Was Pokémon REALLY Rebooted in Black and White? | Gnoggin

you know that thing that people always say oh you know the fifth generation of pokemon was actually a soft reboot for the franchise yeah that you hear it all the time but how much truth is there to that claim is it just a rumor a hypothesis or is there something more to it well that's what we're talking about today i'm loxton and this is [Music] so facts generation 5 began with the release of pokemon black and white on the nintendo ds on september 18 2010 in japan and then the rest of the world got him around march of the following year critics really enjoyed the game overall most people too i mean it's pokemon it's hard to go wrong with that but that doesn't mean it didn't have some points against it but interestingly many of the things that people praised it for were the exact same things that other people hated and that very thing is also our first bit of evidence to the claim generation 5 was a soft reboot as one of the best and or worst aspects of this game was the fact that there were no older pokemon to be found in the region where is my gosh dang delhi bird if it's not here i will riot according to art director ken sugimari this was done for the purpose of making pokemon feel completely new and refreshed quote just by having a new bird pokemon flying through a town you can show that this is a different world it may also change the feeling that you get from the pokemon series so how fresh and new would a setting feel if you really didn't even see a single pokemon you already knew apparently this decision was made fairly early in black and white's development and they achieved their goals pretty well with over 150 new pokemon in this region and not a single older pokemon to be found well i guess that isn't entirely true once you finish the pokemon league in the game then past pokemon will start appearing but still unless you trade older pokemon in you are stuck with a team of all gen 5 pokemon throughout the story and that's the other thing the tone of the story was completely different from any of the series past entries dealing with a bit of philosophical politics truth versus ideals and questioning the very ethics of putting pokemon in balls i mean the bad guys are basically medieval peta and there's like child manipulation and stuff is an even real or is he a zoroark it all felt just a bit more thought out and mature and as a reflection of this the protagonists were aged up full on teenagers instead of little like 10 year olds and both their age and the writing follow another goal they had according to junichi masuda from the very beginning of development we tried to see the series through the eyes of older players who had graduated from the series does it seem too cute is the writing off-putting is it too childish we wanted to change these things to make it more appealing to older players so black and white had a completely new tone for a pokemon game neat an attempt to age up the series just a bit targeting not only those who played the originals and grew out of it a bit but also the kids who aspire to be 10 year olds someday and speaking of 10 year olds ash ketchum one of the biggest bits of evidence supporters of the soft reboot theory tout is that ash was reset to 10 years old here's what that means so we know in episode 1 the narrator states that ash is 10 and when kids turn 10 they get a starter pokemon so this is ash's big day and then in generation 2 we get this important tidbit don't you know what today is pikachu this is the day we first met the day we first became friends ash and pikachu celebrate the day they first met when ash started his pokemon journey meaning a single year has passed at this point ash is now 11. his age isn't brought up again until three more generations pass episode 1 of pokemon black and white and home to this young man ten-year-old ash ketchum what now i don't mind cartoon characters not aging it's incredibly common but retconning a previous birthday scene that's kind of dumb and perhaps evidence of a soft reboot of sorts let's go ahead and look at the anime a bit more now the theme song for black and white mentions that it's always hard when you start a journey which ash hasn't really done since the very beginning in fact if we look at how each generation started with ash we see the following in gen 1 ash is just starting out duh in gen 2 he definitely has the basics down now and knows how to catch pokemon in gen 3 he battles with significantly more confidence and is more noticeably experienced even in the very first episode in gen 4 ash catches a pokemon right away and uses his new apom to help look for pikachu he's quite the confident experienced trainer and in gen 5 ash battles an inexperienced snivy with his pikachu a pikachu who has faced off against legendary pokemon and done okay and loses we're talking a level 5 snivy versus a level 90 at least pikachu later ash even forgets how to catch pokemon which leads to iris calling him a kid as a running gag what happened to all of ash and pikachu's experience and confidence home to this young man 10 year old ash ketchum oh yeah there it went now of course the answer for the pikachu thing is that zekrom basically drained pikachu of its power at the beginning but like that wouldn't get rid of pikachu's know-how experience or confidence and especially not ashes also this is the first season where ash doesn't have a returning companion no brock or misty anymore completely new people maybe that has to do with unova not being based on japan at all brock and misty probably had responsibilities to take care of on their own continent and of course that is another bit unova is the first mainline region not based on some part of japan taking the series in a totally different more global direction and to further compare the black and white anime with the early anime it brought back the who's that pokemon bit for the bumpers which was last seen in the originally japanese version in gen 2. why go back to these original bumpers and to add to these similarities the series has ash compete in the pokemon league and then continue his adventure in some nearby islands just like the gen 1 seasons and also like the gen 1 seasons giovanni the boss of team rocket returns with a much more significant and antagonistic role arguably even bigger now than in the original anime rather than simply making cameos most often in the imaginations of meowth jesse and james he now is in frequent contact with them and even arrives in the region and gets directly involved with the plot ultimately falling under the possession of the reveal glass think about it like this for a moment imagine if mario fights bowser in his first three games and then bowser isn't seen for like 15 years it's mario versus some other enemy and then suddenly they bring back bowser that would be sort of a soft reboot wouldn't you say and throughout the black and white series ash re-learns a lot of lessons so maybe there really is something to this soft reboot idea after all i mean speaking of lessons learned the games sort of re-teach type advantages again as the first gym is led by three gym leaders each with one of the three monkeymon specifically the one with a type advantage over the starter you chose so here we are at generation 5 and we're just now getting around to a direct little tutorial about the game's main mechanic interesting but speaking of those monkeys let's get back to the pokemon themselves on top of the region not having any older pokemon in it generation 5 was also the first generation of pokemon not to introduce any new evolutions or pre-evolutions to older pokemon they are all completely unrelated and this just makes the whole region feel all the more new according to one interview linked below pokemon black and white was specifically made to be all new even the way they made the game and designed the pokemon was a completely new method for them and this of course is why the region had to be based somewhere overseas ultimately they chose new york city a city not only outside of japan for once but also a city that sort of represents new beginnings thanks to its role in history as an immigration hot spot which of course also led the design team to consider more than just the diversity of pokemon but for the first time the diversity of the trainers i mean japan is 98 homogenous new york is basically the poster child of diversity so this was also a fresh new aspect for the pokemon series and then of course being on the opposite side of the planet means the animals or the pokemon would likely be completely different so to continue the theme of all new the designers replaced many staple pokemon now every generation does this to a point there's always a new pseudo-legendary pokemon a new regional bird a regional bug a pikachu clone new starters but this time they went all in for example zubat and geodude were incredibly common in generation one two three and four they were found in basically every cave but now in yenova we have woo bat and dragon rolla taking over their roles like zubat to crobat the evolution is friendship based and like geodude through golem trade based they are full on replacements no more were voltorb and electrode acting as pokeball mimics now it was the new fungus and amungus people don't ride around on rapidash but zebstrika pollution doesn't manifest itself as muck but as garbador no more are cattle farms filled with tauros but with buffalant the rival fighting type pokemon hitmonchan and hitmonlee now at sock and throw a sleep inducing psychic to peer like drowsy now it's masharna an alien pokemon like clefairy now it's lgm a sneaky thievy cat move over meowth we purloin gang now there's new moles new rats frogs jellyfish ducks the that is literally just a fish pokemon the super cute fluffy normal type the ripped humanoid that just gets bigger and helps construction workers the pinchy orange crab bug with a thing related to its type on its back the round ape with a face on its body the moth with only two stages magneton is just a bunch of floating mechanical parts and now click clang is here to replace it the big and important purple pokemon made through human experimentation here you go i mean is gothitel just an alakazam crossed with the jinx maybe would this count here's a pokemon wearing a skull perhaps but heck i mean the regional bird is a pigeon again and according to interviews audino was literally designed for the sole purpose of being nurse joy's new companion pokemon replacing the role of chansey alomamola is just love disc don't know why they needed to replace gen 3's love disc but here it is and speaking of replacing other generation pokemon we also have a new two-stage bear a new cactus a new fur bait pokemon a new deer a new spiky dumb round steel type with eyes a new spider a new cottony plant that just floats with the wind a new feminine flower iman a new floating face made of ice a new mysterious black thing a new it's just a dragon that gains flight on its final stage and really just so so much more and that's not at all to say that gen 5 had no original designs it had plenty and the spins on already done concepts are still great and loved but looking at it like this you can really tell that they were purposefully sort of replacing older pokemon potentially redoing what worked but better sometimes they failed at the better part but that was the intent i'm sure they were delivering a new yet familiar experience for returning players which was the entire idea with these games but what started this idea of newness during development well a few things despite the 3ds being released just around the corner they were making a second pokemon generation for the same hardware the ds so to further differentiate it from diamond pearl and platinum they had to be drastic which is also why they completely changed how the graphics work now using amazing fully animated sprites the scale of developing this game was comparatively enormous to the last generation also generation 4 has been said to have been an ending point for them it's been described as having an overall theme of ultimateness by masuda as not only does it lay out the foundation for the entire pokemon universe giving it its starting point its creation through archaeos and the game's box legendaries but it also gave a ton of past pokemon new evolutions to give previously unpopular pokemon more roles in battle they were finishing up a lot of the past ideas they had for older pokemon sort of making this the big ultimate pokemon experience a great way to end before a soft reboot isn't it and how about the evil plot of the antagonists the stakes were never higher cyrus the leader of team galactic wanted to end and recreate the universe oh geez the stakes you cannot raise the stakes any higher they are stuck to the ceiling where do you go from here we went from let's steal a bunch of pokemon and make a ton of criminal money to let's recreate or destroy the world in our image two let's do the same but for all of existence i mean hot dang there is no raising the stakes from there so how about a soft reboot in gen 5 we're right back to let's just steal pokemon and maybe take over the region that sounds nice so those are the points in favor of the idea that generation 5 is a soft reboot but you'll find on forums and social media discussions that a lot of folks aren't too keen on the idea and they have fair points to make as well so let's get into some of those first of all while the anime does reset ash's age and pikachu's experience or level it doesn't retcon his past adventures at all he still has flashbacks and trophies referencing his previous adventures mostly from gen 1 but still all of those adventures could easily have taken place in about a year an episode a day maybe two or more episodes a day on the more eventful days gosh dang is ash's life busy and here's another point every new generation focuses more heavily on the new pokemon that isn't anything new gen 5 simply focused on it a bit harder overall it's still just another pokemon game they did a few twists to the established formula but it still fits in the continuity and past characters still cameo in the games does that really constitute a reboot as some claim well what defines a reboot according to google a reboot in terms of media is defined as to restart or revive to give fresh impetus to it's interesting that it can mean restart or revive a restart is obviously a reboot take for example the plethora of superhero movies and comics and games how many of them start by retelling the origin story of the hero how many batman and spider-man reboots have there been already the tomb raider reboot was big too and also clearly restarted the franchise going back to lara croft's origin story but revive is a part of our definition too let's look at the doom reboot in 2016. doom was a doomed series at that point but this reboot fully revived it and looking at the timeline of the game it does retcon a lot of the past games but not all of them it is still a sequel while also reviving the series how about bill and ted face the music as a new movie of theirs 2020 the last one was released in 1991 it is a reboot for sure as it is completely reviving the series from the grave yet it's still a sequel the past movies are still completely canon to it being a reboot can mean that it's restarting the story but it can also just mean to revive or introduce a fresh take on the franchise some like to specify these as soft reboots which personally i think much better describes what black and white were to pokemon but some say pokemon was still going strong it wasn't in need of any revival and sure i can see that but looking at the sales and revenue numbers pokemon was in the worst place it had ever been at that time pokemon fever in gen 1 was insane by gen 2 it had died down a little but not by much but then gens 3 and 4 did significantly worse monetarily speaking perhaps a revival was needed to recapture some of that gen 1 and 2 fever which would explain why so many gen 5 pokemon were designed as replacements to gen 1 pokemon what made gen 1 so crazy and memorable let's do that again let's keep pokemon from getting too stale let's breathe new life into it take things in a new direction in terms of design location tone and technology and they did it did it work well no unfortunately it did even worse than gen 4 but that doesn't mean they didn't try all in all this is something that doesn't really matter but having looked into this now i do believe that the intent game freak had while developing black and white was to breathe new life into pokemon to make a familiar yet new experience for players which seems perfectly fitting of the soft reboot descriptor but if you don't think so well that's fine let me know why down in the comments and hey check this out i voiced an episode of did you know gaming i can check that off my bucket list now it's also about pokemon black and white you can check it out here and thanks so so much for watching this far and until next time never stop using your noggin [Music] you

Channel: Lockstin & Gnoggin

Views: 257,755

Keywords: pokemon, pokemon black and white, pokemon black and white 2, pokemon black 2 and white 2, pokemon bw, pokemon b2w2, pokemon bw2, didyouknowgaming, didyouknowgaming pokemon, gen 5 pokemon, gen 5 a reboot, reboot, soft reboot, pokemon anime, pikachu vs snivy, pokachu vs, pokemon reboot, pokemon reboot theory, did gen 5, did pokemon black and white, pikachu level reset, ash ketchum, pokemon theory, pokemon canon, did you know pokemon, did you know gaming, pokemon soft reboot

Id: 8QSZEa8yG2Q

Length: 17min 48sec (1068 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 31 2020