- Grubbin, an adorable grub; Bug with Swarm.
Adorable nothing. The official site says they Tarzan around everywhere on silk threads. I have taken umbrellas outside on bright, beautiful, cloudless spring days to shield myself from the torrential rain of falling, swinging caterpillars and their curtains of silk. The last thing the world needs is
more of that, but a foot long with most of that foot being a pair of deadly pickaxes aimed right at my face. >|
(the design is cute, though, yes)
The new pokémon are cool and all, but honestly I'm most excited about all the thought they're putting into how pokémon really integrate with this culture! I'm not holding my breath for the main plot being any less generic than the previous ones, but it sounds like the setting itself and all of the fabulous tiny touches and easter eggs will be
fantastic. I didn't see the beginning of the stream so I'm not sure what happened in the very first parts of the game, but they also kept mentioning a "guardian deity" (I forget the name, T-something K-something...?) that the player seems to have met... a legendary, I'm assuming? Possibly whatever that "strange souvenir" item from Gen VI is meant to represent?
Yungoos's official site data also mentions it having been introduced to Alola to control the population of some other pokémon. Aside from it being interesting that they're explicitly mentioning "we brought this pokémon here for the express purpose of killing another pokémon", which is the kind of thing they've shied away from a little in recent gens
in favor of talking about dead children via phantump, it looks like that's a direct reference to the way real mongooses were introduced to real Hawai'i to control rats and ended up becoming a big problem themselves. I've seen people wondering whether invasive species would be touched on in these games, and it looks like that's the case! Very interesting. (I guess that means there'll also be some kind of rat pokémon that yungoos is meant to eat... will they use rattata or some other existing pokémon for that, or is it a new ratmon?
also that means that yungoos is actually native to another region entirely, gen 8 confirmed)
And what why does Hau have litten if you have popplio? Where'd rowlet go? Did Lillie take it? Even though apparently she doesn't like battling? (The presenters mentioned that Lillie's bag should be looking "familiar" or "interesting" or something... now that I look at it, it kinda looks like some iterations of the TM case? Is she helping Kukui by studying/providing/??? TMs?)
The updates to the UI also look great. Even better quick move lookup; the ability to see stat changes in battle (something you can do in Showdown and in at least a few fangames but that I never thought would make it into the official games); the UI "learning" which attacks are SE/NVE against each species after you encounter it, giving you a chance to discover matchups for yourself on first encounter and serving as a reminder down the road; the trainers standing behind the pokémon and directing them in battle... all really neat and/or entertaining ideas, imo!
Meanwhile, cue rampant speculation about how popplio's gonna become a fairy-type since it learns disarming voice. Not a requirement, obviously, it could be strictly there because seal barking, but still! A lot of people are already pegging it as a fairy, so that's definitely going to add fuel to the fire. Also grubbin's data on the site mentions it liking to live near power plants, so we've probably got some bug/electric in our future.
But yes so much worldbuilding and pretty region hype Alola is gonna be great I wanna go nooooow
