>>57183148Yes, that was also me.
Some of my absolute favorite bit of Gamufreaku worldbuilding comes from X&Y. It is genuinely some of the most amazing, complex, and multifaceted lore in a series that is quietly a masterclass in DEEPEST LORE... and it's all conveyed with some of the absolute worst exposition I've ever seen in any game or genre. I think I may genuinely be the only (still living) person on this planet who actually gets what they were going for and gives a yellow rat's ass.
But let's give an example of them absolutely nailing it.
On Route 16, at the conclusion of the Kalos midgame, we are introduced to Phantump: the souls of children who died while wandering lost in the forest and became reborn within rotting tree stumps. Life, death, renewal--X, Y & Z. One quick trade evolution later, and you'll have early access to Trevenant, a Pokemon that is kind to Pokemon living in its territory but uses its gnarled roots to control trees and trap people in forests forever. This is how Trevenant reproduce in the wild.
And it's not just flavor text.
At the very end of the game as you're searching for the 8th Gym Leader, you enter Route 20, the standard pick-a-path maze we've seen in Lost Cave and Turnback Cave before it. With a twist: as you move through the forest, you'll come across the same landmarks over and over despite taking different paths to get there. Wander around long enough, and you'll be jumped by wild Trevenant. Sometimes alone, sometimes in a pack of five. If you haven't clued into it yet, you're not moving through the forest--the forest is being moved around you, keeping you away from the enclave of abused Pokemon who escaped from bad humans.
A Pokemon horror story, told in its entirety without a single line of dialogue calling attention to it, Gamufreaku just leaves it for their audience to either piece it together or not.
And I think that's fucking rad.
