>>43834220The last good era, but also the beginning of the end. Their two choices were to either go back to making their games more solo-adventure focused rather than story-arc focused like with Red and Blue, or double-down on roadblocks in order to keep the player on the narrative track they wanted them to be on. The former would've allowed them to fully take advantage of the twisty, expansive region they made for the game, whereas the latter afforded them to add cool set pieces like the Distortion World to the mix while not feeling totally out of place. The decision they went with was the latter, which is why the journey across Sinnoh feels so random, with practically mandatory Fly sections and shit like the Psyduck roadblock to keep you from getting lost. And while this approach didn't necessarily ruin D/P/Pt or B/W, GF really doubled down on this approach with X/Y onward, which is why the 3D Pokémon games feel so linear and railroady.
