In this hypothetical, your friend following you would of course be involved in story. But will also occasionally battle along side you in double battles. Possibly help in other features the game would have. Would you rather they have…
-
Fully customization team of 6 but they won’t be mentioned in story or cutscenes due to the customization.
-
Completely set team of 6 that stay the same through every replay of the game that can be involved in story and cutscenes.
-
1 set partner Pokemon and 5 customization Pokemon. The partner Pokemon being about to be in story and cutscenes.
-
Just 1 set partner Pokemon. Making the main purpose of the companion to push along the story and you won’t be able to battle with them.
-
No pokemon. Again the purpose being to push they story and be flavor text. Similar to Rui in Colosseum.
Personally for me, it depends on if the companion is a custom character or not. If it’s a set character, than the 1 set Pokemon and 5 customizable. If it’s a custom character, then 6 customizable.
What do you think?
by Odd-Guard-2533
10 Comments
Give the player an option to turn off friend assistance in double battles. Sometimes the friend’s AI sucks depending on the game.
Or full customization so that the player can work around the friend AI.
If i were to *make* a game designed around having a friend companion, I’d choose the path of a older sibling/younger sibling which would also probably work as a difficulty choice.
Older sibling has fixed encounters and team, albeit shorter overall story, Younger has the normal experience.
Younger is trying to hard to beat the older, older is trying to get them to relax but maybe leans too much into *their* style.
Younger gets to become their own independent person. Older learns to let them be themselves.
*Maybe* a ending depending on whether or not you win/lose/throw the last Sibling Rivalry Battle.
….this was a random shower thought I had like last week because of Clemont and Bonnie missing and Leon mentioned in ZA. We’ve seen the sibling rivalry, but we haven’t *had* a sibling rivalry angle yet for a story.
5, I wanna fold some mons
None. No help.
I just want a game where you actually struggle a bit.
Need to feed your pokemon and take care of them.
Don’t have much money.
Slum it like Ash did at the start.
A rival where they pick their starter randomly and about 1 or 2 other team members whee they pick out of 3 pokémon that can be in cutscenes. Rest is decided by route.
Example time!
You pick Chikorita
Rival has a 50% chance of picking Totodile or Cyndaquil.
You get to route one. There is a 10% (around there) chance that your rival will catch one of the encounters.
You get further into the game. Something something story and your rival has the choice between Hakamo-o, Sunflora or Cursola (don’t ask. Random pokemon) and the one your rival picks using their 33,3% chance will show up in specific cutscenes.
This would be good for a co-op 2v2 game. Give the player an option at the beginning.
Either play with a human partner that has their own team, or play with an ai that has a predetermined one. If the player can’t do co-op after selecting the human option, keep the team as-is and use the ai.
Either way, incorporate them as part of the story together. There could be a bunch of different ways you could potentially set this up based on other trainer classes in the series, like twins.
I’d go with option 3. Have their set starter Pokemon, and then five Pokemon I get to chose for them to use alongside their plot important starter.
I would like them to be like Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinte. A constant companion, but literally NEVER in the way
2
https://preview.redd.it/6jwwnlw7i11g1.jpeg?width=385&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1dd3aad771008d7e6212b4dcd4064fdfb70727a6
I prefer the Monster Hunter Stories 2 approach of having different companions, but each of them at least having their faithful partner.
Would make replaying each playthrough fun if you can pick a different companion each time (like how Mystery Dungeon you essentially could have a different team partner)
For example, let’s say in PKMN S&V, your companion can be either:
Nemona + Pawmot
Arden + Mabosstiff
Penny + Sylveon
And the dlc adds new companions:
Carmine + Sinistcha
Kieran + Hydrapple
Lacey + Granbull
Drayton + Archaludon
And etc
The rest of their team can just be randomly selected from a pool of predetermined pkmn based on your journey (aka the gym order, or which task you focus on completing first gym,titan,team Star base & etc)
Kind of how a rival team has different members on their team based on which starter they pick for their journey.