Is this a joke? [E17] SPOILERS

[Danzonthebass]

Spoiler

I don't mean to be rude but the episode consisted of one large puzzle in a desert (which I thought was fantastic great job dev team) Followed by a gym battle which yielded little to none plot development( I mean what we found out Lin can't die what a surprise!) Searching for and confronting the 16th Leader not once but several times(seriously this just seemed like filler to me there could have been so much content between this gym and the last but it was instead replaced by about half an hours worth of non-logical goose chasing) and then a final gym battle which concludes the episode. About 2 hours worth and by far one of the shortest episodes to date, not just in length but in content, it just felt so flat for me after months of waiting and the epic music intro and title and it just was a big disappointed  to be  honest.... 

 

Did anyone else feel the same? Does anyone disagree? I'm writing this in way to dis credit Amy and her team on the fantastic work they're doing but with the success of episode 16 I expected a bit more...

 

[ShadowStar]

Spoiler

There are two different paths in Episode 17:

 

Zekrom (You Battled Taka at the Water Treatment Plant OR Ditched Taka in the Desert)

You walk through the desert by yourself and Taka is nowhere in the Episode. The plot involving Titania in Amaria is happier, but in a bitter sense as they are still together.

 

Reshiram (You Didn't Battle Taka at the Water Treatment Plant AND Didn't Ditch Taka in the Desert)

You battle Taka right as you emerge from the Train and he accompanies you through the desert. If you talk to him, he can give you some backstory on some events and locations. There is an extra cutscene after the Reshiram Battle which I will not spoil. The plot involving Titania and Amaria is much darker, but maybe for the better.

 

Also, be sure to explore the Mirage Tower, Teknite Mountains, and Suglime Caves cause they have lots of goodies.

DJ Arclight also has a big sidequest waiting for you in the Grand Hall if you rescued all of the Pokemon from 7th Street

 

All in all, there is not "best" path at the moment.

 

[PokeFailure]

1 minute ago, ShadowStar said:

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There are two different paths in Episode 17:

 

Zekrom (You Battled Taka at the Water Treatment Plant)

You walk through the desert by yourself and Taka is nowhere in the Episode. The plot involving Titania in Amaria is happier, but in a bitter sense as they are still together.

 

Reshiram (You Didn't Battle Taka at the Water Treatment Plant)

You battle Taka right as you emerge from the Train and he accompanies you through the desert. If you talk to him, he can give you some backstory on some events and locations. There is an extra cutscene after the Reshiram Battle which I will not spoil. The plot involving Titania and Amaria is much darker, but maybe for the better.

 

Also, be sure to explore the Mirage Tower, Teknite Mountains, and Suglime Caves cause they have lots of goodies.

DJ Arclight also has a big sidequest waiting for you in the Grand Hall if you rescued all of the Pokemon from 7th Street

 

All in all, there is not "best" path at the moment.

 

Spoiler

Yep. There's an entire new area along with a new gym, two gym fights and a decent bit of plot with some filler mixed in. The sidequests and diverging paths make the episode a lot more interesting IMO. Lin not dying is...Screw it this story was already wacky so whatever there. 

 

I get some of the complaints but E17 was a very solid episode and I look forward to E18 in december of 2018. 

 

[Tribey]

I was feeling similar but ShadowStar's reply put that to rest for me. Guess I'll have to finish my second playthough and see how some different decisions play out. 

[Danzonthebass]

Yeah I'm with Tribey on this one. Here I was thinking that battling Taka in the power plant would prove beneficial in the future and perhaps it will from a moral standpoint but I kind of regret it now knowing that I missed an opportunity to learn more about the character and the plot. It seems one of the outcomes (in terms of without or with Taka) outweigh the other and in this case I got the short end of the stick. All the more reason for me to start a second playthrough I reckon. Thanks for replying!

[Zane0144]

Also, almost every non legendary poke is available now. We have to run out of sidequests eventually. We only have 2 gym leaders left as well. We are on track to conclude the story sadly.

 

There are a LOT of plotlines left to cover admittedly. The few we have wrapped up are Shelly and Heather, Adrien?, Arc Light, and as of this episode

Spoiler

Taka and possibly Titania via the Reshiram path.

 

That still leaves 

Cain, Aya, and Hardy

Amaria?

The twins

Radomus,el, Luna, and Bennet and Serra

The rest of team meteor

Terra , Ciel?, Samson?

Connal

Fern and Florina

Others I may have forgotten

 

[keltena]

Putting aside for a moment the question of whether E17 is lacking in content (I don't think it is, but I understand where you're coming from), I think what you're frustrated with is less an issue with the game itself than an awkward side-effect of the way the game is currently being released. Pokemon Reborn is released one episode at a time, but it's really one big game, not a series of small games. It's a work in progress, so right now it's being released in pieces as they get completed, but overall it's still designed like a single, full-length game, and that means it's naturally going to work best once it's finished and can be played as a whole. And, by the same token, sometimes things that wouldn't be problems at all in the complete game will be frustrating while it's still being released, just by virtue of the fact that we're currently getting the game in a format different from the one it's designed for.

 

Don't get me wrong; I assume the devs put a lot of effort into making each new episode feel worthwhile and satisfying in its own right, and I think they do a great job of it! But there are some inherent issues that tend to come up while you're releasing a larger work in installments. Sometimes that comes in the form of missing out on new early-game content, because it got added in retroactively sometime after you originally played that part of the game. Sometimes it means the devs have to patch in temporary measures like giving you a magic route back to the city between episodes, because the part of the story where you'll be able to return won't exist until they've finished four more episodes. And sometimes it means the pacing gets janky in a way it wouldn't if you could just play the whole game straight through. Maybe because a plot thread gets left dangling for months while waiting for the next release, or maybe—like you're saying here—because the latest section of the game to be released is a more story-light one than most. I can understand feeling frustrated by those kinds of things, but I don't think it makes much sense to treat them as a failing on the devs' part, because, well... they aren't really, in the big picture. It's normal for a game to have some parts that are lighter on story (or any other kind of content) than others; it's just an awkward side-effect of this game being a work in progress that sometimes, the latest installment is going to be one of those story-light ones, and that can feel disappointing in the moment. (To raise another issue that a lot of people have been frustrated about: some people have speculated that since the Zekrom branch is so much less fleshed-out than the Reshiram one in E17, there will be more content unique to that path in later episodes to balance it out. Obviously we don't know yet if that will happen, but if it does, it would be another good example of something that might go over badly while the game is being released but works fine when seen as a whole.)

 

FWIW, I honestly don't think E17 is lacking in content at all compared to most other episodes. The story specifically is shorter than usual, yeah, but—even putting aside all the major game-wide updates that came with it, like integrating Gen 7 throughout the entire game and rehauling the battle AI—it includes the whole enormous Tourmaline Desert and Scrapyard plus three more full dungeons to explore, as well as a handful of other new sidequests, and whatever new content you choose to unlock with your second city restoration project. It just skews more heavily towards exploration-type content than story compared to some episodes. I definitely get wanting the rest of the story and being impatient for more—I mean, the story's the thing I'm most excited for too—but it's still a huge update, just maybe not focused on the parts you were most interested in.

[BushyTheBushSpirit]

To expand on what @Zane0144 and @keltena said, I've seen a lot of talk that all of the branched story lines will ultimately give you more or less the same results in the end.  How you get there might vary, but really I don't envision a final E19 release where one branch has you take down Lin and save the day, while the other has Team Meteor bombing the Pokemon League so you never even get to challenge the Elite Four (very extreme examples, but you get the point).  So for all of the story lines to converge, the paths that had less story thus far will likely have some more story to them than the others in the last two episodes so that they end up in roughly the same place.

 

Spoiler

Whereas the Reshiram path in E17 had a lot more plot than the Zekrom path, there's a good chance that the same outcomes will happen in the Zekrom path in either E18 or E19.  I'm thinking that the biggest possible differences between branches (besides Taka, I'll get to him), might have something to do with some characters getting incarcerated vs killed or something like that.  You'll still fight Hardy and Saphira, take down Lin, and beat the Elite Four, and you'll still find the kids, figure out what's going on with Luna, and get some closure with Titania and Amaria (but not necessarily in that order).  You'll still get post-game content, although there IS a chance that the post-game options you get might be different depending on the path you took.  At that point, though, I feel like the content would have to be split evenly between branches (as in, Reshiram path gets some legendaries, Zekrom path gets some, and you have to trade or something for the others — like version exclusive Pokemon), since at that point all of your decisions would be locked in.

 

 

As for Taka, I personally have hopes that there will be several possible outcomes for him, depending on your choices from the Water Treatment Center all the way until E19:

• Battle Taka in the WTC:  no Taka in the desert
  • No choice to make:  Path one (Zekrom path, Z):
    • Possible sub-path Z1
    • Possible sub-path Z2
• Don't battle Taka in the WTC:  meet Taka in the desert
  • Let Taka join you:  Path two (Reshiram path, R)
    • Possible sub-path R1
    • Possible sub-path R2
  • Ditch Taka:  Path three (alternate Zekrom path, Z')
    • Possible sub-path Z'1
    • Possible sub-path Z'2

It's possible that [Z1 and Z'1] and [Z2 and Z'2] might be the same, or maybe [Z1 and Z'1] are the same but [Z2 and Z'2] are different, or maybe EVERY outcome is different.  It's also possible that some one or more of the three main paths outlined have more than one branch split, or maybe some do not have any splits at all.  And since Taka isn't based on a real-life person, Ame can basically do whatever she wants with him:  maybe in one branch he gets a redemption arc, in another he runs away, in a third he dies, and in a fourth he gets a life sentence in jail.  Maybe we'll even get to see Taka kick Fern's ass in one branch.  The reason I mention Taka separately is because although the Reshiram path heavily focused on him, he's only one character.  All of the paths will converge one way or another, regardless of whether Taka is there to help or hinder the player.

 

I was going to create some theoretical examples from canon Pokemon games, but I think it would be better to just look back at some of the previous story branches in Reborn itself:

• If you find all of the police officers in Jasper/Beryl Wards, you expose Corey in front of Heather, and he gets mad and battles you in a Corrosive Mist.  If you don't find all of them, Corey never gets exposed, and he battles you on a regular Corrosive Field.  Either way, we all know what happens next.
• At the Battle of Tanzan Cove, there are a total of four different results you can get in terms of who gets kidnapped.  Regardless though, eventually Saphira tames the giant Steelix, and you all force Team Meteor to retreat.

Besides some relationship variables increasing or decreasing, and maybe getting a little bit of extra backstory, nothing else really changes by the time the branched stories converge.  Ame could easily do the same with the Taka sub-plot, so that it has more of an effect on our emotions than on the game itself.

 

 

In the end, what happens with Taka depends on how much Ame wants to screw with our feelings, and how different she's willing to let the different branches end up by E19.  But I wouldn't worry too much about the story itself; everything will come together one way or another.