Well, wasn’t that an exciting couple of weeks? Pokemon fans have lapped up 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:every drip of lore that has leaked 𝓀down the high-security walls of Game Freak HQ, despite the fact that no🅷ne of it will ever be considered canonical.

It’s wild that Pokemon developers ever thought it would be a good idea to implement lore about 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pokemon/human relations, but the fable-esque style and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Yokai-inspired stories have done more to build a rounded 🍸world than the games have managed inඣ a long time.

Concept art has also leaked for games as wide-ranging as Diamond & Pearl, Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire, and Legends: Arceus. These images are incredible, the kind of things I’ve wanted to see in Pokemon games for years, and that we might have seen if Game Freak wasn’t so intent on rus🐼hing the things out so often in order to keep the Pokemon machine rumbling.

The combination of these two factors has ignited a passion I didn’t know ex🎀isted within me: a passion for Gen 4.

Gen 4 Is The Worst Pokemon Generation

Now this is entirely subjective, and I understand that every Po🌟kemon fan’s favourite generation is the first one they played, but I’ve never understood the love for Gen 4. While a generation of kids discovered the first Pokemon game on the Nintendo DS and have fond memories of Diamond & Pearl because of that, the games arrived at a time when I was a teenager discovering girls and pi🥃nts, and Gen 4 didn’t have enough to compel me to keep playing.

I took a break from 🍎Pokemon at this point, skipping Black & White and their sequels completely and only getting back into things with X & Y. As the games that r𓃲eintroduced me to the series, I hold them in better regard than most. But that doesn’t change the fact that I find Gen 4 boring.

Yes, I’ve played Gen 5 since. It’s great.

Legends: Arceus started Sinnoh’s redemption arc. The Hisui region is a brilliantly realised proto-Sinnoh, and the subtle storytelling brought life to a region I previously🔯 thought bereft of inspiration. I like that Zorua fled the region after it was hunted to extinction, that the Professor is constantly con🔯fused by the appearance of Porygon in an epoch long before the advent of computers, and that Snorlax is a serious problem for grain farmers of yore.

Exploring the open-world sections is꧋ exciting and, if the game looked any better, the design philosophies would be thoroughly wallpaper-worthy.

The Leaks Make It More Exciting

I still wasn’t sold on Gen 4, though. I was trying to Nuzlocke every Pokemon generation this year (in a system called a Hatelocke), and stumbled at this point. After Let’s Go, SoulSilver, and Emerald Kaizo, I couldn’t make it through Diamond without getting eye-rollingly bored. Maybe I should f🔯inally play Platinum to spi🌠ce things up with some Giratina action, but time to finish my year-long goal is rapidly running out.

However, the leaks draw me to Sinnoh. Building on the groundwork of Legends: Arceus, these darker takes on mythology make the Pokemon world feel deeper and more interesting. Not every game needs Dark Souls levels of lore, but the mystery of Arceus in Diamond & Pearl is so much less exciting than the tale of the God Pokemon splitting itselไf in two to create Dialga and Palkia.

This is the kind of thing that Pokemon excels at. I’m a big fan of N in Black & White, and his qualms about capturing Pokemon and forcing them to fight one another are the only time that the series has genuinely made me think twice about what I’m doing. Hoenn’s tale of global environmental catastrophe has roots in rea🐽l-world issues, and climate change has featured in Legends: Arceus and Sword & Shield since.

If the Gen 4 games had a little more of this grit, a little more ꦅdepth, I’d be more inclined to replay them. I’ve finished the games once but I’m happy to ne🦩ver play them again – I didn’t even finish Shining Diamond, which is unheard of for me.

I hope that Game Freak sees the reaction to this leaked lore and works with it. Yes, it was probably the right decision to not include the stuff about interspecies romance, but 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:there’s roo🍌m in the series fꦏor a deeper mythology based on Norse epics and cautionary tales of Japanese Yokai. If Pokemo🌱n had added any watered-down semblance of this lore to Diamond & Pear෴l, if it had implemented more of the epic concept art into the final games, then there’s a chance my Hatelocke wouldn’t have faltered and I’d have a lot more respect for Gen 4.