pokémon scarlet & pokémon violet
honestly it’s a testament how they were able to develop one of the best and most interesting plotlines in contemporary pokémon with phenomenal characters and a blatant lesbian rivalry ship front and center and yet i have absolutely ZERO interest in any fanfiction of the game
pokémon scarlet & pokémon violet
why is this, you ask? because the worldbuilding of scarlet & violet fucking sucks
pokémon scarlet & pokémon violet
i don't want to read stories set in paldea there aren’t even routes
pokémon scarlet & pokémon violet
every other pokémon game has creepy forests, haunted mansions, spooky towers, sacred shrines, perilous caves… paldea has scenery
pokémon scarlet & pokémon violet
and i’d just rather read the story where you get lost in eterna forest and night falls and all the misdreavus come out than the story where you travel to this one spot in this nameless part of the region along a nameless route to look at the waterfalls
pokémon scarlet & pokémon violet
and it’s not like they COULDN’T have pulled this off with the open-world design because they were successful with it in Legends: Arceus. it really feels instead like their vision of Paldea is one where people have mostly conquered nature instead of harmonizing with it and investing it with mystery
pokémon scarlet & pokémon violet
it's not that paldea doesn't have interesting ecological design or you can't come up with storytelling around it but it really feels like the PALDEANS don’t care. in all the other pokémon games people have a relationship to nature and ecology and they give things names and build routes and shrines and histories regarding them. in scarlet & violet it’s like they don’t even bother