Discussion Third version content has been criminally underrepresented in Pokémon remakes

[Pokemaniac]

Pokémon has long had the tradition of having an enhanced third version releasing after the main pair of games for a generation. While much can be said about how the practice had a lot of downsides and it's good that they've fully transitioned to the DLC approach (so long as the base game is given enough development resources that it doesn't need fixing), past third versions are an important part of Pokémon's legacy, even being effectively the canon versions some of the generations. However, when it comes time to remake old Pokémon games, third versions are increasingly being ignored.

At first they were doing a pretty decent job at including things with the only significant missing things in FRLG and HGSS being the encounter tables, Cerulean Cave layouts, and arguably the anime stuff from Yellow (it can be debated if Yellow is a true "third version" or not, since Blue filled that role in Japan), but starting from ORAS barely anything from Emerald was included at all. You had some allusions to Emerald content, like the Deoxys animation referencing Birth Island (which wasn't even properly Emerald content but wasn't in Ruby and Sapphire originally) or the infamous "Battle Frontier Project has started" sign, but the actual content was completely absent. Even some Emerald adjacent content that was already in Ruby and Sapphire got completely gutted, like the Sky Pillar. I realize that the story of Gen 3 would make it difficult to incorporate everything into Ruby and Sapphire, but surely there was a reasonable solution somewhere out there, even if it involved remaking all 3 games.

Unfortunately, we seem to be going through this again with BDSP. There seems to be some incidental Platinum content included, and the added Pokémon seem to be present (albeit only in the Underground), but otherwise the game seems to be very aggressively ignoring Platinum based on the trailers so far. Even incredibly minor things like the improved regions aesthetics or the back button on the Pokétch are missing. They haven't even shown the Platinum outfits for Lucas and Dawn as a customization option, which is just a completely baffling omission. Perhaps we'll get some minor post-game Giratina thing, but Delta Episode is not encouraging. Ideally I would have liked the remakes to use Platinum as a base, something which would have been able to work perfectly fine if they handled the box legendaries like Sword and Shield did, but even a separate Platinum remake would be preferable to just completely ignoring it.

It's just very frustrating that the remakes are so incomplete, and it seems like we're just going to have to keep putting up with this. I'm entirely expecting Black and White to get remade without the sequels, Sun and Moon to get remade without USUM (which honestly might be for the best, there were some pretty controversial changes in USUM), and Sword and Shield to get remade without the expansion pass when their turn arrives, because they just seem completely determined to not include any sort of post release additions to these games when they remake them.

 

[Squiddo]

It's honestly hilarious the directors think kids are dumb and need handholding all the time. Like when i was 6 i already beat games like pokemon silver etc. The omission of the battle frontier is so sad. And while the gen 3 remakes were awesome that cocktease was crazy. Atleast in the gen 4 remakes the u derground is added to alot so playing that postgame wise with the gf is awesome but yh i do miss the battle frontier. It was such a nice postgame thing to do.

I guess postgame content peaked with gen 5 and 4 it's a shame that the modern games dont come close to it the pokemon sword n shield dlcs are amazing but yeah still.

I love pokemon and grew uo with it but yeah this is one of my big critiscisms of the modern games. It also is kinda weird good features get cut the next games like the dex nav and more. But honestly i ak used to it these days. Hopefully tho someday theyll get back to the nice amount of postgame wouldve been cool if it was part of the gen 8 dlc and in the gen 4 remakes but ohwell i guess another gen without the battle frontier

 

[ArchedThunder]

BDSP seemingly ignoring Platinum almost entirely is a crime. Platinum is so much better than DP, so in my eyes BDSP will likely never be the definitive version of Gen 4.
Hopefully for Black and White remakes they at least recycle the main plot of B2W2 as a post game episode.

 

[Mekanos]

Platinum is my favorite Pokemon game but I was realistic about the chances of Platinum content in DP remakes after ORAS. At least they didn't totally gut the Pokedex, I guess. It is what it is. HGSS will remain the definitive Pokemon remakes.

 

[Ramune]

It sucks so much. When I was younger I always decided to skip third versions because I had way more limited funds, so that’s the content I’d most benefit from having in ORAS and BDSP. Alas.

 

[Serebii]

It's honestly hilarious the directors think kids are dumb and need handholding all the time. Like when i was 6 i already beat games like pokemon silver etc. The omission of the battle frontier is so sad. And while the gen 3 remakes were awesome that cocktease was crazy. Atleast in the gen 4 remakes the u derground is added to alot so playing that postgame wise with the gf is awesome but yh i do miss the battle frontier. It was such a nice postgame thing to do.

I guess postgame content peaked with gen 5 and 4 it's a shame that the modern games dont come close to it the pokemon sword n shield dlcs are amazing but yeah still.

I love pokemon and grew uo with it but yeah this is one of my big critiscisms of the modern games. It also is kinda weird good features get cut the next games like the dex nav and more. But honestly i ak used to it these days. Hopefully tho someday theyll get back to the nice amount of postgame wouldve been cool if it was part of the gen 8 dlc and in the gen 4 remakes but ohwell i guess another gen without the battle frontier

To be fair, they've pulled back heavily on the handholding.

However, if I recall correctly, it was said that their research showed very few actually bothered with Battle Frontier and basically that's why it's not returning. It's not that kids are dumb, it's that nobody bothered. While it's a big thing in the very core communities, that's such a small part of the overall audience

 

[ArchedThunder]

To be fair, they've pulled back heavily on the handholding.

However, if I recall correctly, it was said that their research showed very few actually bothered with Battle Frontier and basically that's why it's not returning. It's not that kids are dumb, it's that nobody bothered. While it's a big thing in the very core communities, that's such a small part of the overall audience

I can get that, but I definitely feel like they should do more to fill that post game void. I appreciate the post game stories we get now and don’t want those to stop, but those are really short and the battle tower doesn’t fully scratch the itch.

 

[Aleh]

Yellow and Crystal barely added anything so until ORAS came around it was harder to notice. The Delta episode was better than the story changes in Emerald to be honest but what I actually missed was the little details like more double battles, new locations (even though they were small and mostly pointless).
Obviously the Battle Frontier too but I can see why that isn’t coming back.

BDSP dropped the ball though. They didn’t even add snow patches in the early game routes smh. Things like this really bother me

 

[Leica]

It didn't really bother me with past remakes like ORAS but Diamond and Pearl were honestly pretty mediocre games when they came out originally so I never really wanted faithful remakes lol. Would have much preferred the Platinum content to be mixed in because that version really elevated 4th gen.

 

[Falcatops]

It's honestly hilarious the directors think kids are dumb and need handholding all the time. Like when i was 6 i already beat games like pokemon silver etc.

It’s crazy but my friends and I beated Red/Blue when we all were < 10 and, most importantly, nobody spoke english! That was before the games were in spanish here.

I learned english to play the game, basically self-taught with an english-spanish dictionary by my side every time I played.

Kids are not dumb. They are really smart if you give them a chance.

 

[TheDok]

Yeah it's a pretty big indication how out-of- touch and bad of a developer Gamefreak truly is. Considering the amount of backlash the lack of a Battle Frontier got in ORAS, if the DP remakes don't have it I'm just going to laugh.

I truly hope the games start selling poorly sooner than later so they start getting the message, the series has been poor since Gen 6.

To be fair, they've pulled back heavily on the handholding.

Not really, the games are more handholdy than ever. Just look at how linear the Gen 8 routes and caves are, alongside other dumb decisions like permeant EXP Share. They've completely butchered caves to the point they're not even remotely serving dungeons anymore, just small linear routes. And they replaced them with nothing similar. The overworlds are significantly more linear/simplified starting. And the stories are outright patronizing with tutorializing and handholding since then as well.

I think the only reason the DP remakes are turning out so straight-laced is because an outside studio is handling them. And even then, they seem to be playing it way too straight since they're ignoring Platinum content.

If Gamefreak was doing the remakes internally they'd remove all the non-linearity from the overworld, kill route complexity, and probably make the entirety of Mt. Coronet a hallway with a permanent escape rope.

 

[Pokemaniac]

It sucks so much. When I was younger I always decided to skip third versions because I had way more limited funds, so that’s the content I’d most benefit from having in ORAS and BDSP. Alas.

Even as someone who played the third versions as they released, Emerald and Platinum are very much the versions of Gen 3 and 4 that I'd want to revisit.

To be fair, they've pulled back heavily on the handholding.

You sure about that? Sword and Shield are the games where they don't trust you to just walk a little bit to the left during your initial visit to Motostoke.

However, if I recall correctly, it was said that their research showed very few actually bothered with Battle Frontier and basically that's why it's not returning. It's not that kids are dumb, it's that nobody bothered. While it's a big thing in the very core communities, that's such a small part of the overall audience

Sometimes it's worth the effort to keep low usage features around for the dedicated audience.

It's not like they've been doing a great job at filling in the post-game without a Battle Frontier either. The post-game stories have been very hit or miss, and all fairly short. Sword and Shield in particular barely even had a post-game before the DLC.

Yellow and Crystal barely added anything so until ORAS came around it was harder to notice. The Delta episode was better than the story changes in Emerald to be honest but what I actually missed was the little details like more double battles, new locations (even though they were small and mostly pointless).
Obviously the Battle Frontier too but I can see why that isn’t coming back.

BDSP dropped the ball though. They didn’t even add snow patches in the early game routes smh. Things like this really bother me

Delta Episode really didn't do much for me. The music is good, and it's interesting from a lore perspective I guess, but the actual content is just a bunch of exposition dumps punctuated by battles. Maybe if Sky Pillar was still an actual dungeon I might have a higher opinion of it, but they couldn't even leave well enough alone there.

 

[Serebii]

Not really, the games are more handholdy than ever. Just look at how linear the Gen 8 routes and caves are, alongside other dumb decisions like permeant EXP Share. They've completely butchered caves to the point they're not even remotely serving dungeons anymore, just small linear routes. And they replaced them with nothing similar. The overworlds are significantly more linear/simplified starting. And the stories are outright patronizing with tutorializing and handholding since then as well.

I think the only reason the DP remakes are turning out so straight-laced is because an outside studio is handling them. And even then, they seem to be playing it way too straight since they're ignoring Platinum content.

If Gamefreak was doing the remakes internally they'd remove all the non-linearity from the overworld, kill route complexity, and probably make the entirety of Mt. Coronet a hallway with a permanent escape rope.

There's a lot they pulled back on. Linearity != handholding and they definitely pulled back on the tutorials in SWSH

However, I think you overestimate the control ILCA have here. If TPC/GF want Sinnoh simpler (and based on how the feedback from DP is what led to more linearity from BW on), it'll be simpler

Yeah it's a pretty big indication how out-of- touch and bad of a developer Gamefreak truly is. Considering the amount of backlash the lack of a Battle Frontier got in ORAS, if the DP remakes don't have it I'm just going to laugh.

I disagree here. They're not out of touch just because they're not capitulating to a very loud but very very small part of their audience.

 

[Aleh]

Even as someone who played the third versions as they released, Emerald and Platinum are very much the versions of Gen 3 and 4 that I'd want to revisit.

You sure about that? Sword and Shield are the games where they don't trust you to just walk a little bit to the left during your initial visit to Motostoke.

Sometimes it's worth the effort to keep low usage features around for the dedicated audience.

It's not like they've been doing a great job at filling in the post-game without a Battle Frontier either. The post-game stories have been very hit or miss, and all fairly short. Sword and Shield in particular barely even had a post-game before the DLC.

Delta Episode really didn't do much for me. The music is good, and it's interesting from a lore perspective I guess, but the actual content is just a bunch of exposition dumps punctuated by battles. Maybe if Sky Pillar was still an actual dungeon I might have a higher opinion of it, but they couldn't even leave well enough alone there.

Sky Pillar really wasn’t much of a dungeon if we’re being real here, it had like 2 tiny floors of very simple mach bike “puzzles” that you can finish in less than a minute. And they wouldn’t have worked in ORAS considering they wanted to show off the elongated mural while having the lore explained. In my opinion they took an uninteresting setting with nothing to offer and turned it into a fairly cool place

 

[Pokemaniac]

Sky Pillar really wasn’t much of a dungeon if we’re being real here, it had like 2 tiny floors of very simple mach bike “puzzles” that you can finish in less than a minute. And they wouldn’t have worked in ORAS considering they wanted to show off the elongated mural while having the lore explained. In my opinion they took an uninteresting setting with nothing to offer and turned it into a fairly cool place

Like I said, Delta Episode largely felt like a series of exposition dumps punctuated by battles, so the mural didn't really do much for me. I would have preferred literally any sort of puzzle or challenge while climbing the Sky Pillar.

 

[TheDok]

There's a lot they pulled back on. Linearity != handholding and they definitely pulled back on the tutorials in SWSH

However, I think you overestimate the control ILCA have here. If TPC/GF want Sinnoh simpler (and based on how the feedback from DP is what led to more linearity from BW on), it'll be simpler


I disagree here. They're not out of touch just because they're not capitulating to a very loud but very very small part of their audience.

Catering exclusively to the lowest common denominator of people isn't good design, universally. Fans like meaty post-games, and their inclusion doesn't exclude casual fans; they simply don't engage with the content. The lack of substantial post-game content (and the casualization) has made for worst Pokemon games across the board. It's as simple as that.

If the theoretical "resources" that went into creating post-game content were used to improve the main singleplayer, that would be one thing. But that's not been the case at all. In any category I can think of (story, overworld design, content/extra features) the new games, from Generation 6 and onward, are worse than previous generations: The simplification, or reduction in scope, of the overworlds, the routes, the dungeons/caves, the challenge, the optional content, and the stories are regarded as huge downgrades over the past 3 generations by almost any knowledgeable fan you ask. The patronizingly agonizing handholding in some of the new games hasn't helped either.

Straight up, the lack of post-games and the casualization aren't making for better games. And the casualization isn't pulling in more players compared to previous generations. Even if the sales were significantly higher, that wouldn't justify the decisions at the cost of game quality.

Also, considering how massive the online "hardcore" Pokemon community is online (/r/Pokemon has 3.5 million users for instance, and they're, at the very least, a step above pure "casual" fans), I really doubt the engagement levels for past Battle Frontiers was horribly, horribly low. I'm also questioning the reliability of that data considering it was probably based on (likely Japan-only) user-submitted surveys, as opposed to actual data collection (Gen 3 was offline and I don't think Gen 4 was capable of sending user data for collection). User submitted surveys are notoriously unreliable, recall what happened with Paper Mario Sticker Star, where Nintendo detrimentally removed story elements, because of dubious Club Nintendo survey feedback from the previous game, which wasn't representative of the desires of the fanbase in the slightest.

I think it's fair to say if a Pokemon game sells 17 million copies, a good 1-3 million actually engage meaningfully with the post-game content. That's not a insignificant amount. If the new 3D Marios didn't have difficulty unlockable post-game levels, they would be worse games because of it, even if the majority of players won't bother playing that content. Same applies to Pokemon, and any other game out there.

 

[WestEgg]

Yeah it's a pretty big indication how out-of- touch and bad of a developer Gamefreak truly is. Considering the amount of backlash the lack of a Battle Frontier got in ORAS, if the DP remakes don't have it I'm just going to laugh.

I truly hope the games start selling poorly sooner than later so they start getting the message, the series has been poor since Gen 6.

I'm not sure it's fair to call Game Freak a bad developer. Their games can be divisive amongst the online fan base, but they're generally at worst competent and enjoyable, and have a massive scope in terms of the Pokémon represented and how they are animated, balanced, etc.

 

[TheDok]

I'm not sure it's fair to call Game Freak a bad developer. Their games can be divisive amongst the online fan base, but they're generally at worst competent and enjoyable, and have a massive scope in terms of the Pokémon represented and how they are animated, balanced, etc.

They're competent games on a base level, partially because they have a tried-and-true formula to pull from. Just because they hit that basic level doesn't mean they're good developers in my eyes, that's just achieving the bare minimum.

I'm not calling them lazy or anything, since undoubtedly a lot of hard work from individuals goes into every game. But something isn't right, I don't know if it's a lack of staff, structural issues, bad design decisions, or what. At the very least they're definitely not equiped to handle HD development as well as they should (considering the over presentational issues in recent games)

 

[HK-47]

It is why I haven’t touched a remake since HGSS.

 

[Lord Azrael]

It's a shame because third version content is often some of the best. They often don't even include the smaller stuff like updated wild encounters or gym leader rosters, which is completely baffling to me.