Where should Pokémon go next?

The recent entry into the massive creature catching and training franchise has arrived and to say the least, it is the most controversial game in the series with GameFreak’s decision to cut the Dex and the new expansion pack that has some fans turning their heads about the business model behind it, needless to say, fans of the series are worried about the future of the game and where it is going from here. Pokemon seems to be stuck in a loop of two variations of the same game and later a combined of the two ie Platinum and emerald, but with the new decade and pokemon getting close to celebrating its 30th birthday I really think Gamefreak and Nintendo should look at evolving the series beyond that and not just playing it safe, Personally, I think this is how it could be done:

• Straight up Reboot
  Yes, this might sound like an eye roll moment for some but hear me out, currently, there are 895 Pokemons in total, the issue with this large number is some of these pokemon when they came out they didn’t get any spotlight and they weren’t anyone’s favorite or on anyone’s teams, I doubt anyone in this world has ever used Whismur or Bruxish and the fault wasn’t with them, there are just too many and the game doesn’t let you develop a meta or a competitive scene because of it, yes I know people play it online sure they do but is it as serious as it could be? no, and the reason is the same reason Dota 2 suffered from it when the game launched, 108 champions right there to chose from who do you chose? but if the game gets a reboot now and we go back to the original 150 we can work with it.
• Pokepass and Expansions
  When they decide to reboot the game, they can now add new regions, pokemon and activities with expansion packs, the same model that most MMOs use like Final Fantasy XIV and Elder Scrolls Online, they could have a Pokepass for 60$ a year or they can sell the expansions as 20$ individual purchases.
• Online Hub
  The previous Monster Hunter games used to do a fantastic job with separating the Solo and Co-Op experience and Pokemon could do the same, the online world and the offline world would be accessed differently and once you are online you can rechallenge the same gyms with a different level of difficulty and there should be things like leader boards and pokemon treading and other activities to keep players busy, It doesn’t have to be an MMO like game maybe they could do what Destiny does once you go out in the world there will be a small number of players in your map which you can talk to and tread with.

Honestly, a Pokemon game like that could be the best thing that happens to the series, they could take the base game and evolve it through the years and bring even more players on board who can’t keep up with it anymore.

10 announced games that I look forward to during the first half of the next decade

A decade has gone by and titles like GTA V, Skyrim, Minecraft, Dark Souls, Splatoon, Overwatch…etc helped shape the gaming industry and prepare it for the next decade to come, in the next 10 years gaming will go places we actually don’t know where just like in 2010 the thought of 100 million people playing Fortnite and more than that watching them play Fortnite on Twitch was completely fiction, but this is no time to look back but it is time to look forward to titles that I personally think might be huge in the coming years:

Riot Games’ Project L:
Riot Games acquired the developer behind Rising Thunder in 2016 to work on an unspecific game which later was announced to be a fighting game set in the world of Runeterra, to those who don’t know Runeterra is the world that Riot has built in the past decade which Leauge of Legends takes place, Project L is seems to be a high skill-based 2D fighting game that is made to be played with an arcade stick, based on Riot’s already long history with Free to Play competitive titles I really expect Project L to become a massive hit with fighting games fans and it should bring more people who don’t play fighting games, I am pretty sure there are more fighting games on the way but the reason why Project L is capturing my attention is Riot Games, the company clearly has long term goals for the title, they have the funds and the backing to keep the project going and grow it and with this year’s Mortal Kombat 11 proving that a smart designed NetCode could totally make playing an online fighting game viable all that is making me believe that the fighting game genre could be looking at a huge return the next decade and I believe Project L will be in the forefront of the renaissance. Estimate Release 2021

The Elder Scrolls VI:
Bethesda had a rocky decade to say the least, first, they started with a massive hit Skyrim then they kinda missed the mark with Fallout 4 but they royally messed up with Fallout 76, one controversy to another since 2018 it is almost making a Bethesda fan like me wish they would just cancel Fallout 76 and start fresh, or I could just pretend that they did that, back in 2018 they announced two new titles Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI both to be in full fledge development for next-generation consoles with 2021-2024 targetted release for both titles, recent reports and leaks suggest that while Starfield was slated to release earlier at this point the company wants to push Elder Scrolls out first to regain some faith and fan’s favor, also development logs and further leaks suggest that the company is working with a brand new engine and photogrammetry technology to make the game very realistic if they manage to make the combat a little more engaging they will have a really good title in their hand one that will sell for the next decade. Estimate Release 2023

Diablo IV:
Apparently, Blizzard will release a new Diablo game at the start of every decade (D2 in 2001, D3 in 2012) and Diablo 4 is set for 2021-2022 launch date, which is a great thing because I personally love Diablo 2 and 3, I still play Diablo 3 for a few weeks every season (50-100hrs) and I would like to see Blizzard apply many lessons that were learned this decade in regards of Live Service games, Diablo 4 shouldn’t feel like just a bigger Diablo game but it should feel like a larger experience by ARPG standards, and I believe the team in charge is capable of delivering that experience and this time Diablo 4 is going to have a stiff competition, remember when Diablo 3 came out it had none but now Path of Exile 2, Torchlight Frontiers, Lost Arc, Magic Legends and Lineage Eternal…etc to compete with so this is all ground for Blizzard to try to make a better title than the competition to remain ahead. Estimate Release 2022

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 (Working title):
Breath of the Wild is one of the triumphs of this decade, it is the highest-rated game on Metacritic and it is the best selling Zelda game of all time, Nintendo really reinvented one of their flagship titles to the modern era making something really really special and taking every element we loved about the series and gave it a new decade twist, the sequel which has been in works since 2017 on the same BOTW engine will have Link and Zelda explore what appears to be an underground labyrinth beneath Hyrule Castle and it will obviously lead to some dark evil being unleashed on Hyrule, it will be interesting to see where Nintendo will take the game in the sequel, the dev team has said they were taking cues from Red Dead Redemption 2 also hopefully they will listen to fans and cut some of the hate features of BOTW like Weapon Durability from the sequel. Estimate Release 2021

Metroid Prime 4:
The long waited for Sequel to one of the best if not the best FPS franchises ever was announced in 2017 to a happy cry from fans, sadly early 2019 it was announced that the quality of game didn’t match what Nintendo wanted to take the series and they restarted the development of the game by giving it back to Retro Studios who developed the original trilogy, some rumors suggest that Retro will be developing the game with Unreal Engine 4 which could mean a speedy development process and that could mean the game might come out sometime in 2021, the game also might have a Multiplayer component in the vein of Overwatch since the already did something like that in Metroid Prime Hunters so it wouldn’t surprise me if they do that, it will be great if Retro reinvents the series just like how Nintendo reinvented Zelda. Estimate Release 2022
Resident Evil 8:
Capcom really made a big splash and an amazing come back with 2017’s Resident Evil 7 Biohazard following it with Monster Hunter World and this year’s Resident Evil 2 and Devil May Cry 5, and these games were excellent boosting Capcom’s revenue to its highest ever, the company found extremely good success with MHW reaching massive numbers of players, the company recently announced Resident Evil 3 Remake which is obviously made in the same engine as last year’s game and is going to have a multiplayer component as well, since 2017 however they announced that the follow up to Resident Evil 7 is in works and is being handled by the same team that did the 2017 Soft-Reboot, some sources suggest the game will take place in a small town overrun by classic T-Virus zombies and the player will try to solve a mystery while trying to escape with their lives, it will have a semi-open world environment but it won’t be an actual open-world game, kinda like 2018’s God of War or The Evil Within 2, either way, I am very excited to see what the twisted brains of Capcom is currently working on until them I have RE3 to look forward to. Estimate Release 2021

 

Persona 6:
Persona was, for the most part, a Niche title through PS2’s it is a Spin-Off from the main Shin Megami Tensei series and it is was made to appeal to younger high school students, the game series has an anime aesthetics and it is a merger of a school simulation, a dating simulation, and a turn-based RPG, Persona 5 took the series to new heights and it reached high numbers of players selling around 3.2 million units making it the best selling Persona game ever, Atlus made an updated version Persona 5 The Royale and containing more characters and personas and palaces to explore just they did with Persona 4 The Golden, Persona 6 was initially announced in 2017 with the website Persona6.jp was registered by Atlus and they announced that they are working hard on new numbered entries to their main series, Atlus has three main teams that work alongside their main internal studio, P-Studios which works on Persona games, Studio Zero which was created in 2017 and they are working on the new RPG series codenamed Project Re Fantasy, and Team Maniax that handles smaller projects, P-Studio is already done with Persona 5 The Royale so I assume from now they will work exclusivly on Persona 6. Estimate Release 2023


Bungie’s Matter:
One of the best studios in the world is Bungie, they created two of the most popular shooters ever Halo and Destiny, in the 2000s decade they made FPS games popular and viable on consoles, in the 2010s decade they helped evolve the Game as Service business model with Destiny and created a massive franchise that will be here for decades to come, their next title is codenamed Matter, little to nothing is known about the title and that image is not known if it is official or just something that comes with Matter google searches, what is known is that the Chinese mega-corporation NetEase is partially funding this project and the game is expected to come out before Destiny 3. Estimate Release 2024

Beyond Good and Evil 2:
Michel Ancel was finally able to announce the game he wanted the original Beyond Good and Evil be, the game had a rocky development to say the least with a concept being announced in 2008 with no updates till 2016 when it was announced as a concept game, the title is basically an online game taking place in a solar system which you can explore the whole system and every planet and it is mostly procedurally generated with cities and towns being hand-drawn, the game is very ambitious and it was absent from UbiSoft’s E3 showing because clearly it isn’t close to a release date and the company wanted to focus on games like Watch_Dogs Legion and Ghost Recon Breakpoint instead, the dev team showed the game’s concepts and scope and it seems very interesting, I look forward to hearing more about this title in the near future. Estimate Release 2024

System Shock 3:
System Shock was one of the legendary Looking Glass’s games that came out in the 90s and early 2000s, BioShock and 2016’s Prey are considered spiritual successors to System Shock, well in 2015 the rights of System Shock went back to Paul Neurath and he started a studio with intention to make a third entry to the series, The studio is called OtherSide Entertainment and Warren Spector who was the producer of the original System Shock games has joined the project as of February 2016, the game will be built with Unity Engine and the game was shown this September 2019 with a teaser trailer. Estimate Release 2023

Other titles that I am looking forward to:

• Hideo Kojima’s Horror game
• Dragon Quest XII
• Final Fantasy XVI
• The Next Monster Hunter title by MHCross team
• Babylon’s Fall

Five things Disney should avoid with Star Wars going forward

In 2012 Disney bought LucasFilm and gained control of the Star Wars franchises, being the biggest franchise in the world at that time the idea was to expand the series of films and create an annual release for the series from 2015, they first announced a new Trilogy that will be a sequel to the original trilogy and they also will release Anthology films in between those movies, all seemed alright until the second movie in the trilogy basically did something to the fans of the series which they seem to have not recovered from, and we could argue about that movie for a decade and not reach the bottom of it so I won’t even bother, my main point of this article is what should Disney do from here onward:

• Have a clear plan and stick to it
  the main issue with the new trilogy and the prequel trilogy was the lack of a plan from the filmmakers, the same issue The Hobbit franchise faced too, there should be someone in charge of the path of the story and he/she should have a clear plan on where this is going to go, Marvel has done a fantastic job with Kevin Feige’s vision and Star Wars should do the same.
•  Maintain Mystery and reveal it only when it is time
  The best part about The Force Awakens was the mysteries that were built through it, Rey’s parentage, Snoke, Knights of Ren…etc and we were all excited to see what and where was that going the issue was they just got revealed in one movie with 2nd one basically saying “it is not important to forget about those”, those mysteries should drive the series and no other storyline should come up and divert from them,
• Not every Star Wars movie needs to be a Billion Dollar blockbuster
  The main entries are sure to be massive projects but why not devote some time to smaller projects that are not about the well-known stories of the Saga and focus on something else? everyone seemed to be enjoying The Mandalorian and Jedi Fallen Order mainly because they are good stories set within the Star Wars universe, it is okay to explore other corners of the Galaxy and add to the lore that we already have, Maybe explore something R-Rated and have people who grew up with Star Wars get their minds blown up with a dark story, why not?
• Let the Series explore other genres 
  Why does every Star Wars film have to be an epic good vs. evil struggle? why can’t we get a Star Wars Revenger Western? or a Heist movie? there are many many genres to go with the universe and it is time to explore some of them beyond what we have gotten so far.
• STOP GIVING IN TO FAN BACKLASH
  this is the most important point and the one that will determine the future of the franchise as a whole, some fans haven’t been happy with the series since 1977 and have attended every Star Wars screening with a pitchfork and a torch calling for director’s head on a spike, when George Lucas made the prequels he dealt with a massive degree of Backlash over Jar Jar Binks that he rewrote the later movies of the series and changed his plan for the story altogether, Jar Jar was an annoying moron but he was supposed to be a big part of the rest of the series with some fans theorizing that he was “The Phantom Menace” which to this day is a title that makes no sense when the sequel trilogy came out fans started a new backlash calling The Force Awakens a remake of A New Hope and criticizing the director for playing it too safe, then came The Last Jedi and now fans are angry with home much it was changed from the Star Wars they knew and loved, how Luke Skywalker wasn’t supposed to be like that, then came Rise of Skywalker and now they don’t know what to be angry about so they are angry about return of a character that was presumed to be dead since it makes no sense for him to be back, even though it is a fantasy series and I don’t know what sense any of it make. all these mistakes were made because The Last Jedi, Rise of Skywalker, Attack of the Clones are all made in reaction to fan backlash and I can guarantee you that there is no way to make fans who already hate the new Trilogy that is coming in 2022 happy about anything, so just let directors and writers do their own thing and write their own films.