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I felt like USUM undid all of Lillie’s character development- instead of confronting her mother and leaving to have her own independent adventure with her newfound confidence, her mother is just framed as being “the lesser of two evils” and Lillie goes back to living with her and gets a Clefairy?
I gotta’ disagree here. USUM really just accelerate in the direction that SM were already heading in - to have Lillie become a Trainer with a reformed mom and a repaired family. Lillie doesn’t leave to have her own “independent” adventure in SM - the main reason why she is going to Kanto is in order to find a treatment for Lusamine, who was left in rough shape by fusing with Nihilego, and Lillie talks about how she’s been trying to help Lusamine understand what she did wrong. Lillie wouldn’t even need to go to Kanto if it weren’t for the link between Lusamine’s fusion and Bill’s; I assume she’d prefer to stay in Alola if she could.
USUM hits the same basic note, but since Lusamine isn’t left unconscious this time, they give Lusamine a more active and aware part in her decision to become better. (And, at least for me, I think the development they have Lusamine go through in USUM is good enough to where this is a fair and sensible trade-off.)
Plus, think about why you’re leveling this criticism - because you saw Lillie go through her full development, with the big confrontation in Ultra Space, in SM. But what’s the point in watching the exact same thing happen twice? I think USUM needed to shift its narrative focuses in order to be even remotely worth playing (frankly, I wish they’d have done even more than they did), and Lillie hogged all the spotlight for the first two games.
That's the purpose of all typical third version games / remakes, while we get that to hold us over and distract fans, the next generation is already being developed and concepts completed. It's a giant cash cow that works.
Sure, but at the same time, I don’t think it has ever been practiced as cynically as it was with USUM. Well, either cynically or naively.
Third versions were perfectly understandable in 2008.
B2W2 showed us they could take the same basic prompt (“we need a filler game made mostly with existing assets so we can still make money while working on this other, bigger game”) and do it in such a way that makes the purchase much more worthwhile on the consumer’s end.
Gen 6 said “hey, just remakes’ll do”, and by now it seemed as though they’d simply moved on from what could reasonably be called an outdated business model.
But then Gen 7 swerves right back around with what is essentially Pokémon Plat and Pokémon Inum, even though it seemed like they were past that.
Sure, I get that they needed to whip something up quick while they worked on Switchmon, but like... they could have at least put more effort into it, especially since USUM exist in the age of DLC. Crystal, Emerald, and Platinum didn’t exist in a reality where that was an option, so naturally they were held to a different standard.
I feel like I am the only one who doesn't dislike Delphox :3
Delphox is great <3
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