When Pokémon Black and White launched on the Nintendo DS in 2011, they quickly became the franchise’s most controversial entries.
The launch of Black and White, which marked the start of the series’ fifth generation following the previous generation’s flagship titles Diamond and Pearl, was met with mixed reception. The games deviated from the franchise’s increasingly formulaic strategy, making changes to the way the games were played and the stories they tried to tell.
By 2011, mainline Pokémon games followed a standard formula: the player would take the role of a young soon-to-be Pokémon Trainer in a small town before embarking on an epic quest that would involve catching unique monsters, new and old. The player would eventually come face-to-face with the Legendary Pokémon featured on the box art, typically foiling the plans of the region’s respective terrorist organization along the way.
Each new generation would present a new region to explore with new characters to meet, brand-new monsters to catch, and eight Gyms to test a Trainer’s strength before they went to the Elite Four and challenged the Champion.
By this point, it was clockwork.
But there’s a reason these games kept selling and were so highly anticipated every time: the formula, while increasingly stagnant, was just plain fun. Even though every game essentially told the same story, the feeling of embarking on a new Pokémon journey remained just as much fun the fourth time as it was the first.
So when Black and White made some major changes to the series’ fundamental ideologies, it’s hard to blame fans for being caught off guard.
The main reason for this controversy is that the new titles wouldn’t allow players to see or catch any Pokémon from previous generations until the credits rolled, meaning the game’s main story was entirely filled with new designs. This meant that fans of the franchise, who surely had many favourites among the franchise’s growing species roster, would have to go without any familiar Pokémon throughout their adventure.
For many, this stung. With an entirely new roster, all previous favourites were off the table; to many, it’s possible that the new games didn’t feel like Pokémon at all. There’s merit in finding a new creature design to fall in love with, but the absence of longtime series favourites felt contradictory to the franchise’s motto, “gotta catch ‘em all.”
But players wouldn’t need to worry about not having enough choices in monster variety, since the fifth generation came equipped with 156 brand-new Pokémon to find, the highest number of any generation.
The problem with this is that many of these new designs just weren’t that great. The designers were told to up the game’s “coolness,” leading them to use sharper, more angular lines within the creatures’ designs. This might sound good on paper, but with the focus being on “cool” designs, much of the charm that came from cute or more unique creatures was lost.
The best example of this can be seen in Druddigon, an utter abomination of a design that looks like it was conceptualized by a kindergartener simply told to draw a “cool dragon.” Many of the creatures also didn’t feel very creative, with the generation introducing the fabled ice cream Pokémon and another that is – quite literally – trash. Others just felt like retreads of previous Pokémon designs, almost like certain species were meant to fill the preconceived archetypes conceptualized by previous titles.
These design issues wouldn’t be quite as big a problem if the game had allowed players to find older creatures throughout their journey, but instead, they were forced to use only the new monsters. It’s no secret that every generation has some stinkers, but this is made worse when you can’t choose your favourites from older games.
Many fans were upset when the generation began, but years later, it is rightfully looked back upon as one of the franchise’s greatest.
As you play Pokémon Black and White, one can truly feel the passion that went into these games. The idea of removing previous designs was certainly going to leave a void for many players, but by focusing on a roster of entirely new creatures, the game felt like a much-needed reboot for a franchise that had become all too predictable.
Players could no longer rely on their old favourites and risk creating teams similar to what they had in previous titles. Instead, they were forced to innovate and explore the new roster, allowing them a better opportunity to find new potential favourites and feel the freshness of the new Unova region.
I argue that this strategy is, contrary to what many fans believed upon the game’s release, a fun and rewarding one. While not every creature design is a winner, this change remains emblematic of the type of freshness and ingenuity that the franchise needs to see more of.
But there’s so much more about the fifth generation that makes it stand out above the rest.
For the first time, the series added in 3D visuals but designed models to appear like 2D sprites, retaining the nostalgic pixel art look of the Pokémon series while giving it some visual depth. The games are visually gorgeous, and the world’s presentation and art style exemplify this.
The game added new notable features such as seasons, which along with adding a nostalgic ambience to the world, changed the way the player could traverse it and what creatures they’d find at a given time. The game’s new ideas brimmed with passion, creating feelings that move beyond nostalgia and bringing its world one step closer to feeling real.
Arguably the most important part of Pokémon Black and White’s uniqueness lies in its story and characters.
The characters in Black and White are deeper than most from previous generations. While the series’ fourth generation featured a rival whose sole purpose was to demand battle every time they crossed paths with the player, the fifth generation opted for a much more nuanced approach.
Cheren, the player’s first rival, seeks strength but is unsure as to why he craves it. His story questions what it means to be strong, and the purpose of strength without reason.
Bianca, on the other hand, is a rival who constantly questions her own strength, and eventually has to face the truth that she will never become the strong Trainer she feels pressured to be. Her tale is one of self-acceptance and forging a path toward who she is ultimately meant to become, even if it’s not what she was originally hoping for.
This nuance expands into the game’s villainous organization, and subsequently its overall story and messaging. While previous villainous teams had absurd plans like expanding the landmass into the ocean and trying to recreate the universe, Black and White’s Team Plasma took a vastly different route.
As the player discovers throughout their journey, Team Plasma’s mission is to steal Pokémon in order to liberate them from what they deem to be the cruelty and selfishness of Trainers. Team Plasma questions the entire identity of the franchise by seeking to create a world in which Pokémon are no longer treated as tools to be captured and used for battle; rather, allowed to roam free and independent from the supposedly twisted desires of humanity.
With previous villains, it was clear that they were plainly evil and had to be stopped – there was no question about it. Team Plasma is the series’ first antagonist to draw genuine questions over whether the societal structure of the Pokémon world should be accepted, and whether they are actually wrong in their actions at all.
It’s not hard to see where they’re coming from; in fact, their messages continue to create conversation over the ethicality of the Pokémon world years after the game’s release.
This is the kind of storytelling that Pokémon Black and White prioritised: one of truth and ideals, which are respectively the main themes of the two legendary dragons found in the games. There is a beauty within these entries that goes far beyond any previous generation. The fifth generation of Pokémon isn’t just beautiful in its nostalgia, it’s beautiful to the very core of its identity.
It’s clear that Game Freak felt genuine passion while developing these games, and that passion is on display throughout the entire experience. All of the same things can be said for the game’s sequels, Pokémon Black 2 and White 2, which were released a year after their predecessors.
The fifth generation was the best that Pokémon has ever seen, and despite the controversy from fans largely blinded by nostalgia, the games should have given players hope for bright things to come in a franchise that was clearly willing to begin trying new things.
Little did anyone know that this could not be further from the truth. The fifth generation of Pokémon isn’t just the best in the franchise – it is also the final entry before a turning point that would lead the series to its eventual downfall.
Pokémon Black and White aren’t just incredible Pokémon games – they, along with their sequels, are the last truly incredible ones that the franchise would see before it began to plummet to mediocrity. This article is part of an ongoing retrospective on the downfall of the Pokémon mainline games. The next article in this series will cover the franchise’s sixth generation’s flagship titles, Pokémon X and Y. To remain updated on this series, stay tuned to The Brock Press.
