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Yeah, Froslass is a ridiculously easy boss. One thing I like about it, though, is that instead of the normal "battle start" animation, it shows a blizzard.
EDIT: Also. This is completely unrelated, but...
I'm really looking forward to watching you do Destiny Tower
pika pal: I guess this is Gen 1 freeze then.
As for Giratina, I'm just more wondering why it was a Wifi/password exclusive mission in T/D since Dialga's in the plot. Even if Giratina isn't, I feel like it should at least be a regular thing IN THE GAME...
lucariomaster2: Yeah, the blizzard is a really neat transition. A little creepy, just as it should be with Froslass being the boss.
As for your spoiler, I still haven't decided if I'm going to do that dungeon or not. Probably since it seems like this thread really wants it, but I haven't ever beaten it before, lol.
Altissimo - Today at 4:07 PM
all right time to play some pokemanz
Silent Hastati - Today at 4:08 PM
kill gary
Altissimo - Today at 4:08 PM
no it's lp
should i kill team charm
Silent Hastati - Today at 4:09 PM
no
marry them
they are waifus
Altissimo - Today at 4:09 PM
ok
… so with that let’s go ahead and get going!
This sure is a sea all right. Maybe. Are those walls ice?
HOW CAN YOU ALREADY SPEAK
WHERE DID YOU LEARN LANGUAGE FROM??? ARE YOU BLUEKIT FROM BLUESTAR’S PROPHECY I MEAN SHE COULD WALK AND SPEAK AND EXIST A DAY AFTER BEING BORN
Ray: Wow! It’s a Pokémon, but I’ve never seen anything like this!
Do you have any idea what kind of Pokémon this little guy is, Chatot?
Chatot: Hmm... Well, to be honest, this is the first time I’ve actually seen a Pokémon of this sort.
So lemme get this straight. We took the egg from the sea...
… specifically set it up in our base... watched it hatch...
and we never talked about what to do at this point?
Yeah I’d be crying too.
Ray: Whoa! What... what’s wrong? The baby started crying all of a sudden!
So yeah if you don’t have any Blue Gummis this is the game’s way of gently nudging you in the right direction.
I do have two Blue Gummis but because I feel like it I’m going to go out and take a rescue mission instead of feeding Manaphy right away. This time let’s get out to Midnight Forest, the one we opened before that I was worried about.
But first...
Oh my gosh! I heard a fantastic rumor!
A rumor about a place called the Surrounded Sea! Eek!
I got to thinking about how the others were considering their prospects for graduating.
So I went around asking others their thoughts about graduation... Well, their answers were all over the place, yup yup.
Take, for instance, Croagunk. They say he’s good enough to graduate anytime he wants.
Now, I don’t rightly know if that is true, no sirree...
That said, Croagunk seems to have no interest in being on an exploration team in the first place...
Huh, all right, I didn’t expect to get one so quickly but all right.
This is one of the seven ‘secret missions’ I mentioned before that are only obtainable after you save Scizor and get the Secret Rank. In all seven of these missions, you will be asked to go to the dungeon in question and retrieve a musical instrument whose theme is similar to the dungeon’s. In order to get this item you must defeat the legendary at the end of the dungeon. No prizes for guessing which legendary is at the end of the Sky Stairway, lol.
We will take this mission, but first we need to feed a hungry child lol.
Yea I guess he’s been here forever lol
All right let’s stop neglecting our child now I suppose.
Manaphy: Weh... Wah?
Ray: Go on! Eat it. It’s a Blue Gummi.
Manaphy: … Goomi?
Well yes but who DOES know something about Manaphy. I mean. Should we just throw him back in the water and hope someone comes along who knows what to do with him?
Ray: Hmm...
But... It wouldn’t be safe to just return the little guy to the sea.
Most of these were Pokémon from the future dungeons, where we can’t get recruits, so this serves as a kind of dumping ground for a lot of them.
On floor 10 and I already need to fill the Belly. Cool.
This dungeon is 50 floors long. It’s kind of a real bear to finish. Here’s hoping it goes all right for us.
Also no recruits yet :(.
… Wasn’t really expecting a Claydol tho.
Named it Dirtpuppet because something something a dude on discord
NO we are TURNING OFF SELFDESTRUCT
I guess I need a ditto but you are useless so you’re going home immediately.
Named Actual Gum by the boyfriend.
Man I’m just getting All Of the recruits now aren’t I.
Named Pukao by Codraroll.
I talked to Pukao on accident and uh
That’s. An odd thing for ANY Pokémon to say lol
Sweet.
Named Neopet because the boyfriend thinks it looks like one.
… Ray died, long live Ray. I don’t really want to continue without him but I also am 34 floors in and have recruited a many friend...
Gathering an army with which to fight Rayquaza here.
Altissimo - Today at 6:49 PM
nickname for Muk
Silent Hastati - Today at 6:50 PM
this isnt the game with the garbage pokemon right
Altissimo - Today at 6:50 PM
bo
*no
Silent Hastati - Today at 6:50 PM
ok in that case this is where the name goes
Your Waifu
Altissimo - Today at 6:51 PM
pfhahhahahahaa
I can’t argue that logic.
I am getting SO MANY MONS
Named Sheep.
As much as I love Vulpix I won’t be taking Jimbo here into the battle, he’s too low-leveled and doesn’t really have any good attack options.
Welp Sheep died to Ominous Wind :( hopefully we can pick something else up soon.
Oh dear god I might die here.
BARELY NOT
Welp time to fight Rayquaza. Clearly I don’t have an army. In lieu of that I’m going to take advantage of items and Magnetoff’s Discharge for this fight.
At the apex...
Well hello.
I am Rayquaza! The guardian of Sky Stairway!
If it is the treasure that you seek...
Possess the sky...
I challenge you to surpass your limits...
Demonstrate your power to me!
Now it begins!
I lead off by throwing a Stick at Rayquaza and setting Magnetoff to use Discharge exclusively... except it doesn’t attack. :/
I take a step back. This puts us both adjacent to Rayquaza. Hopefully Magnetoff will attack now.
I start with Ice Fang as Magnetoff uses Discharge.
… cool I guess...?
When a Pokémon is frozen you can’t attack it, though, so I turn off Magnetoff’s Discharge to preserve PP until Rayquaza thaws. In the meantime, Alti throws another Stick.
Well. I said I was going to do that and then I fucked it up. Now we’re here I guess.
… It’s item time. X-Eye Seed go! This makes Rayquaza unable to see or locate us.
… bye
WE DID IT! SOMEHOW
And we are rewarded.
The treasure box contained... a Sky Melodica!
Alti obtained a Sky Melodica, one of the seven treasures!
Having this in the bag increases the recruit rate for Flying-types.
Rayquaza can’t be recruited the first time so that’s a non-issue.
All right let’s actually feed Manaphy
hey buddy ur gonna eat!!!!
After I go decide if there’s any good missions worth holding on to.
Looks like we have another one of the special missions.
I won’t be taking it now, but this one is for the World Abyss, which houses Giratina and the Rock Horn.
We also find a new dungeon. It’s Oran Forest, which is tiny and not really that worthwhile lel but hey!
Back to Manaphy.
Manaphy: Goomi! ♪
Chew, chew...
Ray: Is it tasty? Er... Goomi tasty?
Did you talk to them or what like
how did you get to learn this
That may be what it takes to cure Manaphy’s illness.
Ray: Phione Dew... So that’s what we need.
Hey, Chatot. Can you tell us where we can find Phione Dew?
Bye Manaphy... One thing I was always curious about is what the connection between Manaphy and Phione in the MD universe was. In the games I always took Phione to be an underdeveloped or differently adapted Manaphy from breeding in captivity instead of the Ocean, but it's safe to assume here that the relation wouldn't quite play out that way, especially since Manaphy's Egg is in a completely different dungeon.
Nickname for Machamp: Bill. There's an in-joke for me but I also just think it's funny for sounding mundane on this thing.
It's always been a mystery to me how water dungeons work. Are you swimming downwards? Are you walking along the bottom of the sea? How do you hold your breath (and why doesn't Charmander instantly die upon going into one)?
Oh, and, I guess... good luck in the next dungeon; hope you're the patient type. :D If you're going for all the Unown, I suggest the NATO phonetic alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie...) for their nicknames.
pika pal: I mean they still LOOK related but considering you can't breed in MD I don't really know how to tell for sure. That's an interesting question.
Thanks for the nickname suggestion!
lucariomaster2: I have no idea how those water dungeons work. And as we saw in MD1 Red didn't die so clearly there must be some sort of protection...? Maybe??? Who knows.
ugh Aegis Cave is the worst lol thanks. I didn't see your suggestions for Unown names until after I had started though so I used a different name scheme for them, sorry :(
No plot yet, so we’re going to take a trip to World Abyss, the dungeon we opened before that houses Giratina.
look at that... a pidgey that isn’t horrifically rare...... a taillow that doesn’t require you to go to a level 1 dungeon......... what is this Madness
Nidoqueen strikes fear into the hearts of men, by the way. It has Earth Power, which is basically Discharge in that it hits all enemies in the room.
Double fun when you’re a Pikachu like I was during my first playthrough :B
large rooms like this are The Worst (TM) because Nidoqueen could hit you a million times before you could do anything about it.
This dungeon is a little bit ass
LOOK AT THAT HIGH DAMAGE AAAAAAAA
I saw this Pidgey and was like SHIT A PIDGEY!!!! GOTTA GET
I have been conditioned by way too many years playing Rescue Team.
Alas. Well at least it’s not stupid rare like in Rescue Team lol
DO NOT WANT
Petrify Orb time!
oh my god
… cool
COOL
And then I died like 10 times. I couldn’t make it past about floor 12. Okay, screw that, we are not doing World Abyss right now. Done with that shit.
Sure let’s take an outlaw mission for once and hope this is a little better.
Graveler is going to run away from us. If it gets to the stairs, we fail. Chase time!
oh my god look how EASY that was
screw you world abyss
Named Squidward lol
… excuse me???
WELL THEN ALL RIGHT
I totally love this, Mewtwo’s just chillin out and he’s like “let’s Fight yall” like he’s chill as hell
Let’s take it!
Named Mothman.
Named Yugi because boyfriend recommended it without even knowing what I was trying to name lol
Named Mojumbo.
Named Camp. (Yugi and Mothman died :()
… not taking Hydro Pump if that’s its PP lol
Camp died. This Drifloon is named Tea.
Here we are! it’s Time, let’s see how this goes.
Tea is set to spam Ominous Wind.
… Tea’s Ominous Wind spam killed Mewtwo before it even got to us lmao
Oh damn, I thought I couldn’t do this yet. Guess I was wrong.
Absolutely down for adding Mewtwo to the gang!
No nicknames as per previous run’s tendencies.
Mewtwo: I owe you...
From now on... I want to be part of your team!
Moreover, they don’t just find treasures. Oh, no!
Strong! Smart! Beautiful! The sheer style of their treasure hunts is what makes them celebrities!
In the middle is Lopunny. She’s the gorgeous one with the long ears.
Next to her is the serenely elegant Gardevoir! ♪ Ah, she is so beautiful...
Finally, there’s Medicham. She moves and flows as if she’s dancing all the time. Irresistibly cool!
Sunflora: Guildmaster... Are you already acquainted with Team Charm?
Medicham: Oh! Wigglytuff was a real go-getter back in the day. Like, grrrowl! So how are you nowadays?
Chatot: Whaaaat?!
The Guildmaster... And Team Charm...?
Wigglytuff: So what brings you all here?
Gardevoir: So astute of you. We came about an important matter.
At the time, we didn’t know what the key was for. Well, we’ve finally found out where it should be used.
You see, we discovered a place called Aegis Cave. That key is a perfect fit for the keyhole to its entrance.
Medicham: Hey! We went through a lot to get that key! Are you saying you’ve lost it?
Gardevoir: … That’s typical for Wigglytuff. Some things haven’t changed at all, it seems.
Lopunny: Yes, darling! This is the key. This will open the way into Aegis Cave.
Thank you, Wigglytuff!
Say, why don’t you join us? It will be like old times.
So instead we head up to Ice Aegis Cave. Hm... wonder what “ice” means here
…
Ok i’ll tell you because this dungeon is the Worst. So basically this dungeon is primarily inhabited by Unown. Unown have a chance of dropping a stone with a letter that matches their shape. You need to spell out the word from the beginning with stones in order to progress. So in other words you need to find, and kill, the Unown matching the letters and hope they random drop the right letter.
Oh, and you can’t hard save at any point, so it all has to be done in one go.
Gardevoir: I would assume this stone marker holds the key.
The surface of the stone marker is scored by deep grooves shaped like Unown.
The cave is filled by hordes of Unown...
Lopunny: “If you seek passage, close your eyes, then submit your proof.” Well, that’s not much to go on.
Well, I closed my eyes, but that did nothing. We must be overlooking something.
It appears to be a letter.
Alti read the letter.
“To Team Hurricane:”
“As we promised earlier, we have already solved this mystery. We’re going on ahead.”
Named Rosa. Looks like it also dropped a stone which is awesome! (The theme now is Rock lol)
Daniel.
Lane.
… because I’ve been blinded by a seed I have no way of knowing what I just recruited other than that it is an Unown. Since it dropped an Unown S stone I can probably assume it’s an Unown S? Named Sergio :p
(It was an Unown S)
Paul.
Getting so many recruits and so few Unown Stones that I need :/
(I realized later Paul was also an Unown R and released him lol)
FINALLY a K STONE and also named Kristy.
So boyfriend moved in with me last week. Instead of getting his name options over Discord I just yelled down the stairs
“HEY [BOYFRIEND]!”
“YEAH?”
“I NEED A NAME FOR A ZUBAT”
“A ZUBAT?”
“YEAH”
“NAME IT ROBIN”
so here we are
IT DROPPED AN O STONE AND JOINED MY TEAM
HOORAY
Named Olivia.
Hands up: who’s surprised?
Yet again Regirock is not much of a threat.
Second verse, same as the first, we then move on to the Steel part of the cave.
I already picked up S, T, and L stones earlier, so now we’re just looking for two E’s.
That was appreciably quick. One more...
Tara.
YES...
Fabio.
On to the next part of the dungeon!
After a fight that is.
(Again. Not hard.)
What
Lopunny: Wh-what happened to us...?
Oh! We were fighting Registeel here... Then Medicham got into trouble...
Medicham? The only one of you that has anything greater than NVE STAB on Registeel?
... After that, I just don’t know. I don’t know what came next.
I can see that you saved us though, Team Hurricane.
Thank you! We were in a bind!
Medicham: We owe you one, Team Hurricane.
If you didn’t show up in time to save us, that would’ve been it for us.
Gardevoir: That is so true.
I’m afraid we can never repay you for this...
Medicham: The ground heaved up! And a gap opened in the face of the cliff!
Gardevoir: That tremor earlier...
What Regigigas and the others were protecting... This must have been it!
Medicham: I get it now! That’s where they hid the treasures! And they’re undisturbed!
Medicham: I’d say it does! The treasures in there, all of it belongs to you!
My word, weren’t you something special!
It was like seeing Wigglytuff in action in the old days!
Everyone: HA HA HA!
Gardevoir: So, shall we go on to our next adventure, old friends?
Lopunny: Yes, let’s do that!
We enjoyed ourselves very much, Team Hurricane. It was fun exploring with you!
If we keep up our explorations, we may run into each other someday.
But next time, we’ll beat you to the treasure!
We also unlock the special dungeon that houses Articuno.
I take on a couple missions to round out the update and set the stage for the next few updates. Anticlimactic ending but it’s better this way Promise :p
Named Sylva.
Named Flagon because of a joke last night in choir practice lol
Pretty sure I need one of these for Purugly.
Named Spike.
Gretzky. (Yes I know it’s a girl w/e.)
That’s it for today. Next time: The next special episode – featuring Team Charm!
All right I'm finally back @_@ sorry this took so long, first I was in Europe for a little over a week and then after I got back I tried to finish it before I went backpacking for a few days but that, uh, didn't happen
Now that it's summer I theoretically have more free time, except that I am starting a M-F 9-5 job on June 11 and also I have to buckle down and get my thesis done so who actually knows when the next update will be.
It will definitely happen though...!
Anyway, let's get into it.
As promised it is time to take on the fourth special episode featuring Team Charm.
of course it is the standard full moon night
I guess we found some more ziggurats
On the eastern horizon...
In a small expanse of ruins...
but what prehistoric societies were there... are we looking for treasure or HISTORY yall
please give me my pokemon society histories n shit yall
that’s not team charm...!!!!!!!
This is the... deepest part of the dungeon, I think...
Oooh, hey! There’s a treasure chest up there!
… D-don’t tell me...
… Don’t tell me this is the treasure everyone’s been blabbering about...
This is the treasure of these ruins!
Ugh... I’ve been working hard as an explorer for a really long time...
And, finally...
Finally, I’ve found what I’ve searched for... an awesome treasure!
So wait were they just standing around on those rocks waiting for someone to show up so they could gloat about being the Best Treasure Hunters and take the treasure and leave.
If the guild’s reaction to them was any indication, I suppose they were. Are. Whatever.
They’re not only famous for being Master Rank and having a great reputation...
But also for their splendid ability to find treasure, which is admired by everyone.
… a forest that has the same music as the forest Friend Areas from Rescue Team?
medicham is Absolutely Dead
We’ve come pretty far...
Are we anywhere near our destination yet?
Gardevoir: Just a little farther, Medicham.
According to my research, once we get out of this jungle...
Our destination... is Boulder Quarry.
Lopunny: Deep in Boulder Quarry, there’s supposed to be a legendary treasure...
It’s said to be so beautiful that mere words cannot express it.
Here’s the Southern Jungle which is pretty... uneventful lol
We aren’t coming back, but might as well state for the record this place houses Dodrio, Mawile, Jumpluff, Staraptor, Muk, Seviper, Forretress, Hippopotas, Glameow, Vespiquen, Murkrow, and Cherrim.
Lopunny has Endure/Return/Pound/Baton Pass, Gardevoir has Double Team/Wish/Calm Mind/Confusion, and Medicham has Bide/Detect/Hidden Power/Force Palm.
cool i have literally no money
COOL
why is there AIR in this dungeon
Anyway after only ten floors we have made it across the jungle.
Medicham: Huh? I think I head some kind of strange noise coming from over there...
Noise: Guuuuu!
Lopunny: I heard it again.
Gardevoir: Let’s go check it out.
Wigglytuff strikes me as the kind of person to find the treasure and leave it put. Like he’s just excited he got there!!!! He doesn’t care about what’s in the treasure box.
Medicham: I-it’s no joke!
We’re the ones who are going to find that treasure!
Lopunny: By the way... What’s the status of the treasure?
Magmortar: Oh. No one’s found it yet.
Houndoom: Unfortunately, nothing’s been found. Nothing at all.
It’s really easy to get lost in it.
Magmortar: Even so, you should be able to get at least halfway through.
But after the waypoint, it’s really difficult...
Gardevoir: Difficult?
Houndoom: Yeah... Even if you try to move forward, you always end up right back where you started.
Sentret: … No matter how many times you try.
And so, almost everyone’s been coming back here to discuss it...
Cacturne: There’s got to be some kind of puzzle to it somehow... I think.
If you don’t figure out the puzzle, you’ll never find the treasure.
It’s said that each and every Pokémon that has run into them in a dungeon...
They’ve all come away from that encounter stripped of all their possessions.
Arbok: Sss-sssss. Better lissssten up!
I’ve been getting ressstlesssss ‘cause it’s been too long ssssince I’ve had the chance to beat sssssomeone down!
Oh! I see! You actually respect us and want to treat us like people?
Drapion: GAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That’s it! That’s it!
If that’s how it is, it’s real simple!
You girls are cute, so... I guess we’ll let you be friends with us.
Gardevoir: Why Team AWD?
Sentret: The truth is... I used to be in an exploration team with some friends a while ago...
My friends... were attacked by Team AWD during an adventure...
Gardevoir: We understand, Sentret.
If we run into Team AWD again, we’ll definitely punish them.
In honor of your friends...
Sentret: Th-thank you so much!
So we end up in Boulder Quarry. Music. Sound familiar? It’s a remix of Mt. Steel from Rescue Team.
Pokémon: Lairon, Ampharos, Staraptor, Manectric, Claydol, Ninjask, Shelgon, Gliscor, Muk
It’s only five floors before we reach a save point.
Gardevoir: I think it’s going to get more difficult from here on.
with more style and grace than any one of yall steelheads can ever possess
DAT TRANSITION THO
Battle music continues to be Team Charm’s theme.
Let’s go.
Medicham is set to use exclusively Force Palm and High Jump Kick. Gardevoir is set to lead with Double Team, and Lopunny will use exclusively Pound but on the first turn uses an Iron Thorn on Aggron.
Gardevoir’s Double Team successfully fends off a few attacks, and Medicham’s Fighting-type moves OHKO two Lairon.
lol you were not much of a threat
RLY you used the Reviver Seed AFTER THE AGGRON WAS DEFEATED grrr
Aggron straight up burrows into the ground and the Lairon return to their wall holes.
Medicham: Hee! They panicked and ran off...
We’re Team Charm, don’t underestimate us!
Lopunny: Well, at least we won’t be held back anymore.
Gardevoir: Let’s keep moving.
When we took the left entrance, we ended up right back here...
So when we took the right entrance, I thought we’d progress...
What in the world is going on?!
Gardevoir: We can’t seem to go any farther.
Medicham: You see the two entrances over there?
It doesn’t matter which entrance we enter...
No matter what, we end up right back here.
We guess there’s a puzzle to solve... Because we’re all really puzzled!
Medicham: Huh?
Wigglytuff: You helped me. ♪ So it would be terribly rude for me not to pay attention.
Thinking about it... It’s a pretty cool problem, isn’t it?
Gardevoir: But – if that’s the case...
Lopunny: You know it! If that’s the case, then that wall...
Gardevoir: That wall might be an invisible... hidden doorway!
Medicham: What?! Could that be true?! If that’s true...
Gardevoir! Lopunny! Let’s find out for ourselves!
The deep part is pretty rocky as u can see Music: Deep Limestone Cavern
Pokémon: Dragonair, Aerodactyl, Masquerain, Volbeat, Illumise, Seviper, Poliwhirl, Dugtrio
After another five floors, we reach the Depths.
Gardevoir: Don’t be so impatient, Medicham. We’ll get it sooner or later.
Lopunny: Everyone! Look! There’s a light over there!
You haven’t even opened the chest yet how do you know if there’s actually something in there
Lopunny: … You said it. Looks like treasure to me...
Medicham: Lopunny! Open it! Quick! I can’t wait!
Lopunny: Hee hee! Patience is a virtue, Medicham!
Oh please just open the damn thing, no need for all this
What kind of treasure will be revealed to our eyes...
What wealth of beautiful things will we find...
That thought is filling me with excitement...
Oh! Truly... Truly... Please...
I don’t know why he did it... But...
He wanted Team Charm and Team AWD to knock each other out...
And by making you all focus on the battle...
I think someone is going to great lengths to hide something.
Ditto: … Deceived... As you saw... I have the power to use the move Transform...
I was a treasure chest earlier, but that’s not all...
I can also... Transform into Pokémon...
It’s an incredibly mysterious scene...
But it’s so... it’s so pretty...
Gardevoir: Yes, very...
It’s emitting this blue-green radiance from its center...
That light is illuminating the whole cave...
This is very beautiful...
Medicham: It’s just fascinating...
I’ve never seen anything like it before... But...
But this thing... What is it exactly?
Weavile: You don’t know?
So who assigned you?
And did Grovyle have to fight you to get it or were you more understanding? I mean, we didn’t see the fight, but who knows if there was one or not. Because this is definitely one of the ones Grovyle took, we saw this backdrop in that scene.
And if that’s the case, what about the one in the volcano that Ray mentioned and is even the title screen art for Darkness but never once seen in-game?
What happened to that Time Gear?
Mysteries, mysteries... feel free to throw in your own input!
Weavile: … A Time Gear, huh...?
Tsk. I guess we don’t have any choice.
So you’re just going to go home without stealing anything?
Weavile: Humph! If it were some other treasure, it’d be fine...
But you can’t just steal a Time Gear and take it with you.
I know Ray and Alti and Grovyle saved the world but I have to wonder if there’s some band of like, i dunno, ill-informed Pokémon or conspiracy theorists that think they were trying to destroy it.
… I kind of dig the conspiracy theory idea.
Even though we’re scoundrels, we at least know that much.
No way...
Gardevoir: It has to be this way.
There are some things in this world that you just can’t take.
Lopunny: Even though we can’t take the treasure with us, I’d call this a success. Wouldn’t you?
Well, I’m headed home now.
Lopunny: Gardevoir, Medicham.
Gardevoir: Yes.
Medicham: Got it.
Wigglytuff: Huh? What’s with everyone?
Medicham: Wigglytuff. You’re not half bad!
We’ve got a better opinion of you now!
Wigglytuff: Huh?
Gardevoir: You saw through Ditto’s treasure-chest disguise...
You’re really cool!
Lopunny: So... What will you do next, Wigglytuff?
Wigglytuff: Huh? Next?
Lopunny: Yes, next. ♪
Wigglytuff: I wonder... I don’t really have any plans...
Wigglytuff: With you?
Gardevoir: Yes, with us. What do you think?
Medicham: Hmmm... What should I do...?
It would be fun exploring with you...
But I’ve never explored with anyone other than my master...
That special episode is not exactly flattering for Team Charm. There was literally no reason to wait around like that to take the treasure if they had time to pose on the statues, and besides the gloating, you kind of put the guy you're bragging to in danger if the temple collapses. It's not even like the Graveler was smug or particularly unlikeable, so it's not like it's gratifying to see him lose out on something he clearly worked hard for (hell he got here alone compared to most implications being people explore in teams).
I always also kind of laugh at the idea that Team Charm's Master Rank and yet couldn't handle the Regis, which kind of makes me wonder how much it's supposed to mean: you could reach Master Rank just doing middle/low rank jobs the entire game. I mean, in this scenario, every roadblock they came to was just solved because Wigglytuff was passing by and knew better. Prodigy or not, having someone else solve the mystery for you doesn't look the best for the audience.
Honestly, this is probably my pick for the weakest special episode. There's not much in the way of character development (at least none the main story didn't give already), Team AWD trying to get expansion from T&D was neat but still pretty shallow, and the story itself was just kind of A-to-B progression. And this is a personal thing, but I don't feel like Wigglytuff needed this particular appearance; after the Igglybuff episode, i think it was more fun filling in the blanks of how Wigglytuff became a renowned explorer, including stuff like his history with Team Charm.
I also agree that this special episode about Team Charm wasn't the best there could be, it would be best to remember the story takes place before they were famous and all which means that of course they'd come over hardships and problems along the way like all teams would, although in this sense having Wigglytuff be involved in every success that involve them too does seem to lower their credibility quite a lot like the post above explains. I feel like a more independent story of Team Charm a bit after the events that happen in this story with them actually being a little less green and solve a big, more interesting story as only a team would be more character defining as this story doesn't really show how they've become the famous team they are today but rather just a random story they've had with Wigglytuff involved in it somehow. I mean the Time Gear stuff was fine but the story in general was rather lackluster in comparison to other side stories.
So like I said above, a better story in terms of character & relationship definitions and an interesting plot I think would make Team Charm a whole lot more interesting and understandable and not just these popular people who are just there, a more refined backstory or experience needs to be recalled in order for Team Charm to actually look great in the main story and actually have an experience that tells why they are so great. Including Wigglytuff I think wasn't a mistake if done properly, of course the relationship between Team Charm and Wigglytuff should be further defined rather than the latter solving or involving himself in Team Charm's problems throughout the main story, but rather working together to do something so that both parties can come out looking reliable and powerful, but since we already have a spotlight on Wigglytuff in the prodigy episode, and we already believe Wigglytuff is awesome, the spotlight should be on Team Charm more as they are the ones who really need credibility right now if the game were to continue with Wigglytuff looking equally credible and powerful while still being a side character.
Team AWD in the side story was pretty boring, to me it was just a cliché gang of ruffians doing what they want to do and causing problems for our protagonists, it was really disappointing really while we having such great side characters such as Armaldo. We don't even know who they really are aside from being the typical bad guys, where did they come from? Very little backstories were given for Team AWD which makes them hardly likable as bad guys and very uninteresting. If there were given a purpose for interfering with the protagonists or involving themselves in the story more efficiently I feel like then they would've stood out more as bad guys than just a group of misfits wanting to get in someone's else way and look strong because that's really common in the archetype of antagonists and for a story to be more interesting then the characters have to be unique.
I can go on about what can be improved about this story but I'll just leave my main, relevant points here. Overall Team Charm could've been a more interesting concept if their side story was done better which I would've wanted to see in comparison to a rather lackluster and uninteresting side story that had way too many cliché moments and plot twists and characters who were rather typical and the pointless inclusion and usage of Wigglytuff. After they've made a masterpiece out of Wigglytuff's own side story you'd think the rest would be great, but sadly it isn't and thats why I also think the Team Charm side story is pretty mediocre.
Re: Team Charm comments: I got the impression, even the first time playing, that the episode was mainly meant as a vehicle to showcase the location/characteristics of the fifth Time Gear that Grovyle takes, because we see four of them directly in the game and only get art for the location of the fifth and little else - and that Team Charm was kind of a convenient vehicle through which to showcase that. Dunno how true that is, though, because Team Charm (and their relationship to Wigglytuff) does seem like a natural topic for expanding on in a special episode so... who knows.
I have to agree it's pretty weak though. Considering how much of Wigglytuff's help they need it doesn't really show them as being the confident and successful treasure-hunting team that their appearance in the main story suggests - they don't figure out the secret of the maze and they don't figure out the secret of the empty treasure box either. Nor are they really given a chance to since Wigglytuff Ex Machina solves the puzzle both times, which is fair because Wigglytuff is a genius but it kind of seems to miss the point of giving Team Charm their own special episode.
Team AWD was... completely inconsequential too. Sentret/Ditto trying to start a fight between them and Team Charm to distract them both makes sense as a defensive tactic but their battle... like... didn't do anything for the story. I dunno I just feel like it wasn't presented as well as it seems like it should be.
Onto the main story! Short update because this was a good stopping point lol
Well good, I guess. Maybe. I dunno watching a storm from Sharpedo Rock seems cool as shit.
(Related: If anyone wants to hear about the absolutely transformative experience I had in Strobl, Austria on my trip feel free to inquire lol, it’s related to thunderstorms partially)
Alti: (Yes, it does feel that way.)
(Going to the future with Ray...)
(Fighting Dialga at Temporal Tower...)
(Now that I think about it, it does feel like all those things were a long time ago.)
Again. Several months. I mean that is a while. How long do regular Pokémon live anyway
(Now that time has returned to normal... and peace has come to the world...)
(It reminds me that... because time returned to normal...)
(It became possible for everyone to evolve at Luminous Spring again...)
Ray: Distortion? The fabric of space?
Voice: Why that should be, I do not know...
But your presence... is somehow related to the distortion of space itself.
As a result of that, you cannot evolve...
(We were told that there was distortion in the fabric of space that prevented our evolution.)
(But what does “a distortion in the fabric of space” mean?)
I put in another fine day of training today, yup yup.
I reckon it’s because I’ve got the goal of graduating. It’s surely making every day meaningful, yup yup.
Why, I can tell I’m getting better and better at exploring, by golly!
The way I’ve been working lately, like a Pokémon on a mission... I’m proud of myself, by golly!
20. Manaphy?
So I was thinking that Chatot has been mighty testy of late. What’s been eating him?
Turns out that baby Manaphy had taken sick. I didn’t know that...
Just a little. We fixed it though. No one can ever die in Pokémon!
21. Cheer Up!
Sniffle... Baby Manaphy had to go back to the sea today...
Like Corphish said... I reckon that Manaphy is a Pokémon that rightly has to grow in the sea.
Oh, Alti and Ray! I hope that you cheer up!
That baby Manaphy won’t forget the two of you, not even after a long time, I reckon.
One of these days, you will be able to see each other again, yup yup.
I’ll keep it in mind that I should stay cheerful and upbeat around Alti and Ray, yup yup!
I just wish that they’d get back to being their usual cheery selves soon, yup yup.
I reckon that goes to show how peaceful it’s been of late. Yup yup.
Why, it seems like it’s been ages since Alti’s team put a stop to the planet’s paralysis.
Eeeek! They’ve beaten me to the punch!
Being free associates of the guild gives those kids an advantage, though. They’re free to go wherever and whenever they want.
22. Yippee! Team Charm!
Oh my gosh! What an exciting day it was!
Everyone’s favorite celebrities, the women of Team Charm, came to our guild! Oh my gosh!
I feel lucky that I’ve stayed with the guild to further my training.
Oh...! Chimecho is eyeing me curiously. I can’t write like this, oh my gosh!
So that’s all for tonight! Good night!
:( that’s... sad. I don’t want to be Timmy Turner where everything is better and also the Cubs won the world series if I don’t exist
(shut up I know the Cubs won the world series, that episode well predated the Cubs’ victory)
(change it to Indians if you want it to still be relevant)
Because you... exist here...
If you remain...
The world be destroyed!
Cresselia, please tell me more... about what you said last time.
You said that my existence is driving the world toward ruin.
What did you mean by that?
I mean. I guess??? If I did come from the future that would create some bizarre fuckery considering the whole “matter and energy are finite” thing. Hasn’t really been addressed satisfactorily here.
Sunflora: There seems to be no danger to his life, but...
Ray: What happened to him?!
Marill: He’s been sleeping and sleeping and sleeping... But he won’t wake up.
Music
So he’s got the mysterious sleeping sickness from Sailor Moon then. Has he been sending in love letters to a random midnight radio station per chance?
(Three guesses as to which anime the bf and I started watching a few days ago. The first two don’t count.)
Ray: What?! He won’t wake up?
Marill: Yes...
I tried waking him over and over, but he’s still asleep.
I got worried. So I brought him to the guild.
Maybe he’s just like sick to hell or something. Or maybe he has mono. I dunno I’ve never had mono.
Corphish: Hey, hey, that could be it.
The way the little fellow is tossing and turning, it looks like he’s having a nightmare, hey, hey.
Ray: Hey, Chatot. Do you know how we can wake up Azurill?
Chatot: Hmm... Unfortunately, I’m fresh out of ideas too.
To be locked in a nightmare... unable to wake for days on end... I’ve never heard of such a thing.
Loudred: What is it, Bidoof?
Bidoof: I got to thinking... Since we can’t make the nightmare go away...
If we somehow figure out what kind of nightmare he’s having...
Maybe we can figure out why that little Azurill can’t wake up, by golly...
but aren’t you also the head of intelligence here and all that noise
However, the possibility exists.
Ray: OK, I get it. So if we were to ask Drowzee...
Maybe he’ll be able to get into Azurill’s nightmare!
Hey, Magnemite.
Marill: Oh, Ray...
Ray: Wait for us, Marill.
We promise we’ll come back with Drowzee.
Marill: Urf... Ray...
You always, always help us... Thank you so much.
We’re not going there right now of course :B Music: Mt. Travail
(Apparently, this art is a recolor of the art of the outside of Mt. Thunder from Rescue Team.) It looks a little more detailed and less GBA-y to my eyes though so I dunno.)
We need Drowzee to help us figure out why Azurill won’t wake up.
We have to hurry finding Drowzee!
We’ve got to be at our best, Alti!
… Ice Punch froze Ray and then Fire Punch immediately thawed and killed him. Amazing. (Usually when a Pokémon is frozen you can’t attack it. I guess Fire moves are an exception.)
… NOOOOOOO
lol I’m just going to use the Spurn Orb which warps everything in the room randomly around the floor and hope for a better turnout.
I don’t know if doing this would ever make up for it, but...
If it would help Azurill even a little...
I don’t know how useful I can be, but... I’ll be glad to help, if you’ll let me.
Ray: What?! So that means...!
Drowzee: You guessed it. It is possible to get into Azurill’s dream.
Ray: Yes!
Marill! We can tackle the mystery of the unending nightmare now!
Oh please Ray we’ve dealt which much more terrifying stuff than a little kid’s nightmare.
Ray: OK. We’ll be on our guard.
Drowzee: One more thing. I want only you two to enter the dream.
I’d prefer to go as well, but...
In all honesty, at my skill level, I think I’d slow you down too much.
Huh, that’s a pretty selfless statement to make, nice.
I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you, but...
Ray: No, there’s no need for that! Sending us into the dream is more than enough!
Thank you, Drowzee. We’ll get ready to go.
Let’s hustle, Alti!
We’ll be back as soon as we get ready!
What is this transformative experience, you made me curious? :P.
Just to make it a useful post, I'll suggest the nickname 'Syrup' for Heracross for its tendency to suck bulbasaurs bulb in the anime.
Sorry I haven't replied in awhile - the last few updates were awesome! This is the part of the game that properly launches into the postgame plot, and I'm really excited to watch you do it. plus then i can talk more about the contradictions i've mentioned before
Hydrachomp: In a spoiler below this.
Thanks for the suggestion! I'll add it to the list lol.
lucariomaster2: Yeah this is gonna be a lot of fun! I'm excited to really get into some of my own theories about time travel etc during the endgame story and Special Episode 5.
I'm also totally down for discussions on the contradictions :p
Bit long-winded so bear with me.
So first of all keep in mind that when we went to Salzburg on our trip I was in AWE about the Alps. I regularly go to the Appalachian Mountains in the US due to my physical proximity to them, and I'm always stunned by their beauty and expansiveness.
They had nothing on the Alps. The Alps just rose out of nowhere, no build-up no nothing and there would just be these huge fantastic mountains jutting out of the ground like a child's school drawing. There were barely foothills. It was just flat land -> slight hill -> BAM MOUNTAIN OUTTA NOWHERE. I'd never seen anything like it. Mountains in general give me life, and this was no exception.
So, Strobl. Village on a lake. Ringed by the Alps on all sides. <4000 people. Exactly my kind of place to begin with. I decided after one look at the place I wanted to move there. Unfortunately we only had about 15-20 minutes to look around the city before we had to be at the church for rehearsal. I fell in love with the church from the minute I saw it. Everywhere we sang on this trip was pretty big and significant so this was surprising to see. I love small churches like that so I was super looking forward to it.
As we were standing outside waiting to go in for rehearsal, I heard the distant rumble of thunder over the Alps. I used to be scared of thunderstorms as a kid, and that fear hasn't entirely gone away, but something about the calm and serene environment I was in helped me out... and instead the sound of thunder echoing over the mountains was just sheer beauty.
So we went in and we performed. The storm fell over the town while we were in the church, you could hear the patter of rain and the low sound of thunder even over our singing. But we - us, the choir, and all the others who were in the church - we weren't affected. We were safe. There was just something about the feeling of being in this tiny church - this tiny church whose doors opened right to the outside, to where the wind and the rain and the lightning were - that felt cozy, warm, familial. I don't know how to explain it any better than that.
One of our songs - one of our songs really added to that. A choral arrangement of MLK's U2. Lyrics:
Sleep, sleep tonight
And may your dreams
Be realized
If the thundercloud
Passes rain
So let it rain
Rain on him
The weather had been absolutely beautiful every single day on our trip so far, but not here, not now - just the benign little mountain storm overhead, dropping water and sounding thunder but ultimately not a threat. A source of refreshment. A source of calm. A sound of beauty. And here we were, in the church - "if the thunder cloud passes rain, so let it rain" - so it was. So it was raining, so it was storming, so were we continuing our program regardless - so was I continuing to sing in spite of my long-standing fear of thunderstorms. It didn't affect me. It didn't matter. So let it rain indeed.
So that was already emotional enough for me -
but that wasn't even the end.
The second to last piece on our program is a beautiful a cappella work called "The Old Church". Its text is taken from what seems to be a set of poems or songs called "Prairie Songs"; just from that name alone you can probably guess it's painting a portrait of life in the American Midwest(/ Great Plains). The Old Church specifically seems to depict a lovely and touching scene of a church in a small village somewhere out west. Lyrics:
The old church leans nearby a well-worn road
Upon a hill that has no grass or tree
The winds from off the prairie now unload
The dust they bring around it fitfully.
The path that leads up to the open door
Is worn and greyed by many toiling feet
Of us who listen to the Bible lore
And once again the old-time hymns repeat
And every Sabbath morning we are still
Returning to the altar waiting there
A hush, a prayer, a pause and voices fill
The Master's house with a triumphant air
The old church leans awry and looks quite odd
But it is beautiful to us and God.
... I'm sure looking at this you can figure out what's meant to be portrayed - a church that's been there for years, decades, generations, worn down by weather and use but still, still in use by a devoted community who loves it because of what it is. This is the song that routinely got my classmates worked up and extremely emotional. One person I hung out with said that she had to hear the last line as "[...] beautiful to a sand god" in order to avoid crying at the poignancy of the lyrics. It didn't affect me so much. Beautiful, yes. Gave me the chills, yes. Lovely, yes... but maybe just because I'm not a choir person at heart, or maybe because I'm not religious, or maybe because it's not the most fun song to sing as an alto - for whatever reason it just never got to me quite the same way.
Not until Strobl.
Because I realized - right in the middle of the song - that this was the old church, this was the church of the town of less than 4000 people, the church dedicated in 1761 whose architecture hadn't been updated since - sure, the other places we sang in were much older or at least more storied, but it didn't feel quite the same way. Maybe because they weren't really functioning as churches so much as tourist spots and concert halls and historical locations - they might be in use but it wasn't, it wasn't one purpose and it wasn't the same purpose. The church in Strobl seemed to be more like a church. And Strobl itself definitely was the smallest place we'd been, and by far the least touristy. It was a place where people lived and breathed and worked and congregated. It was a home. I felt this keenly when it was the only one of our performances where our English-speaking choir director required the services of a translator. English simply wasn't a lingua franca there like it was everywhere else, and that's how it was, and that's how I began to think the church of Strobl was The Old Church.
So I started crying like a baby in the middle of the song. I kept it together enough to finish the song and our last piece and stand for the applause, but then - when it was over - I changed back into street clothes and then went outside and stood in the pouring rain, and looked the Alps through the misty air and the lake and the street and the cemetery with its gravestones like a century old at least and just... cried. Tears flowing down my face mixing with the rainwater doing the same, my hair getting soaked but I didn't care, I just stood and looked. Looked at the church and the Alps and the lake and the sky and the beauty of it all and I cried and cried. I wasn't sad. I wasn't happy. I was just overcome with sheer beauty and amazement at the scenery and the church and the beautiful music and the fact that I was here to experience it all. People asked if I was okay when they saw me crying. I guess they figured something bad had happened. Far from it. I couldn't have been more content.
I'm crying remembering it now.
Late update is late - the last like 10 days or so I've been really gung-ho about getting a draft of my thesis done and sent out to my professors and have mostly been focused on that. Now that it's done I have a little more free time, though... although I'm starting a M-F 9-5 job on Monday so who knows if updates will be any more regular? Lol.
Aaaanyway, let's get to it!
I unlocked these while prepping for the nightmare at the end of the last update but didn’t want to put them in that update for narrative purposes.
Sure, let’s give it a go!
Ray: Yes! We’re all set!
Drowzee: Good.
Then come over here.
So we’re in “The Nightmare” which is appropriately purpley (I guess purple is a nightmare color now) and populated by... Swalot? Well I mean I guess Poison-types are threats to Azurill two generations later
As you might expect we … can’t recruit anything here lol
That said, it has the following mons: Meowth, Spoink, Clefairy, Jigglypuff, Cleffa, Wynaut, Spinda, Lickitung, Espeon, Wobbuffet, Miltank, Blissey, Whismur, Skitty, Swalot, Croagunk, Persian, Igglybuff, Lickilicky, Grumpig, Happiny, Clefable, Wigglytuff, Chansey
… lots of cutesy pink stuff. Uh... okay????
… spinda aren’t that scary though...
:( i guess azurill doesn’t like cats
OH GOD SO MANY CAT? CLEFFA TOO??? Azurill who hurt you
ffffff
I WAS SO CLOSE TO BEATING THE MONSTER HOUSE :(
but WHY IS WIGGLYTUFF IN AZURILL’S NIGHTMARE
After 17 floors, we arrive at the... uh... “depths”...? of the nightmare.
How can you tell
It appears as if it’s just one long path from here...
Alti: (C-Cresselia...!)
(It’s Cresselia... The one from my dreams...)
Cresselia: I cannot fathom how you’ve come here, but...
I find your visit ever so convenient!
I’ve longed to meet both of you!
Alti: (What?!)
Ray: Then what I saw in my dreams...
Cresselia: Yes.
What I told you in your dreams is true...
You two are not supposed to exist in this world.
(Cresselia said that to Ray too!)
Ray: Excuse me, Cresselia. Could you explain something for us?
I traveled to the future and came back again...
And Alti was a human who came from the future...
You said that we’re causing the distortion in the fabric of space in our world.
If space itself becomes distorted... why will the world be destroyed?
I guess if anyone could help us make sense of this it’s Chatot.
And she said that Azurill’s nightmare is caused by the distortion in the fabric of space.
Ray: Yes.
Chatot: If nothing is done about it... all Pokémon will join Azurill in unending sleep.
That is what Cresselia said?
Chatot: There is one more thing about Cresselia.
This Pokémon is said to possess a mystical power that can banish darkness.
Ray: The power to banish darkness...
UH YEAH ABOUT THAT
HER WHOLE SHTICK IS BEING ABLE TO FIX DARKRAI’S NONSENSE
LIKE WHY WAS KILLING US BETTER THAN... USING HER OWN DAMN POWERS TO FIX IT
Corphish: Hey, hey! So let’s get this straight. If we don’t do something...
All the Pokémon in the world are going to fall asleep forever?
Hey, hey! That means we have to do something now to fix the space distortion!
So, uh... a way of stopping the distortion of space...
….....................
Hmm... Nope! I don’t remember Cresselia saying a single thing about that!
Chatot!
Chatot: Y-yes, Guildmaster!
All right, everyone! We’ll disband for the day.
And starting tomorrow, you are to individually investigate the distortion of space itself!
(...............)
(….....................)
(… Ugh. Can’t sleep...)
(Ray is... already asleep, I guess.)
(… But I have to wonder...)
(I understand that we’re causing the distortion of space...)
(But how that leads to the world’s ruin...)
(I still can’t believe it...)
We should all know by now anyone talking to you in a dream is significant in Poké-verse.
(But then with the second dream... When I was told about the distortion of space...)
(That was when I started thinking that maybe it was true.)
(… Hey! Come to think of it, the morning after I had that dream...)
(Ray said to me...)
Alti: (Ray...)
(… It’s true that I fought Dialga knowing that I would disappear if we succeeded.)
(But that had to be done to prevent the planet’s paralysis.)
(Back then, I was willing to disappear if it meant saving the world.)
What’s... What’s different?
… What?!
At Temporal Tower, you were willing to disappear...
But it’s not the same this time?
What...?
You did what you did at Temporal Tower because you had to...
It was the choice to put the Time Gears in the tower, I guess.
But there’s no telling what will happen if we disappear. Not this time.
So we don’t really know if that will bring peace to the world again...
What you’re saying is, nothing about this is certain?
Ray: …............
That’s true...
It’s true that things aren’t completely certain.
But...
It is a fact that you were a human who came from the future, Alti.
Ray: Yes. Remember when we first came back from the future? We slept here?
That’s when I saw the sunrise from here for the first time.
I just remembered something about that first time...
It’s something Grovyle asked me...
No. It was literally impossible to have done what we did and we did anyway because Ray believed we could. (Just as in Phantom Tollbooth.)
I guess that struck Grovyle as being strange.
That’s why Grovyle asked me why I refused to give up...
But I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t know why I was brave then.
But I thought about it, and I began to realize something...
augh please don’t remind me (i’m legit on the verge of tears... this MUSIC is not HELPING I wish I had had room to talk about this track in my thesis but I didn’t...)
I’m taking Dusknoir... back to the future!
Ray: Huh?! Wh-what?!
Grovyle: I can never come back here again.
Watch Alti’s back... Promise me!
The fact that your dialogue doesn’t end with a question mark suggests you might Know something
Ray: Yes. And we’d like to learn anything that you might know about it, Lapras.
Lapras: Hmm...
Ray: C-can you help us? Do you know anything?
Lapras: … I’m sorry to say...
So, just as Dialga governs time itself...
So, too, there is a being that governs the fabric of space.
Ray: Th-that being... Who is it?
Lapras: Its name is Palkia.
Fun fact “spacial” is not registered as a word in (my version of) Microsoft Word, it’s “spatial”, but OpenOffice seems to accept it. I always wished it was Spatial personally.
Alti: (The being that governs space... Palkia...)
(Another being... like Dialga...)
Can you travel there, Lapras? Just like you can go to the Hidden Land?
Lapras: I hate to disappoint, but... I can’t travel to Spacial Rift. I don’t even know where it is.
That is all I can tell you.
Okay, this is a detail of the story that always irritated me. I understand Alti distorting space in some capacity since they technically only exist now because Dialga said "Screw the Rules, I'm the Time Dragon," but Ray doesn't influence things any more than every single Pokemon that interacted with someone from the future during the story, he exists naturally within this timeline.
The Distortion -> Darkness thing makes enough sense since the Planet's Paralysis from Time stopping turned everything dark despite in theory one half of the planet facing the sun. I'd assume it's like a giant whole opening up over the world that's just really dark inside. There's one other missed opportunity for the post-game story coming up, not one that makes the story worse but that I think would have made for really cool escalation as the fanfic-speculative level nerd I can be with these games.
Okay, this is a detail of the story that always irritated me. I understand Alti distorting space in some capacity since they technically only exist now because Dialga said "Screw the Rules, I'm the Time Dragon," but Ray doesn't influence things any more than every single Pokemon that interacted with someone from the future during the story, he exists naturally within this timeline.
The Distortion -> Darkness thing makes enough sense since the Planet's Paralysis from Time stopping turned everything dark despite in theory one half of the planet facing the sun. I'd assume it's like a giant whole opening up over the world that's just really dark inside. There's one other missed opportunity for the post-game story coming up, not one that makes the story worse but that I think would have made for really cool escalation as the fanfic-speculative level nerd I can be with these games.
Of course, the Cresselia they've been encountering up until now is Darkrai in disguise, and it's pretty clear that Darkrai is bullshitting the whole "spatial distortions" thing so that he can get rid of Alti and Ray, the two biggest obstacles to his plan to cover the world in darkness.
Of course, the Cresselia they've been encountering up until now is Darkrai in disguise, and it's pretty clear that Darkrai is bullshitting the whole "spatial distortions" thing so that he can get rid of Alti and Ray, the two biggest obstacles to his plan to cover the world in darkness.
The thing is, the real Cresselia does confirm that their presence is causing a spatial distortion, just not one that will expand on its own or cause problems. That minor one is the basis of why Palkia comes after them at first, so even if the degree is inflated the principle that the time travel seems to be the source of them distorting things is till a thing.
The thing is, the real Cresselia does confirm that their presence is causing a spatial distortion, just not one that will expand on its own or cause problems. That minor one is the basis of why Palkia comes after them at first, so even if the degree is inflated the principle that the time travel seems to be the source of them distorting things is till a thing.
If I had to try and figure it out, it's definitely because Ray actually went to the future while nobody else has. From the current timeline's perspective there's a moment when everything that makes Ray suddenly vanishes from existence and - more relevantly to any "distortions" - a moment when all of Ray's mass suddenly appears from absolutely nothing when they come back. We can be almost positive that Grovyle, Alti, and Ray didn't come back to the present the instant they vanished since there was time for everybody else to bring the Time Gears back and confirm that things weren't being fixed.
I'd say suddenly appearing when they didn't exist immediately before that (which is functionally exactly what happened with Alti) would probably be enough for Ray to also create some kind of spacial distortion.
On a different note, I always found it a bit of a shame that Sky didn't add anything plotwise for Giratina (they added Origin Forme for Sky Peak and that's it). I understand Giratina's role in T/D being just "and it's here too" since they were released before Platinum and that was Giratina's role in DP, but I wish they had even done a single line as a nod to Giratina being just as important as Dialga and Palkia.
pika pal: We could totally stand to see more of the dark world Darkrai envisions. I would love to know how that turns out. There's so much interesting potential for speculation.
Merritt: Even in the context of D/P we still knew Giratina was the third of Dialga/Palkia. I wish there had been something involving it, whether in T/D or added for Sky - no instead it's just relegated to a Wi-Fi/code mission in T/D and a special mission in Sky. Sad!
Both Cresselia and the mysterious voice at Luminous Spring confirmed that there is a spatial distortion that is being caused by Ray and Alti's presence, so that's definitely a thing; Darkrai was just lying about the severity of it, and likely also tricked Palkia into believing the distortion was malicious in nature and something Ray and Alti were actively doing, like, intentionally.
Re: Merritt's metaphysical explanation of how Ray causes a distortion: That's basically what I think is the case. There's that whole thing where matter/energy can neither be created nor destroyed. In order for time travel to work you'd need the matter making up the person to like, be transformed into energy until the time of the recreation, except in backwards time travel that wouldn't make any sense because how can you like. send energy retroactively. unless the traveler was just created out of some excess energy that existed in the past?? Like who knows.
Of course I don't think anyone ever takes any of this into account when writing time travel because it's no fun that way.
But if I had to try and scientifically justify Ray's spatial distortion I'd wager it's because he shouldn't exist from a metaphysical perspective lol. And based on the diary entries it's definitely true that some amount of time passed between Dusknoir kidnapping Ray and Alti and their return from the future, so he doesn't just... blink out of existence and then immediately re-appear.
THE DEFILERS WHO ARE CAUSING... THE DISTORTION OF SPACE!
Ray: Who are you...?
Palkia: I AM PALKIA! I HOLD SWAY OVER SPACE! I HAVE DOMINION OVER DIMENSION!
I always loved this line. Like Pokémon go to Palkia and ask his permission to distort space or something like that. I love the mental image associated with this.
I WILL BE RID OF YOU NOW!
Ray: What?!
Palkia: THIS IS THE END!
So here we are in Spacial Rift. We can’t recruit anything here now but we will be able to later.
So recruits: Chatot, Drapion, Xatu, Gallade, Kadabra, Charizard, Jolteon, Sableye, Honchkrow, Magnezone, Electivire, Solrock, Chimecho, Gligar, Bronzor, Toxicroak, Tropius, Dusknoir, Drowzee, Spiritomb
ooOOOOoo the environment changed
… for all of one floor before we got to the midpoint.
Like Roar of Time, Spacial Rend hits both of us. Fantastic...
… and this happens soon.
Great
On the way back there’s Air Hell which i didnt show before but am showing now because it cool
OK... time again
we dun it!!!
(I used an X-Eye Seed which basically made Palkia wander around uselessly while Ray hit it with Quick Attack and Alti followed Palkia around directly until we got it.)
OH KAY
and then palkia like. I dont know. I don’t know what this is
Ray: Palkia... Palkia has stopped moving...
What happened to him...?
Ray: Waah! Palkia!
W-wait a second! We want to ask you something...
Palkia, why are you trying to get rid of us?
Palkia: YOU DARE PRETEND THAT YOU DON’T KNOW?!
I just love the mental image of Ray and Alti running around distorting space (??? what does that look like) with all the care and attitude of a teenage vandal.
IF THE DISTORTION SPREADS, THE POWER OF DARKNESS WILL GROW!
THE WORLD WILL BE DROWNED IN THIS NIGHTMARE OF DARKNESS!
TO PREVENT IT... YOU MUST BE WIPED FROM THIS EXISTENCE!
Ray: Urk! But there must be...
There must be some other way!
You govern space and dimension, don’t you, Palkia?
Can’t you correct the distortion of space yourself?
Alti: (C-Cresselia said that about us?! In Palkia’s dreams?!)
Cresselia: Don’t be fooled by appearances, Palkia.
If we get rid of them now... all will be saved.
Alti: (So, just like we did, Palkia met Cresselia in his dreams...)
(But now Palkia is growing suspicious... Something is very wrong here!)
(All this is based on what Cresselia claims!)
He’s getting his ass beat by Cresselia, that’s what’s going on
Cresselia: Excellent! I was just in time!
Darkrai: Blast you... Cresselia!
I’ve been foiled! Just as I was about to dispose of those meddlers once and for all!
Palkia: WHAT?!
Cresselia: The Cresselia you thought you knew until now... was not me!
That false Cresselia was nothing more than an illusion made by Darkrai!
It was merely a mockery of me!
Palkia: WHAT?!
Ray: The Cresselia we knew up to now... was just a fake?!
Cresselia: Darkrai!
Using an illusory duplicate of me to deceive others... is so typical of you!
Darkrai: You two, behind Cresselia...
Ray: Wh-what, us?
Darkrai: Correct. Pay close attention.
Now, the one truly responsible for exploiting the space distortion...? For shrouding the world in nightmare...?
It is my doing. Mine alone.
Azurill: Thank you very much, Mister Drowzee!
Marill: Mister Drowzee! I have to thank you too!
You stayed to take care of Azurill this whole time...
Thank you so very much!
What Darkrai was doing... was using his illusions to make you think you were seeing me.
It was all an elaborate ruse to get at you, Alti and Ray...
So that your whole existence could be eliminated.
That was when they prevented the collapse of Temporal Tower.
But who was really the one that put the ruin of Temporal Tower in motion?
Who was it that really sought to put the planet into paralysis?
just a little bit lmao he tried to convince us to commit suicide. That is very low.
Cresselia: He never comes out in the open. He does his nefarious work from the shadows.
If you confront him, he will always flee...
That is how Darkrai has always done things.
Sounds like he wants us to go to this DARK CRATER place yeah DARK CRATER let’s go to DARK CRATER and fight DARKRAI who’s hanging out at DARK CRATER
(And that he would be waiting for us.)
Wigglytuff: Cresselia, you believe that he demanded Ray and Alti come to him for a reason, don’t you?
Do you believe that it’s a trap?
I have long been aware of Darkrai’s scheme... I have pursued him a long time to thwart his plan.
But every time I caught up to him, he would elude me... This time, he is waiting for us.
Yes!
… Next time, that is! What, you thought I was going to resolve this plot chain now? Pshaw.
(Who knows when I’ll be back? Next thesis draft is due a week from tomorrow! :p)
Okay so this is where I think my biggest missed opportunity comes up. Your characters, or at the very least Alti, are back in this timeline as a direct result of their encounters with (Primal) Dialga, encounters that are directly referenced as relevant to this plot. I kind of wish we'd gotten to see some confrontation between Dialga and Palkia over this, Palkia arguing at the apparent damage their presence causes and Dialga speaking in their defense for saving Temportal Tower and stopping the first world of darkness. Hell maybe it could be a call out to the 10th movie with a reverse dynamic, with Darkrai setting the two to fight to cause the distortion rather than fighting them to stop it.
I do also find it a bit forced that Darkrai gives his "it was my plan the whole time" confession in front of Palkia. Ray and Alti it makes sense since he needs to make sure they come after him, and Cresselia already knows, but Palkia was a party that up to this point he was able to manipulate, and if nothing else avoiding the confession at least doesn't paint a bullseye of "I ruined your stuff" as opposed to "I tricked you into doing some fighting for me"
Side Note: While I typically find Darkrai's "uncontrolled dangerous power" portrayal a bit more interesting, I think MD's villain Darkrai might be one of the best villains the franchise has ever produced (he's my favorite, but there's obviously cases to be made for N or Lusamine, for example).
The plot's in full swing now! I don't know how much of this I'm restating and how much I'm saying for the first time, but here we go.
Cresselia confirms that Darkrai was behind the destruction of Temporal Tower. The first question we must ask is, therefore, how did he do it?
There are a few ways that it could have happened. First is the one I've talked about before, where the Time Gears were never supposed to leave Temporal Tower at all, but Darkrai ripped them out and scattered them, knowing that they would keep time flowing for awhile, and that the tower's collapse would take long enough to not be pinned on him. This is supported by the "gear panel" having 5 gear-shaped slots that the Time Gears appeared to be "ripped out of", that quickly repairs itself once the gears are put in. The problems arise when you consider the behaviours of other characters in regards to the gears. I can understand the majority of NPCs believing that the gears being scattered is natural... but what about their guardians? If this theory is the correct one, Uxie, the literal Being of Knowledge, would be played as a fool. In addition, even if Darkrai had sneaked into Temporal Tower and swiped the gears without Dialga noticing, I feel like Dialga would have quickly noticed that they were missing and done... something.
The second potential setup, I believe introduced by pika pal, is that the Time Gears were always scattered as they were, but could be used as a failsafe in the event of Temporal Tower's collapse. This is supported by the Time Gears obviously being extremely integrated into their environments, to the point of having the Lake Guardians watch over them. This once again breaks down when you consider that the Guardians (and Dialga, before he started going mad) really should have realized that something was up.
pika pal: Considering what a large role both time and space have in this plot, yeah, I was a little disappointed there wasn't more of BOTH Dialga and Palkia. I mean, you'd expect they'd communicate or something, right? How is it that Palkia didn't know they selflessly saved the world? The collapse of everything should have been noticeable to Palkia as well, but through most of the main game Palkia may as well have not existed - and then he comes out of nowhere here for the space-plot. Seems like it could have been implemented a little better.
re: Darkrai giving his Evil Speech: Yeah well as you know that's his undoing lmao. Gotta have villains ruining themselves! (That could have also been better though.)
Darkrai is a great villain imo. He's so typically evil he's not very complex at all, not as interesting as say N, but damn if what he does isn't just plain chilling. So good.
lucariomaster2: More of the "what the hell is the Time Gear plot." My personal idea is that the Time Gears were always meant to be scattered (to some degree - there is that whole thing about them fitting into Temporal Tower and all), as a means of regulating time in the "real world" outside the Hidden Land. Why that's necessary when Temporal Tower seems to do the same thing, who knows? The Time Gears and their relationship to their environment and Temporal Tower really falls apart when you start to look at it closely.
Anyway my idea is that Darkrai sabotaged the structural integrity of Temporal Tower, which would make it fall apart, without remembering/knowing that the Time Gears could stop it, or possibly he just didn't expect anyone to actually pull off that whole quest... what with the guardians' existence, and the general lack of knowledge about Temporal Tower and the Hidden Land. I don't know. This game is weird. I'm usually really really good at justifying even the most bizarre of scenarios relating to time travel or future-sight (you'll see me go nuts justifying Special Episode 5 when I get there) but this is more about the metaphysical workings of time and I'm kind of at a loss.
There is a land of volcanic terrain.
The Dark Crater is located there.
Please tell me when you are ready to leave.
I will guide you to the Dark Crater.
Well, here we are. The Depths of Hell. Music: Dark Crater
Can’t recruit anything here on this run, but we will be able to in the future.
Recruits: Charmander, Cyndaquil, Chimchar, Hippowdon, Numel, Slugma, Growlithe, Ponyta, Torchic, Charmeleon, Flareon, Combusken, Monferno, Camerupt, Rapidash, Arcanine, Quilava, Magcargo
We are underleveled, and Cresselia is even worse. You can’t control her AI or move choices so this is a bit more like a glorified escort mission than anything else. Kinda obnoxious.
Cresselia knows Double Team, Slash (… Cresselia gets slash???), Confusion, and Aurora Beam.
… and of course we can’t have an easy time with this dungeon, it has to have all those rooms at the side connected by long hallways like Sky Tower Summit did.
Welcome to (iirc) the first dungeon in the main game with lava!!!
So where the hell is that time gear.
You know what sucks?
Camerupt with Earth Power.
Do not want.
After 15 floors of dungeon we make it to the midpoint.
(Side note, check out the top screen for a nice map. We’re in Hell lmao)
Let’s continue!
It’s still hell. Cool. Music: Deep Dark Crater
Recruits: Charmeleon, Quilava, Monferno, Camerupt, Combusken, Arcanine, Rapidash, Flareon, Magcargo, Rhyperior, Magmortar, Charizard, Typhlosion, Infernape, Torkoal, Mismagius, Blaziken, Aggron
According to Bulbapedia they can top out at 54. Hahahahhaha we’re underleveled
YES PLEASE... I brought more Reviver Seeds than normal but I will absolutely take this
OH GOD FULLY EVOLVED STARTERS
OH GOD MONSTER HOUSE.
Petrify Orb time...
After 14 floors of the upper dungeon (29 in total – pretty long for this game!), we make it to the deepest part. Which is. Terrifying.
Funny, usually I don’t make it all the way here on my first go, even though I’m usually higher-leveled. Don’t know what’s up with that. Ray did use two Reviver Seeds though, so we’ll see how the actual fight here goes...
So it seems.
This appears to be the deepest we can go...
But where’s Darkrai...?
(Side note: I love how they brought that bit back and explained it in the context of Darkrai’s Evil Plans. Like, it would have been easy enough to just chalk it up to An Unfortunate Occurrence, but no, they actually decided to make this plot really go further than just the main story. I remember being amazed and impressed at that sort of complexity back when I was first playing this.)
… does being tied to time automatically mean you can cause some sort of darkness-hell? How does that work. The paralyzed planet defies the laws of physics.
(Fun fact: Y’all know how I’m writing about Mystery Dungeon for my master’s thesis? I’ve mentioned this on the OI Discord a few times, but my professor keeps having comments and questions about my plot summaries about MD1 and 2. I had to explain the Time Gear plot and the paralysis of the planet in the plot summary. When I went to go talk to him in person about it, he was like “This doesn’t make any sense, if time stopped you would expect things to be like-” and then he just froze, emulating the idea of everything literally stopping in time. I sighed and said “I know! I know it doesn’t make any sense! I didn’t make the game.”)
(still beautiful art that’s why I’m showing it off here)
That would have eventually led to the destruction of time. And, ultimately, the planet’s paralysis.
So it’s OUR fault. Of course. We decided to meddle. Not save the world from a horrible apocalyptic hellscape. Meddling. Meddling in your plans.
(Nothing infuriates me more than people who seem to think that nothing that happens to/with them is ever their fault lmao)
I learned of their impending arrival from the future...
And I attacked Grovyle and Alti as they traveled in time... So that I would be rid of them.
But... an unforeseen event made it impossible to be rid of either of them.
It should have been enough. Especially for Grovyle. However...
Do you know how you came to be a Pokémon, Alti?
Alti: (… I... I did that?)
Darkrai: I assumed what I did was sufficient.
I thought that I’d rendered you incapable of preventing the planet’s paralysis.
Maybe what maybe what no what are you saying what the HELL IS THIS
WE WENT ON A HUGE QUEST TO PREVENT THE WORLD FROM ENDING
AND THEN ALMOST GOT MURDERED / ENCOURAGED TO COMMIT SUICIDE WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT
Cresselia: No, Ray!
Ray: Who are we kidding? We don’t stand a chance against Darkrai anyway!
It’s pointless to resist.
Who was the one who insisted we could still make it to the time-travel portal, despite standing less of a chance against Dialga and Dusknoir?
Where did that spirit go?
Joining Darkrai...
It may be the best thing to do.
Now, Alti. What will you do?
When you are one of us...
Our first order of business will be Cresselia there.
The three of us shall get rid of her together.
The first turn, however, is pretty effective. I throw an Iron Thorn at Darkrai, Ray hits Rhyperior with Quick Attack, and Cresselia gets in a Double Team.
Having Ray here actually should be pretty helpful, as Force Palm is going to be pretty effective on a lot of these Pokémon. That’s one thing I’ve noticed about Ray – he has horrible defenses but a hit from Force Palm is hella powerful, even on neutral hits. This might not go as badly as I thought it would.
Here I have Alti use Water Gun on Magmortar as I switch Ray to use Force Palm exclusively.
Water Gun crits and kills Magmortar. Force Palm kills Aggron. Cresselia’s Confusion OHKO’s Mismagius.
Huh... not bad. Not bad at all.
… but then of course Darkrai has to use Ominous Wind, a full-room-hitting move. At least it missed Cresselia due to Double Team.
By the time paralysis wears off, Magcargo and Arbok are dead, but both Ray and Cresselia are taken out by Ominous Wind, using two Reviver Seeds.
Oh, shit.
Darkrai’s speed lets it attack again. It uses Nightmare, but Cresselia takes the hit and is put to sleep.
And yes, Nightmare inflicts sleep AND nightmare in this game. Great.
… I was doing so well too...
(Now do you see why this mission isn’t always loved...? Cresselia I love you but I wish you were more durable.)
Let’s go again. And we need to redo all 14 floors, don’t forget. At least I got through writing the dialogue...
this is THE FIRST TURN can we not do this
… COOL
On the next attempt, Alti got put to sleep and could do literally nothing until she woke up after dying (because of Bad Dreams) and being revived. So here’s our current situation. No Reviver Seeds and two enemies left.
The next try, I manage to get here with... no reviver seeds used and all three mons at a decent amount of health?? I don’t know either.
Then again, Darkrai did use Double Team several times, so we’ll see what actually goes down here.
…. I sure do love Quick Attack doing like half of Ray’s health
since when does Darkrai even get that!!!
Nonsleeper IQ skill is gonna save our ass here since Ray’s Force Palm is as high-damage as it is.
HURRY RAY
FINISH IT
YASSSSSSSSSSS
get
rekt
Cresselia: We... did it...
Darkrai: Urrgggghh!
Cresselia: This is the end for you, Darkrai!
Ray: Hey! What is that?!
Alti: (It’s a dimensional hole!)
Darkrai: Mwahaha...
This dimensional hole may take me to the future... or the past...
Even I don’t know where it will lead me... But...!
I’ve failed only in this time.
I will simply plunge the world into darkness in another time.
Then what was even the point... We’re in the same situation as before.
Ray: When he recovers from injury...
Won’t Darkrai go back to his wicked ways?
Cresselia: That remains to be seen...
Because when Darkrai entered the dimensional hole... he began to time travel...
At that precise moment, he was struck with Palkia’s attack.
Remember what Darkrai said about Alti’s arrival from the future?
We were thrilled by how excited everyone was at our return!
We had been fully fooled by Darkrai...
So I had thought that neither Alti nor I had a place in this world...
I swear this game could cure depression if you wanted it to :’)
Little Azurill woke up from his nightmare...
I’m so glad that everyone was well.
I remember what Wigglytuff said...
Every Pokémon in the world exists for a reason.
Ray: What? Cresselia? In our exploration team?
Cresselia: If I’m not a burden, I very much hope that you would accept me on your team...
Will you have me?
Chatot: Well then... Now that you’ve returned, what will you do now, Manaphy?
Manaphy: I was told that I have to decide that on my own.
Well, um... So, uh... I thought really hard about this and other things..
I’d like to return the favor, Alti and Ray...
Don’t you travel and explore all over the world?
Well, because of that, I’d like to evolve again...
So we went back to Luminous Spring to see.
Ursaring: How many times do I have to tell her that we can’t evolve past this form?
But she just doesn’t listen to me, no matter how many times I tell her...
So we had no choice but to go there and prove it...
Of course, we can’t evolve. … But that’s what I’ve been saying all along.
Teddi-Ursaring: But...
Ray: But?
Teddi-Ursaring: Something about the place feels different... from the last time we went...
If I recall correctly, it was said you couldn’t evolve for some reason...
But since something seems to be different about Luminous Spring...
Maybe whatever is blocking you is gone... That is...
Anyway this one is a question for you guys! To evolve or not to evolve? Let me know!
So that’s the end of this update. I decided to throw the Manaphy and evolution stuff into this update to get all the plot stuff out of the way in one update, so next time we play the main game I’ll be going into recruiting.
I say “main game” because the next update – possibly the next few – will be Special Episode 5, the final piece of plot relating to the whole time travel/Time Gears/Grovyle thing.
THIS is VERY LATE i have been BUSY and dealing with work and thesis and All the stuff. Thesis miiiiiiight be done soon though. Maybe. Possibly. Who really knows.
Anyway.
Now it is time to finish the last bit of plot we have to see here. It’s time for special episode 5: In the Future of Darkness.
Collected the Time Gears...
And together with Alti and Ray...
Made his way to Dialga’s Temporal Tower.
However...
the poor soul missed some very important happenings
Wha... what’s happening?!
Grovyle: Ray! This is it for me!
I’m taking Dusknoir... back to the future!
Ray: Huh?! Wh-what?!
Grovyle: I can never come back here again.
Dusknoir: Gwoh! Unhand me! Release me!
Grovyle: We’re almost there! Quiet!
… Alti!
Take care, Alti.
I was lucky to have known you.
Though the parting hurts... the rest is in your hands!
He moves to attack Grovyle, but it looks like his injuries are still an issue.
Grovyle: It looks like our fight left you with some injuries too.
Don’t push yourself.
Dusknoir: Y-you! Grovyle! Ugh... Augghh...
This... This is... the future...?
I knew I’d come right back here... To this world...
….........
… Heh... Heh heh heh heh heh...
After all... After all, didn’t I lose... to you...
Grovyle and Alti... I...
I couldn’t get in your way. Heh heh heh...
… Seems like an awfully petty reason to be stalking and attempting to murder us, including an amnesiac Totodile and her innocent Riolu friend. Really? That’s it? Self-preservation?
Yet... Why did you...
Grovyle: You saw the world of the past, didn’t you?
Even if we disappeared... It would be for the sake of everyone who lives in the future...
Everyone – everything – from now on would be given a gift... of a new life.
“For a New Life” indeed. This is so emotional guys
Dusknoir: For... a new life...
Grovyle: According to the planetary investigation team, everyone, except those few whose hearts are dark and shriveled...
I have some thoughts on the whole planetary investigation team thing:
I... felt like the introduction of this team – even if they were only introduced in a one-off statement by Grovyle to substantiate his claim – kind of ruined the impact of Grovyle and Alti’s mission. It implies that there’s enough people unhappy with the state of affairs that they’re willing to form a committee to talk about it, to interview others, to figure out what’s going on here and – as Grovyle kind of implied – actually go about changing it. If that’s the case, then why do Grovyle and Alti sound, in the main game, like they’re doing this alone, and doing it to save everyone, risking their lives to do so? If there really is a planetary investigation team working to better things – well, one thing they could do would be to attempt to find a way to fix the planet’s paralysis after the fact, which would mean that Grovyle and Alti don’t need to go back and time and effectively destroy the future in order to fix things.
Grovyle and Alti are presented as independent renegades within the game, people who – with Celebi’s help – yearned to change the past because they wanted to, and because they could. If everyone else seems to want the change they do, and if they seem to have the means to do it – indicated by Grovyle’s statement that “they all agreed to change this world of darkness” (as in, they were asked if they wanted to change it rather than if they liked it, suggesting that the planetary investigation team might have had a plan in mind), then Grovyle and Alti’s actions seem a bit less... important. I don’t know. It’s hard for me to get my words correct, but I always had a little bit of an issue with this and I can’t explain exactly why. Anyone else feel this way / get what I’m saying?
Everyone’s ready.
So do the right thing and give up.
If that happens, Primal Dialga will likely go with Plan B.
But in order to send a new agent back to the past world...
Dialga needs some time to store power.
Until the effects of changing history start to appear in this dark world...
Until then, I want to buy them some time, that’s all. So stay out of my way.
I don’t think it would help because if Dialga or his new agent wanted to warp back they could literally pick their timing. Time. Doesn’t run. Parallel to itself.
Also I like how he thinks Dusknoir will just leave him alone now that he’s told him his plans.
First dungeon: Barren Valley. It... it sure does look like it’s part of the paralyzed future, all right. Music: Barren Valley
Pokémon: Jumpluff, Flygon, Lunatone, Shuppet, Honchkrow, Glameow, Toxicroak
Grovyle has Absorb, Quick Attack, Leaf Blade, and Dig.
We are Alone
… unfortunately nothing particularly interesting happens in the first 5 floors of dungeon, except for Grovyle having bad luck with bad accuracy and missing an annoying amount of attacks.
… and for the first time we get the first proper glimpse at our map.
Is that the destroyed Temporal Tower I see in the top left? It looks like we’re in the future’s version of the Hidden Land...
and this isn’t the first time we’ve seen it. We were here for the future sequence when Grovyle, Alti, and Ray got kidnapped and taken to the future the first point. Case in point, here’s a screenshot I took back then:
And another:
So yeah, we’re in the Hidden Land. This also confirms that Dusk Forest is in the Hidden Land, meaning that Grovyle and Alti must have spent a lot of time there since that’s where Celebi and her Passage of Time hang out.
If that’s the case – how did they get out of the Hidden Land to go investigate the Time Gears’ history? The Dimensional Screams that Alti has at some of those places basically confirm that Grovyle and Alti were actually, physically there in the future – so how did they get there...?
Food for thought.
Anyway, after 5 more floors of Deep Barren Valley, we make it... through. Whatever “through” means.
(Pokémon in the “deep” section were Jumpluff, Shiftry, Flygon, Lunatone, Shuppet, Honchkrow, Glameow, and Toxicroak.)
But it’s still a ways to Temporal Tower. Mustn’t lose any time.
Dusknoir: It’s not a joke. I’m serious.
Grovyle: …! (Th-this guy! What’s he up to?)
(Is he going to pretend to work together... then attack me when my guard is down?)
[Accidentally deleted screenshot of Dark Wasteland. It’s... a dark wasteland. If u care so much here] Music: Dark Wasteland
… another Dark And Edgy Dungeon. Ofc
Dusknoir has Shadow Sneak, Will-o-Wisp, Ice Punch(!), and Shadow Punch.
… the dungeon is only 4 floors which is sad. According to Bulbapedia there’s evidence it was supposed to be 16. Wish it had been, the shortness of the special episode dungeons always kind of saddened me a bit. They went to all that effort for the plot, after all...
Pokémon in Dark Wasteland: Gastly, Onix, Misdreavus, Shiftry, Shedinja, Solrock, Skorupi.
You’re not after only me anymore...
You’re also attacking Dusknoir, right? What’s the deal?
Sableye: Wheh-heh... Th-that’s...
Dusknoir: You’re a Sableye. Will you not follow my orders?
Grovyle: Humph!
Laugh or do what you like, it doesn’t matter to me, Dusknoir.
What I’m really concerned about is that new henchman...
A resourceful Pokémon as a final agent...
Whether Master Dialga really said to eliminate me or not...
I can’t be sure either way.
I have to go Temporal Tower too. I have to know...
Master Dialga’s true intentions...
(However...)
(Dusknoir still looks up to Dialga. That hasn’t changed.)
(Now when we meet Dialga at Temporal Tower...)
(Dusknoir will probably side with Dialga...)
So here we are in the ruined Temporal Tower. As you can see the basic dungeon design is more or less the same, just... much less colorful.
In the main game, Temporal Tower contained Porygon, Lunatone, Solrock, and Bronzor. In this story, it contains Zubat, Kadabra, Magnemite, Gastly, Drowzee, Ditto, Claydol, Mismagius, Bronzong, and Golbat. Huh, a lot of those are Pokémon from the future dungeons we passed through in the main game, wonder if that means anything lol.
… great, those exist here
cool
(I had a petrify orb and a reviver seed though)
Ten floors later (as opposed to 13 in the main game), we make it to the midpoint.
Dusknoir: We’re almost to the pinnacle.
And there... That’s where Master Dialga is...
on one hand that’s great for Grovyle’s stated purpose of wasting time to save Alti and Ray, but on the Dusknoir and Dialga might regroup and come up with a plot...
Onto Temporal Spire. Which... looks the same as the tower lol.
The Spire in this episode has Golbat, Alakazam, Magneton, Gastly, Hypno, Ditto, Claydol, Mismagius, Bronzong, Porygon2, and Crobat.
Sableye said that Dialga would send a final agent.
But to send another agent back to the past...
I expect it would take an enormous amount of power.
To generate that kind of power... Dialga would have to hold still for some time...
Dusknoir: Yes. The Passage of Time.
Rather than waiting for Master Dialga to regenerate...
They will most likely look for Celebi and use the Passage of Time to send the agent back to the past.
Anyway that’s enough for now. Next time: Can we find and help Celebi? Who’s the new henchman? What’s Dialga up to?! Find out next week next month probably knowing me on Explorers of Sky!
So to answer some thoughts and questions brought up.
I think Grovyle and Alti are from the "main land" part of the world initially, which would be where the "investigation team" (perhaps the remnants of the Explorer organizations?) were as well, helping them scout out the Time Gears' locations. If you take the gameplay at face value for a moment, the recruitable Celebi is in Mystifying Forest, which might mean there's more than one place Celebi can live (which would be plausible since she's constantly outrunning the Sableye and Dialga). Perhaps that's where they got sent back the first time, and Celebi mentioned Dusk Forst as a place to find her in the past or if they ended up here again as happened, especially since Grovyle knew where to find her during the story but also did not know how to locate the Hidden Land in the past, which would entail he moved between the locations as a result of the time traveling.
As for time not moving in parallel, prepare for a schmuck applying dinner table 4th dimensional physics logic to a Pokemon story. If you view time in a linear manner here (given that changing the past erases remnants of the future rather than splitting the timelines to exist in tandem), the future is the point at which time outright stopped moving and that energy/progression simply sat, like Dialga basically blocked a giant pipe by stopping time. Matter and space continued to move 4th dimensionally, but physics and time itself did not move on the paralyzed planet. Once Alti and Ray change the past, time now begins moving to "catch up" to where spatial progression has reached. It's not instantaneous, and we don't have confirmation how far in the "future" (because time is screwy to describe when time ceasing to move is a plot point) the story is, but in theory you could imagine that every "second" in the past has to change to fill in the time until it catches up to the future. Someone who understands something like the Theory of Relativity could probably explain this in more scholarly and believable terms, but I'd assume the time having to essentially force its way throughout the universe in each second where it was "stopped" to accomodate the ripple effects (and then changes based on those ripples) would not be immediately perceivable if there's enough of a 4th dimensional gap between the change and the point you're looking at.
Or maybe time travel is a load of BS. Even when the story gets good characters and twists out of the narrative, the time travel in almost no story ever 100% makes sense. The most you can ask for is internal consistency in how it does and doesn't make sense.
pika pal: They definitely were at the main land at some point because the Dimensional Scream triggered on the Groudon statue and the crystals in Crystal Cave. Don’t know about the latter but the former vision definitely was of the future, since a voice in the vision congratulates their “partner” on figuring out the secret – meaning there’s definitely two of them. (In contrast, Crystal Cave could have been a flashback to Grovyle himself figuring out Crystal Cave as he goes to take the Time Gear, since only one character’s voice is heard. But I’d say it’s more probably a future vision since it had the same lack of visuals that the Groudon statue vision had.) Grovyle said they used Alti’s Dimensional Scream to identify the locations of Time Gears, which obviously requires them to go to the mainland to find them.
That said, while I totally buy your theory on Celebi (especially because Mystifying Forest has the Luminous Spring which totally could be time-related in the future world), I thought Grovyle said he met Celebi at Dusk Forest prior to the time he, Alti, and Ray go there – not to mention Alti herself gets the déjà vu sense from it, meaning she has to have been there sometime. She and Ray haven’t been to the Hidden Land yet, so that has to come from her adventures in the future before losing her memory.
Which means somehow they probably crossed from the mainland into the Hidden Land... unless the writers just intended them to have been “mainlanders” all along and just... forgot about the issues that causes with the other stuff in there.
No idea.
Re: time in parallel: Honestly that’s not a bad theory, that the time of the future still has to kind of “tick forward” instead of an instantaneous transformation. That being said I don’t think it really explains why Grovyle seems to talk about Alti and Ray as if they’re climbing Temporal Tower/fighting Dialga/etc simultaneously to his own actions. Either they have or they haven’t. It all happened in the past. I kind of get the mental state he’s going through, human (Pokémon?) brains aren’t really meant to comprehend this kinda screwiness, but it comes up so often it reads like we’re expected to believe they’re parallel but interconnected universes.
... Then again, we did just learn that entangled particles can affect each other at a distance. Maybe the two timelines really are moving in parallel and there’s some quantum tanglement involved, lol. (I highly doubt they actually considered Real Metaphysics with this. It just seems to be The Problem With Time Travel some writers have. A friend of mine told me time travel in Sailor Moon works similarly: the future just seems to be like an alternate universe/world/whatever you can just kind of go to instead of a linear extension of the current state of affairs. That approach easily explains the weirdness of parallel times in Sky too, lol.
I have some personal theories about how the ripple effect comes to exist in Sky, but those will go at the end of the last update for this episode.
Time to see if Celebi is all right.
Top screen for reference... although we’ve all seen Dusk Forest before.
We’ve all seen it before. (Why is it sandstorming tho.)
Music: Dusk Forest
In the main story, it has Jumpluff, Mothim, Mismagius, and Gabite, and is 8 floors long. Here it has Haunter, Lickitung, Ditto, Claydol, Salamence, Drifloon, Mismagius, Hippowdon (oh that explains the sandstorm), and Rhyperior, with 7 floors. Ummm ok but why is it different in the future BOTH TIMES though.
I don’t get this game
Then after the seventh floor we arrive... here, at the Black Swamp. Music: In the Future
The place you met Celebi?
Grovyle: Yeah, that’s right.
Dusknoir: … It’s quiet...
I don’t know how long ago the whole thing with the four of us (Alti, Ray, Grovyle, Celebi) escaping Dialga and Dusknoir happened within the future-world (well, “how long ago” since time is frozen but w/e), but I’d say she’d stay away for a while.
Here’s Spacial Cliffs. I don’t know about you but this doesn’t really look like cliffs so much as generic (future) mountain terrain? But what do I know. Music
Pokémon: Haunter, Beldum, Misdreavus, Koffing, Shedinja, Banette, Mismagius
So this is another reference (after Temporal Tower) to the world of the past in the world of the future. I thought that was a really cool design choice/connection to make, I liked that they linked the two worlds like this.
Blizzard Island didn’t look like this in the past though sadly :( we’ll fix time!!!
Now that the world has plunged into darkness... it’s much more severe...
Grovyle. I suspect you know better than anyone else.
I know I don’t really know where it would be best to go...
However, I believe if we follow the path that lies ahead of here, it would be best.
And now we’re in the dungeon. Which is decidedly less gray than the other dungeons! Hooray.
Pokémon: Banette, Gengar, Skarmory, Metang, Lickilicky, Tangrowth, Duskull
(…
…
… where are the Ice-types)
That looks pretty cool. The water I mean.
Ten floors in and we’re at... a midpoint?
We will reach the peak soon, it seems.
Dusknoir: Yes.
However, I don’t know what lies ahead for us.
FIGHT TIME.
Unfortunately neither Grovyle nor Dusknoir can get a hit in with their range attacks because of positioning! Swell.
So I lead with Grovyle using a Gravelerock on Mamoswine.
And we’re here. I set Dusknoir to use only Will-o-Wisp, Shadow Punch, and Shadow Sneak.
First turn Grovyle attacks the Glalie with Leaf Blade.
Two turns later, one down and a burned Glalie...
… good :( Well, all three Glalie are in kill range.
A couple of turns later, Mamoswine goes down as a result of Dusknoir laser-focusing on it and Grovyle’s Absorb. Just one left...
What is it with you and thinking like, Holes On The Side are enough to protect from watchful eyes. I mean. Maybe it will work. But from the bird’s-eye perspective it doesn’t seem much like it should.
Let’s rest awhile.
We’ll head out again after a short time.
(When he was working with Alti and Ray...)
(He made it through a lot of tough situations...)
(However... His strength and endurance...)
(He has a strong will and doesn’t believe in failure...)
Grovyle: By the way... that time...
When that chunk of ice started falling straight onto my head...
Don’t tell me you... You were trying to protect me...
Before you... you said it was for the future...
You said... you fight... for a new life...
But if you do, you’ll disappear.
Your existence... will end.
With all that said... Why do you fight so hard for such a goal?
Grovyle: … Dusknoir.
I understand that you don’t want to disappear...
But me... This is what I think.
Even if we were to disappear...
Even if I were to disappear... I wouldn’t truly disappear.
You’d still have saved the world and all the Pokémon. Your influence would be everywhere and in everything, every blade of grass, gust of wind, drop of rain...
Something like that?
Even if history is not changed... Even if the world of darkness continues in its current state...
Eventually the day will come when I won’t be here anymore.
This is absolutely true. You can make an impact on the world or you can do everything you ever want to do, but either way it’s up to you to make the most of the time you have.
Dusknoir: … (With your life...)
(With your life... What you... accomplish...)
Absolutely. I’ll attest to that.
(And not just Alti and Ray, too. I think this whole thing affected a lot of players in a very meta way. I’m trying to get to the core of that from a musical standpoint in my thesis...)
And that spirit could be passed along to others.
And so, if I were to disappear... I think all that I have accomplished will go on.
Dusknoir: At any rate... Celebi and the Sableye should be up ahead.
I couldn’t get Snorunt to confirm it...
But there’s a good chance that Master Dialga and his new henchman will be there.
All right, let’s!
… Next time. (Based on how long this update is I’m pretty sure the next one is way too long to put into this. What remains is pretty emotionally-charged too and I’d kind of like it to be its own thing.)
God yeah. He's got such good perspective. And it's so applicable to real life too, not just the game. It's so deep and Grovyle is fantastic and I love him
Anyway so here we are with the rest of Special Episode 5! Following this I'm taking a break from the game... mostly because I'm going to the beach for a week and don't want to do much of anything lmao. Gonna be relaxing and not worrying about this let's play or work or my thesis or any damn thing.
[insert aggretsuko "WE DESERVE A VACATION"]
But have very emotional Pokémon before I go. When we last left off we were about to traverse Icicle Forest in our attempt to find Celebi.
Top screen for reference.
The most interesting-looking dungeon so far imo. Shame it’s JUST as colorless as the rest.
Pokémon: Gengar, Weezing, Ditto, Cacturne, Metagross, Lickilicky, Gliscor, Drifblim
… just as few Ice-types as the last dungeon.
Music: Icicle Forest
(Probably my favorite dungeon track from PMD2. I need to arrange this sometime soon...)
Water here too. It’s vaguely blue? Good?
Ten floors.
Dusknoir: I think the Sableye are up ahead.
Let’s proceed with caution.
It looks like the deepest part of this ice-covered forest.
Grovyle: Over there... I can see a remarkably large ice pillar...
There’s a mysterious feeling in the air... Is that...
The screen kind of... pulses with Grovyle at the center. There’s no real good way to describe or screenshot it.
(What is this sensation...)
(Why... I don’t understand why...)
(Every nerve in my body is bristling!)
(Th-this is a bad sign!)
(My instincts are screaming out that something’s very wrong!)
That’s horrifying! How do you know this? Has it happened to other Pokémon?
… Is there other stuff in the future like this????
Grovyle: Ulp! (M-my spirit... will be melted away?!)
Dusknoir: My plan, elegant and useful... It’s this...
Grovyle... I lured you here for this purpose.
After your spirit has been melted away, I will use your body...
Grovyle: Ah yes. I’m sure as sure can be.
While we were on our adventure...
When we were pressing on through the dungeons... Surmounting all challenges...
While you were behind me...
Grovyle: I ask you to remember more carefully. It’s not just something I sensed.
I’m very cautious.
And even with caution in place, while we were on this adventure together... I decided to trust you...
Mine...
Grovyle: You’ve pledged loyalty to Primal Dialga...
So you’re trying to protect this world of darkness.
But that just comes from the desire not to disappear.
I want to prove that I exist.
If I could do something really important... That would definitely carry on into the future.
No... Not just into the future.
In Alti’s and Ray’s future too...
My spirit has become part of them, I believe.
In them, my spirit is alive.
And that spirit could be passed along to others.
And so, if I were to disappear... I think all that I have accomplished will go on.
That is...
That would mean... that it’s living, right?
True... and they aren’t just servants in the new life.
Haven’t you ever thought of the future or a new life?
Giving in to Primal Dialga and living your whole life in darkness...
Is that truly what you want?
GYAAROOOH! (Th-the electric... The electrical discharge is getting stronger...)
… (C-can’t hold on! My strength...)
(My strength... is draining away...)
Celebi: If this goes on, Grovyle can’t...
Celebi: !?
Dusknoir: A wind... A wind has started blowing...
And up in the sky, there’s an aurora... That means...
The sun... The air has started to move...
Okay but auroras are caused by solar winds affecting the Earth’s magnetic field. It’s been night-time in the dark future for – all this time – so theoretically auroras should have still been visible... unless the sun itself was the REAL issue of paralysis.
Or unless destroying Temporal Tower destroyed the entire concept of time for the whole universe?
Wish I had a better answer.
The paralyzed planet... has started to move again!
He kind of lets out a light that pushes Dusknoir away, and then his chest gem begins to glow.
Um
I guess he just... left?
Dusknoir: D-don’t worry... I’m fine...
It’s more important to... follow Master Dialga...
The rest of you, take care of Grovyle and Celebi...
H-hurry...
Sableye: Y-yes. There’s no mistaking it.
Master Dialga was enveloped in this light...
And then he vanished in the direction of this awesomely vast mountain...
Celebi: It’s hopeless...
Grovyle: What’s wrong, Celebi?
Grovyle: If Dialga were to hit the Passage of Time while he’s not in his right mind...
What would happen, Dusknoir?
Dusknoir: If that occurs...
Now that the world has finally started to move... I don’t know what would happen...
Grovyle: The light has gotten much brighter, huh?
… (The sun is rising.)
(Dawn is near.)
Dusknoir: It took a long time to recover.
From here on, Grovyle and I...
And Celebi, we’ll move as a group of three.
We need to fight as hard as we possibly can to stop Master Dialga...
... Huh? What was that?
D-don’t... tell me... (Don’t tell me this is...!)
Celebi: … Huh?
Grovyle, what’s wrong?
Grovyle: … No... it’s nothing...
… (Alti... Just a little more...)
Dusknoir: I’ve been thinking about what could have happened, since we haven’t seen Master Dialga so far...
Grovyle: Right. I think he may have reached the pinnacle already.
Celebi: History... distorted?!
Grovyle: Our... The end is coming... It’s getting close!
Celebi: What?!
Dusknoir: Until we disappear, we should do everything we can to bring Dialga back to his senses!
Grovyle: Oh! For the future!
And here we are.
Dusknoir is set to use Will-o-Wisp and Celebi Ancientpower... Not that it matters a whole lot for the first turn. Grovyle throws an Iron Thorn.
On the second turn, Grovyle uses Dig, which will (hopefully) get a hit on Dialga when it approaches. Assuming it doesn’t use Roar of Time or something, that is...
Crap. At least Grovyle avoids damage?
This time we get to attack – and Dialga misses with Dragon Claw.
Now Dusknoir is set to use Ice Punch exclusively.
Dialga hits Celebi with Roar of Time a turn later as Grovyle is underground – but fortunately Celebi is the one with Recover!
And... it isn’t a hard fight to win with this trio.
We did it, we beat hi-
Oh... not again.
… oh.
All three of the heroes collapse as well.
Dusknoir: GUHGUHH!
M-my body... My body’s heavy!
Celebi: B-but... We did it...
Grovyle: Yeah...
We’ve finally defeated Primal Dialga...
Daybreak is near... Now... Now we can only wait...
Here... For the end to come...
Grovyle: Yes. Extraordinarily.
Dusknoir: … I am glad...
I-I am...
I am, up to the very end... not wavering... Honestly...
I lived...
Because of you, Grovyle... Thanks to you...
The sun... I had no idea that it could be this warm.
I... Being able to see the sun before the end...
And... Being able to see it with you...
I am really glad...
That I am alive... I am really glad...
Grovyle: … We...
We... truly... are still here...
Celebi: Wonderful!!
But I don’t know why we were fading and then didn’t disappear...
But anyway... Everyone is alive!
Everyone is safe!
Isn’t this just an amazingly wonderful thing?!
Dusknoir: Master Dialga!
Dialga: FOR A VERY LONG TIME... I SAW ONLY DARKNESS...
AND DURING THAT TIME...
THE WORLD BECAME FILLED WITH CHAOS...
Dusknoir: M-Master Dialga...
Dialga: I TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR IT!
NOW THAT THINGS HAVE BEEN RESOLVED... I’LL SUPPORT THIS NEW WORLD FROM HERE ON OUT.
THAT WAS SURELY... THAT POWER AT WORK, I BELIEVE.
AND SO... I MUST EXPRESS MY GRATITUDE.
IT’S WONDERFUL THAT YOU’VE RETURNED THE WORLD FROM DARKNESS FOR ME.
I’M TRULY... TRULY GRATEFUL.
TO YOU... AND THE ONES WHO STOPPED THE PLANET’S PARALYSIS IN THE PAST...
YOUR FRIENDS...
And now you would remember, wouldn’t you...
And Ray! You...
The fate of Pokémon in the future when you changed history...
My fate and that of Alti...
I expect you’ll find out later, but right now you’re...
(If you can carry my message... Please send it to Alti and Ray!)
(Thanks to you, the future has been freed from darkness!)
(And we... and the other Pokémon in the future... are safe!)
(We didn’t disappear!)
(From now on, we’re going to combine our strengths and rebuild this world.)
(For Celebi, who has supported me all this way... After this...)
(Above all, we... are still alive!)
You might be better off watching this ending scene on video.
The ending begins at 46:30.
Remember to clap when the composers’ names scroll across the screen.
A beautiful ending it was.
… So, we may be done with the Special Episode, but I’m not done with it quite yet. I want to share my thoughts on the episode as a whole, pose some questions about it for the reader, and finally do something I’ve been sitting on all game: my own personal attempt at explaining/justifying how time works in this this game. Stuff’s pretty long and may take away from your enjoyment of the emotional aspects of this update, so here are hide tags.
This episode gets a bit of a mixed reception because of what happens to Grovyle, Celebi, and Dusknoir at the end of it. A while ago, I read a very good Mystery Dungeon fanfic where the player disappears at the end of it, just as in the games (though he lives - he returns to the human world a la MD1), but never returns. The author stated they they did this because they thought the player’s reappearance kind of detracts from the emotional weight of the games’ endings. On one hand I get that, but on the other since this is a video game that continues after the ending, I think it’s important that the avatar returns for the epilogue – but from a gameplay perspective, not necessarily a story perspective.
On the other hand, there’s not really any pressing gameplay reasons for Grovyle et al to return. The episode ends there and they never get back in contact with Ray and Alti, so it “doesn’t make a difference” if they live or die. The world is the same either way.
As for me, I’m kind of mixed on it myself. On one hand, it’s nice that we get to see their pure, unadulterated joy at living – being able to continue to experience the new world and actually live for the first time in a world of light and color. I still cry at the ending just because it’s so sweet and heart-melting. On the other... I feel like it kind of detracts from their attempts at sacrifice. Grovyle, Celebi, and in the end Dusknoir all did what they did because they were more willing to save the world than themselves and were content in their own disappearance since it meant they had succeeded. But when they come back, they’re just so happy to be alive that it seems to kind of... undermine their willingness to disappear for the sake of the world. I don’t know, it just seems to exist to be sweet but doesn’t really... follow from the previous events and their previous characterization? Dusknoir questioning whether or not he did the right thing, then determining he had no regrets, on his his deathbed is lovely and sweet and heart-rending... but then he comes back. I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem to have the best impact. Though it’s Pokémon – even though it is dark as hell – so we shouldn’t expect anything other than pure sugary sweetness from this kind of ending, lol.
I know the fact that “a higher being” (implied to be Arceus, obviously) brought them back is somewhat infuriating and Deus Ex Machina-esque for a lot of players. Arceus bringing back Dialga (though... did he even need to??? but that’s in the next spoiler tab) makes sense because Dialga’s got an innate importance to the workings of the world and/or the universe. I guess if that’s the case it might make sense to “give the gift of life” to the three Pokémon and the Sableye who reversed the issues? I... don’t know why Arceus cares. It just seems too “everyone lives happily ever after” in a way.
Also, the part where the camera shows the Snorunt and Spiritomb living happily ever after is questionable – were they meant to disappear too? Probably, because Grovyle said that all the Pokémon from the future would disappear if he and Alti changed things. So Arceus brought them back too??? Why??? Did he just bring everyone back? Is the world now half made up of those from the “proper” (world is saved, continues as saved) timeline and half from the paralyzed timeline? How does that even work????
(More on this last point in the Theory of Time hide tag.)
So... okay. The world started to move again, and the sun rose, implying that Alti and Ray’s efforts to change the past, rather than causing a ripple effect that kind of “altered” the bad future into being an extension of the good present, like... kind of hit it from a distance, and missed all the interim material. Like bouncing a ball on the ground. It hits the ground once – this is Alti and Ray’s putting the Time Gears up – and then skips over some of the ground – this is the paralyzed future – and hits the ground again – this is where the future changes and Grovyle, Celebi, Dusknoir, and Dialga disappear. But all the interim “ground” (time) doesn’t get affected by the ball.
It doesn’t make any damn sense, though, as I’m sure you figured out. If Alti and Ray save the world, everything continues as normal. There’s no paralyzed future to “get fixed” in the first place because the paralyzed future never existed in the first place. So when the effects of the past quest start to show up (which is a whole other issue but that’s in the next tab), I would expect everything to just kind of shift to how it should have been rather than the paralyzed planet but it looks nice now.
And you might be wondering “but, we saw the grass and the living trees appear” - and you’re right, we did, but we also heard one of them say “this is Dialga’s power”, implying that fixing it was part of what Dialga did. It’s almost like the only issue that actually affected the paralyzed planet was that the sun never came up and fixing it made the sun turn again, but everything else has to be handled by third parties “fixing” the world. This is implied when Grovyle and Dialga suggested they have to “rebuild” the world – rebuild it from what. it was never a problem in the first place!!!!
Dialga himself is also... questionable. First, I know some people have been confused on why Dialga vanishes at all. He’s a “future Pokémon”, yes, but one who existed in the past and one who – due to his status as a legendary – is likely immortal or close to it. And it’s extremely clear that “this Dialga” is the same one that Alti and Ray fought at the end of their quest. So he should theoretically just kind of shunt into always having been sane/rational, rather than just completely disappearing.
The only good explanation I heard was, I think, by someone in the OI Discord (I think that’s where I heard it?) that the reason for the disappearances is actually more because there cannot be two of the same being in the world at the same time. Presumably, “always-good-Dialga” is in fact still present when the future changes, so Primal Dialga vanishes in order to accommodate that. When Dialga returns, either there’s now two Dialga, or – more likely to me, if I’m going to buy this theory – the memories of both Dialga kind of “merge” to create one Dialga, and Grovyle, Celebi, and Dusknoir all reappear because they never existed in the first place so there isn’t an alternative version of themselves for them to coexist with.
(Incidentally, this approach also explains why Dusknoir’s plan to use Grovyle’s body involves him showing up to Alti and Ray after they fight Dusknoir and Grovyle pushes him through the time portal. He could teleport to whenever he wanted, unless times where him or Grovyle are present are “out of bounds”.)
So this is an attempt to explain some of the time travel funkiness throughout the whole game. It doesn’t really explain all the issues I brought up in the previous couple tabs but it does attempt to justify the time travel writing in general.
The first part, the conception of time in general, is inspired by an amazing fanfic, Silver Resistance, which all of you should read since it’s great and fun. I’m not going to say too much about time travel in this fic since it’s a rather big plot point, but I’ll quote the relevant bit.
Bending down, [he] used a claw to etch a small circle into the gravelly cave floor. The Chandelure loomed closer to brighten the surface.
“For the sake of argument, pretend this circle is the time stream, the one in which you and I reside. Now...” He began to draw several lines branching out from the circle until it looked like a crude representation of the sun. “Here are the various branches of the timeline,” he continued. “Many... possibilities created by many pivotal moments in this world, the moments which are the causes of changed fates. [...]”
The “most logical” way for time travel to work, in my opinion, is that you can’t actually affect anything in the future. You go back in time and whatever you do there causes or ensures that the future plays out in the exact same way. There isn’t anything you can do to actually affect the past. The actual best use of this I’ve seen is the My Little Pony (yes yes I know) episode where Twilight is accosted by a future version of herself who looks like she’s been through hell and back, and tells past-Twilight not to do... something, we’ll never know, because her time travel ability ran out and she didn’t finish her sentence. Past-Twilight proceeds to spend the entire week being paranoid about what she might do and, in the process, accidentally gets into several accidents that make her look like she’s been through hell and back. Upon realizing that her own actions led to her looking like this, she goes to find a time travel spell so she can go back and warn her past self not to... freak out and do all the shit that made her look like she’s been through hell and back. She inadvertently completes the time-travel loop. This is the actual best “stable time loop” I’ve run across personally, but I know others probably exist.
Well, it’s pretty obvious the stable time loop isn’t how Mystery Dungeon functions. So instead I turn to the Silver Resistance model: Things go in a certain “predestined” fashion up to a point, at which several different futures are possible. The point of divergence is, roughly, Darkrai’s interference with Temporal Tower.
I’d like to take a second to explain something relating to time travel that I made up, a wildcard element regarding free will and the actions of living beings.
This is a theory that states that, while all living beings have the capability of doing many things at any given point in their life, their upbringing, nature, personality, situation, etc. makes some things more likely than others – beings have “preferences”. This is basically a way to get around the free will issue that plagues discussions of time travel. If you can see into the future, and if your future vision shows a specific event as happening, and if this is accurate, doesn’t that mean that every people in the world is going to act in a certain way such that that vision becomes reality? In other words, seeing the future is essentially admitting that people have no free will, because if they did, wouldn’t it be more possible for the vision not to happen? How can the vision even show you anything plausible, if everyone has literal millions of possibilities at any point in their life?
The preference principle is an attempt to resolve this by effectively stating that, while people do have free will, they also have preferences in their actions that make some outcomes more likely than others. I could... get up and get a snack... or a shower... or a beer, at noon... or I could kick myself in the face... or I could scream obscenities at nothing... or I could keep typing this because I want to finish this in one sitting. The most likely result is that I’ll stay here. So the most likely tomorrow is one where in the past, at 12:20 the day before, I was still sitting on a couch writing this post. So if I were to see the future now it would probably be one that was influenced by this likelihood.
The concept of “future vision” as shown in Steven Universe through Garnet/Sapphire is also indicative of the idea of the preference principle. She states that she sees time as a stream with many possible branches, but she kind of ignores/doesn’t focus on some because there’s a sense of knowing which ones are “important” (likely?) and which ones aren’t. In a recent episode, she admits to Steven that his actions in a previous episode were so unlikely, according to her future-vision, that she didn’t even see it coming. The same was true of Sapphire and Ruby’s first fusion: Sapphire saw a future, told Blue Diamond about it, but somehow Ruby managed to betray her own preferences and change the outcome, resulting in the creation of Garnet in the process. This conception of future vision gels nicely with my own preference principle.
This will become relevant for my discussion of the timeline below.
So this is my view of how the branches acted and interacted in this game:
1) The first branch: Temporal Tower is intact and will stay that way for as long as time exists. This is a good future, because Temporal Tower is never threatened and therefore there’s never any issue. We never actually see this time line. What it is is the “natural state of affairs” - how things WOULD play out – if Darkrai never meddled. Darkrai comes from this timeline. He desires a world of darkness, and knows that destroying Temporal Tower is the way to do this.
2) The second branch: Temporal Tower falls thanks to Darkrai and the world is plunged into darkness, resulting in the future that Alti, Grovyle, and Dusknoir originate from. The minute Darkrai begins to sabotage Temporal Tower is the minute the original branch gets “cut off” from existence, and is no longer a potential future. Instead, the world goes to the second branch, the “most likely” second branch – where Temporal Tower is destroyed due to a lack of outside interference. I define this as “most likely” because of the preference principle: no Pokémon has a “preference” that causes them to attempt to fix things or save the tower.
3) The third branch: Grovyle and Alti appear from nowhere, both of them perfectly fine (e.g. no amnesia/transformation on the part of Alti), and succeed in restoring Temporal Tower. This branch is never seen either, but is indicated – if Darkrai never attacked them and Dusknoir never intervened (or failed in his mission), this would presumably have been the outcome. It’s different from the second branch because Grovyle and Alti are time travelers, and there “isn’t a guarantee” that the ever got back to the past in the first place. The second branch is what happens if only Darkrai’s actions are taken into account.
4) The fourth branch: Grovyle and Alti appear from nowhere. Alti is transformed into a Pokémon in the process and loses her memory. They eventually meet up and eventually fix the problem. This is the branch that we play. This is a result of Darkrai, seeing the possibility that branch 3 may pose a threat to his nice little dark future, attempting to intervene. (This branch is kind of the result of me folding into 1 branch some related branches: In this one, the only thing known is that Grovyle and Alti travel, and Darkrai attacks them. I didn’t mention Dusknoir, so if he wasn’t there either, things could have played out very differently. I don’t want to actually talk about every single possibility since most of them are pretty inconsequential, just the big ones.
Branch 4 is the one we see. But... it wasn’t the only possibility for how that timeline ends. This is where Special Episode 5 comes into play.
5) The fifth branch: Dusknoir tricks Grovyle, takes over his body, returns to the past, and prevents Alti and Ray from saving the world – creating a dark future.
When Grovyle and Dusknoir return to the future, it is still dark. If time were linear, and if Grovyle and Alti appearing “shunted” the branch from 2 to 4, they should be returning to a nice future. What they’re actually doing, in my view, is returning to the place that is most likely based on Dusknoir’s preference principle – the future of branch 5. Grovyle’s preference principle has him trusting Dusknoir and blindly falling into his trap... which is what actually happens, and we all saw how close Grovyle got to losing the fight. They are in the future of branch 5 because Dusknoir is “about to confirm” that this happens. Of course, we all know that Alti and Ray never met a second Grovyle and succeeded on saving the world. The problem is that this timeline, branch 4, also hinges on Grovyle’s and Dusknoir’s interactions in SE5 preventing them from creating branch 5. So actually, branch 5 is more likely than branch 4, and that’s why Grovyle and Dusknoir get sent to branch 5 – a dark future because that’s how it happens. In other words, Grovyle and Dusknoir start the episode in the future of a world where Dusknoir has already succeeded at the plan he comes up with at the beginning of the episode.
The timeline does not “confirm” as branch 4 until all the “most likely” things that prevent branch 4 from occurring are eliminated. One of these is convincing Dusknoir to change his mind and side with Grovyle. This is “unlikely” on one or both of their parts, so when it actually happens it goes against the preference principle – unlikely but possible! I don’t think it’s coincidence that the changes to the future indicating branch 4 is “confirmed” begin just after Dusknoir flips his allegiance – not before! Dusknoir is no longer a threat to branch 4 and so it starts to take effect because it’s more likely now.
But, the reason it doesn’t flip to branch 4 as soon as Dusknoir is converted – is because Dialga is still a threat. Branch 4 is more likely but Dialga’s existence means it isn’t confirmed, so the real changes don’t happen until they incapacitate Dialga. Doing so essentially “confirms” that nothing is a threat to branch 4 anymore and thus they start to shunt into branch 4 because now branch 4 is the most likely future... although as we all know they are saved from their demise.
This still doesn’t explain how they have to “rebuild” branch 4 though
That was way too longwinded, I love rambling about time travel stuff lmao. Feel free to put your own thoughts out there or challenge me! I’m always up for discussions like this
Next time: We begin going into recruitment mode. Feel free to suggest nicknames for... well, anything and everything!
