>>42230899>Is it ok to make passing references to Kanto?sure, but what game freak does goes far beyond that. in recent years, they have literally resorted to copy-pasting locations and events from kanto into what are supposed to be new regions. shit like santalune forest, unknown dungeon, diglett's tunnel, and the reuse of the legendary birds are so fucking lazy, it's immersion-breaking.
every new generational gimmick is used to promote kanto pokemon over everything else (even the brand-new ones), every character has to have some sort of personal tie to kanto, every regional dex has to feature an inordinate amount of kanto pokemon compared to everything else (in fairness, swsh is nowhere near as bad about this as gens 6 and 7 were), etc.
the worst offender of all is the town in alola that's supposed to be paying tribute to johto, but features the "kantonian gym" and an exact copy-paste of the nugget bridge, even down to the dialogue and the teams that the trainers use. game freak can't even bring themselves to reference another old region without shoving KANTOOOOO into it, as if there wasn't more than enough KANTOOOOO in the rest of the game.
