The ambience of the new Mega Victreebel trailer is amazing. A dark mansion at night, inhabited by creepy Pokémon scaring people who dare to venture into it. It's a shame Pokémon Legends: Z-A won't have that same vibe, but it's never too late to make a new game with that, right, Nintendo?
A horror game is what Pokémon needs as a franchise. It's been a long time coming, and you Pokémon fans out there know that. The game and anime have always been kid-friendly, which is shown even in this Legends: Z-A Mega Victreebel trailer where, in the end, there's nothing dark or haunting about the Pokémon, just a trainer's Victreebel that Mega-Evolved and got a bit too excited with it, but quickly dismisses any perception of bad will by smiling in the very end of the trailer.
Take the exact mansion from this trailer, expand it, and make it explorable in first person. Fill it with ghosts, some jumpscares, and gameplay like Pokémon Snap where your focus is to try to capture pictures of ghost-type Pokémon. But it can't stop there.
This Pokémon horror game should avoid being silly and instead focus on pure horror, even if it has no blood or graphic violence. It would be boring if a Chandelure jumped on you to end a run, and the game just said, "A Chandelure scared you away!"
One of Chandelure's Pokédex entries says, "It absorbs a spirit, which it then burns." I want Chandelure to take my character's soul if it gets too close. I want my character to have the chills because a Gengar is absorbing their body heat. I want them to hallucinate to Mismagius' incantations. There are so many visual and sound effects you can add to a game to induce horror based only on creepy Pokédex descriptions that leaving it all unexplored in the video games for 30 years feels like a waste.
I want quests where you go into the forest to try to give a Phantump a gift from the family of the kid whose soul is possessing them. Maybe you could protect a child from their stalking, cursed doll that became a Banette. The more you dive into how Ghost Pokémon are described in the games, the more you realize there is already lore and content for a great horror game.
It's easy to dismiss the idea of a mature Pokémon horror game. The Pokémon Company is known for making games, shows, and toys as accessible to all ages as possible, and a horror game would be a big shift from that logic.
The Pokémon manga, however, had serious and even violent tones a few times. A Charmeleon slices Arbok in half in Chapter 14 of Volume 1; Unova gym leaders were tied to crucifixes in the 60th chapter of the Black & White arc; Zinnia is stabbed by Rayquaza in the 20th chapter of the Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire arc. Ghost Pokémon taking the player's soul doesn't look too bad.
I doubt this Pokémon horror game wish will ever come true. Considering I also want a Pokémon MMO, I think I should have fewer expectations so that I don't have my dreams crushed by The Pokémon Company.
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