Looks like there may be a couple small audio glitches and editing blips throughout which I can only apologise for, we had the death of a pet yesterday which meant I wasn't really in the right frame of mind when finishing this up Anyway, Palette Swap are also on Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/paletteswapmag.bsky.social And sorry to any confusion caused with the Patreon. Again, as I say, things will be explained in a post soon. For now, here's where you can support me: www.patreon.com/nocturnalfudj
Say what you will about alola (i liked it) but at least when something happened in the story, you SAW it. Imagine if you got held up talking to wicke at the aether foundation, and then when you went up, Hau said "woah dude, you just missed it, a weird looking Pokémon came out of an ultra wormhole, and I had to beat it up!
people without uk bias almost unilaterally prefer alola to any other 3d era game as well as believe sword and shield are by far the worst 3d era game. the only competing is between sv and xy for the number 2-3 slots.
I kind of forgot this rewrite was for the purpose of making roses theme fit, so by God, when I got to the new fight you wrote the music really blew me away. Such a better implementation. Bravo on the rewrite
You gotta love Sword and Shield for having the exact opposite plot as the UK - Chairman Rose actually wants to make renewable energy! The UK government could never
That was one of my big frustrations with the games-that you could read it as mocking climate "alarmists" the same way Black & White villainized Animal Rights activism.
@@GSBarlevI wouldn’t give them enough credit to think of it as mocking. It feels like all the effort went into the excellent league challenge and then they threw a story together. Eternarus? Fuck it energy crisis Pokémon get big. Yeah but how is the fella sorting that a villain? Errr, it’s in a thousand years and it’s basically a disaster. But we’ve not got time to animate all of the Pokémon rampaging? Make the champion sort it all out off screen. Everyone liked the gym leaders helping in BW, they’ll love that.
@@mechashadowunova(New York), Orre (Arizona) , and aloha(Hawaii) are all really based off of parts of the USA and predate sword and shield, also how would an aristocrat villlan fit the usa?
You've got a real knack for character dialogue and motivation! If you're up for it (and the bank account gets low enough), I'd love to see your take on designing a Pokemon storyline from the ground up. What would you do if you had all the tools, instead of rebuilding a foundation from something else? You've mentioned before how you don't really enjoy returning to the Pokemon well again and again, but I hope an exercise like this is creatively stimulating enough that you can wring some joy out of it! Thank you for sharing!
gunna be honest my only regret with watching this video is the vast gulf of discontent and disappointment i now feel about the ACTUAL swsh storyline LOL i couldnt have told you then or now what the plot was supposed to actually be. it was so muddy i finished the game and was like well.. i guess im done? what? but this. man. this rewrite is so well worked and balanced that i cant imagine a world where this WASNT the actual story now. the twist with the scripted loss against nessa especially- could you IMAGINE that happening ingame??? FANTASTIC work. please make like 50 roms i swear to god
I think the part about dynamax not working is a cool idea, but way too obvious of a rig. Maybe it could be a plot point that refusing to dynamax is seen as a power play meant to inflate the fighters ego. So when someone doesn't dynamax, it's seen as a taunt rather than a stupid decision. Then when the fighter inevitably loses, and claims that dynamax wasn't working, people will just assume he's lying to cover his embarrassing loss. That way it wouldn't be as suspicious as it is now
It could make sense. As it is something that some pokémon trainer who is just so confident to their and their pokémons ability to win the match could do just to show everyone how awesome trainer they are and how strong pokémon team they got.
Excellent video! As one of those weirdos that like reading fanfiction and thinks way too deep about video game stories to find the smallest crumbs in-canon and real life equivalents to pull from, this was right up my alley. A couple of fun-facts you might not be aware about, there are some secret Trainer Cards you can get in-game that reveal some backstory to the characters. For example, Oleana grew up dirty poor before getting a job in Macro Cosmos and being noticed by Rose, so her Garbodor as a Trubbish was her first Mon, and probably the only one she could afford to keep because it ate garbage, which made it cheap. Also Rose's brother is absurdly funny, and really did not like his brother. How much he disliked him? He was the Champion before Leon, and he resigned the micro-instant Rose became chairman. That's how much he didn't want to have nothing to do with Rose. Also, and I'm not joking, he's basically confirmed to be the father of Penny from SV, the small girl with red and blue hair. And the founder of Paldea's own evil team. Domestic terrorism runs in the family.
Cool rewrite, I especially like that you gave Marnie and Piers' story more teeth. I like the characters and always wished they didn't feel so pointless to the game. I also appreciate that you understand the realities of game dev and that the story is the way that it is because the devs had to meet an unfair deadline.
The DLC could work with this with just about zero changes, save for the fact that you can head to the DLC areas whenever you want, and there's certain times in this storyline where it'd be pretty weird to just wander off to an island and fight giant bees for a while. Peonea's relationship with Rose is briefly half-touched on in one line of dialogue, and in general the DLCs are a lot better put together than the main game, and are in need of a lot less fixing.
Absolutely fantastic video. Well-thought-out rewrites like this are solid gold to me, and I hope to match your level of competence. I tried my hand with a total re-write of X and Y a few years back, and it went well at first, but once I was past the halfway point the lack of direction left it with nowhere to go. You handled Team Yell and Macro Cosmos both immaculately, as well as Leon and Sonia. Especially if I've successfully bought in to Leon being lovable and having a heart of gold, the final battle against him would be genuinely emotional, knowing how much the loss I'm trying to inflict on him would hurt him. And then the wrap-up where his brother supports him and reminds him of how he held back eternatus...mwah. I might have cried. I do worry for Hop a little. To me, he's one of the best written Pokémon rivals - top 5 for sure, and I understand that a lot of people don't think highly of him. He's fighting an uphill battle against the bad first impression he makes dragging you through the mandatory tutorial and reusing animations from Hau. His biggest strength is how his team conveys his arc extremely well - once Bede crushes his confidence, Hop repeatedly re-shuffles his team to try and find something that beats you - even trying out Cramorant and Pincurchin, while benching his partner Wooloo for a time. I feel like the decisions he makes in the final act of your re-write detract from Hop's story by both shifting the focus away from him and making him feel even more like a loser. Then again, there's only so much space in a narrative to flesh out characters in a satisfying way - if Hop had to make small sacrifices so that Rose and Team Yell could shine, so be it. The other point of concern is the scripted loss in the Champion's Cup. Forced losses are always volatile things to handle, given how awful they make the player feel. Done well, that awfulness can be harnessed for catharsis later - but I feel like the key to a forced loss is if the player can reasonably believe their character would lose. In basically every successful example I can think of, the player character is weaker than their opponent at that point in the story, whether because they're strictly outmatched or the playing field is somehow uneven, like in this case. You don't mind the mechanical violation that is your starter being too scared of the Houndoom at the beginning of S/V, even if you were a psychopath who grinded up a team that could reasonably defeat it, because at that point in the story you're still just a new trainer at the very start of their journey. It's different here, because Dynamax isn't a be-all end-all. There are plenty of strategies a player could use to defeat a Dynamaxed opponent without using the mechanic themselves by the lategame - and if they're highly competent and/or a little overleveled and/or stocked up on items, you could beat Nessa's Drednaw without breaking a sweat. More importantly, by this point in the narrative, you've gone on a long journey and conquered everything in your path so far - so the player character is expected to be strong, able to overcome even the adversity of being unable to Dynamax in a tough fight. Imagine sweeping Nessa with, I don't know, Sleep Powder Quiver Dance Tanga Berry Lilligant, or something. You don't plan on Dynamaxing, knowing that you'll eviscerate Drednaw with Giga Drain anyways - but the game suddenly forces you to, just to show you that you can't. Then, for six consecutive turns, you're locked out of performing any actions as your healthy team is OHKOd by moves they're obviously capable of living. Of course, not every player would put on such a dominant display, but this is a Pokémon game - a lot of players will have to sit there and watch fainting animations for minutes. I don't think the reaction here would be gut-wrenching indignation at the unfairness of the rigged match - because the player can see exactly how the match was rigged, and knew that by all accounts they should have won anyways based on both their mechanical knowledge and the considerable power the narrative insists that the player character has. And that could be an interesting story in its own right, perhaps. Instead, players who have that experience will just be a little bewildered and frustrated by the obvious railroading. "What?" All of that being said. The forced loss against Nessa is an important plot point for your superior retelling of SWSH. Unlike the Hop characterization thing, I'm more inclined to call this one a flaw, but I also don't see how the story you built could exist without it. And I really enjoyed your story. -And maybe the fact that I never finish any of my amateur writing projects is because I detect flaws in them and deny them their existence rather than let something good be told in spite of its flaws.- And really, the whole deal is a limitation of the game this story necessarily exists in, not the story itself. I wonder if, ideally, it would work better as a cutscene than a playable event? Anyways, thank you for the incredible video.
The “theme” of Galar was descendants/ history / but mostly legacy You beat the unbeatable champion and it’s legacy Hop was trying to reach Leon legacy Marine and Bede continued the legacy of their respective gym leaders Rose was trying to make a legacy last forever Sonia continued the previous professor legacy But even so SWSH doesn’t use this theme very well
yet you catched the theme, how Galar and its people have this inherited will from its past, Hop and Gloria became the new Sword and Shield wielders, the old energy is replaced by a new one, the tradition itself is a passing of the torch the pokemon league is a big celebration, I get that he wanted a more dark approach, but I would loved if he keep the original theme from Sword and Shield
One of my hypothetical Pokémon projects includes a full remake of SwSh, so I'll keep this video in mind if I ever decide to actually sit down and make it. Great job!
Phenomenal rewrite. When Leon was first shown on social media, many people felt he might be a fraud, so I like how you felt your story naturally gravitated towards this direction. And when I made the connection, that Leon’s whole position as the “ruler/victor/what have you” was actually a fraud, and thus called back to the concept of historical revisionism and your quote about victors getting to write history, I really was just “😮” for a moment, lol. Great job. Just some meta stuff right there. In the end, it wasn’t even Leon’s choice, the instrumentalization of his by Rose (the actual “ruling class”) just hurt him in the end. I also liked how Piers, Marnie and Team Yell were enhanced by adding the anti-capitalist, English punk aspect to them, and how the fellow Gym Leaders were portrayed perhaps not as perpetrators, but definitely as beneficiaries of the system Rose hat put into place, and they were not keen on giving up their position until shown undeniable evidence of Rose’s deceit. We truly live in a society.
I also love how it adds way more depth to Leon after he is finally beaten by the player. In the original, he appears to be super depressed by the player beating him. While this is understandable since he’s undefeated before this, it’s not very relatable. In the rewrite, this depression fits a lot better as he struggles with self-doubt. Since he’s based his personality on being undefeated, he probably is wondering who he is if that was all a lie. It also makes a lot of sense to take over the Rose/battle tower, as helps him strive to get stronger and prove himself.
I’m glad you went into explaining the theme of your story. On Bulbapedia, the pages for each generation lists thematic motifs for each region (Hoenn is relationships in nature, Sinnoh is myths and legends, Kalos is beauty and harmony, etc.). Meanwhile, the Gen 8 page doesn’t have a section like that. With a story like this to help contextualize how we should think about Galar, it could.
you said you wanted to make rose a character worth having an epic battle theme, and brother, when you started playing his song at the climax i lost my shit. so damn cool! i feel like your rewrite fleshes out galar soooo much and would probably make the game longer than it was. P.S, if you ever find the time, the DLC is actually quite fun! especially the crown tundra. if nothing else, you should play it so you can go hang out with penny's dad and brag about it when you go back to paldea X3
I personally felt like Bede was missing something. I, too, liked him (I typically do like snarky assholes like him), but it felt like he was left in only a slightly better position from the beginning. he was constantly looking for approval from rose, and then he gets rejected and picked up by opal, who then reforms him to be... himself but without the coat? it didn't feel much like he changed at all, even though he was supposed to have. he learned nothing really, and hasn't really changed. I felt like we didn't get enough time with him to observe the transformation, had it even happened. i know he was a bit of a bitch, but i really never felt that he was doing it just to be an ass. it felt like some unidentified rage at something. therefore: I think bede could work perfectly for a coming out story. all that needs to change is that rose wants him to wear that giant coat, and that he's actually his adopted dad (if he isn't. i actually cannot remember). bede insults the player a lot, so I propose he just focuses on their clothing for insults. make opal's infatuation with pink stem from appreciation AND the sense of freedom she gets from it, and then add a couple encounters after he meets opal. one where his coat is still on, and one where it's unbuttoned, but still on. then, his final battle, without even saying anything, describes his ability to be himself outwardly.
The main problem with Bede for me is how Sword & Shield has him written in the story. Before the final battle against him in the main story begins, he tells announces to everyone that he will retire from being a Pokemon Trainer upon defeat. But just when they do such a good job on his overall character growth, his individuality gets half-assed at the last second by having the *audience* tell Bede not to give up Pokemon Training but to start from scratch. That's not good writing, in my opinion.
Very enjoyable concept, 100% vast improvement on the story. The only complaint I have is that you didn't suggest an alternative Gigantamax Pokemon for Raihan to use. There's only one other dragon type that can Gigantamax, being Flapple/Appletun, which is used by Milo during rematches. I imagine it'd involve promoting Sandaconda to the ace and Gigantamaxing it, since he already has one and as far as I can recall nobody ever actually used Gigantamax Sandaconda. Guess I solved my own complaint, so no notes, great stuff.
I just realized that Hop is vague about Zacian/Zamazenta's appearance in the originals because they didn't want to imply the existence of non-Pokémon animals
The rigged matches part actually lines up with base game. Mustard in the DLC used to be Champion but resigned after learning he would be fighting in fixed matches so it’s really not out of the question
I'd make Leon the champion for 6 years instead of 4 for 2 reasons. 1. It is implied that multiple gym leaders took the gym challenge the same year as Leon or more recently. Raihan is a rival to Leon, who was traveling along side Sonia, who was really good friends with Nessa, who sees herself having a rivalry with Milo. Gordie is described as an upcomer who people believe might become champion one day, which leads me to think he's younger than the others. You could not convince me Allister isn't a new gym leader with how young he looks and how shy he is. Bea kind of just seems younger than the first group, I'd put her around Gordie but that's just a vibe. Piers, filling a similar role to Leon as an older brother to one of your rivals, I just lumped him in with Leon's group, but I could see him being a few years older. Maybe he was a gym leader for a year before Leon became champion. All that is to say I don't think everyone should have become a gym leader immediatly after their own run. Maybe Raihan became one the following year, followed by Nessa 2 years later, and Milo the year after that, with 2 years to go before your run, just to feel more stretched out. 4 just feels more compressed. 2. If Leon has been champion for 6 years then that means Leon defended his title 4 times between him winning and you taking his sponsership. (Spoiler for the video) that's 4 champion level trainers that got cheated. I could see Leon reching out to each of them wanting to set things right. Once you win against the gym leaders again you fight this makeshift Elite 4 before you fight Leon.
I think energy can be the focus of the story in two ways - either Rose wants to seize the means of production himself and has made everyone a pawn in his scheme to get Eternatus OR the energy crisis is 10 years away, and Rose realizes that Galar Particles are finite and dynamaxing eats into this finite resource. So every dynamax battle eats more and more into this resource (giving urgency to halt the tournament)
Also so many people have commented throughout the series on how it seems like world-ending phenomena and massive criminal enterprises are tackled by you, a random character. This is why, because suspending disbelief a bit in this fantasy world is preferable to “and a qualified person fixed it offscreen”
Loved this video - incredible work as always! Always a delight to see a new Fudj video pop up on my feed, the amount of work you must put into these is insane
Turning Hop into a sports journalist/announcer is such an economical change to the story, it’s really brilliant. It doesn’t even really need a whole lot of recontextualizing, it just slots nicely into his character. Hop is infamous for providing commentary throughout your fights with him. His incessant chattering in the middle of battle makes a lot more sense with the rewrite you proposed. This change turns an otherwise annoying character trait into something that contributes to the conclusion of his character arc. The rival trainer to Pokemon professor/assistant pipeline works, but it’s something that’s been done before in the series: Gary Oak from the anime, Cheren/Bianca in BW. Providing a little bit of originality and expanding the world is always a good thing.
In regards to theme, I've always read sword/sheild as being about "Passing on the torch" and the various reactions people have about it. Hop/Marnie/Sonia are worried about not being able to fill the shoes of their older brothers with different choices being made, either gaining confidence in their ability and acceptibg the torch with Marnie/Sonia or Hop realising that succeding his brother just isn't for him and taking his own path. Bede has a torch forced upon him. And Rose is worried that the torch he has isn't in a stable enough state to pass on, granted yeah still kot a great justification for his actions. Granted though your idea of revisionism could play really well together with that! Exploring the responsibilities people have to the upcoming generations to be honest with their history and avoid history repeating and being less susceptible to propaganda.
What I’m discovering from this video is that if a Pokémon story has any sort of nuance, flavor, originality, or creativity, it comes off as a fan creation. Pokémon stories are terrible and have a style that an actually decent story cannot replicate… that sucks.
The closest they get to nuance is Black/White, but N's argument keeps getting shot in the foot by the grunts constantly committing crimes, sometimes not even related to their cause.
@@commonviewer2488 Nah, BW's is shit too. It's wholly contradictory with the worldbuilding of the verse with the game never attempting to provide instances where the player may doubt whether there's rational in Team Plasma's message. I think people interpret the notable NPCs having more depth in BW as for the story itself being quality, but that's not salvaging a plot that utterly fails at being convincing from beginning to end.
I really love most of the changes you did, specially the way you connected the team yell story and characters with chariman rose corruption storty great work!
I'm actually am more interested in a more morally complex villain. I feel like to make rows just a cheap bad guy like this is very easy. But It ultimately makes him very much less interesting. He's a bog standard. I mean this is the point of writing this for themes I guess, but it really sacrificed a more interesting villain for the sake of themes. And I feel like his song would be more fitting if it was actually a tragedy. Instead of that he was a fallen hero... Even in this version you can make him more nuanced, you could have given actually a good reason why he has such an obsession with legacy and having his father... You can show like the cycle of abuse or something like that. That he is so desperate for the approval of his own father and to have a legacy. It feels so cheap just to make him with just a bad guy with no nuance. You know
Here before 200k views. Absolutely incredible narrative from start to finish. The preamble, theme discussion, plot and characterization is all chefs kiss. Not too into Pokémon but even removed from it this is great, well done
I just wanted to say this is so much more of a solid and interesting story that helps elevate the games as a whole. It might lean a bit more mature in terms of what it's telling, but I think it can appeal to both children and adults alike. (I definitely feel like Pokemon tends to forget that older individuals love these games too, so they need to write a story for all-ages, and not just a story that everyone can understand, if that makes sense.) I love how you integrated the sports aspect into the plot besides it being an homage to the real-world region. The twist of Rose being more involved with the league, and the championship battle's scripted match is ... (*chefs kiss*) it's a simple twist, but so effective to narrative. I also love how Piers, Marine and Team Yell encompass more of a punk energy in this story and it perfectly aligns with how the climax would progress. Great work! :)
About the DLC: Peony being Rose’s brother in the original DLC was neat, but I feel like they didn’t go far enough with it. There’s actually some lore that Peony used to be the league champion; however, once Rose became chairman, Peony resigned as champion, presumably due to issues with Rose. This lore could slide in perfectly with your rewrite: once Rose becomes chair, have him approach Peony with their plan to rig matches, thinking he’s doing Peony, his brother, a favor. However, Peony is appalled and disgusted by the plan, and storms off, resigning from being champion. Peony could never turn in his own brother, but he removed himself from Galar’s League and stayed as far away from Wyndon as he could get. Peony could express some regret on not helping take Rose down sooner, but could still be happy that it meant he had the time to spend with his daughter. Anyway, Excellent rewrite! I could tell you put a lot of effort into the writing and the result was just fantastic!
I had an idea for a Sword and Shield rewrite as well, primarily to focus more on the Pokémon battles as a sport idea. And also to remove Eternatus, because I really don't like that or the whole plot involving it. The story stays very lighthearted until the point where Bede loses his sponsorship, where he claims that Leon's battles have been rigged in a desperate attempt to still stay in the competition or at the very least disqualify Leon. This causes a huge controversy, but Bede has no evidence (and he likely just said it in the hope that there actually was something to it), and Leon denies it. But Raihan confirms it, saying that he was paid to lose to Leon to build him up as this unstoppable champion and to make himself the underdog that everybody wants to cheer for to boost his social media presence. Chairman Rose and the rest of the league make no comment. Leon wasn't part of any planning for this, though, so he legitimately believed that he was that good, and the idea that his career was a lie breaks him as he now focuses on proving that he really is that good and that he would have won even without any rigging. Likewise, Hop becomes disillusioned with his older brother, who he now thinks is a cheater, so now he focuses on getting out of his brother's shadow and restructures most of his team to be more competitive and less like Leon's. And to get the battle with Chairman Rose during the championship tourney, you suddenly find yourself getting postponed by staff to ensure that Leon wins via your disqualification. But you battle your way out and Leon insists that they wait longer so that you can battle him because he refuses to keep his title on a technicality, especially if he feels like he's being made a pawn to promote the game. This reinvigorates Hop and makes him realize that his brother truly did believe that he earned his position and is willing to lose in a fair fight to prove his innocence and skill, so Hop goes to help you. You defeat Rose and make him resign, before returning to the championship match and defeating Leon. The box legendary can stay a postgame acquisition after one last battle with Hop to prove who is more worthy. And I'm very tempted to make Dynamax something that you can only do after you beat the game, making the gym battles more of an underdog battle for you and then giving you the power that they used as a reward for beating the game. Either that or replace Dynamax with Mega Evolutions (and still keep it as a postgame reward, just one that you can use anywhere instead of Dynamax being raids and stadiums only).
The Fifa approach would make for a nice change of pace. No plans to take over or destroy the world, just a rich jerk who wants everyone to dance for him.
1:18:27 literally gasped at this reveal. this adds so much more dimension to oleana and gives her a realistic depth. so sad she, rose, and other characters in this video aren't the same as the original 1:30:25 BIG FAN OF THIS
I just watched all of this video and was thoroughly immersed throughout, amazing. I’ve always struggled with themes in the little story writing I’ve done, and I just love how appropriate the theme of history turned out to be, as a fellow Brit. I loved how it improved Rose’s character, and adding Swordward and Shielbert into the main story was surprising to me at first, but it seems so obvious now with the way it was integrated. Also, making Oleana more sympathetic was a good idea, and I actually felt bad for her when she was explaining that Rose fired her and now she was back to the poverty she’d been in before he’d taken her under his manipulative wing. Speaking of feeling bad for characters, I felt actually terrible for Leon. I’ve seen plenty of fan interpretations of Rose controlling his life, whether he’s aware of it or not, but I think I prefer this interpretation where he’s so blind that he only realises his legacy was a lie when its said right to him so carelessly. I was also thinking his reaction to losing to you could represent his illusion of himself shattering, but like, in a good way? Like, it’s a reminder for him that he’s just a pokemon trainer like everyone else. I LOVE IT. I also love what you did with Team Yell. I wasn’t so sure at first about making Marnie and Piers colder towards you, but I love how you build up their trust, and the residents of the shunned town Rose wants everyone to forget about become your closest allies towards the climax (speaking of the climax, I even felt bad for Eternatus, because I wondered if it was suffering being chained up like that, with Rose essentially torturing it to siphon its energy). Also, the way you fleshed out Spikemuth was really interesting, and I just LOVE how the Gym is integrated into the main storyline, with Piers being made a more sympathetic character, so you trust him over Rose - leading up to the ironic decision to work with the “evil team” to take him down. This should be so much more well-known in general, enough to become considered an AU so that more content could potentially be made based on it. I’m just imagining a novelised version of this, with all of Sw/Sh retold exactly like this… and it’s awesome. It really deserves something like that.
It's very good, if it was canon I'd like Sw/Sh more. I especialy love reporter/comentator Hop idea. It fits his "whoa, you hit super-effective damage" comments perfectly. Also it shows there are other jobs in pokemon world other than pokemon trainer and pokemon professor. I know there are also contests (that showed up last time in gen 3 remake :( ) and cooking, but I really would want more verality in things you can do in pokemon. I know games are mainly about fighting, but games could have more verility in activities again. Gen 4 and 5 was the best at it with contests and doing movies and pokemarathon. Anyway, your explanations of thinking process while writing were great too.
This was *so good.* As impressive as the parts you invented were your choices of original elements to keep, accentuate and recontextualize. You told me yesterday that, as a fan of the Sordward + Shieldbert storyline, I would be happy with this, and *you were right.*
before I fully watch the viseo I just wanna say one thing I liked about the story was hop's arc (mostly post game) and the fact the Leon felt like a champion, running around and trying to make sure the kids (you) didn't have to worry about anything.
I haven’t even played either of the Switch Pokemon games myself, yet I was enthralled by every minute of this video. I’m especially impressed with how well you rehabilitated Marnie and Team Yell. Marnie was such a nothing character before, but by adding just a little more friction to her personality and a proper backstory, she feels like a character you can actually root for. Team Yell actually feels like a clever subversion now instead of just a necessity by the status quo. And whereas before Marnie, Piers and Team Yell were punk in basically aesthetic alone, the idea that Team Yell consists of all the people who stuck around in Spikemuth even after Rose ruined it really makes them feel like a proper family, which is what punk is all about, after all. Finding the people who will accept you and stand by you even when The Man stomps all over you, and expressing your refusal to change the things that make you, you. Now, Team Yell look less like ridiculous fans and more like a loyal family backing up their champion. I’m also glad to see Oleana get some more attention. Even if she doesn’t get that many more appearances, her being such an integral part of the final trajectory of the plot feels much more fitting for a character that’s supposed to be so close to the main villain. And I gotta say, you really delivered on your promise to make Rose’s character fit his battle theme. The first time it played, I was honestly baffled that they chose that track for the character they made. But when it played at the end of the video, I got chills. I’d say your version of Rose is probably the most thoroughly evil antagonist Pokemon has ever had, and I like it.
You could potentially wrap up Oleana's story by having her eventually assist or flat-out replace Leon as the new Chairwoman, seeing as she likely already has a lot of second-hand experience and she was simply misguided and manipulated in this retelling. Maybe she could be the proper rags to riches story that Rose stomped on. ... Yes, she likely assisted in far too much shady business to not be locked up, but this is Pokemon. That, and your ending to her involvement already implied she was either pardoned or able to hide her prior actions.
Excellent rewrite. Still feels very much like it could have been the story and just makes way more sense. The only part that had me kinda scratching my head was the motivation the characters have for getting into the vault for the first time. It seems a bit odd that in an age where people store their Pokemon digitally in the PC, you have this one guy who leaves his pokemon behind in a physical location. (Maybe he just doesn't trust "the cloud" and prefers physical pokemon storage.) But that's such a minor detail. He could be retrieving anything from there and the plot would still work.
you have no idea just how perfectly timed this video was for me as someone who's been thinking way too hard about swsh recently and lamenting what it could've been. it somehow manages to be one of my favorite pokemon games despite literally everything about it because i enjoy the gym challenge being made into a huge sporting event THAT much (+ the gym leaders having actual personalities and some bearing on the "plot"). this rewrite is awesome and i love how it makes rose into a real threat deserving of his theme music in the end! i'm also a long video enjoyer so the length was perfect, i hope this gets the attention it deserves!!
I'm not a creative writing major, but I think I can help explain themes. I can definitely understand how it can be difficult to really get a handle on it, and I wouldn't say I'm an expert. Most stories don't have enough to say to bother reading into. Anyway, when you're telling a story, you want to have something to say more than the events that are happening, some perceived truth of the human experience that you can walk away with. Themes are the soul of a story. When you're trying to capture a theme, it should be the wind behind the sails. It's not something you need to see directly, but it guides the course of everything. The themes of a story are either things that define how that world works for the story, or how the characters believe it should. Sometimes themes are a question for the audience, like Pokemon B&W asking if it's right to make Pokemon fight each other for sport (Though B&W is too cowardly to take the question seriously and explore what that would actually mean for the world of Pokemon, which is probably for the best). You did this pretty well with the main theme of the rewrite being that "Victory is written by the victors". The player sees how the history of the country isn't what they've been led to believe, and experienced firsthand how the truth was manipulated to serve the interests of others.
I liked your rewrites a lot. I have two critiques, though. - I think a forced loss is a terrible idea. It could end up very confusing, and make players distrust core mechanics. I think breaking that pattern recognition and flow would mess with a lot of players, not only but especially younger ones. - That penultimate cutscene with all the wires being grabbed and moved would be a nightmare in the Pokemon engine. Wires are hard in games, even getting objects in characters hands is non-trivial. It would add a lot to the price tag. Its an evocative and exciting idea for a scene, but defeats your other goal of keeping things around the same scope and budget.
I think that's more the writer getting carried away with an awesome scene. Which is more than fair enough they'd been very light on gameplay and cutscene details up until that point
@@mightbeapersonmaybe8379 Yeah, I agree. It does sound awesome. It was possibly the scene the entire writing excercise was written around, and its a very cool one. This is just fanfiction in the end, So Oh Well.
loved the video and the story rewrite, it really makes everything flow better. The identity of the dogs being the true heroes doesnt really matter to the end game of the actual swsh making it just kinda pointless like omg the box legendarys exist and are legendary wow but making the villians goal to actual cover it up both makes it relevent to learn and makes sonia look smart and like she actually is good at this whole research and professor thing . i really think the pieces of a good story existed on swsh but some were put in the wrong place and some just never belonged in the first place. Like at said the top good video and PLEASE GAMEFREAK GIVE THE CHARACTERS VOICES, Pierce has a mouth and must sing
I really like the rewrites you did to finale. It seems actually cool and interesting now. I think it's probably the most you can do with Rose without entirely throwing him out.
Starting the video, hopefully you rewrote Leon to have a different ace that actually makes fucking sense and isn't pandering to 90's kids who grew up to market mlm schemes to 5 year olds.
Regarding the DLC, this rewrite definitely fits given what info we have on Peony-he was a former Gym Leader and the Champion of Galar once, but left the League not long after Rose became the Chairman. As his brother, I have no doubt that Peony would know Rose’s nature best and either chose to or was forced to leave due to corruption. Perhaps if he spoke out he would have been regarded as a bitter brother jealous of Rose, mirroring the player here in their darkest hour, or maybe he just felt the whole thing would be toxic and jumped ship to focus on his family? Come to think of it, Master Mustard in the Isle of Armour was a former champion too and contemporary to early Opal, held his title for 18 years before he left for similar reasons, the then-chairman trying to get a match rigged in his favour. Seems the League has a long history of corruption but given Leon was a pupil of Mustard’s once and is a good guy, maybe the cycle can finally be broken.
Thank you for explaining what themes are I use themes in my stories all the time but I never had a good way to explain it, also if I were to rewrite the theme of the game I were to say the theme of giants not like actual giants but metaphorical giants like soccer or people becoming bigger than themselves in terms of success maybe even the takedown of giants like taking down a chairman from his role as a giant of galar.
My favorite part of Sword and Shield's original story was the moment where, at the restaurant, you can point to a poster rather than the obviously correct tapestry, and instead of going "no, that's not right", Sonia will _ACTUALLY_ forget what she was doing for a moment to excitedly describe it. 57:47 Yeah, this bit!
I love this rewrite! My only addition would be with Oleanna's character. On her trainer card it reveals that Garbodor was her first pokemon that she befriended while in poverty. I liked this bit of story because when you first fight her it seems like Garbodor represents her toxic attitude beneath her elegant facade, but it's actually her showing loyalty to her roots and best friend despite how much her life has changed. I think this bit of lore could be wedged nicely into your Potswick scene, and it would strengthen her reasoning for helping you in the latter half of the game.
When I first saw Leon at the start of swsh I suspected that he was being propped up as champion knowingly or unknowingly. But nope he’s just a clueless great athlete. I also hoped the story would be similar to this so this so good to listen to.
i'm still actually really mad they made a region based off the uk, but reduced wales to a single city struggling with poverty, and turned scotland into this empty snowy desert. literally what was going through their heads.
Only issue with Raihan losing Duralidon, is as the dragon tamer he’d use Flapple/Appleton, which a) is possibly Milo’s and b) explains why he never beats Leon. But perhaps in this universe where the story makes sense, Haxorus must be a Gigantimax. (G Max Savage Cleave)
now this is a good pokemon story! can compete with the likes of gen 5 and 9, quite good. kinda hoping a fangame can adapt this story so we can play it.
Great video! This story is much better than the one we got. I'm not sure if giving Rose the gmax Duraludon is the right move though. Taking it away from Raihan will vastly change his team. The only Pokemon that could cover as his ace would be either Flapple or Appletun, and neither one really fits with Raihan or his psuedo-sand strategy. You could have him use sun but that wouldn't make sense for his rivalry with Leon because that would power up Charizard. Rain would have to be the way to go to combat Charizard but Nessa's already the water type trainer. It's less messy to just have Raihan and Rose keep their respective aces.
I figured they could promote Sandaconda to the ace spot. The GMax is sandstorm themed, and it resists the fire attacks that Charizard throws out (even if it is weak on the other side).
Fun fact: There actually is a small plot involving rigged championship matches in Sword and Shield! Mustard, the master of the dojo in The Isle of Armor DLC pack, is actually a former champion who stepped down after the league chairman at the time asked him to win a rigged match. However this is only revealed in his second league card and the game doesn't bother exploring this plot point further.
Is their any chance you’ll continue to rain terror with your fists and take on tailow and the Hoenn crew. I just found your channel today and I’ve watched like 4 of your videos. :D next up is challenging Johto Pokemon to a fight.
When you talked about Lysandre, you mentionned having done an XY rewrite ? Or am I misunderstanding ? If you did where can I see that I’m hungry for actually good XY content and your rewrite of this is real cool so if you did that I’m real interested
From the moment they advertised Leon as being this unbeatable champion, I hoped they were going to do some kind of plot point around match fixing so I'm glad you covered that
This sounds really nice. It works well with he base the game gives. I actually wonder how much of this was in the actual concept for the characters/story and got tuned down/taken away during development. From what can be seen, Pokemon seems to start with way darker concepts then the end results we get. Not complaining here. I prefer the tone of the og Pokemon Stories over the forced edgyness of a bunch of fangames. I think it is just an interesting observation. Rose is a mess in the OG games, but they tried to make him not evil and have this kinda twisted character. They just completely failed it. As well as almost everything else. And he got this very "big evil boss" battle theme. It REALLY makes me wonder what the original direction for him was (if there was one at all).
This was really cool! I could see where you were driving at from about the middle yet still enjoyed the telling of it - that's good storytelling. The suicide bomb idea at the end was hype too, it's like Lysandre but done right. Though it is a little bit silly that nobody stops him messing with the wires for multiple minutes. The only real flaw I see is the volume of text around the finale. Like the rest of the game is very "show don't tell", and this part has some complex details so I understand why it has to be done. But this, plus the more mature topic, makes it feel less like Pokemon and more like a mature RPG. But then again your audience are adults and the original writing is trash, so I'll take this over any of it. (Also I like the subtle fleshing out of Oleana. How the ace Garbodor is like the shame of her humble beginnings that she's hiding with all of Rose's luxury)
Dark Souls 3. I know this because chairman Rose's (maybe first two notes that stuck in my memory) theme is completely unfitting, unearned, and out of place in the series
42:35 FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFELT THAT! 😂 In all seriousness, I appreciate your perspective as a writer, but how would you approach rewriting established cutscenes and character models for a specific scene in your version? There’s a lot to consider beyond just revising the game’s dialogue boxes. For example, having Marnie appear in Route 5 would involve substantial animation, rendering and remodeling changes to the game. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you might tackle that!
Damn, holy shit man. What you've written just made me amazed how good the SWSH story could have been. It had all the material to work with, yet became so bland it's painful. I loved how you changed the little things too. Keep it up man, this is amazing!
people have mentioned oleana's backstory, so i'll instead say that leaving that stuff as backstory is completely fine. having a beautiful woman with a bunch of beautiful pokemon and an 'ugly' ace serving as the lieutenant to the main villain is good storytelling in and of itself. it doesn't need explaining or examination.
Looks like there may be a couple small audio glitches and editing blips throughout which I can only apologise for, we had the death of a pet yesterday which meant I wasn't really in the right frame of mind when finishing this up
Anyway, Palette Swap are also on Bluesky:
bsky.app/profile/paletteswapmag.bsky.social
And sorry to any confusion caused with the Patreon. Again, as I say, things will be explained in a post soon. For now, here's where you can support me:
www.patreon.com/nocturnalfudj
sorry for your loss dude :(
I'm so sorry for your loss.
Say what you will about alola (i liked it) but at least when something happened in the story, you SAW it. Imagine if you got held up talking to wicke at the aether foundation, and then when you went up, Hau said "woah dude, you just missed it, a weird looking Pokémon came out of an ultra wormhole, and I had to beat it up!
Oh my god I would combust
people without uk bias almost unilaterally prefer alola to any other 3d era game as well as believe sword and shield are by far the worst 3d era game. the only competing is between sv and xy for the number 2-3 slots.
@@BeIlGTRUE, gen 7 stays winning
@@BeIlG nah xy is PEAK. Number 2 is probably johto
I kind of forgot this rewrite was for the purpose of making roses theme fit, so by God, when I got to the new fight you wrote the music really blew me away. Such a better implementation. Bravo on the rewrite
You gotta love Sword and Shield for having the exact opposite plot as the UK - Chairman Rose actually wants to make renewable energy! The UK government could never
That was one of my big frustrations with the games-that you could read it as mocking climate "alarmists" the same way Black & White villainized Animal Rights activism.
@@GSBarlevI wouldn’t give them enough credit to think of it as mocking. It feels like all the effort went into the excellent league challenge and then they threw a story together. Eternarus? Fuck it energy crisis Pokémon get big. Yeah but how is the fella sorting that a villain? Errr, it’s in a thousand years and it’s basically a disaster. But we’ve not got time to animate all of the Pokémon rampaging? Make the champion sort it all out off screen. Everyone liked the gym leaders helping in BW, they’ll love that.
Imagine setting a game in Britain and not making the villain an aristocrat.
I mean, a corporate chairman is a modern day version of an aristocrat
Imagine that they saved the Aristocrat villain for AMERICA
Especially when they did for Kalos
@casteddu6740 there is no difference really unless what's he's asking is a stereotype of one being top hatted Tumblr sexy men esc villain
@@mechashadowunova(New York), Orre (Arizona) , and aloha(Hawaii) are all really based off of parts of the USA and predate sword and shield, also how would an aristocrat villlan fit the usa?
You've got a real knack for character dialogue and motivation! If you're up for it (and the bank account gets low enough), I'd love to see your take on designing a Pokemon storyline from the ground up. What would you do if you had all the tools, instead of rebuilding a foundation from something else? You've mentioned before how you don't really enjoy returning to the Pokemon well again and again, but I hope an exercise like this is creatively stimulating enough that you can wring some joy out of it! Thank you for sharing!
gunna be honest my only regret with watching this video is the vast gulf of discontent and disappointment i now feel about the ACTUAL swsh storyline LOL i couldnt have told you then or now what the plot was supposed to actually be. it was so muddy i finished the game and was like well.. i guess im done? what? but this. man. this rewrite is so well worked and balanced that i cant imagine a world where this WASNT the actual story now. the twist with the scripted loss against nessa especially- could you IMAGINE that happening ingame??? FANTASTIC work. please make like 50 roms i swear to god
It's like someone took pokemon suns plot, shuffled a couple of things around, and didn't bother checking if things worked coherently
"unfortunately i am still a pokemon fan." too real...
I find myself hating pokemon but still playing the older games
I think the part about dynamax not working is a cool idea, but way too obvious of a rig. Maybe it could be a plot point that refusing to dynamax is seen as a power play meant to inflate the fighters ego. So when someone doesn't dynamax, it's seen as a taunt rather than a stupid decision. Then when the fighter inevitably loses, and claims that dynamax wasn't working, people will just assume he's lying to cover his embarrassing loss. That way it wouldn't be as suspicious as it is now
It could make sense. As it is something that some pokémon trainer who is just so confident to their and their pokémons ability to win the match could do just to show everyone how awesome trainer they are and how strong pokémon team they got.
i like how the villain is tory austerity
The problem is always capitalism
@@RybackToTheFuturenot capitalism. Corporatism.
@@grandarkfang_1482 Corporatism is the inevitable end result of capitalism.
@@grandarkfang_1482 Imagine defending capitalism🤣🤣
true, but the whole 'mining family' backstory gives the same vibes as 'my father was a toolmaker'
Excellent video! As one of those weirdos that like reading fanfiction and thinks way too deep about video game stories to find the smallest crumbs in-canon and real life equivalents to pull from, this was right up my alley.
A couple of fun-facts you might not be aware about, there are some secret Trainer Cards you can get in-game that reveal some backstory to the characters. For example, Oleana grew up dirty poor before getting a job in Macro Cosmos and being noticed by Rose, so her Garbodor as a Trubbish was her first Mon, and probably the only one she could afford to keep because it ate garbage, which made it cheap.
Also Rose's brother is absurdly funny, and really did not like his brother. How much he disliked him? He was the Champion before Leon, and he resigned the micro-instant Rose became chairman. That's how much he didn't want to have nothing to do with Rose.
Also, and I'm not joking, he's basically confirmed to be the father of Penny from SV, the small girl with red and blue hair. And the founder of Paldea's own evil team.
Domestic terrorism runs in the family.
Penny's father is HEAAAVILY implied to be Peony
Cool rewrite, I especially like that you gave Marnie and Piers' story more teeth. I like the characters and always wished they didn't feel so pointless to the game.
I also appreciate that you understand the realities of game dev and that the story is the way that it is because the devs had to meet an unfair deadline.
The DLC could work with this with just about zero changes, save for the fact that you can head to the DLC areas whenever you want, and there's certain times in this storyline where it'd be pretty weird to just wander off to an island and fight giant bees for a while. Peonea's relationship with Rose is briefly half-touched on in one line of dialogue, and in general the DLCs are a lot better put together than the main game, and are in need of a lot less fixing.
41:52 "Home of J.K. Rowling" Ok that got a chuckle out of me
Solid joke. 10/10 would clip to watch again.
Absolutely fantastic video. Well-thought-out rewrites like this are solid gold to me, and I hope to match your level of competence.
I tried my hand with a total re-write of X and Y a few years back, and it went well at first, but once I was past the halfway point the lack of direction left it with nowhere to go.
You handled Team Yell and Macro Cosmos both immaculately, as well as Leon and Sonia. Especially if I've successfully bought in to Leon being lovable and having a heart of gold, the final battle against him would be genuinely emotional, knowing how much the loss I'm trying to inflict on him would hurt him. And then the wrap-up where his brother supports him and reminds him of how he held back eternatus...mwah. I might have cried.
I do worry for Hop a little. To me, he's one of the best written Pokémon rivals - top 5 for sure, and I understand that a lot of people don't think highly of him. He's fighting an uphill battle against the bad first impression he makes dragging you through the mandatory tutorial and reusing animations from Hau. His biggest strength is how his team conveys his arc extremely well - once Bede crushes his confidence, Hop repeatedly re-shuffles his team to try and find something that beats you - even trying out Cramorant and Pincurchin, while benching his partner Wooloo for a time.
I feel like the decisions he makes in the final act of your re-write detract from Hop's story by both shifting the focus away from him and making him feel even more like a loser. Then again, there's only so much space in a narrative to flesh out characters in a satisfying way - if Hop had to make small sacrifices so that Rose and Team Yell could shine, so be it.
The other point of concern is the scripted loss in the Champion's Cup. Forced losses are always volatile things to handle, given how awful they make the player feel. Done well, that awfulness can be harnessed for catharsis later - but I feel like the key to a forced loss is if the player can reasonably believe their character would lose.
In basically every successful example I can think of, the player character is weaker than their opponent at that point in the story, whether because they're strictly outmatched or the playing field is somehow uneven, like in this case. You don't mind the mechanical violation that is your starter being too scared of the Houndoom at the beginning of S/V, even if you were a psychopath who grinded up a team that could reasonably defeat it, because at that point in the story you're still just a new trainer at the very start of their journey.
It's different here, because Dynamax isn't a be-all end-all. There are plenty of strategies a player could use to defeat a Dynamaxed opponent without using the mechanic themselves by the lategame - and if they're highly competent and/or a little overleveled and/or stocked up on items, you could beat Nessa's Drednaw without breaking a sweat. More importantly, by this point in the narrative, you've gone on a long journey and conquered everything in your path so far - so the player character is expected to be strong, able to overcome even the adversity of being unable to Dynamax in a tough fight.
Imagine sweeping Nessa with, I don't know, Sleep Powder Quiver Dance Tanga Berry Lilligant, or something. You don't plan on Dynamaxing, knowing that you'll eviscerate Drednaw with Giga Drain anyways - but the game suddenly forces you to, just to show you that you can't. Then, for six consecutive turns, you're locked out of performing any actions as your healthy team is OHKOd by moves they're obviously capable of living. Of course, not every player would put on such a dominant display, but this is a Pokémon game - a lot of players will have to sit there and watch fainting animations for minutes.
I don't think the reaction here would be gut-wrenching indignation at the unfairness of the rigged match - because the player can see exactly how the match was rigged, and knew that by all accounts they should have won anyways based on both their mechanical knowledge and the considerable power the narrative insists that the player character has. And that could be an interesting story in its own right, perhaps.
Instead, players who have that experience will just be a little bewildered and frustrated by the obvious railroading.
"What?"
All of that being said. The forced loss against Nessa is an important plot point for your superior retelling of SWSH. Unlike the Hop characterization thing, I'm more inclined to call this one a flaw, but I also don't see how the story you built could exist without it. And I really enjoyed your story. -And maybe the fact that I never finish any of my amateur writing projects is because I detect flaws in them and deny them their existence rather than let something good be told in spite of its flaws.-
And really, the whole deal is a limitation of the game this story necessarily exists in, not the story itself. I wonder if, ideally, it would work better as a cutscene than a playable event?
Anyways, thank you for the incredible video.
Hop's character arc was the only good thing in SWSH...
The “theme” of Galar was descendants/ history / but mostly legacy
You beat the unbeatable champion and it’s legacy
Hop was trying to reach Leon legacy
Marine and Bede continued the legacy of their respective gym leaders
Rose was trying to make a legacy last forever
Sonia continued the previous professor legacy
But even so SWSH doesn’t use this theme very well
yet you catched the theme, how Galar and its people have this inherited will from its past, Hop and Gloria became the new Sword and Shield wielders, the old energy is replaced by a new one, the tradition itself is a passing of the torch the pokemon league is a big celebration, I get that he wanted a more dark approach, but I would loved if he keep the original theme from Sword and Shield
One of my hypothetical Pokémon projects includes a full remake of SwSh, so I'll keep this video in mind if I ever decide to actually sit down and make it. Great job!
LOVE this channel, LOVE this rewrite!
Phenomenal rewrite. When Leon was first shown on social media, many people felt he might be a fraud, so I like how you felt your story naturally gravitated towards this direction. And when I made the connection, that Leon’s whole position as the “ruler/victor/what have you” was actually a fraud, and thus called back to the concept of historical revisionism and your quote about victors getting to write history, I really was just “😮” for a moment, lol. Great job. Just some meta stuff right there. In the end, it wasn’t even Leon’s choice, the instrumentalization of his by Rose (the actual “ruling class”) just hurt him in the end.
I also liked how Piers, Marnie and Team Yell were enhanced by adding the anti-capitalist, English punk aspect to them, and how the fellow Gym Leaders were portrayed perhaps not as perpetrators, but definitely as beneficiaries of the system Rose hat put into place, and they were not keen on giving up their position until shown undeniable evidence of Rose’s deceit. We truly live in a society.
We really do
I also love how it adds way more depth to Leon after he is finally beaten by the player. In the original, he appears to be super depressed by the player beating him. While this is understandable since he’s undefeated before this, it’s not very relatable.
In the rewrite, this depression fits a lot better as he struggles with self-doubt. Since he’s based his personality on being undefeated, he probably is wondering who he is if that was all a lie. It also makes a lot of sense to take over the Rose/battle tower, as helps him strive to get stronger and prove himself.
I’m glad you went into explaining the theme of your story. On Bulbapedia, the pages for each generation lists thematic motifs for each region (Hoenn is relationships in nature, Sinnoh is myths and legends, Kalos is beauty and harmony, etc.). Meanwhile, the Gen 8 page doesn’t have a section like that. With a story like this to help contextualize how we should think about Galar, it could.
you said you wanted to make rose a character worth having an epic battle theme, and brother, when you started playing his song at the climax i lost my shit. so damn cool! i feel like your rewrite fleshes out galar soooo much and would probably make the game longer than it was. P.S, if you ever find the time, the DLC is actually quite fun! especially the crown tundra. if nothing else, you should play it so you can go hang out with penny's dad and brag about it when you go back to paldea X3
I personally felt like Bede was missing something. I, too, liked him (I typically do like snarky assholes like him), but it felt like he was left in only a slightly better position from the beginning. he was constantly looking for approval from rose, and then he gets rejected and picked up by opal, who then reforms him to be... himself but without the coat? it didn't feel much like he changed at all, even though he was supposed to have. he learned nothing really, and hasn't really changed. I felt like we didn't get enough time with him to observe the transformation, had it even happened. i know he was a bit of a bitch, but i really never felt that he was doing it just to be an ass. it felt like some unidentified rage at something. therefore: I think bede could work perfectly for a coming out story. all that needs to change is that rose wants him to wear that giant coat, and that he's actually his adopted dad (if he isn't. i actually cannot remember). bede insults the player a lot, so I propose he just focuses on their clothing for insults. make opal's infatuation with pink stem from appreciation AND the sense of freedom she gets from it, and then add a couple encounters after he meets opal. one where his coat is still on, and one where it's unbuttoned, but still on. then, his final battle, without even saying anything, describes his ability to be himself outwardly.
bede got estrogen
The main problem with Bede for me is how Sword & Shield has him written in the story. Before the final battle against him in the main story begins, he tells announces to everyone that he will retire from being a Pokemon Trainer upon defeat. But just when they do such a good job on his overall character growth, his individuality gets half-assed at the last second by having the *audience* tell Bede not to give up Pokemon Training but to start from scratch. That's not good writing, in my opinion.
Kinda fitting that the region for one of the worst pokemon games is called galar which is the Irish word for disease
That’s actually hilarious given their history 💀💀💀💀
I knew it, Sword and Shield is actually IRA propaganda! That's why it's so bad! To make England seem bad!
Very enjoyable concept, 100% vast improvement on the story. The only complaint I have is that you didn't suggest an alternative Gigantamax Pokemon for Raihan to use. There's only one other dragon type that can Gigantamax, being Flapple/Appletun, which is used by Milo during rematches. I imagine it'd involve promoting Sandaconda to the ace and Gigantamaxing it, since he already has one and as far as I can recall nobody ever actually used Gigantamax Sandaconda.
Guess I solved my own complaint, so no notes, great stuff.
ok but GMax Dragapult would be awesome! I'm imagining it like a bomber jet or aircraft carrier
I just realized that Hop is vague about Zacian/Zamazenta's appearance in the originals because they didn't want to imply the existence of non-Pokémon animals
The rigged matches part actually lines up with base game. Mustard in the DLC used to be Champion but resigned after learning he would be fighting in fixed matches so it’s really not out of the question
Amazing rewrite. What could have been...
All roads lead back to Pokemon. Especially an empty bank account due to crushing financial debt... It just leads right back to Pokemon.
I'd make Leon the champion for 6 years instead of 4 for 2 reasons.
1. It is implied that multiple gym leaders took the gym challenge the same year as Leon or more recently. Raihan is a rival to Leon, who was traveling along side Sonia, who was really good friends with Nessa, who sees herself having a rivalry with Milo. Gordie is described as an upcomer who people believe might become champion one day, which leads me to think he's younger than the others. You could not convince me Allister isn't a new gym leader with how young he looks and how shy he is. Bea kind of just seems younger than the first group, I'd put her around Gordie but that's just a vibe. Piers, filling a similar role to Leon as an older brother to one of your rivals, I just lumped him in with Leon's group, but I could see him being a few years older. Maybe he was a gym leader for a year before Leon became champion. All that is to say I don't think everyone should have become a gym leader immediatly after their own run. Maybe Raihan became one the following year, followed by Nessa 2 years later, and Milo the year after that, with 2 years to go before your run, just to feel more stretched out. 4 just feels more compressed.
2. If Leon has been champion for 6 years then that means Leon defended his title 4 times between him winning and you taking his sponsership. (Spoiler for the video) that's 4 champion level trainers that got cheated. I could see Leon reching out to each of them wanting to set things right. Once you win against the gym leaders again you fight this makeshift Elite 4 before you fight Leon.
Ultra Sun and Moon were such great games packed with content, it's a shame that the series spontaneously combusted and no sequels were ever made -_-
Although 2 hours long, I enjoyed your sense of humour and the entire video.
I think energy can be the focus of the story in two ways - either Rose wants to seize the means of production himself and has made everyone a pawn in his scheme to get Eternatus
OR
the energy crisis is 10 years away, and Rose realizes that Galar Particles are finite and dynamaxing eats into this finite resource. So every dynamax battle eats more and more into this resource (giving urgency to halt the tournament)
Also so many people have commented throughout the series on how it seems like world-ending phenomena and massive criminal enterprises are tackled by you, a random character. This is why, because suspending disbelief a bit in this fantasy world is preferable to “and a qualified person fixed it offscreen”
I like your version more. Character motivations that make some sense can go such a long way.
16:22 Clearly that’s DS3, no fucking way that’s Chairman Rose’s theme.
Edit: CALLED IT- And Chairman Rose somehow has a more dramatic theme, what-
Loved this video - incredible work as always! Always a delight to see a new Fudj video pop up on my feed, the amount of work you must put into these is insane
Turning Hop into a sports journalist/announcer is such an economical change to the story, it’s really brilliant. It doesn’t even really need a whole lot of recontextualizing, it just slots nicely into his character.
Hop is infamous for providing commentary throughout your fights with him. His incessant chattering in the middle of battle makes a lot more sense with the rewrite you proposed. This change turns an otherwise annoying character trait into something that contributes to the conclusion of his character arc.
The rival trainer to Pokemon professor/assistant pipeline works, but it’s something that’s been done before in the series: Gary Oak from the anime, Cheren/Bianca in BW. Providing a little bit of originality and expanding the world is always a good thing.
In regards to theme, I've always read sword/sheild as being about "Passing on the torch" and the various reactions people have about it.
Hop/Marnie/Sonia are worried about not being able to fill the shoes of their older brothers with different choices being made, either gaining confidence in their ability and acceptibg the torch with Marnie/Sonia or Hop realising that succeding his brother just isn't for him and taking his own path.
Bede has a torch forced upon him.
And Rose is worried that the torch he has isn't in a stable enough state to pass on, granted yeah still kot a great justification for his actions.
Granted though your idea of revisionism could play really well together with that! Exploring the responsibilities people have to the upcoming generations to be honest with their history and avoid history repeating and being less susceptible to propaganda.
What I’m discovering from this video is that if a Pokémon story has any sort of nuance, flavor, originality, or creativity, it comes off as a fan creation. Pokémon stories are terrible and have a style that an actually decent story cannot replicate… that sucks.
only pokemon game stories, but yes
The closest they get to nuance is Black/White, but N's argument keeps getting shot in the foot by the grunts constantly committing crimes, sometimes not even related to their cause.
@@commonviewer2488 Nah, BW's is shit too. It's wholly contradictory with the worldbuilding of the verse with the game never attempting to provide instances where the player may doubt whether there's rational in Team Plasma's message. I think people interpret the notable NPCs having more depth in BW as for the story itself being quality, but that's not salvaging a plot that utterly fails at being convincing from beginning to end.
I really love most of the changes you did, specially the way you connected the team yell story and characters with chariman rose corruption storty great work!
I'm actually am more interested in a more morally complex villain. I feel like to make rows just a cheap bad guy like this is very easy.
But It ultimately makes him very much less interesting. He's a bog standard. I mean this is the point of writing this for themes I guess, but it really sacrificed a more interesting villain for the sake of themes.
And I feel like his song would be more fitting if it was actually a tragedy. Instead of that he was a fallen hero...
Even in this version you can make him more nuanced, you could have given actually a good reason why he has such an obsession with legacy and having his father...
You can show like the cycle of abuse or something like that. That he is so desperate for the approval of his own father and to have a legacy.
It feels so cheap just to make him with just a bad guy with no nuance. You know
Here before 200k views. Absolutely incredible narrative from start to finish. The preamble, theme discussion, plot and characterization is all chefs kiss. Not too into Pokémon but even removed from it this is great, well done
I just wanted to say this is so much more of a solid and interesting story that helps elevate the games as a whole. It might lean a bit more mature in terms of what it's telling, but I think it can appeal to both children and adults alike. (I definitely feel like Pokemon tends to forget that older individuals love these games too, so they need to write a story for all-ages, and not just a story that everyone can understand, if that makes sense.)
I love how you integrated the sports aspect into the plot besides it being an homage to the real-world region. The twist of Rose being more involved with the league, and the championship battle's scripted match is ... (*chefs kiss*) it's a simple twist, but so effective to narrative. I also love how Piers, Marine and Team Yell encompass more of a punk energy in this story and it perfectly aligns with how the climax would progress. Great work! :)
this is the best sword and shield rewrite video ive ever watched, keep up the good work this is so awesome
This was a treat to watch. Thank you for enlightening us on what could have been.
About the DLC: Peony being Rose’s brother in the original DLC was neat, but I feel like they didn’t go far enough with it. There’s actually some lore that Peony used to be the league champion; however, once Rose became chairman, Peony resigned as champion, presumably due to issues with Rose.
This lore could slide in perfectly with your rewrite: once Rose becomes chair, have him approach Peony with their plan to rig matches, thinking he’s doing Peony, his brother, a favor. However, Peony is appalled and disgusted by the plan, and storms off, resigning from being champion. Peony could never turn in his own brother, but he removed himself from Galar’s League and stayed as far away from Wyndon as he could get. Peony could express some regret on not helping take Rose down sooner, but could still be happy that it meant he had the time to spend with his daughter.
Anyway, Excellent rewrite! I could tell you put a lot of effort into the writing and the result was just fantastic!
I had an idea for a Sword and Shield rewrite as well, primarily to focus more on the Pokémon battles as a sport idea. And also to remove Eternatus, because I really don't like that or the whole plot involving it. The story stays very lighthearted until the point where Bede loses his sponsorship, where he claims that Leon's battles have been rigged in a desperate attempt to still stay in the competition or at the very least disqualify Leon. This causes a huge controversy, but Bede has no evidence (and he likely just said it in the hope that there actually was something to it), and Leon denies it. But Raihan confirms it, saying that he was paid to lose to Leon to build him up as this unstoppable champion and to make himself the underdog that everybody wants to cheer for to boost his social media presence. Chairman Rose and the rest of the league make no comment. Leon wasn't part of any planning for this, though, so he legitimately believed that he was that good, and the idea that his career was a lie breaks him as he now focuses on proving that he really is that good and that he would have won even without any rigging. Likewise, Hop becomes disillusioned with his older brother, who he now thinks is a cheater, so now he focuses on getting out of his brother's shadow and restructures most of his team to be more competitive and less like Leon's. And to get the battle with Chairman Rose during the championship tourney, you suddenly find yourself getting postponed by staff to ensure that Leon wins via your disqualification. But you battle your way out and Leon insists that they wait longer so that you can battle him because he refuses to keep his title on a technicality, especially if he feels like he's being made a pawn to promote the game. This reinvigorates Hop and makes him realize that his brother truly did believe that he earned his position and is willing to lose in a fair fight to prove his innocence and skill, so Hop goes to help you. You defeat Rose and make him resign, before returning to the championship match and defeating Leon. The box legendary can stay a postgame acquisition after one last battle with Hop to prove who is more worthy. And I'm very tempted to make Dynamax something that you can only do after you beat the game, making the gym battles more of an underdog battle for you and then giving you the power that they used as a reward for beating the game. Either that or replace Dynamax with Mega Evolutions (and still keep it as a postgame reward, just one that you can use anywhere instead of Dynamax being raids and stadiums only).
Wrote this before I watched the video. Will be interested to see what similarities, if any, are in the video.
The Fifa approach would make for a nice change of pace. No plans to take over or destroy the world, just a rich jerk who wants everyone to dance for him.
The use of Zorn & Thorn's theme for Sordward and Shielbert is perfect lmao
1:18:27 literally gasped at this reveal. this adds so much more dimension to oleana and gives her a realistic depth. so sad she, rose, and other characters in this video aren't the same as the original
1:30:25 BIG FAN OF THIS
Holy shit.
I LOVE your re-imagining of the final Rose encounter! The music fits perfectly! This actually gave me shivers.
I just watched all of this video and was thoroughly immersed throughout, amazing. I’ve always struggled with themes in the little story writing I’ve done, and I just love how appropriate the theme of history turned out to be, as a fellow Brit. I loved how it improved Rose’s character, and adding Swordward and Shielbert into the main story was surprising to me at first, but it seems so obvious now with the way it was integrated. Also, making Oleana more sympathetic was a good idea, and I actually felt bad for her when she was explaining that Rose fired her and now she was back to the poverty she’d been in before he’d taken her under his manipulative wing.
Speaking of feeling bad for characters, I felt actually terrible for Leon. I’ve seen plenty of fan interpretations of Rose controlling his life, whether he’s aware of it or not, but I think I prefer this interpretation where he’s so blind that he only realises his legacy was a lie when its said right to him so carelessly. I was also thinking his reaction to losing to you could represent his illusion of himself shattering, but like, in a good way? Like, it’s a reminder for him that he’s just a pokemon trainer like everyone else. I LOVE IT.
I also love what you did with Team Yell. I wasn’t so sure at first about making Marnie and Piers colder towards you, but I love how you build up their trust, and the residents of the shunned town Rose wants everyone to forget about become your closest allies towards the climax (speaking of the climax, I even felt bad for Eternatus, because I wondered if it was suffering being chained up like that, with Rose essentially torturing it to siphon its energy). Also, the way you fleshed out Spikemuth was really interesting, and I just LOVE how the Gym is integrated into the main storyline, with Piers being made a more sympathetic character, so you trust him over Rose - leading up to the ironic decision to work with the “evil team” to take him down.
This should be so much more well-known in general, enough to become considered an AU so that more content could potentially be made based on it. I’m just imagining a novelised version of this, with all of Sw/Sh retold exactly like this… and it’s awesome. It really deserves something like that.
It's very good, if it was canon I'd like Sw/Sh more. I especialy love reporter/comentator Hop idea. It fits his "whoa, you hit super-effective damage" comments perfectly. Also it shows there are other jobs in pokemon world other than pokemon trainer and pokemon professor. I know there are also contests (that showed up last time in gen 3 remake :( ) and cooking, but I really would want more verality in things you can do in pokemon. I know games are mainly about fighting, but games could have more verility in activities again. Gen 4 and 5 was the best at it with contests and doing movies and pokemarathon.
Anyway, your explanations of thinking process while writing were great too.
Just watched the whole video, and wow, dude, your storytelling abilities are amazing. Super compelling narrative from start to end.
This was *so good.* As impressive as the parts you invented were your choices of original elements to keep, accentuate and recontextualize.
You told me yesterday that, as a fan of the Sordward + Shieldbert storyline, I would be happy with this, and *you were right.*
before I fully watch the viseo I just wanna say one thing I liked about the story was hop's arc (mostly post game) and the fact the Leon felt like a champion, running around and trying to make sure the kids (you) didn't have to worry about anything.
This was such a breath of fresh air; being able to imagine this story as opposed to what we got was a really invigorating experience
I haven’t even played either of the Switch Pokemon games myself, yet I was enthralled by every minute of this video. I’m especially impressed with how well you rehabilitated Marnie and Team Yell. Marnie was such a nothing character before, but by adding just a little more friction to her personality and a proper backstory, she feels like a character you can actually root for. Team Yell actually feels like a clever subversion now instead of just a necessity by the status quo. And whereas before Marnie, Piers and Team Yell were punk in basically aesthetic alone, the idea that Team Yell consists of all the people who stuck around in Spikemuth even after Rose ruined it really makes them feel like a proper family, which is what punk is all about, after all. Finding the people who will accept you and stand by you even when The Man stomps all over you, and expressing your refusal to change the things that make you, you. Now, Team Yell look less like ridiculous fans and more like a loyal family backing up their champion.
I’m also glad to see Oleana get some more attention. Even if she doesn’t get that many more appearances, her being such an integral part of the final trajectory of the plot feels much more fitting for a character that’s supposed to be so close to the main villain.
And I gotta say, you really delivered on your promise to make Rose’s character fit his battle theme. The first time it played, I was honestly baffled that they chose that track for the character they made. But when it played at the end of the video, I got chills. I’d say your version of Rose is probably the most thoroughly evil antagonist Pokemon has ever had, and I like it.
You could potentially wrap up Oleana's story by having her eventually assist or flat-out replace Leon as the new Chairwoman, seeing as she likely already has a lot of second-hand experience and she was simply misguided and manipulated in this retelling. Maybe she could be the proper rags to riches story that Rose stomped on.
... Yes, she likely assisted in far too much shady business to not be locked up, but this is Pokemon. That, and your ending to her involvement already implied she was either pardoned or able to hide her prior actions.
Excellent rewrite. Still feels very much like it could have been the story and just makes way more sense.
The only part that had me kinda scratching my head was the motivation the characters have for getting into the vault for the first time. It seems a bit odd that in an age where people store their Pokemon digitally in the PC, you have this one guy who leaves his pokemon behind in a physical location. (Maybe he just doesn't trust "the cloud" and prefers physical pokemon storage.) But that's such a minor detail. He could be retrieving anything from there and the plot would still work.
Hell yeah Fudj is back
This is an incredible rewrite, and I very much wish it was in the actual game. So, so good. Fantastic job!
you have no idea just how perfectly timed this video was for me as someone who's been thinking way too hard about swsh recently and lamenting what it could've been. it somehow manages to be one of my favorite pokemon games despite literally everything about it because i enjoy the gym challenge being made into a huge sporting event THAT much (+ the gym leaders having actual personalities and some bearing on the "plot"). this rewrite is awesome and i love how it makes rose into a real threat deserving of his theme music in the end! i'm also a long video enjoyer so the length was perfect, i hope this gets the attention it deserves!!
16:40 haha you tried to trick me but I could guess this easily, I know Motoi Sakuraba's work from anywhere (the composer of Dark Souls)
I'm not a creative writing major, but I think I can help explain themes. I can definitely understand how it can be difficult to really get a handle on it, and I wouldn't say I'm an expert. Most stories don't have enough to say to bother reading into.
Anyway, when you're telling a story, you want to have something to say more than the events that are happening, some perceived truth of the human experience that you can walk away with. Themes are the soul of a story. When you're trying to capture a theme, it should be the wind behind the sails. It's not something you need to see directly, but it guides the course of everything. The themes of a story are either things that define how that world works for the story, or how the characters believe it should. Sometimes themes are a question for the audience, like Pokemon B&W asking if it's right to make Pokemon fight each other for sport (Though B&W is too cowardly to take the question seriously and explore what that would actually mean for the world of Pokemon, which is probably for the best).
You did this pretty well with the main theme of the rewrite being that "Victory is written by the victors". The player sees how the history of the country isn't what they've been led to believe, and experienced firsthand how the truth was manipulated to serve the interests of others.
Pokémon Fudj and Shield
I liked your rewrites a lot. I have two critiques, though.
- I think a forced loss is a terrible idea. It could end up very confusing, and make players distrust core mechanics. I think breaking that pattern recognition and flow would mess with a lot of players, not only but especially younger ones.
- That penultimate cutscene with all the wires being grabbed and moved would be a nightmare in the Pokemon engine. Wires are hard in games, even getting objects in characters hands is non-trivial. It would add a lot to the price tag. Its an evocative and exciting idea for a scene, but defeats your other goal of keeping things around the same scope and budget.
I think that's more the writer getting carried away with an awesome scene. Which is more than fair enough they'd been very light on gameplay and cutscene details up until that point
@@mightbeapersonmaybe8379
Yeah, I agree. It does sound awesome. It was possibly the scene the entire writing excercise was written around, and its a very cool one.
This is just fanfiction in the end, So Oh Well.
loved the video and the story rewrite, it really makes everything flow better. The identity of the dogs being the true heroes doesnt really matter to the end game of the actual swsh making it just kinda pointless like omg the box legendarys exist and are legendary wow but making the villians goal to actual cover it up both makes it relevent to learn and makes sonia look smart and like she actually is good at this whole research and professor thing . i really think the pieces of a good story existed on swsh but some were put in the wrong place and some just never belonged in the first place. Like at said the top good video and PLEASE GAMEFREAK GIVE THE CHARACTERS VOICES, Pierce has a mouth and must sing
I really like the rewrites you did to finale. It seems actually cool and interesting now. I think it's probably the most you can do with Rose without entirely throwing him out.
C'mon algorithm, it's a Pokémon video! And Fudj will almost certainly say "ludonarrative dissonance." What more do you want?
I think hop should have been an announcer instead of a professor in base game and I think it still works here
Starting the video, hopefully you rewrote Leon to have a different ace that actually makes fucking sense and isn't pandering to 90's kids who grew up to market mlm schemes to 5 year olds.
Regarding the DLC, this rewrite definitely fits given what info we have on Peony-he was a former Gym Leader and the Champion of Galar once, but left the League not long after Rose became the Chairman. As his brother, I have no doubt that Peony would know Rose’s nature best and either chose to or was forced to leave due to corruption. Perhaps if he spoke out he would have been regarded as a bitter brother jealous of Rose, mirroring the player here in their darkest hour, or maybe he just felt the whole thing would be toxic and jumped ship to focus on his family?
Come to think of it, Master Mustard in the Isle of Armour was a former champion too and contemporary to early Opal, held his title for 18 years before he left for similar reasons, the then-chairman trying to get a match rigged in his favour. Seems the League has a long history of corruption but given Leon was a pupil of Mustard’s once and is a good guy, maybe the cycle can finally be broken.
Thank you for explaining what themes are I use themes in my stories all the time but I never had a good way to explain it, also if I were to rewrite the theme of the game I were to say the theme of giants not like actual giants but metaphorical giants like soccer or people becoming bigger than themselves in terms of success maybe even the takedown of giants like taking down a chairman from his role as a giant of galar.
My favorite part of Sword and Shield's original story was the moment where, at the restaurant, you can point to a poster rather than the obviously correct tapestry, and instead of going "no, that's not right", Sonia will _ACTUALLY_ forget what she was doing for a moment to excitedly describe it.
57:47 Yeah, this bit!
it's been 5 years bro let it go 😭
I love this rewrite! My only addition would be with Oleanna's character. On her trainer card it reveals that Garbodor was her first pokemon that she befriended while in poverty. I liked this bit of story because when you first fight her it seems like Garbodor represents her toxic attitude beneath her elegant facade, but it's actually her showing loyalty to her roots and best friend despite how much her life has changed. I think this bit of lore could be wedged nicely into your Potswick scene, and it would strengthen her reasoning for helping you in the latter half of the game.
When I first saw Leon at the start of swsh I suspected that he was being propped up as champion knowingly or unknowingly. But nope he’s just a clueless great athlete.
I also hoped the story would be similar to this so this so good to listen to.
i'm still actually really mad they made a region based off the uk, but reduced wales to a single city struggling with poverty, and turned scotland into this empty snowy desert. literally what was going through their heads.
Only issue with Raihan losing Duralidon, is as the dragon tamer he’d use Flapple/Appleton, which a) is possibly Milo’s and b) explains why he never beats Leon. But perhaps in this universe where the story makes sense, Haxorus must be a Gigantimax. (G Max Savage Cleave)
i appreciate the way you meander through the topic tbh keep yapping fam
now this is a good pokemon story! can compete with the likes of gen 5 and 9, quite good. kinda hoping a fangame can adapt this story so we can play it.
GameFreak / TPCI / Creatures Inc. / Nintendo should hire you. You are amazing Fudj, truly a generational talent.
Great video! This story is much better than the one we got. I'm not sure if giving Rose the gmax Duraludon is the right move though. Taking it away from Raihan will vastly change his team. The only Pokemon that could cover as his ace would be either Flapple or Appletun, and neither one really fits with Raihan or his psuedo-sand strategy. You could have him use sun but that wouldn't make sense for his rivalry with Leon because that would power up Charizard. Rain would have to be the way to go to combat Charizard but Nessa's already the water type trainer. It's less messy to just have Raihan and Rose keep their respective aces.
I figured they could promote Sandaconda to the ace spot. The GMax is sandstorm themed, and it resists the fire attacks that Charizard throws out (even if it is weak on the other side).
Fun fact: There actually is a small plot involving rigged championship matches in Sword and Shield! Mustard, the master of the dojo in The Isle of Armor DLC pack, is actually a former champion who stepped down after the league chairman at the time asked him to win a rigged match. However this is only revealed in his second league card and the game doesn't bother exploring this plot point further.
Is their any chance you’ll continue to rain terror with your fists and take on tailow and the Hoenn crew. I just found your channel today and I’ve watched like 4 of your videos. :D next up is challenging Johto Pokemon to a fight.
I always thought Bede was a grandma and that her name was pronounced Ba-Dae.
The classic rival Bidet.
When you talked about Lysandre, you mentionned having done an XY rewrite ? Or am I misunderstanding ? If you did where can I see that I’m hungry for actually good XY content and your rewrite of this is real cool so if you did that I’m real interested
From the moment they advertised Leon as being this unbeatable champion, I hoped they were going to do some kind of plot point around match fixing so I'm glad you covered that
That song you've played is without a doubt, the Soul of Cinder theme from DS3 (you told me to comment this)
Oh my god fudge I thought you weren’t gonna make a 2 hour video on Pokémon sword and shield
I now need a fanfiction written like this
I really thought you were going to make Rose overcharged with the Powerspot Dynamax his entire team
This sounds really nice. It works well with he base the game gives.
I actually wonder how much of this was in the actual concept for the characters/story and got tuned down/taken away during development.
From what can be seen, Pokemon seems to start with way darker concepts then the end results we get. Not complaining here. I prefer the tone of the og Pokemon Stories over the forced edgyness of a bunch of fangames. I think it is just an interesting observation.
Rose is a mess in the OG games, but they tried to make him not evil and have this kinda twisted character. They just completely failed it. As well as almost everything else. And he got this very "big evil boss" battle theme. It REALLY makes me wonder what the original direction for him was (if there was one at all).
I would 100% replay the whole game if Pokémon Shield if this was the story! Bravo!
This was really cool! I could see where you were driving at from about the middle yet still enjoyed the telling of it - that's good storytelling. The suicide bomb idea at the end was hype too, it's like Lysandre but done right. Though it is a little bit silly that nobody stops him messing with the wires for multiple minutes.
The only real flaw I see is the volume of text around the finale. Like the rest of the game is very "show don't tell", and this part has some complex details so I understand why it has to be done. But this, plus the more mature topic, makes it feel less like Pokemon and more like a mature RPG.
But then again your audience are adults and the original writing is trash, so I'll take this over any of it.
(Also I like the subtle fleshing out of Oleana. How the ace Garbodor is like the shame of her humble beginnings that she's hiding with all of Rose's luxury)
Dark Souls 3. I know this because chairman Rose's (maybe first two notes that stuck in my memory) theme is completely unfitting, unearned, and out of place in the series
40:49 closest is SM/USUM & your early encounters w/ Tapu Koko & Nebby (Cosmog, who is technically the box legendary)
42:35 FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFELT THAT! 😂
In all seriousness, I appreciate your perspective as a writer, but how would you approach rewriting established cutscenes and character models for a specific scene in your version? There’s a lot to consider beyond just revising the game’s dialogue boxes. For example, having Marnie appear in Route 5 would involve substantial animation, rendering and remodeling changes to the game. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you might tackle that!
Damn, holy shit man. What you've written just made me amazed how good the SWSH story could have been. It had all the material to work with, yet became so bland it's painful. I loved how you changed the little things too. Keep it up man, this is amazing!
this writing is so insanely good im so sad this wasnt sword and shields actually story now 😭😭 gamefreak shoudl commision you as a writer
people have mentioned oleana's backstory, so i'll instead say that leaving that stuff as backstory is completely fine. having a beautiful woman with a bunch of beautiful pokemon and an 'ugly' ace serving as the lieutenant to the main villain is good storytelling in and of itself. it doesn't need explaining or examination.