#it may be too much to hope that there'll be some reworking in the inevitable remakes

[quixot1sm]

i think, and this may just be my zekrom bias speaking, that if someone wants to experience the full value of bw's story it's better to play through white first. black has the issue of coming off as very dismissive towards plasma's legitimate and well-founded claims that pokemon abuse DOES occur (and it does! from the kanto games' marowak to bw2's liepard there's instances where it's put in the spotlight, so it certainly does happen)... by assigning the protagonist to truth, it feels pretty evident that n's beliefs are "wrong", and the game just seems to brush any questioning aside.

on the other hand, white giving n the hero of truth role means we're basically forced to think about what that means for the relationship of people and pokemon at large. to translate a point n makes in chargestone cave: if you allow people to coexist with pokemon, even if the majority of trainers treat them well, there will always be someone somewhere out there who abuses or neglects them instead. are we okay with that? should those pokemon still be allowed to suffer, just because what they experience is an outlier to the general rule? while not outright stated, zekrom's association with hope and the strive for the ideal suggests that we don't brush off these facts, but instead take them into consideration, and aim to change the world based off of them... like how in bw2 society in unova puts a lot more emphasis on the bond between people and pokemon, and on pokemon as equals (see: iris's dialogue before entering your team info the hall of fame).

i think black version has its own unique avenues to explore, but on the surface level, it's a much more cut and dry, "no, you're just wrong", type of story that kind of makes you work harder to fit it into bw's overall theming of "the world's not black and white, there's not a singular objective right or wrong perspective."

#text #pokemon bw #this is inspired by a few posts i've come across over the past handful of months including a poketuber's who completely missed the point #i think black version should've been handled with as much care as white. because how gamefreak did it was kind of.. well lazy #and downright mean at times (white getting way more version exclusives due to white forest + black 2 making black city an empire of greed #with kinda. i don't know. depressing visuals like route 4 being turned into suburbia) #(oh and leaving in stuff like thundurus's cry over tornadus's + the castelia city paintings still being 'ugly truth and eternal ideals') #it may be too much to hope that there'll be some reworking in the inevitable remakes #that gives more credit black versions telling of the story but i doubt it. this is modern tpc we're talking about #ANYWAY yeah i think if you want to engage with the plot white version is the more rounded of the two. and i've played all 4 gen 5 games so #i was able to get a pretty good comparison between my experiences with the version differences #and oh for the record this is not a diss on anyone who takes the wrong messages from black becausefrankly black presents the wrong messages #even if it did not actively intend to. turns out just changing the word 'ideals' to 'truth' is not enough to be compelling