[Would you prefer a silent MC or a pre-written personality for your MC?]

17 hours ago, Egzample said:

A silent protagonist didnt bother me much before, as you said you can project your choices on it anyway. What I noticed though, there is a little too many dialogue references in E19 to the fact that the protagonist is silent. In my eyes it doesnt fit the narrative too well and breaks the immersion a little bit.

I'd actually say that was quite fun and decent comic relief but I definitely see your point if it gets overdone

[Wasteland walls from Chrysolia?]

Ah thanks! I forgot all about that area

[Wasteland walls from Chrysolia?]

Spoiler

Randall is saying I should get to the wasteland walls from Chrysolia but I've been circling around Chrysolia forest and deepwoods and can't find anything. I'm so lost right now, anyone can help?

 

[Would you prefer a silent MC or a pre-written personality for your MC?]

4 hours ago, GenEric said:

what i like is if a pre-written mc still gives player input on how to act and what decisions to make, like the ones from telltale games, just have to give them a strong motive and likeable characteristics

Oh yea for sure. However you wouldn't be able to "project" yourself onto the character, so that's one down side. Some people would probably like it if they felt like it's them going through the adventure and not a character that was already written.

[Would you prefer a silent MC or a pre-written personality for your MC?]

I can't really decide on which would be better as both have their advantages and disadvantages. For one, a silent MC allows you to project yourself onto the character and story a lot easier as this is supposed to be a role playing game after all. Additionally, it can be considered a "safe" option as you couldn't possibly create a horrible character if the character is literally blank. On the other hand, a character written by the writer could potentially be better for the plot and overall story itself if done well. It might also be good to note that the silent MC is quite honestly overdone at this point and I'd love to see a fresh take. I remember playing Pokemon Red Adventures a long time ago and although I haven't played the recent updates, I remember liking Red pretty well, so I think it definitely can work. What do you guys think?

[E19 Guides, Pokemon Locations, TM, Passwords, Stickers, Puzzles, Tutors, Crystals, Mega Stones, Z Cell]

Spoiler

Does anyone know how to progress the Zeraora quest? I've talked to smeargle, and then to Arclight after going out of the nightclub and now I cant find any sign of either Zeraora or Arclight. I've circled around the lost train cave for hours and went to the final room with the captain's log and still nothing. Smeargle mentioned something about helping "hurt human" but I can't find any. Where do I go from here?

 

[That's rough buddy...]

Oh nice, I somehow didn't catch that last one when playing episode 18

[That's rough buddy...]

Spoiler

Anyone else noticed that line from Cal when he thought we became one with the moon? Didn't expect this reference from Reborn. A welcome surprise for sure.

 

[SWM modular modpack [E19]]

The noTMXneeded mod is missing in the e19 version, just confirming but I'm assuming it's still being worked on for e19 compatibility?

[Rejuvenation's MC compared to Reborn's MC]

13 hours ago, FuntimeDude said:

Actually, it's in V13 that the Rejuv MC got a great development, thanks to the complete revamp of the entire story, early game included. Now, the character is more able to show his/her/their emotions with options and dialogue choices, plus from midgame, the MC got a great part of the lore's spotlight.

 

That's kinda the point I was criticizing though, that the MC is getting a bit too much emotion for what I assumed to be a blank and mute character. I've always associated blank and mute characters as "me" when I play games like Pokemon and the MC showing emotions that I myself am not feeling makes it seem awkward for me. 

[Rejuvenation's MC compared to Reborn's MC]

Fair enough, I'll finish the game first since everyone's saying it matters. Though to be honest at the moment I'm not as invested as I was when playing Reborn. it's definitely good, but I'm not getting the same feeling of wanting to know what happens next asap as I did with Reborn. Maybe it's just me though.

[Rejuvenation's MC compared to Reborn's MC]

I've seen lots of discussions regarding the story and gameplay of these 2 games and how they compare to each other but I rarely see people talking about the MC, the playable character, us in game basically. Now this might seem unimportant since they're both just characters for us to play and they don't even really have any dialogue other than the ones we select to choose the path of the story and such. That's the thing though. I notice Rejuvenation's MC doesn't really feel like a total blank slate character but also not a fully fleshed out character either. It kinda feels like somewhere in the middle if that makes sense. Quick disclaimer, I haven't finished Rejuvenation and am just at the part where we just got Magma Drift but I just feel like talking about this point and I think my arguments here should still be valid since it's not entirely related to the plot or progress of the story.

 

Story spoilers:

Spoiler

One thing that made me really notice this was during the moment where our mom died. After this scene, our characters goes to a depressed state and barely interacts with the others because we're obviously supposed to be sad, right? The thing is, I wasn't lol. I was more sad when we found out Melia "died" because I personally had more connection with the character Melia than the character Mom since throughout the game, it's not like our mom was there.  We've had more interactions with other characters so naturally I've "bonded" with them more despite canonically, of course our character would be closer to their own Mom. I think this point is valid for when Melia died as well. Venam and Ren being depressed was a given, but it felt like I was also forced to be depressed when it wasn't necessarily true that I would actually like Melia. I mean I do, but that's not necessarily true for everyone right?

 

In Reborn however, our character feels way more like a total blank slate. Emotions aren't explicitly being forced upon us during the story. On the surface, our character is just there to put ourselves in a spot where we can progress the story, whether that be linear progression or in certain times, branching plot lines, if that makes sense. This sort of allows us to put our own emotions and feelings into our imagination and interpretation of the character since the MC is basically indifferent to everything on the surface. You actually like Fern? Well we can imagine our character feeling or responding positively during interactions with him. Don't actually care when a character dies? That's fine since our character is acting indifferent to it anyways. Actually sad that someone died? You can also "imagine" your character being sad since it's not like they're responding to the situation with anything.

 

Now I'm not saying these blank slate characters are always the way to go but IMO, but I think the Rejuvenation MC is still obviously trying to pass as that blank slate model but still has some form of default character to them. As in it's not 100% blank. This feels weird because I wanna think that character on the screen is me, but this me is feeling or doing things I'm not or wouldn't. I think ideally, we either have a fully blank character like your classic Pokemon game, or have a clear pre-written character, and not somewhere in between as that kinda leaves us in an awkward spot as the player. A good example of a pre-written playable character in Pokemon I think is Red in a Fire Red romhack called Pokemon Adventure - Red Chapter, where the game follows the story of the manga version, so we play as the character Red from the manga. The story itself isn't exactly a masterpiece of course, but it shows that playing as a pre-written character in a classic RPG works. If you want another example, then The Witcher series is an obviously great example. It's an RPG, role-playing game, but we don't necessarily need to role-play as a new character. We role-play as Geralt, a character clearly written by the story writers.

 

Basically what I'm trying to say is I think it's better to just pick one.

 

On a side note, the upside to a blank character is that you'll never end up with a badly written character. I mean, that's not really possible if it's blank right. Basically a safe option, The thing with a pre-written character, however, is that you can create something really excellent but also risk creating an unlikeable character than the player has to play throughout the game.

 

Just some story related discussion I'd like to have, what do you guys think?

[Some challenging battles to test out my complete team as of E18?]

I have some ideas for a new a team for E19 but nowhere to test it out. Aside from the grand hall trainers (since they're not really challenging), are there any battles that I can redo after beating Hardy? At first I thought I could just test my teams on showdown but there's a different feel and strategy between battling actual players and the AI. Not to mention the various field effects in game. Also, my team revolves around Naganadel so playing in showdown's gen 7 OU is not possible.

[Looking for Lileep/Cradily]

Or even just root fossil. I don't really wanna have to spend 2-3 hours soft resetting for it if possible

[EV Training Areas for Each Stat (Episode 18)]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post since I'm not actually looking for a specific pokemon or item so I apologize if I'm mistaken. 

 

Anyways, I'm looking for any good or decent spots to EV train specific stats. Most importantly, for speed. I found a thread for this but it was for episode 16 so I'm wondering if there are any changes worth noting since then.