>>41266471Nice revisionism. Yes, Pokémon has routes that have a beginning point and an exit point (sometimes with a third exit). Yes, Pokémon has had short routes in every game that can barely be called routes. Yes, the early routes of every game are fairly simple. But route design improved and grew more complex with every game all up through Gen IV and some Gen V, mostly in later B2W2. And usually the significant number of routes in those Gens meant that a fair amount of them were really good.
Level design is ABSOLUTELY important to a video game. Imagine if they removed pits, warp pipes, secret exists, and verticality from Mario levels while making the overworld level select a straight path with no alternate routes? Imagine if the coins and blocks were just placed around randomly with no thought, or enemies were just in random places. The game would be a hot mess. There are hundreds of articles on the great design of World 1-1 in SMB and how it teaches the player everything they need to know.
This applies not just to Mario, but all games, including Pokémon. For example, Route 1 should always be fairly simple, forcing the player to walk through tall grass to go to the next town, then requiring them to backtrack and learn how to use ledges. You don't need water, and you should pace each route and add more complex features to it such as hills, bike ramps, and HM spots leading to rewards as the player progresses. That is what makes the world interesting. There is no thought put into a straight line with nothing but grass. Dungeons should be challenges. Viridian Forest is the first dungeon in the series, and Silph Co. is the first climax dungeon while Cerulean Cave is the first post-game dungeon. But they also became more interesting and complex with Mt. Coronet, HGSS Mt. Silver, Chargestone Cave, etc.
You might as well remove the walking in Pokémon if there's nothing of interest and play Showdown instead.
