Allow me to preface this with a few things. Pokemon is my favorite gaming franchise of all time. I've played every single mainseries entry to date. I have an encyclopedic knowledge of every single Pokemon to date. I know Pokemon, so when I criticize it, it comes from a place of great admiration, and more importantly, of great knowledge.

I've come to realize, with every new entry to the franchise, that Pokemon is a series of games that I like more in concept than in delivery. They are games that I grew to love by imagining what they could be, rather than what they currently are. It's a franchise that I love because of it's possibilities, not because of what it actually does. I find myself longing for a Pokemon game that is more like other games, rather than longing for other games to be more like Pokemon. I know for an absolute fact that a lot of people feel the same way. Just look at the hundreds of article on the idea of a console Pokemon game.

I, like many of you, got excited when Pokken Fighters was announced. A Pokemon Fighter sounds awesome, right? Right, it does. And it probably is, but quickly after the high of its reveal, a cynical little thought entered my mind. "Now they have another reason to further postpone the game they know we really want."

You know the game. The one every child in the late 90's had in their minds, yet even here in 2014, no one can perfectly articulate. That open world Pokemon game, where you're participating in real time hack and slash, almost Devil May Cry-meets-Legend of Zelda-like combat. Using the Pokemon you caught and trained with the moved you specifically costomized and chose to get the best results in your matches, you adventure through this Pokemon world as you've never seen it before. Climbing mountains. Sailing oceans. Flying unmanned skies. Being hoisted by the strings of an epic campaign with an epic score and epic boss battles until you've finally beaten this epic of a game. Traveling the land, you meet a mixture of both NPC trainers and real ones alike, all in the same world, much like how Destiny does it. That game. That game that just won't be.

Maybe it's just too complex of a game to make. I can't imagine how daunting it would be to balance a roster of 714+ different characters. Infact, I can't imagine how daunting it must be to code 714+ unique characters. There are hundreds of moves in Pokemon, and though many of them wouldn't translate to a real time action game, that's still an insane amount of animations and effects to program. Factor in a stable online function, and it's a nightmare to code, I'm sure.

Maybe it's just to big. Like I said 714+ possible playable characters, plus 500+ moves, plus NPCs, plus AI, plus a huge and fun to traverse world to fit it all in. All the music and voice acting files for both the NPCs and the Pokemon so they all have unique and authentically animalistic sounds. All running at a framerate that's at least playable. (Because there's no way a game this big would be able to acheive the 60fps standard on the Wii U. Or any next gen console for that matter)

Maybe it's just too expensive. Maybe it would just cost Nintendo so much time and money to produce such a game that the returns wouldn't make it worth the investment.

Or maybe, just maybe all of that is bull shit. Maybe this game can be made, just as I described. In fact, I'd argue that Pokemon is the only franchise big enough to pull this sort of thing off. The only other would be GTA, and it's games aren't nearly as complicated as what this would be. No games are. But what Pokemon could do is make the biggest game the world has ever seen so far, and would likely ever see for a long time. A game with the impact the Skyrim, or the first (third) GTA, or Ocarina of Time, Mario 64, or the original two Pokemon games had.  A game that changes the way people design games for years to come.

A game that can, atthe very least, be so much more than just another turn based, top down, handheld Pokemon game.

Thank you.

*The audience snaps in applause*

*A heckler in the back of the room yells "Tell us something we haven't heard a thousand times already!"*

tl;dr

just joking. I think the game you envision will be nintendo's tramp card when business becomes really shit and they need an ace in the hole to get them out

I agree with every thing you said. I used to love Pokemon and played every game. But now every game just feels the same. They just add a "new" region, Pokemon, and some new moves. I hope one day they do create a unique Pokemon game on their console, but I doubt it.

"They are games that I grew to love by imagining what they could be, rather than what they currently are."

That pretty much describes every Nintendo series for me. I've spent most of my gaming life imagining the sorts of things Nintendo could do with each series, and none of it ever happens. To this day I'm CONSTANTLY dreaming up possibilities and new ways to play the IP's I love, as I'm sure so many of us are. But when any of us says, "It would be so cool if [blank]," [blank] never happens. It's not Nintendo's way. They play it safe and stick to formulas they know will work. When they do something new, it has to be in a way that no one expected. And for me at least, that leaves basically all dreams unfulfilled. I still end up playing some fun games, but always wanting more.

(And this is also coming from a big fan, let me make that clear.)

I want an open world in the same way that the core games are open world, just translated to a 3D game. I don't understand how one can like Pokemon, which is a top down open world game, but not agree with the idea of the same thing in a 3D 3rd person game. We have to agree to disagree on hack and slash games. I find turn based battling inferior to real time battles in every way, and hack and slash has the most "Pokemon-like" complexity of any fighting system in 3D gaming. I don't want an MMO either. Destiny isn't an MMO. It just has other players populating your world in a way that isn't intrusive to what you're doing, which is what I want.

What is "more" to you? What do you think Pokemon should be doing? What is it's potential in your eyes?

*looks at Wii U sales*

You know how much that cost? It would cost more than GTA V! That game had budgets that would put to shame most movies! Nintendo's budgets on games would be equivalent to most comedy movies. Even if they made this game, what if it flops? HUGE LOSSES FOR NINTENDO OF COURSE!

Honestly, I've come to the conclusion that the reason Nintendo won't do something like this is for fear of wrecking the portable franchise's popularity. I mean if we got some amazing home console Pokemon RPG /MMO/Open World game, fans might never wanna go back to the portable franchise. And then there goes Nintendo's bread and butter for their portable gaming systems. But if that whole "hybrid" next gen console rumor people love to buy into is real, then maybe we will finally get that Pokemon game next gen since their portable and home console will be one in the same.

Perhaps Pokemon could be more, yes. But your idea of the game really isn't doing it for me.

Pokemon will only change a inch at a time cause most of the fanbase are terrified of change and Gamefreak and Nintendo aren't gonna rustle that golden goose.

I made a similar suggestion in a thread made on this forum asking for what each person would like in pokemon,
I said4 attacks mapped to 4 buttons, open world 3D and I was immediately accused of wanting pokemon to be like skyrim