ton of exp, more spicy skills, and become ever stronger. Or take the main story objectives, they'll often be presented at a recommended level 2-3 levels above you if you keep tunnel visioned to them, as the game expects you to be doing other activities to gain exp alongside the main story, and you could complete them and be safer in the main story, or you could just do the story mission anyway and be presented with a much harder challenge, but gain way more exp than any quests around your level would give and therefore become stronger faster and unlock those game changing skills, and now those quests you saved for later are even easier because of it. It's a push and pull relationship, the fun of balancing risk and reward; game essence. Take Minecraft as another example. The game begins with risk, you need to figure out some form of shelter and/or weaponry and/or food if you don't want to fall to the creatures of the night. Eventually you establish a base you make safe; risk is low. But if you want better tools to progress you now need to incur risk again by starting to mine and venture out into the world to acquire new resources. Some items are going to be exclusive to the Nether and End; you need to incur a risk by leaving the safety of your home to venture into them and acquire these resources. You could incur a big risk by just gunning it as you are for reward in getting these new resources early if you pull it off, or you could reduce your risk first by mining and crafting proper armor and weapons, and farming a reliable source of food, which plays into strategy: balancing risks in pursuit of rewards. By engaging in these other activities to reduce risk this is in and of itself a fulfilling experience, working towards an awesome new armor set, some spicy enchanted weapons, establishing dedicated facilities like farms that really capture your decision making and progress, AKA your agency, in a meaningful way. Assassin's Creed, taking the time to become stronger is fulfilling because of the skills you unlock with it that change the way you can engage with the game itself. Elden Ring, I struggled against Godrick for 3 hours before beating him. My little cousin on the other hand incurred a greater risk earlier by trekking into a high level area to unlock a spicy new summon, for the reward of less risk later by beating Godrick with it in minutes, an excellent use of strategy and game essence. Pokemon you level up to reduce risk; your stats went up, it's not really as fulfilling. Closest equivalent to some of those other examples may be sometimes getting a new move if it's one you actually want to use. Scarlet/Violet can still have game essence on the small scale, ie. in a battle taking a risk on whether your opponent outspeeds you or not and make battle decisions based on those risks, but on the large scale how the game itself is designed; it lacks this game essence. There not much risk to taking on the linear objectives the DLC expects you to, apart from maybe losing some of your time by losing battles like against BB elite four members, and if you strategize by grinding to reduce risk that's not really all that fulfilling. The fun of games is very seldomly grinding, unlike something like Assassin's Creed with countless side objectives that are their own challenges, or Elden Ring trekking into areas you risk getting 1 or 2 shot because there's something that'll really change how you play here if you can just snag it; these are fulfilling challenges to get stronger instead of the monotonous auto-battle spam Scarlet/Violet promotes. In Scarlet/Violet main game even when you incur a greater risk by tackling higher level challenges early you either reap the same reward as an easier challenge, or you receive an essentially unusable reward until you're strong enough that repeating it would no longer incur risk, it's the complete opposite of game essence and one of the core problems I have with this video game as a whole, and why even regardless of any of the countless technical issues I would say while it may be an interesting Pokemon game at times, that Scarlet/Violet is not a good video game Whether in story or gameplay, there is no real tangible cost to your agency of taking on the challenges ahead of you, there is no "burden" to be the one who faces it down as every adult around the player forces this tiny child to take on all these situations. The only real cost is to others, such as Arven losing his robodad, or Kieran feeling like his chance to shine was taken from him and going full edgelord. There's never any protagonist consequences in the story, and no risk of there being any. Kieran's right to be pissed. To offer an example of how gameplay risk and reward can be factored into story one can look at Bandai Namco's Tales of Arise. The main character Alphen wields a normal sword, and the blazing sword which only he can wield because it causes insane pain to the wielder and he has a pain inhibitor. In gameplay, we can use the blazing sword at the end of a combo, at the cost of some of our health, with the more health we consume with it the more blazing sword damage we do to our foe, even putting us down to 1HP if we want and being oneshottable to deal big damage to our foe; ultimate risk for massive reward. In the story he eventually is freed of his pain inhibitor, so he now fully feels the damage the sword does to him. And yet he treks on doing it anyway, because despite the pain he knows he can use its power to build a better future. That's a burden of being the hero, something we as the player feel whenever we call on the swords power and reduce our own health in the process. A character like the player of Scarlet/Violet shoulders no burden, they always just smile, nod, and do what all the adults tell them they need to, and I feel like saying they do shoulder this massive burden and pain discredits the storytelling of characters who actually do (ie. one of the examples that was used as equivalent, Frodo)

I guess if you rush through it you might be able to beat it in just a couple hours but I took my time to enjoy it lol and still am not 100% finished

@JohtoJonnyYT the actual story takes an hour or so. If you're not trying to explore or anything. There's only 6 mandatory battles that take more than 20 seconds and even then they only each take a few minutes lol