>>56634285>>56634405SV definitely had parts of the Paradise concept, especially with meeting the dead prof at the lake after the DLC credits and all the allegories to death in Area Zero (white flowers, moth Pokémon, several mentions of death from the characters). The AI prof also kept babbling about paradise. But the "ancient civilization" stuff did basically not come up at all, even if there's a lot of hints towards that with the mysterious metal plate, Cyclizar being depicted jn 10000 year old murals, all the ruins in Paldea etc. So maybe they took those concepts and decided to implement them in the next game instead? That's what it sounds like to me.
>>56634560It wasn't really, seems like they decided to go for a more natural approach after all. It resembles more those crystal caves in Mexico or whatever. HOWEVER, the Terarium in the second DLC is 100% inspired by the Dragon Palace, specifically the surroundings of it. In the Japanese tale, the Palace was surrounded by gardens divided into the 4 seasons. The Terarium does exactly that as well, the 4 biomes represent a different season each. Then there's also Terapagos which also has parallels to the whole story. In the end it seems pretty loosely inspired, but perhaps they just didn't go through their initial plans for one reason or another.
Another thing that made me think they would go further into the paradise theming (but then didn't) were Kieran and Carmine. Visually, they have a very clear snake theme going on (snake eyes, hair like forked tongues), and Kieran even gets an apple mon that evolves into 7 serpents.
Really wonder how much of this is cut content.