The Outrage

I don't really see anything under the ice aside from the ocean to the east.

I hope you're right about the movies, but it appears that filming will take place on stage.

I hope that all of the locations in eastern Unova will have version differences now, and that Team Plasma and Kyurem have conquered that part of the region. I don't know why Team Plasma would want to make the towns look futuristic in Black 2, though.

"The setting for the adventure is Isshu Region, 2 years after B/W! What is with the map showing the setting being covered in ice? Did some weird event happen?!"
I don't care if the actual region isn't covered by ice. It is clear that something happened in-game, so this isn't a case of hiding locations for no reason.

At the very least the faraway region should be strongly referenced by N and will turn out to be the Generation VI region, which I hope will be based on Tohoku.

I still doubt that the Unova expansion will make up for there being just one region. I think that the new areas will make Unova comparable to Sinnoh at best, and by this point there should be a longer story.

"He is said to be mysterious and hard to read." But people were also suspicious of Prof. Rowan's description and that meant nothing.

Sunyshore wrote this for PokeBeach's translation: "The Unova region sports new towns, buildings, locations, and Gym Leaders. New subway lines will take you to new places." That's pretty unprofessional, as CoroCoro definitely doesn't mention the Subway. It's pretty clear that the underwater tunnel will be used for passage, too.

It could be both, especially as the theory is that Overdrive is a hidden ability. Since there is a picture of the three Unova starters, I'm guessing that he will distribute them with their hidden abilities. But it's rather hard to swallow that the Dream World will be rendered obsolete as far as anyone else is concerned.

We'll see on Sunday how Overdrive plays out, unless the footage is really limited and focuses just on the signature moves.

What would be the point of the references to the faraway region if it didn't serve a role in these games? This is really vexing.

I hope that Unova isn't actually frozen over, but I don't see why CoroCoro would hide locations we've seen before.

I think that the current coverage is really luckluster. It would have been fine a month ago, but nearly two months before release? Nothing there is too surprising at all.

One of the "new" locations is just the Unity Tower island. It was indeed one of the destinations on the Battle Subway map, but that didn't mean anything then and I don't see how it would work. The other two new locations don't correspond to the Battle Subway map.

You would think that Game Freak would more new locations than just those, but...

I'm exaggerating, because even initially I thought that we might go back and forth between the two regions. But I just don't like what I see at this point.

It doesn't seem that Unova has been expanded by much, though - just a few towns to replace Nuvema, Striaton and Nacrene.

I'm worried that half of Unova being frozen means that the post-game will just consist of that. Ideally, you would need to go to N's region to undo the damage done to Unova, but how expansive could that region be if it were sandwiched between two parts of Unova?

I'm pretty pessimistic at this point.

Not only does Oak not seem to be the secretive type, but I don't think mysteries are his thing. Obviously he's into research and documentation, but dabbling in the unknown? I didn't get that impression.

When I first saw Dialga before Diamond and Pearl's release, I didn't think its role would pertain to time travel because the description "Time-Ruling Pokémon" was so over the top that I figured Game Freak wouldn't know where to begin to demonstrate its powers unambiguously. But I did hope that Dialga and Palkia's distorting space-time would be referenced in the remakes as causing a wormhole to go through the Ilex Forest shrine - even without Celebi being seen. My idea was that instead of adding new locations akin to the Sevii Islands, we would get to see Johto's past. But the main plot was barely expanded, and the Celebi event was wasted on Giovanni, whose mystery didn't warrant time travel at all.

So then I hoped for Celebi to have a role in Black and White (this was when we all assumed that the region would be based on Japan); by May I had to lower my expectations to a second movie event which would be better than the HGSS one, but it turned out to be far worse. I remember being told by Mijzelffan that time travel had already been used in Guardian Signs and couldn't be used in the main series, which was annoying for obvious reasons. So I feel like a broken record at this point, but I take comfort in the fact that the words Sinjoh Ruins and Time Travel were suspiciously highlighted in HGSS.

I am open to the idea of playing as Oak and Agatha in Kanto and Johto 40 years ago, say in Generation VII. I just think that the mysteries should be solved first through a game that wouldn't be primarily set in those regions, with only the "special" locations being revisited via time travel (and we've seen that Celebi can freely move through space, as well). If any researcher should stand out in such a game, it's Professor Silktree. Even then, I wouldn't make him the player character, but I have entertained the notion of the player character being his child.

There is an obvious problem with this suggestion: If Professor Oak had traveled to Johto's past and garnered enough knowledge about its mysteries, then he would have known the answers to questions that no one knew the answers to in Generation II/IV Johto. Oak does not strike me as the silent or secretive type. I could stomach Oak covering up Dr. Fuji's past, but why would he have stood aside when the Kimono Girls had Mr. Pokémon find the right person to summon Ho-Oh? Or when Professor Silktree funded the Ruins of Alph research center, which even ten years later didn't begin to touch upon the heart of the mystery?

As for Oak's knowledge of Celebi:


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You met it at the Ilex Forest? A mysterious Pokémon called CELEBI has been sighted there, or so I heard. Speaking of that... Professor Oak once wrote about CELEBI and Time Travel in a research paper he presented at a conference! CELEBI can use its mystic power called Time Travel to travel to the past and future.
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You see three people, with landscape in the background. It's Kurt, Professor Oak, and... in the middle, a lady with determined eyes.
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Whew, wasn't that something! Kris, that was fantastic. Thanks! The legends about that SHRINE were real after all. I feel inspired by what I just saw. It motivates me to make better BALLS!
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Since Kurt had doubts about the legends of the shrine, he clearly had not heard from Oak about his own encounter with it; I don't see why Oak would tell the scientific world about that and yet hide it from his childhood friend (I would imagine). I find it much more likely that the GS Ball event took place before the Spiky-eared Pichu one (and the Giovanni one, for that matter), and it was Kurt who told Oak about Celebi's time travel.

Don't worry, done.

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Young Oak traveling through Kanto and Johto would be the *only* reason I'd want to see those regions featured again.
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The only reason? Sure, their mysteries may be solved through games taking place in other regions, but I feel that's a harsh statement to make. At the very least I want to see Ecruteak City and the Ruins of Alph in different eras, if not even the Pokémon Mansion in one particular period.

Thankfully, I don't want to receive input from anyone who dismisses a valid theory just because they know a fan thought of it. Unfortunately, this considerably reduces the number of fans whose opinions I value.

I thought about this as I was writing the "A Tale of Two Worlds" entry, but I didn't continue it because even some of the few people who replied questioned the idea of retaining Hilbert and Hilda.

If it were to happen, it should be the key to defeating Kyurem alone in the story climax, fulfilling the Abyssal Ruins prophecy. What I mean by that is that instead of battling Kyurem right away, we would have to outsmart it in some sort of labyrinth first - possibly one hidden in the Giant Chasm. This is a somewhat vague idea, but basically some parts of the labyrinth would only be accessible from a specific universe, so the only way to get out would be to control your character and the doppelganger, for whom the lower screen would be used. Only by getting out of the labyrinth before Kyurem would it be considered defeated.

Since the prophecy says that after the king defeats one Pokémon he will be joined by its counterpart, the labyrinth should work in such a way that the player actually gets to defeat Kyurem in the other universe, allowing them to start a battle and catch the other Kyurem (defeated by the doppelganger) as soon as they return to their universe. So I'm suggesting two things: Traveling between the two universes (possibly before the labyrinth) and working as one with the doppelganger. I know that it sounds complex, but I think any climax should be a step up from the Distortion World.