A Dad sits you down to have "the talk" except it's about reacting to the recent Pokemon Legends Z-A trailer.

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Note: Eric Halliday is a professional father with over a decade of experience under his belt and a casual Pokemon player with over two decades of experience under his belt and if you question either you will absolutely get that belt.

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Hey kiddo, can I come in? I'm just gonna sit over here on the end of the ol' beg here and...man. You really gotta get some of this stuff picked up and...wait, you know what? That's not what I'm in here for. sigh Listen, we need to have, well, the talk.

First, I want you to know that I come from a place of caring and my actions were the result of making sure you were okay because, frankly, you've been showing some worrying behavior.

But, well, I went through your internet history and...wait, come sit back down, it's okay, it's okay! Listen, I was young once too okay? We all have these sort of impulses that hit us really hard when we're young and sometimes we don't really know how to handle it. That's why we need to have this talk. It's awkward and I promise we should only have to have this once.

So, when going through your internet history I saw some...comments...you were posting on YouTube under the recent reveal trailers for Pokemon Legends Z-A. I...wait...why do you suddenly look relieved? Was there something else I needed to look for in your history?

Anyways, moving on.

I saw you said something like where you were making fun of the way the game looked. You said the older games were better. You said the animation sucked. You said a lot of very negative things and not just directly too the people who made the game but you put them where the whole world can see.

Let me ask you something. What game have you played recently that you feel hits your standards of "beautiful".

Oh? Dragon Age Veilguard? Yeah, listen, don't tell your mom I said this but that game is GORGEOUS. I hear you bud. But let me ask you something, can you name more than five enemies that you fight on a regular basis? Not like bosses but like, out and about in the world.

Hey, don't get frustrated. It was a trick question. I don't think anyone can.

But, well, do you know what resources are? Okay, well think about this. Imagine for a second you were a living video game and every single thing that you had to display was one of your toys okay? Those action figures? Those are the characters. That Lego set of a Japanese city? That's the game world. Your headphones are the soundtrack and sound effects. That book is the script. Okay?

Well, imagine you have to explain a scene using those things but you can only do it with what you can hold at once with just your arms. Well, your arms, in this case, are your resources. They determine what you can display at once, got it?

Now imagine you were trying to describe the open world of Dragon Age Veilguard, yeah? If you're in an area you're probably going to need to grab like 3 or 4 action figures. Now, do you know how many different Pokemon there are? Well...wait, 1,025? Really? Jeez louise, that's a lot. Wow okay. You just knew that off the dome, huh?

And, while that's true, the recent games have significantly less but that still brings Scarlet and Violet's count to around 600 or so.

How's about you go ahead and show me the open world of those games using your action figures? Yeah, it gets a little tougher doesn't it?

But that was one of your complaints, remember? About the animation? You said the animation sucked but then you also said that they were probably going to be lazy and not include the entire National Pokedex. You thought them modeling and animating over 600 different characters was lazy.

And now, imagine if you had to hold those action figures but you also had to make your world more detailed. So instead of those flat green blocks to represent grass, you had to add more blocks and create detailed depictions of varied plant life. You'd have a much bigger model right? And you want to display that WITH the action figures in your hand without the world model breaking. Yeah, tough right?

And the thing about the older games being better? Kiddo, have you played the older games recently? They're just...wow. They're way more linear than the games now. The cities are lifeless. They are almost devoid of any story. And the only reason the games are long is because you have to grind for DAYS.

You can tell me about how having a picnic and cooking for your Pokemon is super lame but I come from an era of gamers who, instead, we just ran around in circles in a small patch of grass beating up the same thing over and over again until our Pokemon was a higher level. Then we'd switch lead Pokemon and do it again. There is no world in which that is preferable.

Ultimately, you have to remember something. Pokemon? And you're probably not going to want to hear this. But Pokemon is a game designed for children. They're supposed to be simple, and upbeat, and have the illusion of complexity while also being simplified enough to not lose the really young kids that ask for the games. Just look at the shows.

Ash had been the lead of the show for decades and did you ever see an episode where he got rid of a Pokemon because it wasn't the correct IV level? No, because one, that would have made the character look incredibly boring. And two, because Ash, unlike those people, has not only touched grass but has slept in it.

Look, I'm gonna cut this short, I can tell this has been weird for you, trust me, it's weird for me too. But I'm just making sure that before you go out into this world you don't have these weird, unrealistic expectation that the internet can give young folk. Okay?

Next time we do on, let's just think about what we're saying instead of attacking people who've worked very hard.