1009: Walking Wake

(And a rant about the very nature of Paradox Pokemon)

If you told me the Johto Legendary Beast trio were getting Paradox forms, I probably wouldn't be all that excited. And I wasn't, given that's pretty much what they DID tell us. Well before the reveal of Walking Wake, there was a page in the Scarlet Book (and Violet Book by proxy) that depicted one of the explorer's illustrations of what Pokemon in Area Zero might look like.

Where they got the idea that a Pokemon in Area Zero would look like a fusion of Suicune/Entei/Raikou or Virizion/Cobalion/Terakion specifically, who knows. But it has been one of the biggest bases for the "Imagination theory", which is a theory suspecting that the power of the mysterious crystals that form around the region and as a result of an upcoming Legendary actually manifests one's imaginations, and is furthermore proposing that all the Paradox Pokemon are not actually Pokemon from the past or future, but rather just figments of the explorer's imaginations brought to life. Or perhaps even more odd, the whole of the Scarlet/Violet books were just a tall tale and Heath and co's travels into Area Zero were actually much more mundane, but the professor of your respective version taking the book and plugging it into a supposed "time machine" actually caused this machine powered by Tera Jewels to start 3D printing fictional Pokemon.

It's an interesting theory, and an idea they do pay lip service to; even Arven brings up that it's a little sus that the books were so accurate in describing Pokemon that only could've gotten here via the time machine. But by the very VERY very final and hidden story cutscene of the game where you allegedly talk to a time-traveled professor, they then propose that the Paradox Pokemon are simply from alternate timelines, rather than necessarily from the future or past. Unless we're to be led to believe THAT was a fabrication made by Terapagos, too. Who knows, and given Gamefreak's tendency to set up an elaborate mystery only to have a weirdly simple answer that still leaves behind a bunch of loose threads, we might not ever get to find out. Unless maybe we get a Pokemon Legends: Terapagos in 15 years.

All that said, I think to some extent the Paradox Pokemon's place in The Lore isn't even meant to make any real sense. They are time travelers that shouldn't have been able to make it here until a time machine was built. What is even Terapagos' relationship to them? How do we have past Paradox forms of Pokemon like Magneton, Mega Salamence, or the Johto Beasts, Pokemon that allegedly shouldn't exist until much further in the future than several million years ago? How do the future Paradoxes get to live like animals, including being able to eat food, behaving and fully integrating into a natural environment as if Pokemon just straight up evolved to eventually become robots? It's all just in the name. PARADOX Pokemon. They're beings of self-contradiction. Their existence makes no sense, by so many accounts they shouldn't be real, yet they're here. And that's just the paradoxical reality of the Pokemon universe now.

Anyway, what were we talking about? Oh right, Doug Walker. Whatever the case may be, this thing crawled out of SOMEBODY'S imagination and I'm kinda living for it. Waking Walk is Suicune but gotten up on two legs, hunched over with a raptorial or t-rexian stance. It holds onto the big purple mane, now tufted with some orange feathery fur and a much wider crystal on its head. And it even turns the two ribbons that flow alongside Suicune into a split pair of tails!

It is an objectively (hyperbole) very stupid design but that's exactly why it works. I WISH more of the Paradox Pokemon looked this hokey and silly, especially ones like Scream Tail or Flutter Mane. What WOULD Magneton look like as a proper dinosaur instead of just looking very Unga Bunga? Alan Wake here definitely gives off the vibes like it was designed well after the other Paradoxes and they had a more solid grasp on what the idea could've been if it was more fleshed out and less just "Slap some spikes on a Misdreavus"

Even just on its own, Walter White is a pretty well-realized design for a t-rex monster thing. The forehead crystal looks a little less pristine; more rough and dangerous-looking, which is a nice touch. But the mane also adds a lot of artificial space to the design. Sure, looking at the rest of its fairly skinny physiology, Albert Wily probably doesn't exactly have a ton of muscle beneath all that fuzz, but it allows it to keep the sleekness of Suicune without sacrificing the bulky menace.

The only part about The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker I'm questionable about is the orange tips to its fur on the top, which break up what was already a solid color scheme and ISN'T some unifying feature with its other Dino-Buddies, so I'm not so sure why it's there. But I still enjoy how nice and naturally flowing the claws are, which feels refreshing to see after seeing stuff like Baxcalibur feel so artificial by comparison. And I'm glad the fun extends to the "Entei" and "Raikou" we'll be seeing in a little bit.