The Balance Between Tradition and Innovation in Pokémon Sun and Moon
The latest entries to the Pokémon series, Sun and Moon, were released at the end of last year. Most who got the game around release have finished their journeys through Alola by now, bringing an end to Pokémon’s 20th anniversary celebration, including monthly Pokémon giveaways throughout the year, Pokémon Go’s release in the summer, and near-weekly trailers leading up to the release of the games.
Following the Pokémon Go craze that thrust the first generation of Pokémon back into the cultural zeitgeist for people across the world, Game Freak found themselves faced with a widespread level of interest in the series that hasn’t been seen since the original Pokémon craze in the ’90s. Leading up to the November release date for Sun and Moon, they tried to keep up interest and hype with constant video releases revealing new Pokémon, locales, and characters, but Game Freak’s focus on balancing tradition and innovation come through strongest as the driving forces behind many aspects of the game’s design.
Just like many players that may not have picked up a core series Pokémon game in years but were swept back in due to Go, in Sun & Moon the main playable character has just moved from Kanto, the region of the first games, to Alola, a new region based on Hawaii.
The games focus on first generation Pokémon, drawing heavily from Kanto in order to attract Pokémon Go players and fans of those first games. Many classic Pokémon received revamped Alola forms that change their designs and typings, easing older players into the more diverse designs showcased throughout these games six generations after the series’ first releases. Even Pokémon from other generations who didn’t receive updated forms have new Pokédex entries often adding more Alola-specific flavor to the world, including how some Pokémon that were introduced in other generations are actually originally from Alola and how different Pokémon have interacted with the islanders for generations.
In Pokémon Sun and Moon, the series’ renewed focus on its legacy and past is emphasized more than ever before.
Many of the generation’s new Pokémon designs more directly reflect this focus on tradition. The four guardians (one for each island) have totem pole-like exterior shells and are each based on a major Hawaiian god. One of my personal favorites, Mimikyu’s design is a self-aware nod to the likeability of Pikachu and how other Pokémon struggle to reach same heights of likability, while Drampa draws on the mythology of Chinese culture.
This all adds to the unique atmosphere of the region and shows how effective Game Freak’s world-building can be, scattering clues about the Pokémon universe between the games’ locales, character interactions, and Pokédex entries.
Though Alola is only the latest region to be added to the constantly expanding globe of the Pokémon world, Game Freak shows that they haven’t even begun to run out of ideas for new routes, cities and landscapes. Though many areas of Alola are similar to areas in past Pokémon games, these areas innovate on past ideas and use sleeker graphics to convey mood and atmosphere. Overall, the region does an excellent job fitting into the world without feeling forced or retconned.
Much of Sun and Moon’s plot also emphasizes tradition, though this tradition is more inspired by Alola’s Hawaiian setting than the series’ history. Though each Pokémon region has unique aspects and real-life influences, Alola has the most distinct culture of any region in the series so far. The island challenge, trial leaders, kahunas, and village designs are all based on the rich heritage of the region. Because of this rich culture and proud heritage, it’s understandable that Guzma and Team Skull would be resistant to the creation of a Pokémon league, as it is a change from the traditional progression of the region’s island challenge that makes Alola a little more like every other region in the world.
Despite its focus on the traditions of the series and the game world, Pokémon Sun and Moon take steps to change up the classic formula of the Pokémon games. The rigid structure of gyms and easily identifiable rivals of past generations have been done away with, at least on the surface. The island trials replace gyms for more visual variety and less predictability, though the trials and regular kahuna battles are really pretty similar to the older gym battles.
Though there are friendly characters that you battle regularly, they play a more central role to the plot and feel more like friends than rivals (something that’s been improving and feeling more natural since Black & White). These differences add more color and excitement to the general Pokémon formula than other games in the series.
A balance of innovation and tradition in design is present throughout the plot and world of Alola.
Many of the stories of past Pokémon games flirt with advanced technologies, from Bill’s attempts to combine himself with Pokemon in the first games to increasingly complicated plots involving world-destroying flowers and flash-freezing entire cities. The plot in Sun & Moon follows these same high-tech trends, revolving around the Aether Foundation, a huge corporation that is dedicated to high-tech ways to study and preserve Pokémon ecology — at least on the surface. The Aether Foundation’s obsession with progress doesn’t quite reach the heights of previous villainous teams, but their buildings always stand out against Alolan scenery, their island-side bases looking like Apple’s new foray into mobile home design and their headquarters looking like some kind of Silicon Valley tech campus.
Team Skull serves as an interesting initial villainous team for this installment, as they embody an overall fear of change, exhibiting a social immaturity rather than any sort of genuine malice. They’re a clear foil to the Aether Foundation despite their place as the game’s villainous teams, fearing the progress and sense of responsibility that the foundation represents. This is also reflected in how their leader opposes the creation of a Pokémon League in Alola because he sees it as threatening the traditions and status quo of the islands.
Fitting with the themes of technology and innovation, not all of the new Pokemon designs are tradition-based like the Island Guardians. The designs of the Ultra Beasts that only show up in the postgame are super hypermodern, strange hybrids of aliens and technological, manmade influences taken to design extremes. To catch these synthetic-looking Pokémon, your character works alongside the Aether Foundation to find them and ensure they’re not a threat to Alola’s islands. After the bulk of the game’s progression being based on the island’s traditions, the postgame plot is mainly propelled by technological focuses that would seem more at home in older entries to the series.
Pokémon Sun & Moon’s plot strikes a complicated balance between its perhaps inevitable high-tech influences and its parallel narrative of traditions, how they are passed between generations, and how they change and evolve over time.
Though there are some gameplay missteps in every generation, with Pokémon Sun and Moon, Game Freak shows that they can balance tradition with innovation in ways that make a 20-year old formula seem fresh even by modern standards.
Each Pokémon game is contending with the series’ history and fan expectations based on that history. Though they stick to certain staple elements of the gameplay and plot, each game innovates in different ways to spice up the formula and establish itself as more unique from a gameplay and narrative perspective in the Pokémon library.
Of course, if you want to look at it more clinically, these innovations help Game Freak and Nintendo sell the games and ensure that the series continues. If we’re judging success through this lens, it looks like Sun & Moon have done spectacularly well, the “fastest-selling game ever published by Nintendo in [North America].”
The financial success of Sun and Moon versus the sales of other recent entries in the series reflect the creative success that Game Freak has struck with this generation’s games, carefully catering to many different groups of Pokémon trainers across the world. I’m personally hoping that the next Pokémon games will continue the precedent Sun and Moon created of balancing nostalgic and innovative influences, and I’m optimistic about the series’ future after these stellar additions.
