Pokemon Sun and Moon First Thoughts

Here I mean to give my thoughts on the first real Pokemon Sun and Moon Trailer, in no particular order, but corresponding with the images above. 

Let’s Begin:

From what I can tell the region is based off of either Maui or O’ahu, probably O’ahu based on the volcanic crater (which I take to be the equivalent of Diamond Head in Honolulu). But frankly, I was struck by the fact that the map of the Alola region is very small. Now it may not seem that way, but the largest portion of the map is covered by the big city and we see our main protagonist glibly running down the whole of main street, which means that the size relation of the person to the environment is considerably less than Kalos. To me this can only point to there being more islands in the region. The Hotel, and Motel, from the concept art seem surprisingly absent from this region art as well. I mean honestly you don’t make a region based on Hawaii without having more than one island. Also the waterfall that flows backwards is not pictured in this map, and is likely on the kauai based island. This region is just too small. So that either means that there are more islands in the region, or we'll be travelling to Hoenn or Kalos, (or another region maybe).Professor Kukui is solid. The Kukui tree is the symbol of Hawaii and he seems a lot more chill than Professor Sycamore, who honestly creeped me out a bit.

This game will seemingly include more character customization as the whole notion of the trailer was diversity (which by the way is not that common in Hawaii, but that’s a topic for a different day), which is a good thing, but whether it stretches beyond two shades of brown for your character to choose from, and into clothing, or being able to remove a hat, only time will tell. One thing we can say however, is that it is back.

With regards to the starters, at this point its probably better if I don’t give my opinion. I mean I’ll probably choose the owl. The one thing I’ll say is that the Kalos starters had everything in the world going for them and they sort of turned out dumb looking, so there may be hope yet for these pokemon. Also, I swear on my grave that there is a fakemon that looks exactly like the seal pokemon. Also I foresee a clown based evolutionary line for this pokemon who fate has already been so unkind to. Type predictions: Owl retains typing, Cat becomes fire/dark, and Seal becomes Water/Psychic, however these predictions are based solely on the color schemes, and if I did this for the Kalos starters, I might’ve been predicting Chespin to be grass/ground. 

Something that I noticed about the morphology of the game that should be interesting. The NPCs seem to have different builds. Something they tested in ORAS. Different height and muscle mass, which is interesting as a priority.  Also the character’s gait is very strange, it almost seems as though the full time view of the character will be that of an ORAS cutscene. Also, just based on the scenes of the player running, it would seem that this game will be much more open world and less confined to routes. Perhaps because the island is so small it can be that way, for example in the city screenshot, it appears as though the player could make a 180 turn and get on the side walk and continue walking. This would really put the diagonal movement on the MainStage. 

With regard to the character design, for the boy, it is very unoriginal, I don’t know. Then again I don’t know how much you can do with a hat wearing boy character. He just looks like Calem from XY. The girl character is fine, although I’m not sure whats up with the pokemon breeder hat (or is it? Mark my words there is an NPC from XY/ORAS that has that exact same hat.) Fortunately it appears for now that there are only two rivals; that of the opposite sex, and this goofy Hawaiian guy. However judging by the smile on his face, he is going to be our close friend, which is kind of a drag as many fans are tired of the sappy friend rivals.

With regards to the legendaries. Firstly, I want to know why Pyroar and Noivern were given priority for mega evolutions of Gen 6 pokemon. No but in all seriousness, I don’t like the legendaries. I’m sure someone can find me saying that about Xerneas and Yveltal back when XY was announced, but I know I never felt this much disdain for Xerneas.  That said, I will again be choosing blue -pokemon moon that is. The bat creature overall looks better, but it has a mega salamance stupidity to it, so that a good design that might’ve been the base is all but obscured.  One thing to note about the bat legendary is that when it uses its signature move (presumably) lights appear at points on its circular body, which seemingly represent constellations, so make note of that as it may be important. The lion pokemon is just a mess, quite frankly. It has all the ambiance of a fakemon with none of the design elements that people wish game freak would take from some fakemon. Why is it all white? It just makes a bad design worse. One last thing to note is that it is in a temple venerating both sun and moon as pictured above, and there is a symbol in the background that is not fully in view, perhaps this is the symbol of the third legendary. And on that note, the presence of tikis and carvings throughout the trailer was to be expected, but we still didn’t see the “protector of my region” that the backpacker was talking about.

What I would be looking forward to: Kalos Travel, or inter island travel, better looking pokemon, a steel/poison Eevee, and of course some reference to Pokemon Z or zygarde as they’ve got me too involved in that story now to pivot their focus. Corocoro should be coming out soon, and I’d expect to see names for the legendaries and types and stats, and if we’re lucky an exposé on some new pokemon, like XY did with Helioptile and Fletchling, but I think this is unlikely because no new pokemon (aside from starters and legendaries) were shown in the trailer.

Lastly, like a man soured by bad news, my beloved Pokemon Z theories for the time being have had to be put on hiatus. I had some thoughts about further expounding of the storyline of AZ as it relates to Lysander, and about what the Kalos region would look like if we were to return, but now it seems like these theories don’t belong, so I’ll keep them tucked away for the time being. Here’s where it stands as of now.  If this island is the only island in the Alola region, the prospects of travel to Kalos are very slim. I mean, there’s a shipping yard and a giant boat docked inside the building, but that seems a very ham handed way to bring the player to Kalos.  Perhaps Kalos won’t return in this game, and perhaps this installation was a way to build hype for Pokemon Z which will come after, in much the same way that E came after FRLG which came after RS, (even though ORAS should’ve filled the intermediary spot.)

Oh and shoot! Looks like I was correct about the region being Hawaii.