A Safer Orre
Like Pokémon Conquest, Pokémon Colosseum and XD are two great games that are very underappreciated. So here's a little insight into the main characters' minds of these little-noticed games. (I'm still hoping for a sequel, by the way. Come on, make it happen!)
Wes
As much as it pains me to say it, my primary goal was never to save the humans of Orre. I blew up Team Snagem's base purely for the benefit of the Pokémon that we had Snagged. It wasn't even the Snagging that I minded; after all, if we take Pokémon away from abusive trainers, are we not helping the Pokémon? No, it was what we did with them after. Gonzap agreed to a deal with Cipher—to turn the Pokémon that we Snagged into Shadow Pokémon. To take the very soul out of the pour things, and turn them into fighting machines. If my Espeon or Umbreon, my two closest friends, had their hearts closed…
That was the snapping point for me. I blew up Team Snagem's base and left. I wanted to make a safer Orre for the Pokémon.
That humans might be harmed never even crossed my mind. After all, it was the Pokémon who were having their morality removed. Humans were the perpetrator of the crime, not a victim.
Then, I reached Phenac, where I met a squirming body bag. I had never been a hero; I had no plans to save whoever was inside. After all, that had nothing to do with stopping Cipher and saving the Shadow Pokémon, as far as I knew at the time. But since I apparently looked like a trainer, the people at the entrance to Phenac City all but forced me to stop the two peons.
And then Rui started to follow me. Me, the best Snagger on all of Team Snagem and practically Gonzap's right-hand man, followed by a weak, Pokémon-less redhead girl. If she didn't have the ability to recognize Shadow Pokémon, I would have ditched her right then and there. I had two close friends already; I didn't need another tagalong to take care of.
But slowly, she started to grow on me. She clearly truly cared for Pokémon, even if she didn't have any. Her upbeat attitude often brought me out of depression and anxiety, and yet she was not a naïve and impractical person, either. After all, she was the one who suggested Snagging the Shadow Pokémon to save them. I would have never thought that she was a thief at heart—and, certainly, she isn't. She was just being pragmatic about the well-being of Orre's Pokémon.
She showed me, ultimately, that not all people were bad. I had grown up around criminals—indeed, I myself was a criminal. Yet here was someone who cared for Pokémon, an oasis of compassion in the desert of callousness that was Orre.
I began to notice when other people were trying to do what was right and not just what was best for themselves. The Kids Grids worked against Cipher, even from the Under, Cipher's stronghold. Eagun and Beluh protected Agate Village and Relic Forest from threats, even in their old age. Nurse Joy helped to heal any injured Pokémon, regardless of its trainer.
And slowly, I realized that the humans of Orre were just as much a victim of the Cipher's crimes as the Pokémon were. They were being injured by the Shadow Pokémon; they were used as test subjects in Pyrite as the Shadow Pokémon's trainers; they were forced to build Realgam Tower, where Shadow Pokémon would be forced to fight each other for sport; they were kidnapped and placed into body bags if they could recognize when a Pokémon has lost its soul.
At some point in my journey, my goal shifted. It wasn't just to save the Pokémon of Orre from having their souls torn out of them. It was also to defend the humans from the atrocities that Cipher committed against all of Orre.
When I fought Evice, I had a goal in mind: a safer Orre, for both Pokémon and humans.
Michael
As much as it pains me to say it, my primary goal was never to save the Pokémon of Orre. All I was doing was looking after my little sister. Orre is not a safe region for a little girl to run around freely, especially one who doesn't even know the dangers of doing so, yet she did so on a regular basis. I had to track her down and bring her home safely.
The whole Shadow Pokémon thing was just forced upon me. Of course I'd heard about the great Savior of Orre who had rescued all the Shadow Pokémon five years ago—my mom and Professor Krane were the leaders in creating the Purify Chamber, after all. But all I wanted was to make Orre a safer place for kids like Jovi to travel around.
That Pokémon might be harmed was not a concern of mine. It was horrible, certainly, but it had always been a distant idea, one that was stuck in the past and far away from the Pokémon HQ Lab where I grew up. The Pokémon around me, like my Eevee and Jovi's Mimi and Pluplu, were all safe; they were the only Pokémon that I cared about.
Shadow Pokémon only became my concern when Professor Krane was kidnapped. It's not just Jovi that I care about; Professor Krane had become my father ever since my biological one went missing. Still, even then, my anger at the kidnappers was not because they made that Teddiursa into a Shadow Pokémon, but because they took away my father figure.
It wasn't until I purified Teddiursa that eliminating Shadow Pokémon became more than an issue about human safety. The change in the cute bear Pokémon's expression was enormous. One moment, it was emotionlessly staring into space, awaiting strict orders from its master, and the next, it was crying in agony, in pain over what it had done as a Shadow Pokémon.
It wasn't until that moment that I saw how truly horrible the Shadowfication process was. It ripped the Pokémon's souls apart, it tore apart their conscience, it eradicated their emotions—it turned a home for a living soul into a heartless fighting machine.
My goal after that point became twofold. On one hand, there was Jovi. I still wanted to make Orre a safer place for children like her, a place for kids to roam around freely without fear of being abducted by Shadow Pokémon or criminal gangs. On the other hand, there was Teddiursa. The pain and the sadness that it felt over the atrocities that it had committed as a Shadow Pokémon—I just couldn't let that happen to any other Pokémon, if I could help it.
When I fought Greevil, I had a goal in mind: a safer Orre, for both Pokémon and humans.
Published July 18, 2013