Pikachu315111
Ranting & Raving!
That would be interesting with Lillie as your rival and you get to explore more on what happened after she and Lusamine get to Kanto (I can't help but feel splitting Lusamine from the Nihilego poison isn't going to be easy as they hope).I'd put money on a Kanto-based game taking place after both the Red/Blue and Sun/Moon events where Lillie is your friendly rival. And if it could include Johto content, all the better. Maybe it's a unified region by this point, with 16 gyms and one Pokemon League?
And 16 Badges it way too much, at least to challenge the Indigo League. Either they'll do what they did with Gen II and you'll collect the Johto badges post game. Or, if they combine both regions, I say split it so you get 4 Badges from each region (as for the other Gym Leaders, I say move some to the Elite Four and have anyone missing be bonus battles). I would go more into this but that gets too much into speculation/wishlisting.
Is Floette-E in the game?We're teetering on the edge of baseless speculation here, but I think there is enough data to stay on the safe side. At least for point 1) and 2).
I've been wondering about point 1) myself. Magearna was released almost immediately after the games themselves. Ash Hat Pikachu is an event series running until... October, is that right? That means, depending on how you look at it, that 2/3 of the event Pokémon are released within a year of the games. Or 7/8. And they've set a precedent for an unusually quick release schedule too. They appear to be holding off the event outside Japan for some (stupid) reason, meaning it will be a little more spaced out here, but that still doesn't fix the issue; it just means the Japanese will run out of event stuff faster than the rest of us. I guess they could be throwing out Floette-E in Gen VII too, but it's a stretch.
Though let us not forget between now and then they could release a third version/sequel and/or a remake which could add something they could use as an event. Like if they do a Sinnoh remake, I'd say Mega Arceus would be a very tempting thing to do.Another option would be to re-use event legendaries from earlier games. There's a whole crapton of them out there already by now, so nobody would bother if they released some of them again rather than adding new ones. This would also be possible without burying anything suspicious in the code for hackers to find.
Though I think if they're willing to break their "no new Pokemon mid-gen" rule then reordering that generation's section of the National Dex wouldn't be that big of a deal. I'd say a region's position in the National Dex is only locked once we move on to the next generation. But if its still that generation, why not? It just means some printed material the made would be out of date which isn't that big of a deal as it would be when we moved onto the next generation (heck, this is true for any Pokemon that gets a new form and they give its old form a name: Giratina and Zygarde come to mind).There's also the remote possibility that they would break the old convention of not adding new Pokémon mid-generation. They've done it for moves and abilities already, so I guess nothing is impossible. The obvious thing would be to release more Ultra Beasts, since they're apparently the Hot New Thing and their sudden appearance out of nowhere would be completely in line with their lore. But these would have to come after Marshadow in the National Dex, or the Dex order would have to be changed completely, so I'd say it's unlikely that they would go for that solution.
I can see them using variant Pokemon as a way of filling gaps in the Regional Dex without creating a new Pokemon while making a new Pokemon design, that's how I see the main use of variants going forward.As for point 2), I think more Variant Pokémon is a rather natural way to proceed. It adds new designs, sort of, without bloating the Pokédex. GameFreak already set themselves up for something similar in Mega Evolutions, but dropped that concept like a hot potato as soon as the generation shifted, so it could be that they'd throw regional variants under the bus at first opportunity too. Or they could be thinking that regional variants are a better way to execute the concept of revitalizing old lines, what do I know. Either way, I wouldn't mind them adding regional variants of more old Pokémon. They haven't done a bang of a job for it so far from a competitive standpoint, but they could improve in the future.
And there's a perfect excuse for it: we're now in the Mega Timeline. Who's to say that Mega Timeline Kanto isn't more diverse in appearance and locations? Plus we've moved onto full non-grid, 3D graphics, I doubt even Kalos and ORAS Hoenn would be kept the same now.And 3)... It's a little wishlist-y, but I guess some general assumptions could be stated anyway. And that is that Kanto is outdated as heck. It's designed with the limitations of the GameBoy in mind. That means a completely rigid grid system, a camera locked to a single angle, extremely limited tilesets, no climate variation, and rather monotonous dungeons. To bring Kanto up to par would necessitate a lot of re-imagining. Town layouts are completely wonky and would have to be redone. The buildings are identical all over the region, the routes are often too cramped, and the detail level of things in general is waaaaay lower than what we've grown used to since Gen IV or so. The designers would basically have two choices: Accept an outdated-looking Kanto, or add details that weren't there before. This would radically change the atmosphere of certain places (for instance Cinnabar Island, which in its latest iteration is a handful of buildings on a concrete slab in the ocean). It wouldn't be the Kanto we're used to. There would be controversy.
Personally, I'd let the designers loose completely, and build a Kanto experience from scratch. Keep the basic layout, redesign everything else. Let nothing be sacred, the time of Gen I Kanto has passed (twice) and is preserved for posterity in the Gen I (and to some extent III) games, so no need to recreate it faithfully once again. I haven't worked out the details of everything, but elaborating here would be against the wishlisting rule anyway.