Falling out of Love: Pokemon and Apathy

[Music] I don't have many memories of my Early Childhood most people don't they fade away with time as they become irrelevant to our daily lives as functioning adults Echoes remain of course but our childhoods become more and more Misty as the years march on changing from Clear episodic memories to a few Vivid isolated events lost in a sea of vague yet deep feelings associated with era's long past this however I remember like it was yesterday a 4-year-old soda crab was dragged Away by his big sister from his Lego Duplo or Play-Doh or dinosaurs or whatever he was playing with that day and into a small room an unused bedroom with nothing but a bright red couch and a big wooden cabinet that could open to reveal a clunky old CRT I'd spent lots of time in this room watching my dad play Super Monkey Ball and Super Mario Sunshine on our black GameCube back when is Delino felt like a NeverEnding world and every monkey ball level looked like a magical maze I would only ever watch for the most part though because games were hard those were for adults and big kids to this day my parents still tell me about how they would wake up on Saturday mornings to the sound of the fourth to eighth place results music in Mario Kart Double Dash when I finally figured out how to turn the games on myself but today I wasn't in this room for video games no my sister wanted to show me something a cartoon she had found on Boomerang I remember she sat me down said I think you're going to like this and pressed [Music] play from that moment Pokemon was my life and my life was Pokémon it was a magical time I was jumping on the Pokémon train almost a decade late given that I wasn't alive in the 9s so from the word go I already had three generations of material to discover with without the unrestricted internet access we all take for granted today I wasn't privy to all of this material either for the rest of my childhood I would hungrily search for every bit of information I could on Pokemon drinking in everything from the games to the cards to the anime to the movies to rumors on the playground I remember when I finally got my hands on a gba with Pokemon Sapphire it felt like it had been years but in hindsight it probably wasn't long after I started obsessing with Pokémon I had great parents the search was exhilarating I would comb the search function on my to looking for names of Pokemon movies and shows I hadn't seen yet I would beg my mom to print out coloring sheets of Pokémon hoping I would get a new one I had never seen before I remember sitting on some poor M Santa's lap in 2005 and explaining to the confused old man with infinite patience why I needed Pokémon XD Gale of Darkness I remember a kid in the school bathroom that same year taking some of my Pokémon cards promising to bring me an elusive Shadow Lugia card with 5,000 HP the next day and exchange of course I never got that card it doesn't exist if you're out there Tyler I haven't forgotten I remember seeing strange Pokémon plushes I'd never seen on store shelves only to find out they were from this new Diamond and Pearl game which I needed to have on the spot of course I remember riding around in the cart at Target with a pop corn and the slushie catching starl and beds while my mom looked at clothes or decorations I remember the excitement when I wrote of my mom to pick up my sister from a sleepover and I leaned out the window to excitedly inform her that our rolu had finally evolved in our shared copy of Pokemon Pearl and of course I remember the devastation I felt when that copy of Pokemon Pearl went missing during a move unbeknownst to me at the time Pokemon Pearl going missing was the least of my worries we were moving across the country to a new state which to me was just another adventure of course I was confused as to why we would leave our home why Mom seemed sad why Dad seemed stressed but I wasn't old enough to understand that was 2008 the recession hit us hard like it did most families we were moving across the country from my dad's new job as he'd lost his old one to the worsening economy before long just as we' settled in that new job was gone too and things got worse now this isn't a video about my life story so I won't get too deep into the details but things were bad for a few years they were really bad my parents did a good job of hiding it from me but even I could tell some things were off sharing a bedroom with my brother my dad not being around because he works double shifts at a warehouse to put food on the table and eventually found work overseas my mom splitting her time between three kids in a part-time job with support from dad being ocean away it was hard not as much for me and my siblings because my parents gave everything to Shield us from it but hindsight and things I did notice at the time are enough for me to know that they were hard days hard years even during those hard years though Pokemon was there for me I still had my DS and my GameCube and with my love for Pokemon the games I had already been playing for all of these years were more than enough around this time I also figured out how to access the internet so alongside my own Adventures I also got to experience the adventures of thousands of other Pokemon fans around the world through Let's Plays I learned about video games new and old with countdowns commentary videos and reviews from dozens of Angry Video Game Nerd copycats but even as my interests widened and I learned more about games in the world Pokemon was still number one in my heart one memory from this time that I'll always hold dear is the day Pokemon Black and White came out money was very tight but my mom knew how bad I wanted this game she took me to Target and bought me Pokémon White Version then took me to Chili's next door and bought me a whole rack of ribs with some corn on the cob looking back at that memory sitting there with my mom barbecue sauce covered hands all over my DS in the booth at that Chili's always makes me smile it came with this little artfolio that I still have to this day and it warms my heart whenever I'm sorting through things and come across it it's moments like like this that made Pokémon mean something to me since those days even as life changed as I went out and did new things grew up and became my own person Pokémon was a constant I amassed a huge collection mostly made up of plushes emblematic of the different eras of my life some of them are from the past few years still looking brand new some of them from my teenage years show a bit of discoloration and age from sitting on a Dusty shelf I was too lazy to clean the oldest among them even show signs of Decades of love with hundreds of Adventures and hours of play accured over my childhood showing on their ragged dirty fabric all this time I kept playing the games kept learning new things about the mechanics and the Monsters themselves growing out of things like the animated lore and moving to competitive battling and challenge runs even as the lens shifted though the focus was always somewhere on Pokemon fast forward to today I'm not that child that grew up with Pokémon anymore in fact it's it's been years since I was I left home long ago I have a career and I'm making a life for myself now a lot of my interests have carried over since I was that child I got into fire emblem for example quite a while after Pokémon but still definitely during my childhood and to this day I'm still a huge fan Mario Sunshine and monkey ball games I used to watch my dad play are still games I find myself coming back to for the sheer Joy of it I wish I could say the same about Pokemon I really do but the fact of the matter is I'm not a Pokémon fan anymore it's not like I have some kind of hatred for Pokemon in fact far from it though that doesn't mean I have any love for it either it's more of an ambivalence apathy the real killer love whether it's between two people or a person in their interests doesn't often go out in a blaze of glory left unattended like a candle it slowly burned itself out until the day there's nothing left but a smoldering Wick and a faint smell of smoke where there was once fire for me this all started around 2019 it was my last year living at home with my family I bought Pokémon sword and shield on day one of course like any good fan my relationship with Pokémon had been a bit rockier than usual in the past couple of releases the Gen 3 remakes were a slam dunk and the Pokémon go summer was as magical for me as it was for every everyone else but I was pretty lukewarm on X and Y sun and moon weren't really my thing and let's go was clearly made for kids so going into sword and shield especially with the controversy swirling around it I was apprehensive and playing through the game My apprehension turned into disappointment there were still glimpses of what I loved about Pokémon in there collecting the things was always fun the new monsters were mostly pretty cool and the soundtrack was amazing but the game just felt boneless first off there was the disappointment of being lied to by Game Freak they cut more than half of all Pokemon out of the game's code locking them into a paid Subscription Service until they decided to take them out of jail and gave us nothing in return the models were the same the animations were mostly either reused or extremely rudimentary it didn't feel like there was any upgrade in quality but there was a massive decline in quantity the greed is obvious with Pokémon getting locked in Pokémon home if I had bothered to move all of my Pokémon from my 3DS for example my beloved zeep Striker zappy would have been locked in there until the release of indigo disc and if I didn't pay the subscription fee he would have been Zapped from existence they're holding your Pokémon at gunpoint and demanding Ransom I really don't understand how people are defending this practice but beyond that sword and shield just didn't feel good the lack of voice acting in this game was really bad I don't think the game needs to be fully voiced hell if they played their cars right and kept it small scale they wouldn't need any voice acting at all the problem is we get awkward cutcenes like this where voice acting is conspicuously missing I don't care about reading text boxes when we're interacting with NPCs or having brief story interactions but big sweeping cinematics like this where the camera is whirling around feel incredibly awkward with the character's lips just flapping in silence for an example of this principal done right let's look at fire emblem Fates this game isn't fully voiced during story cut scenes we get talking portraits with text boxes but when we get an actual cinematic when the game Cuts away to a fully animated cutscene it's fully voiced it would be incredibly uncomfortable if it wasn't Beyond sounding awkward sword and shield also look ugly it looks demonstrably worse than the 3DS games before it and the game is linear and the most literal and uninteresting sense I love me some good linear progression in fact I think Pokemon's nonlinear games are its most poorly balanced ones but this game is just a straight line it's just hallways the Gen 5 games were also linear in terms of progression but with tons of side paths to explore intricate Dungeons and treasures to reward you for going out of the way or backtracking sword and shield are missing all of the Nuance that makes linearity good competitive singles is also pretty much unplayable on cartridge there's no way to turn off the battle timer and even if there was Dynamax is so broken that it got banned in the competitive singles meta anyway and the Dynamax VGC meta was so boring I barely even bothered with it I put sword and shield down after my first playthrough and the few times I've thought to return to it and re-evaluate I haven't been able to actually get into it so that's how it all started disappointment my faith wasn't entirely shaken yet I was too deeply entrenched to give up after one bad game after all there were Fire Emblem games I thought were pretty low quality or otherwise deeply flawed but I found ways to enjoy those and remained a huge fan I could do the same for Pokemon and so I continued to be a good fan I bought Mystery Dungeon DX on launch I definitely enjoyed it because it was a remake of a game that I already liked it was a bit light on extra content but the original was treated with respect and the Remake came out satisfying but for the rest of 2020 I didn't buy any other Pokémon games I was disappointed with sword and shield and cared enough to protest scummy Pokémon Cuts so I didn't buy the DLC I figured I would wait until the next Pokémon game surely with all the criticisms levied by the fans at sword and shield game freak would get their act together with the next game they had to right by 2021 I had left home a while ago when I was now going through the training process for my job my days were long and I didn't have much time for gaming but when I did I was usually on my laptop board 3DS doing nuzlock of my favorite Pokémon games on February 26th 2021 though things were different I wasn't playing games no I was sitting patiently waiting for the Pokémon presents to start after sitting through some stuff celebrating 25 years of Pokémon it finally happened the trailer began with a shot slowly zooming in on a DS laying on the table displaying gameplay of my beloved Pokémon Diamond and Pearl the memories came rushing back I smiled that little boy sitting in the Target shopping cart with his slushy popcorn and DS smiled back at me through time the screen faded to Black proudly proclaiming experience the Brilliance once more and with a flash the diamond imp PE remakes were finally R there Comes A Time in every person's life where they must look Inward and evaluate they must look at everything they've experienced to reach this point in life and form their core value values from there they form a sense of right and wrong informed by values forged through love and loss heartbreak and Triumph joy and sorrow determining where that line of right and wrong is is a lifelong process and it can shift as we learn more as we interact with others our values can change and we can grow or regress as a person I for one know that I'm not a complete person I may never truly be complete the line of right and wrong may continue to shift I may never even truly learn where it lies before I draw my dying breath but if there's one universal truth one thing I know from the bottom of my heart one thing I know with all of my being it is this if there is a line Pokemon brilliant diamond and Shining Pearl [ __ ] cross it there are a few games I actively hate dislike sure find disappointing maybe not really care about plenty of those games out there brilliant diamond and Shining Pearl though they pissed me off and it all goes back to this moment the second I saw this trailer I knew they bungled it there were some people desperately coping after this trailer dropped saying that they liked the art style saying it wasn't the final game that they had time to make it better finding any excuse to not be disappointed but I skipped right past all of that they had burned me before with sword and shield and at this point I knew what a hot stove looked like but then game free [ __ ] got me months later leading up to release they showed off a trailer that looked interesting a revamped underground follow Pokémon a trailer for Legends archus right afterward that made that game look a lot better than it ended up being it looked just interesting enough just promising enough that I couldn't completely write it off just when I thought I was off the hook turns out I was just swimming into a bigger sharper hook with that trailer game freak planted the seed and when the game dropped even knowing in my heart it would be bad I drove my happy ass to GameStop and picked up a copy of brilliant diamond and after suffering through my playthrough I had never been less happy to be proven right to this day we still have some people high off their minds on copium that like this game but I'm glad the general public perception has shifted enough to call this game what it is a shitty cash grab outsourced to inexperienced developers given no time and budget with tons of constraints from the suits which turned it into a terrible mess the art style here is just terrible the chibi look worked on DS because of the low graphical Fidelity here it just looks awful diamond and Pearl's look wasn't meant to stand up to scrutiny on HD Hardware but instead of redoing the visuals they put a magnifying glass on them even when the art style shifts during battle the models look worse than sword and shield a game that already didn't look good the game is bright to a point that it hurts my eyes and all in all I just hate the way it looks the soundtrack is terrible and I hate it I already made a whole video about that mess the UI is clunky and awful it's like they challenge themselves to find the most backwards ass way they could possibly implement the pokeat and HMS and went with that they blatantly ignored improvements from Platinum even simple no-brainers like livening up the textures in the Eternal Galactic building I could talk for hours about this game I could make one of those multi-hour video essays [ __ ] on every second of it but I'm not going to enough people have already done that and aside from my critiques on the music I don't think I have anything new to add that hasn't been said plus you honestly couldn't pay me enough to replay this game for footage in a fresh perspective so you're probably thinking that doesn't sound a whole lot like apathy and you're right time and indifference to Pokémon as a brand have not tempered my feelings for brilliant diamond and Shining Pearl specifically but this was the Catalyst the previous disappointments had laid out the Tinder and bdsp sparked an uncontrollable Blaze but as I said before my passion for Pokémon didn't go out in a blaze of glory it fizzled out unceremoniously this was only possible because a few months after bdsp Legends archus came out to half-heartedly Spritz some water onto the fire until it was a slow steady burn of annoyance I'm just going to come right out and say it I don't like Legends Argus and I don't see why so many people think this game is somehow the template for fixing Pokemon sure Pokemon has been doing quote unquote the same thing for years but I don't see the problem with that necessarily like any series I used to play the next Pokémon game because I wanted more of it it's weird to criticize Pokemon specifically for following its winning formula as long as it was doing it well of course they weren't doing it well and I think that's why people suddenly started to notice and subsequently hailed Legends archus as some sort of step in the right direction I however wholeheartedly disagree with this Legends archus savior narrative this game has an interesting idea for a Pokemon spin-off focusing on catching Pokemon and managing resources and it's cool I'll give it that but Pokemon has been releasing quality spin-offs for decades there's literally a Pokemon and Tekken crossover and a game where you take pictures of Pokémon on the same console as archus this game isn't the breath of fresh air you think it is I think the dissonance comes from the fact that a lot of people Pokémon company included call archus a main Series game that just isn't true this game has an entirely different structure core gameplay Loop and battle system this game has less in common with main series Pokémon games than Coliseum or XD and those are both spin-offs the only thing this game has in common with a main Series game is that it's a turn-based RPG in the Pokemon franchise one with entirely different mechanics though if this is a main series Pokémon game then Persona Q2 and Tokyo Mirage session sharp Fe Encore are main series Shin magami tensei games remember how I said Pokemon has been releasing quality spin-offs for decades well while this is a spin-off I would hesitate to call it quality this game looks and performs like absolute garbage on the same console as two massive Zelda games and two Xenoblade games that look fantastic I really do not want to hear about how this is the switch's fault if Xenoblade Chronicles X could run on the Wii U then no Nintendo game has any excuse the world is Barren and empty with little to do outside of catching Pokemon wandering around mindlessly in fields the core gameplay Loop is fun for a little bit but before long it devolves into mindless ball throwing and grinding catching Pokémon is fun for a while but what you'll be using them for Pokémon battles are terrible in this game archus ditches Pokemon's greatest strength the battle system in favor of this weird simplified version that uses speed for determining both turn order and turn count I could get deeper into why it's bad but really all you need to know is that it devolves into sending out a Pokémon koing an opponent's Pokémon and then having your Pokémon KO before you can react the only reason it's functional and not extremely frustrating through most of the game is that you always have an inherent numbers advantage that battle with Volo that everyone always points to as finally a difficult Pokemon battle it's only hard because you're basically playing a best of 15 set of rock paper scissors with someone that has a two game handicap it's amazing to me that in a game where they made catching Pokémon much more fun they took the other core half of Pokémon the battle system and completely and totally bastardized it in the end Legends archus ended up being a mediocre game that I mildly enjoyed playing around with for a few hours then finished out of obligation since completing my first playthrough I haven't touched it again and really I have no desire to after the gut punch that was brilliant diamond and Shining Pearl the wet blanket of Legends archus just left me feeling empty when I finished archus I found myself not only caring less about Pokémon but also less about the community not only did I not enjoy the game I also just wasn't seeing what everyone else was seeing for the next year or so there were times that I thought maybe I was the problem that I was just growing up that I was moving on I was getting towards my mid-20s after all Pokémon had served me well I had loved it but it was time for me to move on to bigger and better things let a new generation of children experience the same joy that I had but there were always times when I came back I would be bored and I wouldn't particularly want to play anything in my backlog so I would fire up an older Pokémon game for a Nuzlocke and I would always find myself having fun the mechanics the Polish and the design philosophy of these older games had stood the test of time I could feel the love and attention to detail put into a game like soul silver or White 2 I could feel the effort put in to squeeze every bit of atmosphere and cohesion they possibly could into these tiny pixelated worlds some of you might be thinking that this is just Nostalgia and in truth I've had the same thought I've actively tried to test that thought putting myself in the mindset of a new player trying to experience the games as if it was my first time obviously that methodology can never be perfect but I still keep reaching the same conclusion these old games really were better Pokemon really did used to be good this is made more glaring by the fact that I usually tend to have a bias towards newer games other series I love like Fire Emblem Zelda XCOM Smash Bros and Pikmin have all trended towards General improvement with each subsequent entry in my opinion Pokemon seems to be the only one that's in this backslide of quality and so we arrive in 2022 with the release of Pokémon scarlet and violet by this point in the timeline I pretty much didn't care anymore I was content to occasionally enjoy my old games and consume some Pokémon content from time to time but as a brand I really just didn't care about Pokemon after Legends archus I didn't have high hopes for an open world Pokemon game on switch especially less than a year after that game's release I could have told you scarlet and violet were going to be a rushed mess without seeing a single trailer and I didn't need to buy it to know that I wouldn't like it I simply wasn't interested and so I didn't buy it that should be where the story ends and for a while it was however the next time I saw saw him my brother gave me a copy of Pokémon Violet as a late Christmas gift that game sat on a shelf under the TV in my apartment for 10 months in the Saran rap the kid and me that loved Pokémon would have hungrily torn into that box and relished the opportunity to explore a new place in the Pokemon world full of new monsters to catch but that kid was stuck back in my childhood home throughout 2023 I had time off weekends with the whole place to myself a whole year of opportunity he's here and there to give Violet a try but it just sat there collecting dust it took a particularly nasty flu late in the year to finally get me to give the game a try I was homesick from work for over a week I wanted to make the most of my time off and play some games and relax mostly because I've been pushing myself lately which was probably part of why I got so sick the unfortunate side effect of being that sick and feverish though was that I was a bit too Delirious to play any strategy games which is a problem because all of my favorite games are strategy games no I needed something low stress and low threat to relax and pass the time that's when Violet finally caught my eye with a sigh I resigned to give the game a chance I'm not going to get too in depth on a scarlet and violet review you all know how it turned out it's a broken horribly balanced mess being held together by dental floss and Elmer's glue sticks I could count all of the moments that brought me Joy during my playthrough on one hand and most of them were probably glitches I think the only genuine smile I got was watching a toad School run across the landscape I grinded away at the gyms the team star bases and Titans with a sort of grim determination I could feel in my heart that this was it I was done it was like taking one final walk with an old friend before parting forever when I defeated the final boss and Ed sheer and started belting the credit song out of my soundbar I wasn't angry I wasn't even disappointed I just turned off my switch put my controller down and watched a few episodes of the expanse before bed I didn't think about Pokemon Violet I had no desire to talk about Pokemon Violet really I had no desire to think about Pokemon at all it was over and now we've arrived at the present Pokémon Legends Z to A was announced last month to absolutely no reaction by me I had to find out about it from someone at work as I'm sitting here writing this script it almost makes me a little sad taking this trip down memory lane has made me feel like I've lost a little part of Myself by being so apathetic towards something that meant so much to me something that made me the person that I am to me that's the strange part the sorrow I'm ambivalent towards Pokémon but that ambivalence makes me feel sad I've left behind plenty of other things from my childhood most of them far earlier than Pokémon but I don't feel the same emptiness when I think about how I don't care about the Wiggles Thomas the Tank Engine or Pixar's Cars like I did when I was six those things I grew out of Pokemon I fell out of love with this feeling of apathy has been around since long before I started this channel yes I have a few Pokémon videos but they were all ideas I wanted to make since 2021 I just only got around to them a couple years later when I finally had the time and equipment to actually make them I've had viewers ask me to make more Pokemon content since and I've opened up my notes app try to brainstorm multiple times but nothing comes I don't want to play Pokémon I couldn't care less about anything that came out 2018 or later and even if I can still appreciate them as being good I'm extremely burnt out on the old games at this point aside from occasionally tuning in to see if free ey has made it to number one on the random battles ladder or maybe once in a blue moon watching blunder sack today's videos shitmat my lunch I don't even really think about Pokemon anymore I don't care and it's sad I've come to realize that it's not about growing up yes I'm a grown man but I'm still able to appreciate Nintendo games I'm an active participant in my local Smash Brother scene I still have Mario Party nights with my friends when I want to relax I'll play a few hours of Pikmin 4 and despite the awful cringe I've done half dozen challenge runs of Fire Emblem engage being an adult doesn't preclude enjoyment of things with wide appeal you aren't pigeon hold into strictly m-rated games and R-rated entertainment the moment you start your career do your taxes or take out a mortgage my Fallout with Pokémon was specific and motivated by something that transcends age a lack of trust love and Trust are deeply intertwined it's a lesson that I'm sure we've all had to learn the hard way with something a bit more serious than our relationship with Pokemon love is founded on trust without trust love becomes an uncertain scary thing love can waver if trust isn't repaired at every small sign of damage and with time absent trust love will fade to protect ourselves sometimes trust is something that breaks all at once in one Earth shattering revelation it can lead to months of Heartache uncertainty and unanswered questions and the love we feel can continue to hurt until it finally Fades enough for us to be whole again but with Pokemon it wasn't like that it would be a little concerning if a media franchise hurt me that badly no my trust was eroded over time and with every little bit that faded away it took some love with it it was a long process a process that I didn't notice until it was already almost complete but it was happening and now now my trust in Pokémon is gone and it took my love with it with that trust gone like in a relationship with a person I don't think there's an easy way Pokemon could get it back even if Pokemon announced tomorrow that they had cracked fully immersive sensory VR and that they'd secretly been developing the perfect open World online Pokemon game where you could finally live out your dreams of becoming a Pokemon trainer I probably wouldn't even buy it even if my friends told me that it was just as great as it looked I don't think I would bother giving it a try I just don't care anymore I know this all sounds very dramatic for a video about Pokemon and yeah it is a little bit dramatic at the end of the day when I shut this Google doc and turn off my pc my life won't be any different after reflecting on how I fell out of love with Pokémon I might feel a tinge of sadness I might cry some nostalgic tears looking at my tattered Plusle plushy and thinking of my childhood with my siblings I might even open up Pokémon platinum or black too in a few years and smile thinking about the good old days but time will keep moving regardless of whether or not Pokémon is in the picture for now Pokémon is still fresh in my mind because it's something I really only realized I fell out of love with recently but I can already see it slipping I'm already out of the loop on the new dlc's I don't know much about what an ogre Pond or a trapos is 20 years from now I probably won't even know what generation we're on kids will laugh when I say things like back in my day we only had 493 Pokémon and you know what that's okay like they say it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all and while I may not care what Pokémon is up to now I'll always treasure the memories that I made before all of the adventures I went on with my friends the moments I spent with my brother and sister Pokémon was there for all of that it was the Catalyst for a lot of it so thank you Pokémon I may not love you anymore but I'll always remember and appreciate the time that I did thank you guys for watching this video was a little more serious in tone than my usual content not because it's a particularly serious subject but because it's more about my honest feelings on something rather than silly observations we'll be back to business as usual soon enough though don't worry if you enjoyed the video I'd really appreciate if you could leave a like And subscribe to see more as always I'd like to say thank you to my cool Cola crustations over on patreon yonas leser mag's gaming Seth peacock Dirk Strider jck pth and the wind is blowing thank you all for making this possible with that you all have a fantastic and wonderful rest of your day or night and I'll see you all next [Music] time [Music]

Channel: Soda Crab

Views: 69,640

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Id: KyLboIB742s

Length: 34min 45sec (2085 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 08 2024