For this critical play, I played Pokemon Black and White, a game that I’ve played a bit as a kid and wanted to try again with the lens of the game designer. Pokemon Black and White is published by Nintendo, and played on Nintendo DS or emulators. It is part of the larger family of Pokemon role playing games, which are targeted for a very wide audience ranging from kids to adults who may or may not be familiar with the Pokemon series. Every Pokemon game creates a detailed and exciting world for the player to explore, with Pokemon Black and White entering the Unova region that uses an ecological approach by showing the culture and beliefs of Unova to add to the player’s journey. The design of the world of Pokemon Black and White builds a world with competing societal beliefs on the relationship of humans and Pokemon, which makes the Unova region feel like a real, complex society, through which the player navigates through a traditional sequence of Pokemon challenges while exploring their views on the same ethical issue.
The world building of Pokemon Black and White seems to highlight the role of Pokemon in the world they live in. The different cities show different relationships between humans and Pokemon, such as Castelia City, which is a big, metropolis city, or Driftveil City, which is more of a historic and industrial city. These cities serve as evocative spaces, which reveal different parts of Unova’s culture just based on the overall feeling and design of the city. The gyms in which the player battles against gym leaders represent landmarks of the region rather than just a list of tasks for the player to complete. Much of the NPC conversation as well as interactions through the experience of the game are centered around the role of Pokemon in the lives of humans, which contribute to the environmental storytelling of the game and allow the players to experience the culture of the fictional Pokemon world and storyline through a spatial story rather than narrative. Such details about the design of the cities make the world feel more real, filled with thematic characters and locations.
Compared to other Pokemon games that I have played, Pokemon Black and White stands out in its exploration of a deeper theme of the premise of Pokemon itself. My experience of playing the other Pokemon games seemed very straightforward, with the narrative feeling quite obviously framed towards being a challenger in the world with the objective of “catch em’ all!” and defeating a series of other Pokemon trainers to be the champion at the end. This narrative has been almost an assumption of mine until I played Pokemon Black and White.
The world that Pokemon Black and White enters involves many interactions with Team Plasma, with the game starting with a character named Ghetsis giving a speech about how humans are enslaving Pokemon and should release them. This is followed by an interaction with a character named N, who claims to be able to hear the voices of Pokemon and further evokes questions about the relationship of humans and Pokemon. Such conversations reoccur throughout the rest of gameplay, with Team Plasma creating various challenges as the player travels through Unova. As the player becomes more experienced as a Pokemon trainer, the player’s interactions with N also unfold with N increasingly believing that you have a trusting relationship with your Pokemon. The character repeatedly interacts with others with different philosophies about Pokemon ownership, which allow the character to engage in this consideration for themselves as well. This makes the Unova world feel like a real society, with points of opinions and agreement or disagreement. By design of the game, this is an embedded narrative rather than something that is explicitly presented.
One area of criticism that I have for the game is that I do not think the game very completely addresses the ethical question, and ultimately the conclusion of the game slightly undermines the purpose of the discussion. I believe this is largely done to make the game feel lighter and more enjoyable, but I personally would have liked to further explore some of the deeper ethical questions about this world as a player in the game. The game ultimately concludes back to the classic assumption of the Pokemon series, but offers an interesting addition to the series of games in which some of these thoughts are questioned.
