Undertale Helped Me Understand CEOs

There’s been a certain human behavior that I’ve never really been able to understand, or even visualize, for a lot of my life: that of a great many corporate CEOs (and various associated executive leaders they surround themselves with).  Well, I suppose it's more just the ultra-rich as a whole, but it's the heads of corporations who most notably engage in this behavior, so for the sake of ease, we'll just refer to them all as CEOs in this rant.  Anyway, 1 of their behaviors has always confused me.  Specifically, the all-consuming greed that drives them to harm or even destroy the lives of others.

Oh, now, come on, don’t look at me like that.  I’m not naive.  The concept of greed isn’t some ghastly unknown to me.  I’m as familiar with, and able to grasp the concept of, avarice as the next average person.  The desire to accumulate more of something (typically money) is a thought pretty much each and every one of us is familiar with, and I’m no exception to that.  Hell, I’m not sure you can exist in a capitalistic society without a functional understanding of greed, as it’s the fundamental fuel and backbone of the entire damnable system.  And before you go labeling me a Socialist or a Communist, let me point out that I don’t believe greed is any less prevalent in those systems--it (and the desire for power) is just the wrench that inevitably gets stuck in their works and destroys them, rather than the oil that greases their gears.  Greed is an inherent part of our nature as human beings.  One that we absolutely should try to overcome and rise above, mind you, but to act like it’s not naturally there is silly, and to not understand it pretty well is nearly impossible.

But there’s greed, and then there’s what CEOs feel.  Like...okay, regular greed, the kind that we all know and are familiar with?  There’s a purpose to it.  Usually not a good one, but a purpose nonetheless.  You desire more of something (typically money) because of its potential use for you.  Maybe you’re begging for bucks because you’re destitute and in need of what money can buy you--that’s a purpose (and 1 of the few morally acceptable ones).  Maybe you’re craving more capital because it might mean some more luxuries in your life--that’s a purpose.  Maybe you're avaricious for acquisition because it might mean being able to show off your wealth to others, gain their admiration or jealousy--that’s a purpose.  Maybe you’re covetous for cash because you want the ease and power it brings, the favors you can buy with it, putting you above the laws that restrain normal people--that’s a purpose.  Maybe you desire more dough because you want the security of knowing that if hard times hit, you’ll have something to fall back on--that’s a purpose.  Maybe you lust for lucre because you want to create a legacy to pass on to your inheritors, and make sure they’re comfortable, secure, or even affluent--that’s a purpose.

But there can come a point where further greed no longer serves any purpose.  Let’s take Activision-Blizzard’s CEO, Bobby Kotick, as an example, here.*  Mr. Kotick, as of the moment I type this, has a net worth of $600,000,000.  His annual income, in 2019 (the most recent "normal" financial year, I reckon), was $30,000,000.

Think, for a moment, about anything and everything you can conceive needing, wanting, setting aside for financial safety, and leaving to your family.  Consider how much money it would take for you to impress anyone and everyone you’ve ever known with passing familiarity.  Contemplate every luxury that you could own and make enough use out of to actually enjoy.**  If we for a moment buy into the idea that possessions, comfort, adulation, and wealth can buy happiness, try to conceive everything it would take to bring you as much enjoyment as you could ever want, for the rest of your life, with enough extra to provide very well for your family after your passing.

All done with the thought exercise?  Well, you’ve racked up quite a charge on your mental American Express, but I can almost guarantee you that you have not gone over budget for Bobby Kotick’s salary for a single year, and it’s all but certain that you haven’t broken what he makes in 2.

Okay, but so what?  So the guy makes a truly exorbitant amount of money.  He’s earned it, right?  Well, I mean, not really, in fact not at all, actually, he’s just the one telling the company what to do while the employees do 100% of the actual work involved in making that money, but hey, that’s the system.  The point is, what’s so mind-boggling here?  He’s made it to the absolute top, he won the game of life.  There is nothing left in the game of capitalism for him to strive for, because he’s already able to do and acquire absolutely anything he wants and can effectively enjoy or benefit from.  The fact that he’s in a position where the money keeps accumulating even beyond his ability to find ways to enjoy it is sickening, but irrelevant; it’s just a passive fact.

Well, what defied my comprehension for so long is the fact that Bobby-boy wants more.

Yeah.  Having already accumulated more money than could ever be entirely spent on things that he could take enjoyment from for the rest of his life, with the guarantee of dozens of lifetimes’ worth of money coming to him every year, Mr. Kotick continues to make bids for more.  In the last year alone, he demanded--and was given--a bonus of $155,000,000.  Yes--while already possessing more money than he could meaningfully spend on anything, Bobby Kotick petitioned to be handed over 1/5th of his entire net worth, out of the blue.

And this money didn’t come from nowhere.  It didn’t just happen to be lying around, waiting to be claimed.  In the past few years, Kotick’s company has laid off over a thousand employees, hundreds of which were canned just this same year as Bobby’s bonus.  Not to mention that a significant number of Activision-Blizzard’s rank-and-file employees are paid so little that they can’t afford the lunches sold at their own cafeteria.  The money used to foot Bobby’s bonus came at the expense of thousands of other people’s comfort, health, and livelihoods.  Bobby isn’t just greedy beyond comprehension in a vacuum--he’s actively and knowingly worsening the lives of others to satisfy his avarice.

And THAT’S what I could never really, truly grasp until recently.  It’s always just been too beyond my imagination to really understand.  How can a human being at a CEO’s level still reach covetously for more?  Once you have so much wealth that the wealth becomes meaningless, because you’ve already passed the point of being able to buy anything you could ever, ever need or personally enjoy, then what motivation can there possibly be to desperately seek more of it?  And especially confusing--why go out of your way to harm others in that pursuit?  To a man for whom all doors are already forever open, a key can exist as no more than a faintly understood, intangible concept, so why would that man go out of his way to grab other people’s house keys right out of their pockets?

It’s always confused me, because even by the low standards of human behavior, it’s completely illogical.  Bobby Kotick and his like are exerting themselves in pursuit of acquiring something that, relative to them, has no value.  And while I wouldn’t be so naive as to believe that Kotick or any of his peers have even the slightest capacity to feel empathy--in our world, you don’t often get to the top of an economic or political venture while burdened by a functional human psyche--it equally confused me that they could care so much about accumulating what is functionally nothing to them that they’d go to the trouble of harming others for it.  I didn’t get it.  I acknowledged the reality of the behavior, but I didn’t understand how it was possible.

Until, about a year ago, I suddenly remembered Undertale’s Chara.

Undertale is 1 of the more masterful works of art in the modern age, and its beneath-the-surface antagonist Chara represents a lot of things.  Amongst them, Chara symbolizes the player him/herself--or, more accurately, an archetype of a gamer that the player has, in order to meet Chara, undertaken.  Chara is a psychopath, incapable of caring for those around him/her, whose only observable joys come from destruction...and from the increasing of his/her stats.  In fact, we don’t really even see evidence that Chara actually enjoys the murder and suffering he/she is responsible for, only that he/she is utterly determined to cause it.  The only thing we truly know for sure that Chara enjoys is the act of gaining power--and even that’s not about the power, but the fact that the number denoting the power has increased.  To quote Chara him/herself:

“Power.
Together, we eradicated the enemy and became strong.
HP.  ATK.  DEF.  GOLD.  EXP.  LV.
Every time a number increases, that feeling...
That’s me.”

It’s a chilling, and yet very accurate, indictment of a certain mentality that some gamers have toward their pastime.  I’ve seen, and I’m sure at some point you have as well, players who approach games with a narrow mentality of solely caring about what tangibly benefits their protagonist.  They make their decisions based entirely on what most benefits them, regardless of what it means for the story and the characters within it--if the game’s story presents a choice between letting an innocent child live and having no tangible reward from it, or brutally killing that child and acquiring an extra point of Strength or a slightly better weapon from the act, this particular type of player will commit infanticide every time, because that’s what’s better for them.  The fact that the benefit from this terrible act might be so small that it will never produce a noticeable effect on the rest of the playthrough is unimportant--all that matters to this kind of gamer is that a number or inventory slot informs them that they have benefited.

And sure, it’s all just a game, so it doesn’t really matter, but at the same time...if gaming is a major hobby or passion of yours, and yet you don’t care enough about it to even feel any remorse over what may happen to the people (imaginary though they may be) within the game from your actions, then isn’t that still troubling?  It unnerves me a bit, at least.

At any rate, that’s Chara, by his/her own words--the unrelenting, uncaring drive to see numbers increase.  It doesn’t matter whether those increases are needed, or important, or even something you’ll ever benefit from--you can beat Undertale without needing to kill everything in the game to accumulate as high a level and stats as you can get; you can beat just about any RPG comfortably without maxing out your stats.  All that matters for Chara, for the kind of player that Chara represents, is that tiny little shot of dopamine at seeing a stat increase, at having a little numeral tell you that you’re greater now than you were prior...even if your increase has no practical value because no obstacle could have stopped you before it.  As Chara him/herself said in the past, according to an unreleased (but by all appearances canon) piece of dialogue found here, what matters when filling a glass of water is doing so most efficiently, completely to the top and even beyond that, regardless of how thirsty you are.

And that’s how I now can understand Bobby Kotick, and all his kind.  They’re Chara.  And Chara isn’t something made up--he/she is a representation of people, a lot of people, who demonstrably only play the game to achieve the maximum and nothing less.  People who level-grind past the point that they can kill a game’s final boss in a single turn aren’t addicted to the application of that power, they’re just addicted to the pleasure of seeing the numbers representing that power rise.  But in real life, the only universal stat of any significance is your wealth--and Bobby Kotick and his peers, these real-life Charas, just like seeing that number jump up.  Regardless of whether it has any function for them.  Regardless of what other people--no more than NPCs to them--are damaged in the process.














* Please understand, though, that while Bobby makes a great, well-rounded example of what I’m talking about, he is by no means unique to those in his position and class of wealth.  If we looked at the CEO of Ubisoft, or CD Projekt Red, or EA, or Disney, or Epic Games, or Apple, or Kimberly-Clark, or Amazon, or General Motors, or almost any other given major corporation, all that would change are the figures and dates, not the actual content of their behavior.


** I think it’s important to make this distinction, here.  A lot of people like to talk about how much money a person “needs,” but Cr1t1kal once made a compelling point about why this is a bad mentality and turn of phrase to adopt.  It’s not unreasonable to want more than what you strictly need--wanting to have enough to be able to enjoy life is beyond what one strictly needs, after all, and yet it’s only right and natural that we pursue pleasures, satisfactions, and lasting fulfillment within our lives.  Only ants don’t care about anything but strict necessity.

BUT, it is also equally important to make the distinction between what you can own, and what you can own and effectively enjoy.  Owning 7 different homes, for example, is meaningless because you can only realistically enjoy the luxury of owning 2 or 3, 4 at most--any more is either a possession that will mean nothing to you because you won’t use it, or a burden because your instinct to make use of it will negatively affect your living habits as you keep jetting from 1 to the next all year round.  Cr1t1kal’s point of viewing matters beyond just “need” is reasonable, but we must also recognize that its own parameters are not limitless.

General RPG Minigames 13: Suikoden 2's Cooking Contest

It’s true that most of the times when I have spoken about minigames in RPGs, it hasn’t been especially positive, and the rants I’ve specifically done on them have by and large been highly negative.  I cannot deny this fact.  I think, however, that if you will for a moment recall the objective fact that minigames are by and large an agonizing cancer that act as a pestilence constantly debilitating the entire genre’s immersion and enjoyability, you’ll find that my attitude toward them is forgivable.

Nonetheless, no matter how vile something may be as a rule, there are always bound to be exceptions.  I mean, in general, the prospect of consuming vomit is not very appealing, but we’re happy enough to make an exception for bee barf, and hell, we’ll wear whale puke.  And much like honey, and ambergris, and that flavoring agent that we harvest from beavers’ butts, there exist a few RPG minigames which are not just bearable, not even just okay, but actually good.  And among them, Suikoden 2’s Cooking Contest deserves special recognition.

Why is the Cooking Contest so laudable?  For a number of reasons, really.  First and most importantly, it’s actually a decent storytelling entity in and of itself.  This sustained series of culinary battles contains its own side-story of loss, intrigue, and heroics, independent of and unbeholden to the story of Suikoden 2 itself.  This is a full-on sidequest complete with its own story as Hai Yo attempts to thwart the aims of a shadowy underground organization by stealing their prized weapon and keeping it safe from their attempts to reclaim it.  The Suikoden 2 team took time and put effort into writing a story of Hai Yo facing off against the evil organization that killed his lover and proving to the world that his and their craft is at its most powerful when used for the good and joy of others, rather than one’s own ambitions.

Most RPGs with long-term minigames make the mistake of thinking that the minigame itself is capable of maintaining the player’s engagement.  You play Chocobo Hot and Cold a lot over the course of Final Fantasy 9, for example, but there’s not really any plot associated with it, nor for that most heinous and reviled of evils, Dark Cloud 2’s Spheda, in spite of it being a constant companion through the game’s full course.  The most you can usually hope for is a very, very minor little bit on the side with a minigame as with Final Fantasy 8’s Triple Triad, which can involve a small pseudo-sidequest of finding and challenging the game’s top players to prove that Squall’s the true king of the game.  But just as a character defined solely by a desire to be better than everyone else at 1 single solitary skill/game is a flat and boring entity, so is a minigame story that’s just about being the best at that minigame bland and unappealing.  Suikoden 2’s Cooking Contest, though?  There’s an actual running plot, and while competition over who’s the true master of the game is a factor, it’s not an end in and of itself, but a vehicle for the true purpose of a story of heartbreak, courage, and conviction.

...A story of heartbreak, courage, and conviction, all told in relation to culinary competitions.  Yeah, that’s the next fun thing about the Cooking Contest: it’s greatly amusing tongue-in-cheek stuff.  You know how 1 of the reasons I love Barkley: Shut Up and Jam Gaiden is for the fact that it hilariously keeps a straight face about its story of despair, redemption, parental love, cyberpunk stuff, sacrifice, and all this other serious jazz even while being an utterly ridiculous sequel to Space Jam where basketball is some kind of dangerous super-power?  While not as gloriously sober-absurd as BSUaJG, Suikoden 2 still pulls off an admirable and very amusing blend of the severe with the ridiculous as it tells Hai Yo’s story of a man fleeing and then fighting to stop a corrupt, powerful clan...of chefs who want to use the ultimate recipe to rule the world, somehow.  I mean, the minigame side story’s protagonist says it all himself, really--Hai Yo is a man carrying the loss of his beloved, the burden of turning against his comrades, the struggle of being the only man who will champion the just and responsible use of his art as a source of joy rather than ambition...and this is what the guy looks like.  Tell me that’s not funny.

Smart, too.  In a game whose plot possesses such weight and emotional power as Suikoden 2, having such a different, amusing aesthetic to its side story makes the Cooking Contest’s tale manage to stand out, rather than getting stuck in the main story’s shadow.

Aside from the fact that this minigame has an actual story, and that said story is filled with a deftly constructed dissonance of SERIOUS BUSINESS and over-the-top theatrics based in absurdity, this minigame is also beneficial for another narrative reason--it provides a little smidgeon of character development for the majority of the cast.  It’s certainly nothing much, of course, but having over 60 members of the cast able to sit in as judges, each with their own food preferences and introduction (as well as a few of them even having a line of dialogue to say for said intro), fleshes out the large cast of Suikoden just a little bit more and adds to their personalities.  Suikoden 2 has a lot of small touches of character rounding to its grand cast, and while individually they don’t amount to much, the sheer number of little quirks and details that are gleaned about each of the 108 Stars of Destiny from side content like the Cooking Contest is a great alternative method for making a cast that feels real and personal, without having to dedicate entire side stories and character arcs to them all.  Additionally, a major draw of the early Suikodens is their ability to create a sense of community and camaraderie through the army that the protagonist raises, looking at and portraying large-scale conflicts as social entities as they do so, and having half the residents of the castle get involved in this side story, even just in a small and silly role as cooking judges, helps build that communal aesthetic for the cast.

While those are the qualities that make me particularly fond of Suikoden 2’s Cooking Contest, it’s also worth applauding just how much effort went into this minigame.  True, from 1 perspective, this minigame is exceptionally simplistic mechanically--all the player does is choose which courses to serve, and then mash the X button to make them.  You can make the argument that this is as mindless a task as drinking soup with Ayla in Chrono Trigger, arm wrestling in Final Fantasy 7, charging a Guardian Force in Final Fantasy 8 or your next attack in Saturday Morning RPG, or any of hundreds, probably thousands of other minigames and minor combat mechanics that incorrectly equate rapid button-tapping with entertainment.

However, even if it’s technically facile in 1 regard, it’s impressively coded in another.  Consider this: there are over 60 different characters from whom the game randomly selects judges, each of whom has relatively individualized tastes* and so has been programmed to respond with different levels of favor to every possible dish, of which there are, when you account for seasoning combinations, a total of 240.  Even if my suspicions that most judges fall into an archetype instead of being totally unique (I theorize, for example, that 1 lover of sweets will give the same scores as another lover of sweets), that is an absolutely insane commitment of time and effort to make for programming a completely optional minigame--or even a mandatory one.  And keep in mind that the scoring system isn’t just a Yes-No situation for whether a character did or didn’t like the food--they judge on a scale of 1 to 5, so those 60+ characters have been programmed to respond with 5 levels of preference regarding those 240 dishes.

Meanwhile on the other side you’ve got Xenogears acting like it’s hot shit because it figured out how to code Rock-Paper-Scissors, and Breath of Fire 3 acting all proud that it can throw some NPCs into a couple corners of the map and call it Hide and Seek.  Yeah, Wild Arms 1, I’m sure the programmers who coded the thousands of potential scoring outcomes to Suikoden 2’s Cooking Contest are really impressed by the fact that you simulated Whack-A-Mole.

Lastly, I’d like to acknowledge that beyond the ways in which the Cooking Contest is an unexpectedly fun experience for a minigame, it also avoids some of the pitfalls that minigames frequently suffer from.  It doesn’t really require any specialized and frustrating outside skills that have nothing to do with the rest of the game, as minigames so frequently do, for 1 thing--yeah, I guess button-mashing could be called an outside skill, but I feel like that’s simplistic enough that it shouldn’t count, and even then, the required competence at it for success in this minigame is pretty minimal.  And secondly, while it’s not content that you would want to miss, it’s always, always, always a good thing NOT to make your minigame mandatory to continuing the main game, so I can appreciate that the Cooking Contest is entirely optional.

Now, in the end, what does this all amount to?  Not much more than a cute, enjoyable, but mostly negligible little extra quirk to the game.  Suikoden 2 would certainly not feel less complete, nor, really, any lesser as a whole, were it to have never included the Cooking Contest minigame and its little story arc.  Still, though, ANY minigame that exists as anything more than a stupid, frustrating burden upon the game it inhabits is a happy exception, and the fact that this one is actually an outright positive experience, not to mention made with actual care and work, makes it deserving of some recognition, I think.











* Although admittedly those tastes are not always consistent.  When Icy Brian played through this sidequest, he discovered that just because a judge is said to like Japanese dishes,** that doesn’t mean they actually WILL give them a good score.  Hell, 1 character outright requested a specific dish in his intro, and then gave it a 2 when his wish was granted.  The preferences stated for the judges are usually reliable, but there are a few gaffs here and there.


** How the hell do people in the Suikoden world know what cuisine is Japanese, anyway?  Or French, or Chinese, for that matter?

Pokemon Generation 8's Leon is a Jackass

Not every Pokemon Champion is all that impressive.  Lord knows that Lance and Alder never impressed me in the slightest, for example, and I actually just had to look up who the Champion of Generation 3 was to remind myself.  Which didn’t even work; I know what he looks like and what his name is, but I still don’t remember a thing about him.  So yeah, they can’t all be Cynthia.  But that’s no excuse for Leon.

Leon is a putz.  A schmuck.  An incompetent, braindead doofus whose existence has actively worsened his entire nation.  The guy is an embarrassing, tiresome excuse for a Champion, and represents a painfully obvious case of Trying Too Hard on Nintendo’s part.

Let’s just get it out of the way first: I was never gonna like the guy, because he’s the most notable entity forcing the protagonist to stay out of the plot of their own game.  If the slightest possibility of actually taking part in the game’s story arises and Leon’s around, you can bet your last dollar that Leon’s gonna be the one to enthusiastically shoo the player off, insisting the protagonist concentrate solely on their little sports challenges.  Leon and I weren’t going to get along, ever, because he is dedicated to keeping me away from the entire reason I’m playing the game.

Still, it can’t just be me, right?  I mean, the guy is a rank amateur!  As a Pokemon trainer, Leon reminds me of Eleanor Silverburg from Suikoden 4: overrated, and constantly lauded by all around him for possessing nothing more than basic competency.  You’d have a difficult time arguing that he’s anywhere but the absolute bottom of the Champions in terms of basic in-combat ability, and his dialogue certainly seems to back that up.  “Super effective hits are a surefire path to victory!” he’ll proudly inform you, as you battle him for the title of greatest trainer in the region.  Cynthia set and manipulated battle conditions to give herself advantages half a dozen turns in advance--meanwhile, Leon over here knows how to follow the advice of a tutorial NPC.  So impressive.

I also like the part during the final battle where, if he scores a critical hit, he’ll reassure the protagonist not to focus on it, and keep going ahead.  It’s like...yeah, okay, thanks again for the tutorial during the final battle, dick.  Yup, Gloria/Victor has trounced every Gym Leader in the region, beaten all of her/his rival trainers, fought alongside beasts of legend to save the world, and taken down a godlike Pokemon that whupped your sorry ass, Leon--but no, you’re right, she/he’s in serious danger of giving in to despair over your lame-balls Charizard getting a lucky shot.  She/He’ll just fall all to pieces without your generous condescension.

Speaking of the Charizard, gee, Nintendo, could you pander a little harder to the nostalgia of your adult audience?  “Look, look, 30-to-40 demographic!  Leon uses a CHARIZARD!  Just like YOU did 25 years ago!  Remember that?  Huh?  Remember the good old days with Charizard?  Is this not DA BOMB, my fellow used-to-be kids?  I’d buy that for a dollar, amirite?  ...No, really, please, buy this for dollars, please please oh my Arceus we want your money so bad.”  Never mind that Leon’s constantly spouting platitudes about how much regional pride he has while making his signature Pokemon one that comes from an entirely different region.  I mean, I’ll be the first to agree that the new Pokemon you’ve rolled out for the Galar region are the most uninspired lot you’ve come up with yet--seriously, I never thought I’d  reach a day when I’d view something like Flapple would be 1 of the better new Pokemon for a generation--but maybe at least showcase a Pokemon you can find in your own country if you’re gonna keep spewing patriotic sweet-nothings all the time?

And while we’re on the subject of stuff that Leon says all the damn time...DUDE.  We get it.  YOU’RE THE CHAMPION.  Could ya...could ya maybe stop calling attention to it every 4 minutes?  I mean the word champion is even Leon’s favorite adjective.

Not that he’s too terribly attached to the job, mind you.  Leon’s perfectly willing to give up the position to any of the sponsored trainers who can complete their journey and defeat him, as is only right.  Indeed, Leon is perfectly content to give the chance to replace him to any talented, worthy trainer...or, of course, to his own family member.  Yes, nepotism is alive and well in the Galar region with Leon, who makes it a point to endorse Hop, his own brother, to take on the challenge to become the next Champion.  Yeah, because Hop being admitted into a competition based on talent for leadership and tactical intelligence isn’t a dead give-away of preferential treatment at all.  Who else was on Leon’s list of potential candidates for sponsorship that Hop was deemed more qualified than, I wonder?  Team Skull grunts?  Magikarp?  A half-eaten sandwich?*

And on the subject of the transition of leadership from 1 Champion to the next, can we talk about what a scummy, responsibility-dodging ass Leon is?  The first thing he does, the FIRST THING, when Gloria/Victor becomes the new Champion of Galar, is immediately start talking about how it’s time to start looking ahead and planning for the future, passing the goddamn buck to Gloria/Victor as he says it’s up to her/him “to create the bright future we all hope to see.”  GEE, kinda interesting how the SECOND he’s no longer Champion himself, suddenly all the fun and games are over and it’s time for the Champion to start doing some real goddamn work, huh?

What convenient fucking timing that we’re going to start taking the responsibility for Galar’s future seriously NOW, huh?  Not for the last few years, during which the Champion’s been known for absolutely goddamn nothing but public showboating and sporting matches to show off his might as a trainer.  Not for the past couple weeks, which was when Rose was trying to get Leon to commit to some action regarding the potential energy crisis in the region’s future.  Not last night, when another sporting event was deemed more important than Rose’s having a mental breakdown out of worry for the region’s future.  No, no, not any of THOSE times, only NOW, when some other Champion can be the one working for the good of Galar.

So, hey, Leon, quick question there, buddy.  If it’s up to the Champion to bring about the new future and guide their region’s path, as you are so conveniently quick to point out now that you’ve been replaced...does that mean it’s your fucking fault that Galar is a nation of sports-obsessed morons who are too busy filling stadiums in worship of you to pay any attention to their looming energy crisis?  That everyone in the region’s so fixated on seeing giant Pokemon battles that even the most basic history and lore of your country’s been almost completely lost?  That all socio-economic ventures have become so inherently tied to the narrow, specialized Pokemon battling involving Dynamaxing, that any town not lucky enough to be built on a Power Spot runs the risk of sagging into poverty and obscurity, like Spikemuth?

Is the current careless, teetering bread-and-circus society of Galar the path and destination you consciously envisioned, Leon, or did it just happen to get that way on your watch because your mental acuity, ability to prioritize, and personal values are all identical to those of a poorly-raised 5-year-old?  Has your country been getting destroyed by your vision, or your carelessness?  Hitler or Nero, Leon, which one are you?

You know, if I had even the slightest faith in the writers of Pokemon Generation 8, I might have thought that it was all intentional.  I might have thought that Leon, and the sorry, vapid, 1-dimensional society of the Galar region were an intentional critique of the Pokemon world’s tendency to elect its most lauded celebrities and (from all appearances) government leaders based simply on how good they are at a specific sport.  You could look at Leon’s total disinterest in anything of actual importance to the region, at the way the region’s so busy being distracted by stadium matches that it can’t face its actual problems (present or future), and see a subtle but scathing commentary on the social structures that have been established in previous games as being the norm of the Pokemon world.  A message to the tune of, “Choose your leaders based on their ability to win Pokemon battles, and of course you’re going to get a dumb-as-rocks, clueless jock like Leon as your leader,” or something to that effect.  This could be a clever, insightful indictment of the series, much in the way that Generation 7 quietly criticized the way that Pokemon are treated in this world...

But it’s not.  Generation 7?  Well-written, involved, emotionally powerful story with depth and nuance.  Generation 8?  Game Freak actively barred you from the plot so they wouldn’t have to actually write it.  The writers of Sword and Shield likely do not possess the talent, and absolutely do not possess the work ethic, to have intended anything more of Leon as a character than the surface level.  Besides, the game makes it too strong and uniform a point to portray Leon as some great guy you’re supposed to idolize--he’s celebrated too earnestly for you to be intended to do anything else.  Sadly, though, the substance isn’t there to back that desire up, and in the end, Leon is simply a tiresome dipshit.

I miss Cynthia.














* Yes, he did sponsor Gloria/Victor, too, but let’s not pretend that said sponsorship didn’t feel a hell of a lot like an unexpected afterthought.