First of all, it was really cool to be able to revisit the world of Pokemón through the lens of this critical play. The Pokemón video games were such an integral part of my childhood, and even though I’d never played Emerald beforehand since I didn’t have a GameBoy, which is the platform it was released on, playing it put me back for a second into being in the target age (8+) and playing it with my sister on long road trips.
I think an underrated aspect of the game that I’ve begun to realize with this critical play is how much the narrative of Pokemón games contributed to my love of the game. When opening up the game for the first time, I saw this narrative sequence open up that instantly placed me back to the first time I played a Pokemón game of my own, which was HeartGold. I saw immense geographies, powerful creatures with dramatic effects, and humans running with Pokemón. When thinking about what exactly would make a child interested in a game, there’s not much else that would be needed – there’s wonder, fun, and mystery.
The Starting Cutscene
This then culminates in a start where you’re placed in this moving truck, an incredibly small room in comparison to the massive scenes and visual elements shown in the beginning cutscenes. You’re left with this small confusion, then – how does this story resolve into this massive world? I think, for a kid, this narrative element is what gets them interested. In my case, at least, that’s what got me interested when I was a kid. Thinking of it in the context of our readings, in this arc we see the beginning and hints of the end, but with no clue about how they connect. Any kid, seeing this, would want to figure out how it all connects. It’s just really cool!
You start here? How? I guess we’ll find out!
One thing that didn’t help me in terms of caring about the world is the lack of diversity present in the world. When you come into the game, there’s one character for a boy and one character for a girl, with no way to edit these characters .I used to always wonder about the inability to change the character, especially since it did not reflect how I looked at all, but now knowing about Nintendo’s lack of allowing these sort of characterizations, it’s not that shocking to me now.
In some sense, there’s not really much to change in this version of the game, since it’s all in this 2D sprite version of the game where you can only see one’s head and a little bit of your character’s body. But still, there’s definitely something to be said about how decisions can change your ability to immerse yourself in the world. I was still able to become really absorbed in the story because of how big it is, but in some sense it wasn’t like I felt I, myself, was immersed into the world – instead it felt like my character was immersed in the world and I was controlling them.
Does not look like me 🙁
