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Too much focus on villainous teams?

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Psyburn

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Throughout the franchise, every main game, spinoff, and their mamas have had central storylines revolve around evil villain teams. In RSE - DPPt, the villainous teams were literally EVERYWHERE! And usually before your last badge, a HUGE portion of the game has you fighting well over 56+ grunts in a single dungeon until you get to the very final battle with a legendary. It seemed that galactic took waaaaay to much focus in platinum, where you first meet Cyrus at the beginning, fight 2 grunts at jubilife, fight Mars's almost directly after floaroma town (which is what....a 2min trek?), AGAIN in Eterna, had a reasonable gap to veilstone, AGAIN after pastoria, cyrus right into celestic, two more grunts at Iron Island, a new plot involving lakes blowing up, requiring a badge to help pearl/barry/moron fight off jupiter (poorly shoe horned attempt at making the badge more important than need be imo) and 2 dungeons in succession that deal with galactic. not to mention you fight them again AFTER the main games. Buck bothers you about them right away after kicking Volkner and flint's arses. There's so much villainous team action that the actual main characters can't grow (not that they could with these writers who can't be arsed to change the dialogue after you beat the elite four, acting like you never kicked their asses for 4 straight gens in a row). The villains are literally shoved down your throat that it felt like gym battles were more of an excuse for you to progress through the game. Hell Team Rocket was in moderation back in the first 2 gens.

Idk....who thinks villainous teams should be more subtle in 5th gen? Leave room for a plot that doesn't involve a man's desire to rule the world or wanting to increase he sea?
 
Yeah, they started over-using the teams in Gens III and IV. It was even harder to care because it was hard to take them seriously. In Gen III, you fought two teams lead by crazy environmentalists who wanted to increase the amount of land and sea respectfully. Gen IV had you fight a guy who wanted to make a new little fantasy universe for himself. Scary. Ugh.

The best balance of villians and plot was in Gen I, where there was just enough. Plus, TR felt like a badass team to fight. They had underground casinos, they killed pokemon, and they held a city captive. They didn't need to chase down legendaries, they were threatening enough. Also, I agree with the two dungeons, because it's anti-climactic to defeat an evil team and save the world, then go and beat a few more trainers. They really need to stop taking themselves seriously with the plot, it was better when it was all in good fun.
 
I approve of Team Rocket and Team Galactic. I think those were handled well. Aqua and Magma were ridiculous.

I don't know, I like the evil teams and it just wouldn't feel like pokemon if they were phased into non-existance.
 
Agreed. Aqua and Magma weren't very good. I like Rocket obviously, and TG is awesome, but yea the other two were terrible.
 
I'm of the opinion that Team Galactic were done badly. The way I see it, there was too much of a "comic relief" element, almost as if they were poking fun of the entire evil organization thing. At least with Team Rocket, things looked a little sinister but I don't know, TG just looked like one big joke to me.
 
Evil Raichu said:
I don't know, I like the evil teams and it just wouldn't feel like pokemon if they were phased into non-existance.
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Im saying "dont focus too much" on them. Not put them out period.

Then again...that would be interesting.
 
I can't wait to see what theme they come up for the 5th gen villains...
 
I think team Rocket was a team with some nice goals, only they were more like a group of bandits then a team with an evil plan. Organised crime anyone? Team Aqua and Team Magma were better, with a cool plan to change the world and everything. Only the fact that there were two teams kinda ruined it (team aqua ftw). Team Galactic is well organised, we meet some cool admins, only the re-use the idea of re-creating the world making it unoriginal. The Gen V team should be organised like team aqua/galactic and have admins, but they should capture rare pokemons for money if you ask me. Catching rare pokemon for world dominance is overused.

About spin-off teams:
Go-rock squad is very funny, capturing rare pokemon and being well organised. Team Dim sun is also cool because you don't meet the leader and don't know their plans untill the end of the game. Cipher in Colosseum is a near perfect evil team in my opinion. In XD they ruined them though. Team Snagem is really an evil team, but they suck anyways.
 
I think they need the focus on the villainous teams, as they're the only consistent source of true unfriendly conflict. That doesn't mean they couldn't be done better, however.
 
The overall teams are better, I mean I love Team Rocket, but they're as generic as white bread, milk, and Leave it to Beaver. It had no direction, no goals, just generic promises of money and power. Villainy 101, Page 1.

But I don't like how they always, TR/TM/TA/TG, get shoehorned into the plot. They should come second to the Gym Quest, not the main event.
 
Plato said:
I'm of the opinion that Team Galactic were done badly. The way I see it, there was too much of a "comic relief" element, almost as if they were poking fun of the entire evil organization thing. At least with Team Rocket, things looked a little sinister but I don't know, TG just looked like one big joke to me.
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They were actually interesting in Diamond and Pearl. The grunts were clueless meatshields who made it clear they joined it just to be evil. They didn't have a part or even know about Galatic's true goal - they just did what they were told, never asked questions (at least not to their boss' face), and thought nothing of it. All Nintendo needed to have done to make them perfect was to have them turn on Cyrus as soon as they found out; destroying/changing the world not being something they'd particularly want to do.
 
System Error said:
They were actually interesting in Diamond and Pearl. The grunts were clueless meatshields who made it clear they joined it just to be evil. They didn't have a part or even know about Galatic's true goal - they just did what they were told, never asked questions (at least not to their boss' face), and thought nothing of it. All Nintendo needed to have done to make them perfect was to have them turn on Cyrus as soon as they found out; destroying/changing the world not being something they'd particularly want to do.
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IMO, that defeats the point of villians in the first place. If there are going to be villians, I don't want to see them as some clueless boneheads who are trying to be funny. The writing in Pokemon isn't good enough for them to be funny.
 
Phoenicks said:
IMO, that defeats the point of villians in the first place. If there are going to be villians, I don't want to see them as some clueless boneheads who are trying to be funny. The writing in Pokemon isn't good enough for them to be funny.
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But the true villians here are Cyrus and the commanders. The clueless grunts are there to show a lot of things; the scary fact that Cyrus can draw a huge following without having to give a reason, to show just how organized Team Galactic is, etc.

The grunts are not supposed to be the real bad guys. As far as real bad guys go, I think they did a great job with Cyrus/Saturn/Jupiter/Mars/Charon.
 
Evil Raichu said:
The grunts are not supposed to be the real bad guys. As far as real bad guys go, I think they did a great job with Cyrus/Saturn/Jupiter/Mars/Charon.
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Yeah, especially with Charon. Man he's funny, always saying how much of a genius he is, and how Team Galactic did well to recognine his genius. I also really like Looker's character btw, but that aside.
 
mijzelffan said:
Yeah, especially with Charon. Man he's funny, always saying how much of a genius he is, and how Team Galactic did well to recognine his genius. I also really like Looker's character btw, but that aside.
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I thought Looker was great, too, and since you brought him up, I thought it was a nice touch to have an actual police agent investigating said villianous team.
 
Phoenicks said:
IMO, that defeats the point of villians in the first place. If there are going to be villians, I don't want to see them as some clueless boneheads who are trying to be funny. The writing in Pokemon isn't good enough for them to be funny.
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What writing? :p
 
What I'd like to see is a game where the "evil team" is basically just like the Team Rocket (JJM) of the anime (well, abeit slightly more of a threat).

But what about the story? Well, I'd like to see it being focused more on the rivialies formed (including one formed between you and said "evil team"). I'd love to see the main game rival ending up as the main antagonist of the game. Kinda like Paul is in the anime.
 
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