>>55492286I watched some YouTube video on a hypothetical pokemon game to integrate every region and how it would work a while back. I recently decided to play Pokemon Fire Ash and realized that his point was valid. There’s no way to do a linear story that long in a level curve that doesn’t have random level 300 pokemon everywhere or reset every region. That’s why Fire Ash is unplayable.
So, I was theorycrafting a game based around that one video I saw. Here’s the pitch.
>Game is set several years after all the mainline games from gens 1-8 (maybe the game would include gen 9 pokemon but including the region from gen 9 is too much of a headache)>Game takes place in a new region at the start>Player takes on the league at a time where all the gym leaders had to leave the region to go hunt down members of an evil team who all fled the region after doing something>Player adventures in the main region for a bit before hearing that all the leaders are gone and that they either have to wait (they won’t) or go find the gym leaders where they went>From here the gameplay loop kicks in. They player will adventure at the hub region for a bit, reach the town the next gym leader is suppose to be in, learn about where they are now, and catch a ride to the region they ran off too so they can challenge them after helping them with something there >The pseudo nonlinearity is that you can challenge the gyms in each region separately from the main story and each region has their own story involving the evil team and what they’re doing Here’s the main mechanical considerations
>The game has hard level caps that are only lifted by beating the main region’s gym leaders >Field moves are only gained on the main region as well meaning some aspects of each region are gated behind “main” story progress >Gyms all have a minimum level to the leader’s pokemon and scale to your most recent main region badge if that’s higher >A lot of side quests 