(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

[pika pal]

Here's my question: Does anyone know what the Japanese (or other languages) use as wording for the "Timeline" talk at the Crystal Pool scene? As someone who played a lot of PS1 era RPG's and early 3D Sonic games, rough translations completely losing/changing the meaning of a line isn't unfamiliar territory to me: a Sonic Heroes line for example mixes up referring to a character as "a robot" instead of "artificial" (like organic but created through experiments), which throws off a follow-up line about Cloning and the character's identity.

Like in this case, is "timeline" definitely meant to refer to an alternate version of history/the future as opposed to being a sloppy word for a different period in time?

I still hold to my theory that the Paradox Pokemon are essentially a semi-permanent Terastalization affecting specimens of the Pokemon (EX: Great Tusk is a Tera Fighting Donphan that's stuck halfway there). Terapagos and the Tera Crystals powering the time machine has the effect of essentially fishing out the base Pokemon and the energy causes them to turn into a form based on a Tera Type. The Illustrations of Great Tusk and Iron Treads don't look that far off from more-stylized depictions of Donphan, and to my knowledge they're the only images of Paradoxes we're shown from Heath's Expedition (excluding the explicitly-dreamed Combination Mon). It could just be confirmation bias by the Professor, where the machine brings out a Mon that looks KIND OF like Donphan but not quite, so they take it for an abnormal creature out of the book, where Heath might have recorded them as different species but they would be more akin to Regional Forms of those mons, with no research taking place to answer the question since Heath's team was discredited.

So Great Tusk or Slither Wing isn't what Ancient Donphan or Volcarona look like, so much as they pulled in a Donphan and the Terastal energy caused what we know as GT to come out of the machine.

 

[R_N]

Here's my question: Does anyone know what the Japanese (or other languages) use as wording for the "Timeline" talk at the Crystal Pool scene? As someone who played a lot of PS1 era RPG's and early 3D Sonic games, rough translations completely losing/changing the meaning of a line isn't unfamiliar territory to me: a Sonic Heroes line for example mixes up referring to a character as "a robot" instead of "artificial" (like organic but created through experiments), which throws off a follow-up line about Cloning and the character's identity.

Like in this case, is "timeline" definitely meant to refer to an alternate version of history/the future as opposed to being a sloppy word for a different period in time?

オーリム『この出会(であ)いも　地続(じつづ)きの
過去(かこ)・未来(みらい)では　ないかもしれない

オーリム『異なる時間軸の　ポケモンを
捕まえて　現代へ　呼びだす……

First one is roughly "we may not be from your past/future" and the second one is "Pokemon from different timelines". This is via deepL translation so ymmv (especially the first one, it seemed very rough on that)


I will say that while I was in Poke Corpus for this, it brought up the AI's exerpt about it.
It sends Poké Balls to a different point on the
timeline to catch Pokémon there, and it can
then draw them back here to the present.

モンスターボールを　転送(てんそう)し
異(こと)なる時間軸(じかんじく)の　ポケモンを　捕(つか)まえて
現代(げんだい)へと　呼(よ)びだすことが　できる

Transfer the Monster Ball.
And catch Pokémon from a different time line.
and recall them to the present day.

However, just about all the other translations follow what the English puts forth: brought along the timeline and to the modern day.

So if there's any sort of nuance being lost in either conversation it's probably on the machine translation.
https://abcboy101.github.io/poke-co...llections=ScarletViolet&languages=en-US,en-GB

Here's the corpus if you want to look at it yourself, or if someone wants to look at the full context of the conversations in other languages. There's been several times I've seen translation back & forths zero in on one line but if you view both conversations in full it's clear the context is meant to be the same

I still hold to my theory that the Paradox Pokemon are essentially a semi-permanent Terastalization affecting specimens of the Pokemon (EX: Great Tusk is a Tera Fighting Donphan that's stuck halfway there). Terapagos and the Tera Crystals powering the time machine has the effect of essentially fishing out the base Pokemon and the energy causes them to turn into a form based on a Tera Type. The Illustrations of Great Tusk and Iron Treads don't look that far off from more-stylized depictions of Donphan, and to my knowledge they're the only images of Paradoxes we're shown from Heath's Expedition (excluding the explicitly-dreamed Combination Mon). It could just be confirmation bias by the Professor, where the machine brings out a Mon that looks KIND OF like Donphan but not quite, so they take it for an abnormal creature out of the book, where Heath might have recorded them as different species but they would be more akin to Regional Forms of those mons, with no research taking place to answer the question since Heath's team was discredited.

For what it's worth they had photos of Great Tusk/Iron Treads but it's pretty cryptid esque. And there are presumably other depictions of the paradoxes in the rest of the book, we just don't get to see them so we don't know if they had more photos or just drawings.

 

[Esserise]

Here's my question: Does anyone know what the Japanese (or other languages) use as wording for the "Timeline" talk at the Crystal Pool scene? As someone who played a lot of PS1 era RPG's and early 3D Sonic games, rough translations completely losing/changing the meaning of a line isn't unfamiliar territory to me: a Sonic Heroes line for example mixes up referring to a character as "a robot" instead of "artificial" (like organic but created through experiments), which throws off a follow-up line about Cloning and the character's identity.

Like in this case, is "timeline" definitely meant to refer to an alternate version of history/the future as opposed to being a sloppy word for a different period in time?

R_N covered the points I was going to hit, but I’ll still throw this into the ring for consideration: a user on the Bulbapedia talk page for Paradox Pokémon makes the case that the wording in Japanese always suggested that the Pokémon were drawn from alternate timelines, even in the base game, and as such, the Japanese part of the fandom usually discussed them in those terms from the start. Maybe something worth looking into, but personally I think the most interesting point is that the English version of the game sort of implies two different things — the AI Professor’s dialogue is generally taken to mean that the machine transports Pokémon directly from the past or future, whereas the real Professor says they’re brought over from alternate timelines — while the original Japanese appears to be more consistent.

 

[R_N]

R_N covered the points I was going to hit, but I’ll still throw this into the ring for consideration: a user on the Bulbapedia talk page for Paradox Pokémon makes the case that the wording in Japanese always suggested that the Pokémon were drawn from alternate timelines, even in the base game, and as such, the Japanese part of the fandom usually discussed them in those terms from the start. Maybe something worth looking into, but personally I think the most interesting point is that the English version of the game sort of implies two different things — the AI Professor’s dialogue is generally taken to mean that the machine transports Pokémon directly from the past or future, whereas the real Professor says they’re brought over from alternate timelines — while the original Japanese appears to be more consistent.

It'd be nice if we had a deeper look into the Japanese fandom's discussions in general, to get a better read of things. But obviously that's harder than not.

I wonder if there was any notes from the story writers while translating these. There's lots of ways for this to have shaken out the way it did ; it's also interesting to me that Korean follows the English lead when I figured it'd follow the Japanese lead (like Chinese seemingly does).

 

[Noah3475]

I was very annoyed at Spear Pillar. I walked up to Mars and Jupiter, saved the game, and defeated them with relative ease with Barry's help. The Lake Legendary Pokémon freed Dialga from Cyrus' clutches, and he challenged me to battle in his rage. My Pokémon were not even LV.40, and included Bibarel and Finneon for HM usage, so I was unsurprised when I was swept by Honchkrow and Gyarados. "OK, I will purchase a few medicine items and see which of my six battle Pokémon would perform the best against him". I soft-reset the game, and began to depart from Spear Pillar... Mars then says, "You don't think that you can just run off now, do you?" To which I thought, "Of course I can, unless I am at the Pokémon League, I can go wherever I want". The game disagreed. Never mind that I wasn't at the Pokémon League, or that my ace Pokémon, Mattrex , was LV.40 to Cyrus' LV.48 Weavile, or that I barely had any items... No, I must defeat Mars, Jupiter and Cyrus in one sitting, and if that pseudo-softlocks me into my first and only file-recorded defeat, so be it. Barry was incredibly helpful in healing my Pokémon after the Multi Battle with Mars and Jupiter, but I still only defeated Cyrus through well-timed usage of the few X-Items, Max Potion and Full Restore I picked up on various Routes. After I narrowly vanquished Cyrus, Dawn and Prof. Rowan saw fit to detain me further until I caught Dialga. I wisely bought 80 Poke Balls for a Shiny Pokémon earlier in my adventure, and those Poke Balls allowed me to save my Master Ball.
The decision to confine the player to the Spear Pillar until after the climax of the game's plot replaced any enjoyment or satisfaction I might have felt with bewilderment and agitation.

 

[Cobalt Empoleon]

I was very annoyed at Spear Pillar. I walked up to Mars and Jupiter, saved the game, and defeated them with relative ease with Barry's help. The Lake Legendary Pokémon freed Dialga from Cyrus' clutches, and he challenged me to battle in his rage. My Pokémon were not even LV.40, and included Bibarel and Finneon for HM usage, so I was unsurprised when I was swept by Honchkrow and Gyarados. "OK, I will purchase a few medicine items and see which of my six battle Pokémon would perform the best against him". I soft-reset the game, and began to depart from Spear Pillar... Mars then says, "You don't think that you can just run off now, do you?" To which I thought, "Of course I can, unless I am at the Pokémon League, I can go wherever I want". The game disagreed. Never mind that I wasn't at the Pokémon League, or that my ace Pokémon, Mattrex , was LV.40 to Cyrus' LV.48 Weavile, or that I barely had any items... No, I must defeat Mars, Jupiter and Cyrus in one sitting, and if that pseudo-softlocks me into my first and only file-recorded defeat, so be it. Barry was incredibly helpful in healing my Pokémon after the Multi Battle with Mars and Jupiter, but I still only defeated Cyrus through well-timed usage of the few X-Items, Max Potion and Full Restore I picked up on various Routes. After I narrowly vanquished Cyrus, Dawn and Prof. Rowan saw fit to detain me further until I caught Dialga. I wisely bought 80 Poke Balls for a Shiny Pokémon earlier in my adventure, and those Poke Balls allowed me to save my Master Ball.
The decision to confine the player to the Spear Pillar until after the climax of the game's plot replaced any enjoyment or satisfaction I might have felt with bewilderment and agitation.

I guess I understand wanting your save file to be a continuous string of victories, but if you were kinda expecting to lose to Cyrus anyway, why does it matter whether or not the loss is "file-recorded"? If you just accepted the defeat and blacked out to Cyrus you would've been taken back to the Pokemon Center, so you weren't actually soft-locked in any meaningful sense.

Your arbitrary need to not let the game 'remember' your loss doesn't constitute a flaw on the game's part. Besides, it sounds like being forced (well, ""forced"") to strategise with the resources you had on hand led to a interesting challenge!

 

[QuentinQuonce]

I guess I understand wanting your save file to be a continuous string of victories, but if you were kinda expecting to lose to Cyrus anyway, why does it matter whether or not the loss is "file-recorded"? If you just accepted the defeat and blacked out to Cyrus you would've been taken back to the Pokemon Center, so you weren't actually soft-locked in any meaningful sense.

Your arbitrary need to not let the game 'remember' your loss doesn't constitute a flaw on the game's part. Besides, it sounds like being forced (well, ""forced"") to strategise with the resources you had on hand led to a interesting challenge!

He's got a point, though. DP does a similar thing to this in another part of the game: once you've been to the Contest Hall, you can't leave Hearthome City without defeating Barry, so if you're underlevelled or want/need to catch more Pokemon, bad luck! It was never a massive problem for me (outside of the Pearl run I did last year) but I can imagine it was a source of frustration for some people.

 

[Cobalt Empoleon]

He's got a point, though. DP does a similar thing to this in another part of the game: once you've been to the Contest Hall, you can't leave Hearthome City without defeating Barry, so if you're underlevelled or want/need to catch more Pokemon, bad luck! It was never a massive problem for me (outside of the Pearl run I did last year) but I can imagine it was a source of frustration for some people.

But that's an entirely separate criticism, one that I agree with and one that they didn't make. Genuine soft-locks are bad!

 

[ant4456]

Wait, Barry blocks you if you go West?

I actually haven't tried that before so I didn't even know wtf

 

[QuentinQuonce]

But that's an entirely separate criticism, one that I agree with and one that they didn't make. Genuine soft-locks are bad!

I may have misunderstood but their original post was about not being able to leave Spear Pillar without defeating three opponents in a row.

The Hearthome one is a more genuine softlock but the Spear Pillar one is similarly crappy - true it can be mitigated by being very well-prepared and having a massive stock of healing items, but not everyone is. Hearthome at least lets you use the Pokemart.

 

[R_N]

I try not to rag on Serebii too much, because I find more often than not their site is still very useful for information but the way he decided to handle TMs in SV is mind numbingly worthless