Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire

[Jason-Kun]

sure, but the benefit of customisation is that you get to play as yourself; as your own trainer and your own identity. Even if May and Brendan are iconic, you don't play pokemon Ruby & Sapphire as May and Brendan, you play as yourself and your rival. Your own avatar doesn't really have any of its own characterisation - there isn't any dialogue, decisions or anything like that and you name the character yourself. It's not like when you're playing Mario, you're playing as Mario; there's a storyline and Mario has his own motivations and all you do is push him around various levels until you beat the game. Mario has his own agency as a playable character, but the pokemon protagonists do not (and they never do). Pokemon has always gone on the emphasis of you going on your own Pokemon adventure, and it kind of ticks me off that now we've finally reached the point of customisation they're taking it away for some reason.You are essentially playing as yourself, but you look like May or Brendan; if you wanted to stay looking them, you could've just stuck to the default clothes?? It seems kind of odd for them to introduce customisation and then take that away, particularly when they did a really nice job of it. It's also disappointing because it means now you have to play ORAS as a white person. It also means that everyone on PSS will look the same ?? Assuming there is a PSS.

also it really shits me off that we get cosplaying Pikachus but not character customisation. I don't care about your mascot Game Freak shut up about it already

Except you don't need customization in order to play as yourself and you are playing as Brendan/May given that those are their canon names.

Not to mention neither Brendan nor May are white. All the player characters up until generation five are Japanese.

 

[Catkibbles#310]

Except you don't need customization in order to play as yourself and you are playing as Brendan/May given that those are their canon names.

Not to mention neither Brendan nor May are white. All the player characters up until generation five are Japanese.

I'd say they look more white than Japanese. Most player characters have blue eyes and light brown hair.
Plus Brendan seems to be called Orlando now and his skin is a darker tone.
What about Lyra she replaced Krys? or is Leaf not canon becuase Red was the original? or Gold now being renamed Ethan?
Plus all the intros in all the games and on the boxes always state Your own Pokemon adventure is about to unfold. Clearly not saying you control someone else.

 

[hopeandjoy]

I'd say they look more white than Japanese. Most player characters have blue eyes and light brown hair.
Plus Brendan seems to be called Orlando now and his skin is a darker tone.
What about Lyra she replaced Krys? or is Leaf not canon becuase Red was the original? or Gold now being renamed Ethan?
Plus all the intros in all the games and on the boxes always state Your own Pokemon adventure is about to unfold. Clearly not saying you control someone else.

For the first: Mukokuseki Also tons of Japanese people have brown hair? Light brown even.

For the second and bolded: no different than Hilbert being Blair in demos or Calem being Xavier.

 

[Vipera Magnifica]

I'm glad that move tutors are back.

 

[M&F]

For the second and bolded: no different than Hilbert being Blair in demos or Calem being Xavier.

Or Hugh being called Hihihihihihihihihihiroshi, presumably.

Also: a lot of Japanese people have skintones that could effortlessly pass for white, the hair color is nothing out of the ordinary, and the eyes are ultimately cartoonish anyhow. And besides, even if they really did look as un-japanese as possible, it stands that they're born and raised in fantasy-counterpart Japan and have lived their whole lives within Japanese culture -- ethnicity isn't skin deep (although it's entirely relevant that society often treats it that way).

Also, it's more of a personal thing than one I'd argue as objectively good, but I'm kind of glad character customization isn't in ORAS, although it'll hit me once we're in Gen VII. But then again, the whole "keeping each region unique in identity" thing isn't exactly one they've always followed to the letter (coughSinnohcan'tstoptakingHoennthingsanddoingthempoorlycough), so I wouldn't necessarily expect that character customization is definitely not coming back, specially not since there's going to be plenty of demand for it.

 

[shy ♡]

oh, i suppose? still kind of shitty, really!

Japanese people are asian, not white, so it's not shitty at all. Assuming people in asian-made products (games, anime) are white when they're made by asian people to look like asian people is kind of shitty.

 

[ultraviolet]

Japanese people are asian, not white, so it's not shitty at all. Assuming people in asian-made products (games, anime) are white when they're made by asian people to look like asian people is kind of shitty.

yes I'm aware that japanese people are asian!

i meant more from the fact that a) even in Japan not everyone is Japanese, and b) i still think it's kind of backwards for game freak to be really cool and actually have other POC appear as characters and NPCs and stuff and enable players to be POC in XY and then in Hoenn for it to kind of all go back from that? I think it's really disappointing. Like i get that XY was set in France so I guess they made more of an effort to be more inclusive, and I know ORAS are remakes, but adding that kind of thing wouldn't hurt, particularly because it's a 100% optional feature ?? Like the fact that it was all already implemented and programmed and all that stuff means that all they really had to do was sit down and say 'no, we aren't going to include this' and that's why i think it's shitty. i don't mean, like, that it's shitty that pokemon generally only features japanese people. o.o

Except you don't need customization in order to play as yourself and you are playing as Brendan/May given that those are their canon names.

well, you don't, obviously! I think it's a really cool and important part of the game's narrative and it bothers me that they've removed it. Also their canon names don't really come into it when you rename your player character anyway? The emphasis on the game being your journey doesn't come from the names anyway, it comes from the fact that your character has no agency aside from the actions you give it (for example, there aren't any cutscenes where your character speaks or makes decisions or anything). Your character also has basically no personality traits aside from 'is a pokemon trainer' and 'is you'. the player character is a blank slate, because you're supposed to identify with them! and that's why it bothers me that they've removed customisation.

Like, I would get it if we were discussing how silly customisation would be for a player character like Squall from FF8 or something, because he actually has a complex character narrative and dialogue and the game is his adventure, not yours.

 

[Music Dragon]

The characters in the Pokémon games may very well be Japanese, what with the games being Japanese and many of the regions being based on places in Japan, but honestly? There is absolutely no way to tell. First of all, Asians totally have white skin. The idea that Asians are not white has its origins maybe one or two hundred years ago, back when people started referring to (East) Asians as "yellow". (You've got the same thing going on with Native Americans having "red" skin.) But, you know, we totally have white skin! Of course, nowadays, when you say "white person" you're really referring to a white Western person, I get that. But if you take a cartoony character like a Pokémon protagonist, there is literally no way to tell if they're supposed to be a white person (in the latter sense) or an Asian person. How would you distinguish between the two? And consider, for example, the regions Unova and Kalos, which are supposedly based on the US and France, respectively. The characters in those games look exactly the same as in the other games. Are they still supposed to be Japanese?

I think the line between "play as a white person" and "play as someone who looks exactly like a white person" is thin enough. In any case, the fact remains that if you're only allowed to play a character with white skin, then yeah, that's pretty shitty, all things considered.

 

[kyeugh]

I compiled all the ORAS trainer arts I could find and named them accordingly, if that's helpful to anyone.

It's pretty indecent that you're forced to play as a white person, especially after they made the shift away from that just a year ago. It's literally a step backwards, which is odd. I think that it isn't permanent, however; since it's a remake, I think they wanted to stick with the characters from Sapphire and Ruby, which may also be why customisation isn't making a return (that, and the fact that incorporating a bunch of boutiques that didn't exist before might be more trouble than it's worth). At any rate, hopefully we'll see character customisation and the option to actually pick your skin colour return in the seventh generation. Sure, forcing you to play the white character is indecent, but it's what they did before, and I think it makes sense that they would do what they did, so long as it isn't permanent.

 

[Autumn]

would it be any fucking better if the protags were black i mean seriously

 

[kyeugh]

would it be any fucking better if the protags were black i mean seriously

It's really not as much about them being white as it is them being exclusively white, when they weren't in X and Y.

 

[Autumn]

exclusively white or exclusively any race? because the latter i get but the former just reeks of the kind of sjw racism that thinks that way

 

[ultraviolet]

honestly i just think it's shitty that they did a cool thing and made it so you can be someone with not white skin and then they took it away for some bizarre reason ?? i feel like that's a really cool inclusive thing for game freak to do and it doesn't make much sense for them to take it away and be like 'nope you have to have white skin now'

 

[hopeandjoy]

But they don't have white skin. They are Japanese made characters living in a fantasy version of an actual Japanese region.

While there are non-Japanese people living in Japan, 98.5% of the Japanese population are from the Yamato ethnic group (what we think of as the "Japanese"). While we could go on for a long time about Japan's various troubles with xenophobia and poor treatment of its indigenous peoples, the fact remains that the PCs of the first four regions are absolutely meant to be Yamato Japanese, partly because of Japan's xenophobia.

That said, I personally find it curious that Brendan's art is so much more tan than his model. I have a feeling that we can still choose skintones.

 

[Music Dragon]

I feel like we're derailing this thread, and at this point I've kind of lost sight of what this discussion is even about, but I really want to respond to this one thing because it kind of irks me:

But they don't have white skin. They are Japanese made characters living in a fantasy version of an actual Japanese region.

Well, I'm trying to argue that Japanese people do have white skin. I think it's fair to claim that East Asian people are not "white people", since the term "white people" in contemporary usage refers specifically to the Western world, but we absolutely have white skin. Like I said, it was only in the early nineteenth century that people stopped thinking of East Asians as white. (The issue is further muddied by the fact that "white skin" is really just a racial metaphor; it's not literally white, after all.) In summary: I agree that Japanese people are not "white people", but I definitely disagree that they do not have white skin.

 

[hopeandjoy]

I feel like we're derailing this thread, and at this point I've kind of lost sight of what this discussion is even about, but I really want to respond to this one thing because it kind of irks me:

Well, I'm trying to argue that Japanese people do have white skin. I think it's fair to claim that East Asian people are not "white people", since the term "white people" in contemporary usage refers specifically to the Western world, but we absolutely have white skin. Like I said, it was only in the early nineteenth century that people stopped thinking of East Asians as white. (The issue is further muddied by the fact that "white skin" is really just a racial metaphor; it's not literally white, after all.) In summary: I agree that Japanese people are not "white people", but I definitely disagree that they do not have white skin.

Good point, MD.

 

[M&F]

I guess it'd be nice to still be able to pick skintone even with the wider array of character customization out. It's not so different from getting to pick gender... And it wouldn't even necessitate different official designs for each option, necessarily.

If anyone needs a solid reminder that Game Freak is terrible at resisting the siren song of adding supposedly unique features to other future games, though, one only needs consider the fact that Mega Evolution, continuosly established as being a thing unique to Kalos, was probably the first thing they announced about ORAS short of the games themselves.

 

[ultraviolet]

I feel like megas will stick around in other gens because they're a game mechanic though, like breeding or IVs or whatever.

 

[I liek Squirtles]

Yeah, since it affects the competitive scene, obviously you'd have to bring them back.

Also, remember that while the trainer models from ORAS don't have to be compatible with XY (like DPPt and HGSS), the Megas must be compatible between versions. Why not just add Megas? The data could be patched in to XY, or it always could've been there.

 

[hopeandjoy]

Yeah, since it affects the competitive scene, obviously you'd have to bring them back.

Also, remember that while the trainer models from ORAS don't have to be compatible with XY (like DPPt and HGSS), the Megas must be compatible between versions. Why not just add Megas? The data could be patched in to XY, or it always could've been there.

For whatever reason, Game Freak has confirmed that XY will not get a compatibility patch. The two games will have different rankings, though they can communicate.