I don't know who or what made Pokemon Snap, I don't know who or what made Pokepark Wii 1/2 but when I look at those games they give me a sense of what Pokemon do in their lives. I don't care what Slowpoke baby steps GameFreak manage to churn out each generation until now but there is no excuse. You get new people with the experience needed and you go for it.
Pokemon Snap is what I envisioned the mythical Pokemon 64 to be like just with battles. They started that ship and I've been dreaming about it ever since.
Catching Pokemon is fun but half of that fun comes from finding an area that houses the creature. Deep in a certain cave there is like 9 squares of space where you can actually catch a Bagon in one of the games. It's neat and fun when there are places to go off the beaten path. It's just in these games those paths are super few and far in-between and the makeup of the paths themselves are so tiny and linear.
Doesn't have to be open world or is as wide open as Xenoblade(both would be nice) but just make it look like the environments would allow for all these magical creatures and let us really explore. They can continue to recycle all the human and pokemon animations they want for the 39th generation in a row just let me do something meaningful in the world.
I feel like Sun/Moon was almost exactly what you're talking about. There's a good couple of nooks and crannies for you to find some rare Pokemon. If you wanna see what they do in their lives, well to catch a Sableye you have to find a Carbink and hope it calls for help. The Sableye then shows up to eat the Carbink.
And Pokemon Snap was just an on-rails series of scripted events. You do almost no actual exploring.
Every Pokemon game has the hidden path here and there to discover something new. How these paths are presented is the problem. So many of Sun and Moon routes are as narrow and linear as any pokemon game gets. Ever so often the camera shifts and everything looks so big and wide open but it's all an illusion.
I bring up Pokemon snap not for the exploration factor but obviously for the immersion that it brings. That world looks lived in.
Now I do I like that with each new main line game Pokemon in the over world are more frequent. Wingle, Pidgey, and Murkrow fly around going about their business. In towns you might see the odd Hypno here or there just doing its stalker thing. On the farm the Touros and Mitank are living their lives and in everyone's home something is out and about just living. I want more of that but everywhere.
Pokemon Snap, scripted events or not, is what I want a Pokemon over world to look like more or less. When I look at Xenoblade I see horse like creatures running together across a field or drinking together at a water hole. Pokemon doesn't need to be any more complex than that AI wise in the over world. Granted there will eventually be over 1000 of them but that doesn't mean anything. Make a regional pokedex with say 500 or so and if you consider evolutions that may not exist in the wild you probably only need about half of that actually existing in the over world. With far less actually doing something meaningful for the odd event or side quest.
Certain rodents, horses, canines, felines, snakes, amorphous blobs, snails, birds, etc can be rigged very similarly in the over world to cut down on the animations needed. There is already walking and running over world animations for EVERY SINGLE POKEMON up to ultra sun and ultra moon. I mean how different do Ponyta/Rapidash have to move in the over world in comparison to Stantler, Sawsbuck, Blitzle and Zebstrika? On the same note perching birds flap, hop and peck all pretty similarly. Don't get me started on floaters like almost all the ghosts, Koffing, Magnemite, Vanilluxe, and so on.
I don't know nothing about the animation process but considering what is already available internally the man power to have the Pokemon roaming around the over world is not unreasonable.
You know those little picture modes in Sun and Moon? Look over a bridge and see the Pokemon up and about living? That but on a full game scale. It can be done.
Thats what I want. Not some barren waste land where every Pokemon is an invisible ghost. I want wide open areas and I want to be able to climb over a knee high railing to stand up on a hill.
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