Pokemon Unite's New Season Should Influence Gen 9
Pokemon Unite’s newest season has been somewhat overshadowed by the launch of Pokemon Legends: Arceus, but with any justice it too can have a significant impact on Gen 9. With some bold predictions suggesting Gen 9 could be arriving at the end of the year, we know startlingly little about it. India has been suggested as a setting due to a complex fan theory, while I’ve previously written that Africa, a continent yet unexplored by Pokemon, would also be an appropriate setting. After four generations away from Japan, we could be headed back there, but in that time, a new pattern has emerged. Gen 5 and Gen 7 were both set in the USA (or rather, fictional versions of the country), and that could mean Gen 9 returns to continue the pattern. If that’s true, then this is where Unite comes into play.
The new season takes place in the Wild West, a setting that is so perfect for Pokemon it feels surprising on reflection that New York and Hawaii got a look in before Texas. Considering the swathe of movies and adventure stories set in the Wild West, video games are lagging behind. There’s Red Dead obviously, but then you’ve only really got Call of Juarez (which already modernised itself out of the genre) alongside it. I don’t think Pokemon would deliver something with the rich themes of Unforgiven or The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, but it would have a helluva lot of fun with the genre. Westerns were often very playful movies, it’s just that the darkest and most tragic stories have gone down in history. A series like Pokemon can explore the fun of the era again, without needing to worry about gritty realism.
Related: I'm So Sorry If Your Favourite Pokemon Isn't In Legends: Arceus
The settings speak for themselves. The Old West has an
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