Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are all about discovering freedom of their open world. This is as true mechanically as it’s thematically, because the pair of Switch RPGs allow you to freely discover the Paldea area looking for your personal “treasure.” They posit that the Pokémon world is filled with prospects and that it might probably imply one thing completely different to anybody. You can change into the area’s champion, assist the scholars of Paldea’s central academy with their private issues, or you may simply fuck off into the wilderness and seize each critter you could find. But narratively, it additionally asks: what if all that ambition and freedom is left unchecked? Scarlet and Violet’s finale takes this query to its darkest, most tragic conclusion, and as we close to the discharge of its last DLC, let’s look again at what made the ultimate hours of these messy video games so spectacular.
Buy Pokémon Scarlet: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop
Buy Pokémon Violet: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop
In most Pokémon video games, the professor is a gap staple in your journey. They’re often the one who provides you your starter, tells you to catch ‘em all and fill up your Pokédex, and hints at new, underlying mysteries of whatever region the game is set in. In Scarlet and Violet, the professor is much more enigmatic. Professor Sada and Turo, who appear in Scarlet and Violet respectively, aren’t actually a part of your journey in any respect. They aren’t there to greet you whenever you boot up the sport, they solely ever speak to you by video name, and even once they do speak to you, it’s simply to ask you to analyze one thing above floor whereas they toil away at one thing within the Great Crater on the heart of the Paldea area.
This distance is seemingly fairly regular, as even Arven, the professor’s son, hasn’t had a lot of a relationship with them in a very long time. Scarlet and Violet aren’t afraid to sit down with the trauma their younger characters expertise as a result of neglect of the adults round them. The Team Star plotline explores the cycles of bullying inside the Paldean college as adults fail to step in and assist, and Arven’s relationship with the professor (or lack thereof) is the familial realization of the identical downside. Even the fitness center chief storyline highlights how grownup characters can not rely on their very own management, with characters just like the exhausted workaholic Larry highlighting that the adults within the room are so enamored by their very own “treasure” that they lose sight of their neighborhood.
Scarlet and Violet contact on all these concepts in every of their branching storylines, however all of them converge in a single place: Area Zero. At the behest of the professor, the participant, alongside the chums they’ve met all through their journey, heads right down to the Great Crater of Paldea to assist cease some thriller downside. That all sounds normal sufficient, however I wasn’t ready for what would come subsequent.
When I first performed Violet, even the opening cutscene of Area Zero felt markedly completely different from every part that got here earlier than. First, moderately than all the chums I’d made throughout Paldea current on islands in several, self-contained storylines, all of them converge to battle no matter awaits us within the depths of the area. Arven desires to confront his father, Nemona has spectacular battling expertise to assist battle no matter threats lurk beneath, and Penny is our tech help.
Welcome to Exp. Share, Kotaku’s Pokémon column wherein we dive deep to discover notable characters, city legends, communities, and simply plain bizarre quirks from all through the Pokémon franchise.
Pokémon video games are stuffed with memorable characters, however as a result of your participant character tends to be fairly impartial, you don’t spend lots of time feeling like you may have an actual RPG forged with dynamics and relationships to discover. Traveling down the Great Crater of Paldea is a communal second, although it’s barely undermined by Pokémon’s insistence on not including voice performing to its important video games. You must learn dialogue as fleeting subtitles when you run round, battling highly effective wild Pokémon, however Penny, Arven, and Nemona kind a reasonably compelling celebration. Penny and Arven’s seriousness runs in opposition to Nemona’s carefree nature, even because the grim actuality of what’s occurred in Area Zero turns into extra clear.
As the group travels down Area Zero (all to the tune of the beautiful, choir-driven theme composed by Undertale developer Toby Fox), they cross by way of long-abandoned labs, studying scribbled notes within the professor’s journals that illustrate a genius descending into insanity simply as these youngsters descend into the depths of the Paldea area. There are references to their want to see what Pokémon would seem like within the far-flung future for Turo, or the prehistoric previous for Sada, and the revelation that they created a working time machine to lastly notice their dream of Pokémon of various eras co-existing by way of time.
These futuristic and historical Pokémon are referred to as Paradox Pokémon, and appear to be previous or future kin of the Pokémon we all know. In Scarlet, the primary of those the group comes throughout is Scream Tail, a long-haired, fanged model of a Jigglypuff. In Violet, the group meets a robotic relative of Delibird identified solely as Iron Bundle. It seems, the professor has been slinging Master Balls, that are assured to seize any Pokémon they arrive involved with, into the time machine and bringing outdated and new Pokémon into the current.
The downside is, as a result of these Pokémon haven’t developed for Paldea’s present ecosystem, they’ve the identical impact as an invasive species, and thus, have been saved in Area Zero to keep away from inflicting hurt to the folks and Pokémon of the area. But in the event that they have been such a hazard, why are they nonetheless right here? Why didn’t the professor ship them again to the cut-off date the place they got here from? These are the uneasy questions Scarlet and Violet make you sit with as you uncover extra of those displaced Pokémon whereas making an attempt to achieve the professor’s base on the backside of the crater. But on the best way down, you discover one last laboratory that has clearly been destroyed in what appears to be an intense battle. And because the professor’s calls to your group change into extra distorted, erratic, and maybe…robotic, Scarlet and Violet’s mysteries change into greater than alluring, they change into haunting.
At the underside of Area Zero, we meet the professor, nevertheless it’s not truly them. It’s a robotic powered by an AI copy of them that has been sustaining this underground lab ever since the true professor was mauled by a legendary Paradox Pokémon that also lives in Area Zero. Ultimately, the professor’s downfall was borne of the identical freedom to pursue one’s personal passions that Scarlet and Violet are constructed upon. As their journals describe, the professor’s associate left them and Arven (it’s closely implied that whichever professor doesn’t seem within the recreation you’re enjoying remains to be Arven’s absentee father or mother), and the one individual they needed to verify their ambition was a digital copy of themself. But now, with the professor gone, their ghost-in-the-machine AI has sought out assist to finish the wanton destruction left behind within the wake of their dying. They ask the participant to close down the time machine so no extra Paradox Pokémon can threaten Paldea.
Even earlier than we get into the “how” of this revelation and all its ramifications, now we have to speak about how these scenes are introduced. They’re all delivered with a deafening silence because the music fades away and the one sound left is the elevator bringing you and the AI professor to the bottom level within the lab. You can ask just a few questions on what occurred to the professor, and certain, a little bit little bit of the dialogue appears hand-holdy, as if designed to assist any youngsters who may not know what synthetic intelligence is, however the implications about who the professor was in life are each poignant and in addition fairly damning.
The AI has the professor’s reminiscences, however doesn’t share their view that their dream of seeing time-displaced Pokémon was definitely worth the potential destruction. They can not fathom why the professor would have felt so strongly as to ignore the security of everybody, even their very own son, to see this dream achieved. But as a part of the professor’s security web protocols, they’re unable to cease it alone. This is why we’re right here, however even in dying, the professor’s fixation with their dream lives on within the machine they’ve left behind.
This leads us to what’s simply the most effective second in all of Scarlet and Violet, and maybe probably the greatest moments within the Pokémon franchise’s historical past. The AI explains that with the intention to shut down the time machine, we should battle them, as any try to show off the machine will end result within the activation of all its defensive protocols, together with the AI itself. We attain the time machine, which is encased in a Tera Crystal-like dome, and after we provoke the shutdown, the AI pleads one last time that we should defeat them earlier than the professor’s programming takes over.
Then we get into some Yoko Taro-ass shit. The AI’s robotic ascends to a large platform, towering over the participant because the professor’s persona utterly overwrites their AI copy. Their dialogue containers change into distorted, with damaged textual content and their title tag switching from “AI Turo” to “Professor Turo,” so you recognize who’s chatting with you from past the grave. Even whereas Pokémon video games have refused to undertake cinematic manufacturing values like voice performing, Scarlet and Violet use their text-based storytelling and sporadic, malfunctioning animations as greatest they will as an example that the professor’s mad scientist thoughts is combating you, even when they’re not alive to do it themselves.
The battle, set to the unimaginable last battle theme, tears down any good religion view you may have of the character, as they converse right down to you, dismissing your small-minded views and your Pokémon battling expertise. The Professor is meant to be a secure place so that you can retreat to in a Pokémon recreation. Scarlet and Violet do greater than flip this on its head; they eviscerate any notion of it.
Defeating the professor’s artificial ghost saves the day, however even because the climactic battle involves an in depth, Scarlet and Violet hammer dwelling how we acquired right here. The AI laments that it needed to watch you and your pals discover the Paldea area looking for your personal “treasures” whereas they have been caught sustaining a mad scientist’s in Area Zero. But whilst they’ve managed to make a tough break from the cataclysm the professor wished, they nonetheless have bits and items of their creator’s hopes of their programming. They try to inform Arven that his father or mother cherished him, regardless of the space, after which use the time machine to journey to the distant previous or future. It underlines how the Pokémon world is filled with prospects to be sought out, however with out the companionship you’ve present in your journey, that ambition can have catastrophic penalties.
In the previous few years, Pokémon video games have began flexing their narrative muscle groups in a manner they by no means actually had earlier than. Make no mistake, the anime (particularly the restricted collection runs you could find on the franchise’s YouTube channel), manga, and movies have at all times delved into the terrifying prospects of the universe. But there’s usually an concept that Pokémon can’t be “for adults” as a result of it’s too busy being for youngsters. And whereas that premise is, in and of itself, flawed, as a result of adults can relate to themes of friendship, teamwork, and neighborhood as a lot as any child, the precise lore is turning into extra of a focus of every recreation, moderately than one thing you make a detour to see earlier than getting again to your eight badges.
Scarlet and Violet are so keen to simply go for it that it illustrates the distinction between one thing that merely entertains a toddler and one thing that may change their life. If I had performed by way of the Professor Turo boss battle as a child simply beginning out my Pokémon journey, it could’ve utterly modified how I considered its world, giving me a lot to consider and take into account moderately than making me really feel like I had to make use of my creativeness to broaden it past the boundaries of the video games.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus, Detective Pikachu, and Scarlet and Violet have instructed among the greatest tales the collection has ever dared to inform, and the thrilling a part of this story is that it’s not fairly finished. As the title The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero implies, Scarlet and Violet’s two-part DLC has already hinted that we’ll lastly uncover the mysteries of Paradox Pokémon and the way the professor might have been concerned in some a lot deeper shit than they even realized. The Teal Mask DLC wasn’t nice, nevertheless it did lay the muse for additional exploration of what occurred in Area Zero in The Indigo Disk on December 14.
Even whereas The Teal Mask felt half-baked, it nonetheless had advanced character relationships that I’m to see by way of, however greater than something, particularly after penning this, I’m excited to lastly see the conclusion of what feels prefer it might be Pokémon’s greatest story ever. Hopefully, it lives as much as what Scarlet and Violet laid down.
Buy Pokémon Scarlet: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop
Buy Pokémon Violet: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop
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