The Walrein
Vicinal Dragging for the Truth
- Partners
-
This was inspired by the Youtube channel Screen Rant's "Pitch Meeting" series. And when I say "inspired by", I mean it's a complete rip-off of their format. Be aware that this contains fairly major spoilers for Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Red/Blue Rescue Team.
Pitch Meeting: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon
Scene: The offices of The Pokemon Company in Tokyo, 2003. A bespectacled, nerdy-looking Developer Guy has just entered the office of Producer Guy, who is sharply dressed but otherwise looks weirdly similar to Developer Guy.
Producer Guy: So, you have a new Pokemon spin-off game idea for me?
Developer Guy: Yes sir, I do! Previous spin-off games have covered the genres of pinball, photography simulators, pet simulators, tetris simulators, and I hear there’s a racing game in development as well. So the next logical step is a Pokemon roguelike!
PG: What’s a ‘roguelike’?
DG: Oh, it’s a super-popular genre, sir! Pretty much every other indie game tries to claim that it has ‘roguelike elements’ in it nowadays, and even some triple-A game studios are getting in on it!
PG: So why haven’t I heard of it before?
DG: Whoops, sorry, I was actually talking about my predictions for what the roguelike genre will be like in the late twenty-tens! Currently it’s a super-obscure genre pretty much only played by old grognards who play PC games exclusively, prefer challenging titles with intricate mechanics, and scorn elements of popular RPGs like random encounters or level grinding.
PG: I see. And does that demographic have any overlap with the audience for Pokemon, a casual, easy to understand console-exclusive RPG with random encounters and level grinding, enjoyed by young-skewing players?
DG: I mean, maybe it does, sir! You never know until you try!
PG: Hmm. Well, I assume you must have an idea that could only be possible as a roguelike, then, which makes use of the genre’s greatest strengths.
DG: Actually sir, I was planning on making a story-focused game, and story is notoriously one of the roguelike genre’s biggest weaknesses!
PG: And you’re doing this because…?
DG: Us roguelike players love making things unnecessarily difficult for ourselves, sir!
PG: Oh, making things unnecessarily hard is tight!
DG: It sure is, sir!
PG: So what’s this game about?
DG: Alright! So it’s set in this fantasy world inhabited only by sapient Pokemon, which can be accessed from the regular Pokemon world by mysterious and never clearly explained means.
PG: Huh, a Pokemon-only world sounds like it has potential for a ton of interesting worldbuilding! You’d have to consider how society would be different when you can’t assume that any given person will have the same body shape, lifespan, or nutritional requirements. Communication would be difficult given that many Pokemon don’t have the dexterity necessary for traditional writing, and some don’t even have mouths to speak with. Even body language wouldn’t necessarily carry across from a quadruped to a snake, for instance. Then you have to consider the problems that would arise for meat-eating Pokemon in a world where all their possible prey is also intelligent. Would they be exiled? Survive solely on scavenging? And what about Pokemon like Muk or Magmar which are dangerous simply to be around? Their society would have to-
DG: Actually sir, I was thinking that their culture would be pretty much exactly like ours is, except that everyone lives in houses that look like their heads!
PG: That also works!
DG: Of course, we still want to the protagonist to be relatable to the player, so I was thinking of having them be a human who mysteriously got turned into a Pokemon and woke up in the new world with no memories. You know, cash in on that whole isekai craze!
PG: Isekai craze?
DG: Oh, isekai is a super-popular genre, sir! Pretty much every other anime or light-novel is an isekai nowadays! Even all the shows making fun of isekai are also still themselves isekai!
PG: And I haven’t heard of it because-
DG: Whoa, sorry, I was talking about my predictions for the late twenty-tens again, sir! Currently, my ‘transformed-into-a-Pokemon-in-another-world’ premise would most likely be interpreted as being in the ‘furry wish-fulfillment’ genre, sir!
PG: It’s kind of weird that this is the second time this conversation you got confused about what decade we’re in.
DG: I’m just super ahead of my time, sir!
PG: ...right. So what will the protagonist of the game be doing in this Pokemon world?
DG: Immediately after waking up, the protagonist discovers that the world is being assailed by a large number of natural disasters, which are causing mysterious rifts in space-time to open up. Anyone who falls into one of these rifts – which happens with astonishing frequency – will slowly have their personality and sanity ground away, until they’re nothing more than brutal, feral beasts, mindlessly attacking everyone in sight. Throughout the game, the protagonist will be forced to enter these rifts again and again, slaughtering dozens of these formerly-innocent Pokemon each time, in the hopes of saving just one more Pokemon from this fate. Yet the player’s actions are ultimately proved futile, as they have no way of closing the rifts, which will only have increased in number by the end of the story.
PG: This is sounding kind of grim for a Pokemon game!
DG: Don’t worry, everyone will act really cheerful all the time, and I’ll use fun names for things. For example, the feral-slaughtering squads will be referred to as ‘Rescue Teams’, and the horrible mind-rending wounds in space and time will be called ‘Mystery Dungeons’!
PG: Oh, okay! ...wait, is ‘Mystery Dungeons’ even remotely plausible as a name Pokemon would’ve chosen for this phenomenon in-world? Do they even have regular dungeons where they imprison people?
DG: Not at all sir, but I’m afraid I’m completely married to the term, because I’ve already decided the game will be called ‘Pokemon Mystery Dungeon’!
PG: I don’t know, that name kind of just screams ‘generic dungeon crawler’. Is it possible to-
DG: I’ve put a ring on that name, driven it home in a car with cans tied to the bumper, and made love to it, sir!
PG: Okay, okay! So what’s the gameplay of this thing going to be like?
DG: It’ll be a top-down turn based dungeon crawler, where all the enemies and player characters are Pokemon. For ease of development, I was thinking of copying over as many mechanics from the mainline games as possible. Pokemon will still only have four move slots, with learnable movesets being about the same as they are in Ruby and Sapphire, and use all the same stats as the mainline games except for speed.
PG: Huh, sounds like it’ll be difficult to take mechanics designed for an abstract JRPG battle system and balance them for a game involving tactical movement and positioning!
DG: You’re right sir, which is why we’re not going to do that.
PG: Wait, so you aren’t going to use the mainline Pokemon mechanics?
DG: No, I mean we’re just not going to balance them. Like, at all.
PG: Fair enough! I guess you said the game would be more focused on the story anyways. Tell me more about that.
DG: Well, it starts with the protagonist forming a rescue team with the first Pokemon they see after waking up, which is canonically called ‘Team Pokepals’, because they’re two Pokemon who are pals with each other. They learn about the existence of other rescue teams, such as recurring antagonist Team Meanies, who are a bunch of meanies, and the elite Team A.C.T., short for Alakazam-Charizard-Tyranitar, which consists of an Alakazam, Charizard, and Tyranitar.
PG: I take back what I said about ‘Mystery Dungeons’ being an unrealistic term. It seems like it’s consistent with Pokemon in this world just being generally terrible at naming things.
DG: The protagonist does a lot of miscellaneous good deeds, and eventually decides to investigate the mystery of how they got transformed into a Pokemon. So they go to visit this Pokemon named Xatu, because he’s a Xatu. Since he stares into the sun all day, he has knowledge of the past and future.
PG: I don’t think staring into the sun does that.
DG: How else do you think I learned so much about what genres would be popular in the late twenty-tens?
PG: ...right. So what does the protagonist learn from this Xatu?
DG: Xatu tells them that the recent disasters that have been afflicting the world are ‘connected’ to the protagonist turning into a Pokemon, and also that the planet will be destroyed soon unless the world’s balance is restored.
PG: That all sounds kind of vague and easy to misinterpret.
DG: Well, obviously Xatu was just expecting that the protagonist would stare at the sun themselves if they wanted to figure out the details. Admittedly it’s kind of a major plot hole that nobody else in the world does any sun-staring.
PG: Somehow I don’t think anyone is going to notice that.
DG: Afterwards, Team Pokepals goes to see a Pokemon named Whiscash because he’s a Whiscash, who knows lots of things because he stares at a waterfall all day. He tells them of a legend about a human trainer in the regular Pokemon world who touched a Ninetales’ tail, and was therefore subjected to a horrible thousand-year curse. The trainer’s Gardevoir intercepted the curse for him somehow, but the human cowardly ran away. Then the Ninetales predicted that one day that human would be reborn as a Pokemon, after which the balance of the world would be disrupted.
PG: Being reincarnated as a powerful quasi-magical being in a fantasy world doesn’t actually seem like that bad of a curse!
DG: That’s actually something I predict will be a common misconception after the release of the game! Getting reborn as a Pokemon wasn’t the curse; the curse was that Gardevoir got trapped in the spirit world for a thousand years, completely alone in a dimension where the conventional laws of physics and logic have no meaning, unable to have any effect on the world except to occasionally contact the protagonist in dreams, but otherwise being a prisoner inside her own spirit-body, unable to scream or even have the mercy of death!
PG: Seems pretty extreme for just touching a tail. This Ninetales is an absolute monster!
DG: No, the human who ran away was the monster, because he abandoned Gardevoir to her fate.
PG: Did he have any means whatsoever of interacting with the spirit world to save Gardevoir?
DG: Not at all, sir! The most likely result of him staying behind to help would’ve been Ninetales giving him a horrible curse too. So as you can see, he’s a total monster!
PG: ...right.
DG: Anyhoo, it turns out that the human in that legend actually got reborn as Gengar, the leader of Team Meanies! Gengar overheard what Xatu said to Team Pokepals about the protagonist becoming a human being “connected” to the recent disasters, so he decides to start a rumor that the protagonist was the human in the Ninetales legend and is the one responsible for all the recent disasters and possible end of the world!
PG: Sounds like it’ll be pretty difficult for Gengar to convince anyone of that, given that the protagonist has just done a bunch of good deeds for everyone while he’s the leader of a team literally called “Team Meanies” because of how mean they are!
DG: Actually sir, it’ll be super-easy, barely an inconvenience! All he has to do is tell everyone about the Ninetales legend and what he heard from Xatu, and then everyone automatically believes him!
PG: Oh, really?
DG: Yeah yeah yeah! So then all the Pokemon in town decide to murder the protagonist in the hope that this will somehow make all the disasters go away, and Team Pokepals has to go into exile! There’ll be this really sad and beautiful music playing, and the whole thing will just be super emotional and touching!
PG: I guess I’ll have to take your word for it.
DG: So Team Pokepals has to fight through a really dark place, then a really hot place, then a really cold place, until finally Team A.C.T. catches up with them! They’re just about to murder the protagonist when Ninetales appears and explains that they aren’t the human from the legend, and in fact that it was only a coincidence that the appearance of that human in the Pokemon world occurred around the same time as the disasters. So then Team Pokepals goes home and tells everyone this, and everyone in town believes them without evidence!
PG: These town Pokemon seem awfully trusting.
DG: So then Xatu, annoyed at how no one else has done any sun-staring yet, decides to just contact everyone telepathically and tell people the real cause of all the natural disasters: There’s a big ol’ meteor headed for the planet!
PG: How does an approaching meteor cause natural disasters for months before it even hits?
DG: I don’t know sir, but I do know that stories about meteors about to impact the planet are super-popular right now! Pretty much every news story is about that nowadays, and even the ones that aren’t are about all the apocalypse cults forming in response! We’ve gotta cash in!
PG: Wait, what!? Why haven’t-
DG: Oops, sorry about that! I was actually talking about my predictions for the date of February seventeenth, twenty-twenty-two. Currently the planet slumbers in a state of blissful ignorance, heedless of the coming of the Great Firebringer and the Making Over of the world!
PG: ...right. So what does Team Pokepals decide to do about the meteor?
DG: Conveniently, there exists a Pokemon called Rayquaza who has the power to destroy meteors, but who apparently hasn’t done anything about it yet, so Xatu, Alakazam, and Gengar join their powers to create a teleport gem that can warp Team Pokepals to the mysterious sky tower where Rayquaza lives!
PG: Wait, Pokemon can just create ‘teleport gems’ now? Was this foreshadowed in any way, or does it have any justification in previously established Pokemon lore?
DG: Well sir, Alakazam and Xatu both know the move Teleport, and Gengar is a ghost-type, so naturally he can do, you know, sort of ghost-y, mystical stuff, like creating teleport gems.
PG: Works for me!
DG: But before they use the gem, the protagonist has a dream where Gardevoir contacts them and reveals that they got turned into a Pokemon because Gardevoir sought a hero who could save the world from the meteor, and the protagonist was that person! Gardevoir also reveals that the protagonist specifically chose to have their memory erased, so that they could prove themselves worthy of being the hero!
PG: Wouldn’t it have made more sense for the protagonist to retain their knowledge of the coming meteoric destruction so that they’d have a lot more time to prepare, instead of going for this last-minute teleport gem thing?
DG: Oh, whoops!
PG: Whoopsie!
DG: So anyways, Team Pokepals use the teleport gem and fight their way through the final dungeon to reach Rayquaza, but he attacks them before they can tell him about the meteor, because the game needs to have a final boss! After the fight, Rayquaza notices shock waves coming from the meteor, which is now directly overhead! So he shoots a Hyper Beam that blows up the meteor, and the world is saved!
PG: Wait, so was everything the protagonist did completely unnecessary, and Rayquaza would’ve just blown up the meteor anyways after they detected the shock waves?
DG: Probably! In fact, the protagonist’s trip to see Rayquaza actually made things worse, because now Team Pokepals is close enough to the meteor to be caught in the blast radius of its explosion!
PG: Oh no!
DG: Fortunately, Gengar shows up and drags all the members of Team Pokepals through the Dark World, which somehow causes them to appear back on the ground completely safe! And then Xatu announces that the natural disasters will go away soon! But to add a little bittersweetness to the ending, we also learn that the protagonist must leave the world of Pokemon, and return to being a human.
PG: Huh. Was this ‘Dark World’ thing foreshadowed in any way, or-
DG: Nope!
PG: Do the mystery dungeons induced by the natural disasters actually end up going away?
DG: Not at all! In fact, the entire post-game is completely consistent with the idea that everyone was mistaken about the meteor being the true cause of the disasters, which in retrospect was never that plausible to begin with!
PG: Does the protagonist actually go back to being a human?
DG: Ha-ha, definitely not! Or rather, they do, but only until the credits end. Then it’s right back to the status quo for the post-game content!
PG: Huh. So what happens to the protagonist’s original human family?
DG: I guess they all have to live with the fact that the protagonist preferred being a small marketable critter in a world filled with people they’d only known for a month or so over being with their own family!
PG: Fair enough!
DG: So, what do you think of the game?
PG: I’ll be honest, this one sounds like a long-shot. But we here at The Pokemon Company believe that everything needs to have a Pokemon version of it made, so, sure, why not a Pokemon roguelike?
DG: Yes! Thank you, sir! The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series is going to become a cult classic, I just know it!
PG: ‘Series’? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here…
A musical sting is heard as the image of a Kotaku article appears onscreen, dated February 16th, 2022. The headline: “Next Game In Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Series Canceled After The Pokemon Company Faces Lawsuits From Parents Whose Children Blinded Themselves Staring Into The Sun”. A link to another article can be seen labeled “The ‘Coming Of The Great Firebringer’ Hoax, Explained”.
Reference to death, suffering; mild sexual references
Pitch Meeting: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon
Scene: The offices of The Pokemon Company in Tokyo, 2003. A bespectacled, nerdy-looking Developer Guy has just entered the office of Producer Guy, who is sharply dressed but otherwise looks weirdly similar to Developer Guy.
Producer Guy: So, you have a new Pokemon spin-off game idea for me?
Developer Guy: Yes sir, I do! Previous spin-off games have covered the genres of pinball, photography simulators, pet simulators, tetris simulators, and I hear there’s a racing game in development as well. So the next logical step is a Pokemon roguelike!
PG: What’s a ‘roguelike’?
DG: Oh, it’s a super-popular genre, sir! Pretty much every other indie game tries to claim that it has ‘roguelike elements’ in it nowadays, and even some triple-A game studios are getting in on it!
PG: So why haven’t I heard of it before?
DG: Whoops, sorry, I was actually talking about my predictions for what the roguelike genre will be like in the late twenty-tens! Currently it’s a super-obscure genre pretty much only played by old grognards who play PC games exclusively, prefer challenging titles with intricate mechanics, and scorn elements of popular RPGs like random encounters or level grinding.
PG: I see. And does that demographic have any overlap with the audience for Pokemon, a casual, easy to understand console-exclusive RPG with random encounters and level grinding, enjoyed by young-skewing players?
DG: I mean, maybe it does, sir! You never know until you try!
PG: Hmm. Well, I assume you must have an idea that could only be possible as a roguelike, then, which makes use of the genre’s greatest strengths.
DG: Actually sir, I was planning on making a story-focused game, and story is notoriously one of the roguelike genre’s biggest weaknesses!
PG: And you’re doing this because…?
DG: Us roguelike players love making things unnecessarily difficult for ourselves, sir!
PG: Oh, making things unnecessarily hard is tight!
DG: It sure is, sir!
PG: So what’s this game about?
DG: Alright! So it’s set in this fantasy world inhabited only by sapient Pokemon, which can be accessed from the regular Pokemon world by mysterious and never clearly explained means.
PG: Huh, a Pokemon-only world sounds like it has potential for a ton of interesting worldbuilding! You’d have to consider how society would be different when you can’t assume that any given person will have the same body shape, lifespan, or nutritional requirements. Communication would be difficult given that many Pokemon don’t have the dexterity necessary for traditional writing, and some don’t even have mouths to speak with. Even body language wouldn’t necessarily carry across from a quadruped to a snake, for instance. Then you have to consider the problems that would arise for meat-eating Pokemon in a world where all their possible prey is also intelligent. Would they be exiled? Survive solely on scavenging? And what about Pokemon like Muk or Magmar which are dangerous simply to be around? Their society would have to-
DG: Actually sir, I was thinking that their culture would be pretty much exactly like ours is, except that everyone lives in houses that look like their heads!
PG: That also works!
DG: Of course, we still want to the protagonist to be relatable to the player, so I was thinking of having them be a human who mysteriously got turned into a Pokemon and woke up in the new world with no memories. You know, cash in on that whole isekai craze!
PG: Isekai craze?
DG: Oh, isekai is a super-popular genre, sir! Pretty much every other anime or light-novel is an isekai nowadays! Even all the shows making fun of isekai are also still themselves isekai!
PG: And I haven’t heard of it because-
DG: Whoa, sorry, I was talking about my predictions for the late twenty-tens again, sir! Currently, my ‘transformed-into-a-Pokemon-in-another-world’ premise would most likely be interpreted as being in the ‘furry wish-fulfillment’ genre, sir!
PG: It’s kind of weird that this is the second time this conversation you got confused about what decade we’re in.
DG: I’m just super ahead of my time, sir!
PG: ...right. So what will the protagonist of the game be doing in this Pokemon world?
DG: Immediately after waking up, the protagonist discovers that the world is being assailed by a large number of natural disasters, which are causing mysterious rifts in space-time to open up. Anyone who falls into one of these rifts – which happens with astonishing frequency – will slowly have their personality and sanity ground away, until they’re nothing more than brutal, feral beasts, mindlessly attacking everyone in sight. Throughout the game, the protagonist will be forced to enter these rifts again and again, slaughtering dozens of these formerly-innocent Pokemon each time, in the hopes of saving just one more Pokemon from this fate. Yet the player’s actions are ultimately proved futile, as they have no way of closing the rifts, which will only have increased in number by the end of the story.
PG: This is sounding kind of grim for a Pokemon game!
DG: Don’t worry, everyone will act really cheerful all the time, and I’ll use fun names for things. For example, the feral-slaughtering squads will be referred to as ‘Rescue Teams’, and the horrible mind-rending wounds in space and time will be called ‘Mystery Dungeons’!
PG: Oh, okay! ...wait, is ‘Mystery Dungeons’ even remotely plausible as a name Pokemon would’ve chosen for this phenomenon in-world? Do they even have regular dungeons where they imprison people?
DG: Not at all sir, but I’m afraid I’m completely married to the term, because I’ve already decided the game will be called ‘Pokemon Mystery Dungeon’!
PG: I don’t know, that name kind of just screams ‘generic dungeon crawler’. Is it possible to-
DG: I’ve put a ring on that name, driven it home in a car with cans tied to the bumper, and made love to it, sir!
PG: Okay, okay! So what’s the gameplay of this thing going to be like?
DG: It’ll be a top-down turn based dungeon crawler, where all the enemies and player characters are Pokemon. For ease of development, I was thinking of copying over as many mechanics from the mainline games as possible. Pokemon will still only have four move slots, with learnable movesets being about the same as they are in Ruby and Sapphire, and use all the same stats as the mainline games except for speed.
PG: Huh, sounds like it’ll be difficult to take mechanics designed for an abstract JRPG battle system and balance them for a game involving tactical movement and positioning!
DG: You’re right sir, which is why we’re not going to do that.
PG: Wait, so you aren’t going to use the mainline Pokemon mechanics?
DG: No, I mean we’re just not going to balance them. Like, at all.
PG: Fair enough! I guess you said the game would be more focused on the story anyways. Tell me more about that.
DG: Well, it starts with the protagonist forming a rescue team with the first Pokemon they see after waking up, which is canonically called ‘Team Pokepals’, because they’re two Pokemon who are pals with each other. They learn about the existence of other rescue teams, such as recurring antagonist Team Meanies, who are a bunch of meanies, and the elite Team A.C.T., short for Alakazam-Charizard-Tyranitar, which consists of an Alakazam, Charizard, and Tyranitar.
PG: I take back what I said about ‘Mystery Dungeons’ being an unrealistic term. It seems like it’s consistent with Pokemon in this world just being generally terrible at naming things.
DG: The protagonist does a lot of miscellaneous good deeds, and eventually decides to investigate the mystery of how they got transformed into a Pokemon. So they go to visit this Pokemon named Xatu, because he’s a Xatu. Since he stares into the sun all day, he has knowledge of the past and future.
PG: I don’t think staring into the sun does that.
DG: How else do you think I learned so much about what genres would be popular in the late twenty-tens?
PG: ...right. So what does the protagonist learn from this Xatu?
DG: Xatu tells them that the recent disasters that have been afflicting the world are ‘connected’ to the protagonist turning into a Pokemon, and also that the planet will be destroyed soon unless the world’s balance is restored.
PG: That all sounds kind of vague and easy to misinterpret.
DG: Well, obviously Xatu was just expecting that the protagonist would stare at the sun themselves if they wanted to figure out the details. Admittedly it’s kind of a major plot hole that nobody else in the world does any sun-staring.
PG: Somehow I don’t think anyone is going to notice that.
DG: Afterwards, Team Pokepals goes to see a Pokemon named Whiscash because he’s a Whiscash, who knows lots of things because he stares at a waterfall all day. He tells them of a legend about a human trainer in the regular Pokemon world who touched a Ninetales’ tail, and was therefore subjected to a horrible thousand-year curse. The trainer’s Gardevoir intercepted the curse for him somehow, but the human cowardly ran away. Then the Ninetales predicted that one day that human would be reborn as a Pokemon, after which the balance of the world would be disrupted.
PG: Being reincarnated as a powerful quasi-magical being in a fantasy world doesn’t actually seem like that bad of a curse!
DG: That’s actually something I predict will be a common misconception after the release of the game! Getting reborn as a Pokemon wasn’t the curse; the curse was that Gardevoir got trapped in the spirit world for a thousand years, completely alone in a dimension where the conventional laws of physics and logic have no meaning, unable to have any effect on the world except to occasionally contact the protagonist in dreams, but otherwise being a prisoner inside her own spirit-body, unable to scream or even have the mercy of death!
PG: Seems pretty extreme for just touching a tail. This Ninetales is an absolute monster!
DG: No, the human who ran away was the monster, because he abandoned Gardevoir to her fate.
PG: Did he have any means whatsoever of interacting with the spirit world to save Gardevoir?
DG: Not at all, sir! The most likely result of him staying behind to help would’ve been Ninetales giving him a horrible curse too. So as you can see, he’s a total monster!
PG: ...right.
DG: Anyhoo, it turns out that the human in that legend actually got reborn as Gengar, the leader of Team Meanies! Gengar overheard what Xatu said to Team Pokepals about the protagonist becoming a human being “connected” to the recent disasters, so he decides to start a rumor that the protagonist was the human in the Ninetales legend and is the one responsible for all the recent disasters and possible end of the world!
PG: Sounds like it’ll be pretty difficult for Gengar to convince anyone of that, given that the protagonist has just done a bunch of good deeds for everyone while he’s the leader of a team literally called “Team Meanies” because of how mean they are!
DG: Actually sir, it’ll be super-easy, barely an inconvenience! All he has to do is tell everyone about the Ninetales legend and what he heard from Xatu, and then everyone automatically believes him!
PG: Oh, really?
DG: Yeah yeah yeah! So then all the Pokemon in town decide to murder the protagonist in the hope that this will somehow make all the disasters go away, and Team Pokepals has to go into exile! There’ll be this really sad and beautiful music playing, and the whole thing will just be super emotional and touching!
PG: I guess I’ll have to take your word for it.
DG: So Team Pokepals has to fight through a really dark place, then a really hot place, then a really cold place, until finally Team A.C.T. catches up with them! They’re just about to murder the protagonist when Ninetales appears and explains that they aren’t the human from the legend, and in fact that it was only a coincidence that the appearance of that human in the Pokemon world occurred around the same time as the disasters. So then Team Pokepals goes home and tells everyone this, and everyone in town believes them without evidence!
PG: These town Pokemon seem awfully trusting.
DG: So then Xatu, annoyed at how no one else has done any sun-staring yet, decides to just contact everyone telepathically and tell people the real cause of all the natural disasters: There’s a big ol’ meteor headed for the planet!
PG: How does an approaching meteor cause natural disasters for months before it even hits?
DG: I don’t know sir, but I do know that stories about meteors about to impact the planet are super-popular right now! Pretty much every news story is about that nowadays, and even the ones that aren’t are about all the apocalypse cults forming in response! We’ve gotta cash in!
PG: Wait, what!? Why haven’t-
DG: Oops, sorry about that! I was actually talking about my predictions for the date of February seventeenth, twenty-twenty-two. Currently the planet slumbers in a state of blissful ignorance, heedless of the coming of the Great Firebringer and the Making Over of the world!
PG: ...right. So what does Team Pokepals decide to do about the meteor?
DG: Conveniently, there exists a Pokemon called Rayquaza who has the power to destroy meteors, but who apparently hasn’t done anything about it yet, so Xatu, Alakazam, and Gengar join their powers to create a teleport gem that can warp Team Pokepals to the mysterious sky tower where Rayquaza lives!
PG: Wait, Pokemon can just create ‘teleport gems’ now? Was this foreshadowed in any way, or does it have any justification in previously established Pokemon lore?
DG: Well sir, Alakazam and Xatu both know the move Teleport, and Gengar is a ghost-type, so naturally he can do, you know, sort of ghost-y, mystical stuff, like creating teleport gems.
PG: Works for me!
DG: But before they use the gem, the protagonist has a dream where Gardevoir contacts them and reveals that they got turned into a Pokemon because Gardevoir sought a hero who could save the world from the meteor, and the protagonist was that person! Gardevoir also reveals that the protagonist specifically chose to have their memory erased, so that they could prove themselves worthy of being the hero!
PG: Wouldn’t it have made more sense for the protagonist to retain their knowledge of the coming meteoric destruction so that they’d have a lot more time to prepare, instead of going for this last-minute teleport gem thing?
DG: Oh, whoops!
PG: Whoopsie!
DG: So anyways, Team Pokepals use the teleport gem and fight their way through the final dungeon to reach Rayquaza, but he attacks them before they can tell him about the meteor, because the game needs to have a final boss! After the fight, Rayquaza notices shock waves coming from the meteor, which is now directly overhead! So he shoots a Hyper Beam that blows up the meteor, and the world is saved!
PG: Wait, so was everything the protagonist did completely unnecessary, and Rayquaza would’ve just blown up the meteor anyways after they detected the shock waves?
DG: Probably! In fact, the protagonist’s trip to see Rayquaza actually made things worse, because now Team Pokepals is close enough to the meteor to be caught in the blast radius of its explosion!
PG: Oh no!
DG: Fortunately, Gengar shows up and drags all the members of Team Pokepals through the Dark World, which somehow causes them to appear back on the ground completely safe! And then Xatu announces that the natural disasters will go away soon! But to add a little bittersweetness to the ending, we also learn that the protagonist must leave the world of Pokemon, and return to being a human.
PG: Huh. Was this ‘Dark World’ thing foreshadowed in any way, or-
DG: Nope!
PG: Do the mystery dungeons induced by the natural disasters actually end up going away?
DG: Not at all! In fact, the entire post-game is completely consistent with the idea that everyone was mistaken about the meteor being the true cause of the disasters, which in retrospect was never that plausible to begin with!
PG: Does the protagonist actually go back to being a human?
DG: Ha-ha, definitely not! Or rather, they do, but only until the credits end. Then it’s right back to the status quo for the post-game content!
PG: Huh. So what happens to the protagonist’s original human family?
DG: I guess they all have to live with the fact that the protagonist preferred being a small marketable critter in a world filled with people they’d only known for a month or so over being with their own family!
PG: Fair enough!
DG: So, what do you think of the game?
PG: I’ll be honest, this one sounds like a long-shot. But we here at The Pokemon Company believe that everything needs to have a Pokemon version of it made, so, sure, why not a Pokemon roguelike?
DG: Yes! Thank you, sir! The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series is going to become a cult classic, I just know it!
PG: ‘Series’? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here…
A musical sting is heard as the image of a Kotaku article appears onscreen, dated February 16th, 2022. The headline: “Next Game In Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Series Canceled After The Pokemon Company Faces Lawsuits From Parents Whose Children Blinded Themselves Staring Into The Sun”. A link to another article can be seen labeled “The ‘Coming Of The Great Firebringer’ Hoax, Explained”.
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