>>58858609I think that's the defining factor though. HGSS is a game that is like "How can we supercharge GSC and remain respectful while doing it?". When playing it, I was shocked at how many things they included that I WANTED to see as a kid, I wanted to find Mewtwo, the Legendary birds, the Kanto fossils and starters, and I wanted the Safari Zone and these other areas that just were no longer there. I wanted Giovanni to show up, he was missing. It actually makes Lorelei and Agatha being absent all the weirder. But HGSS is Gen II but (mostly) better because it was made with a lot of respect for its legacy.
ORAS doesn't quite feel that way. Yeah, they were more of a new game than HGSS, but some of that feels like they didn't respect the original. It was more like "let's trying making this Hoenn game again and it resembles our previous Hoenn games but it's more like another attempt than a strict love letter", and because of that, it doesn't build upon everything that existed, it just outright replaces things. Even in terms of designs and characterization, characters like Shelly and Courtney are just completely different characters that happen to share the same basic roles and names, and they were already splitting the role depending on your version anyway. Instead of building upon the Courtney that existed, they just made a weird autist. There are very tiny passing references to a handful of the things that didn't make the cut, but they were cut because they couldn't fit it in time and gave just the briefest of acknowledgement. Even the story of how quickly ORAS was made and why it was made makes it seem half-hearted and superfluous. Compare to HGSS, where Gen II remakes are hinted at as far back as January 2004, and prototypes exist as early as 2006, they were in the works for a long time.
