Based on my own experiences, I'd be surprised if the story came first for any game. It's likely more a case of coming up with a way to play the game ("you collect monsters via turn-based battles!"), then trying to figure out how to structure that in a satisfying way, then adding a story on last. Like the story is wallpaper over the walls of the structure.
The Pokemon team likely didn't know what they were doing with gen 1, just as I didn't with MARDEK, so they just cobbled together a bunch of inspirations into something that mostly worked. They likely structured things the way they did to allow for a linear strength progression of opponents, as I did in MARDEK, and in Scarlet and Violet they made it more open world because that's what's trendy these days (maybe I should do a Roguelike Metroidvania like every other indie dev!).
Immersion is what I like most about games, and the music and creature/character designs fall under that category. They're probably what I focus on most too; maybe the whole reason I made games at all was to have something to compose music for. And my favourite part of Pokemon games is going in blind and discovering new Pokemon designs myself.
It's tricky with this side project I'm working on though because I want to minimise the amount of work it'll take to finish, which limits what I can do. I want all the characters to be humans so then I don't have to make or animate other models. And I feel the idea of 'human archetypes having silly social battles where they try and convince the other side to convert to theirs' is amusing enough to form at least a short game around... I'm just uncertain of how to do so in a way that's fun without getting tedious or repetitive.
It's also tough to write a linear story for it because your party can change so much and the characters you recruit aren't actual characters.
Hmm, I suppose an equivalent is something like the Final Fantasy Tactics games, where you only really have one or a few named characters with story roles and a bunch of faceless recruits, but they've got a story focused on that main character anyway. Maybe I'll think about how they went about it, do some brainstorming...
Based on my own experiences, I'd be surprised if the story came first for any game. It's likely more a case of coming up with a way to play the game ("you collect monsters via turn-based battles!"), then trying to figure out how to structure that in a satisfying way, then adding a story on last. Like the story is wallpaper over the walls of the structure.
The Pokemon team likely didn't know what they were doing with gen 1, just as I didn't with MARDEK, so they just cobbled together a bunch of inspirations into something that mostly worked. They likely structured things the way they did to allow for a linear strength progression of opponents, as I did in MARDEK, and in Scarlet and Violet they made it more open world because that's what's trendy these days (maybe I should do a Roguelike Metroidvania like every other indie dev!).
Immersion is what I like most about games, and the music and creature/character designs fall under that category. They're probably what I focus on most too; maybe the whole reason I made games at all was to have something to compose music for. And my favourite part of Pokemon games is going in blind and discovering new Pokemon designs myself.
It's tricky with this side project I'm working on though because I want to minimise the amount of work it'll take to finish, which limits what I can do. I want all the characters to be humans so then I don't have to make or animate other models. And I feel the idea of 'human archetypes having silly social battles where they try and convince the other side to convert to theirs' is amusing enough to form at least a short game around... I'm just uncertain of how to do so in a way that's fun without getting tedious or repetitive.
It's also tough to write a linear story for it because your party can change so much and the characters you recruit aren't actual characters.
Hmm, I suppose an equivalent is something like the Final Fantasy Tactics games, where you only really have one or a few named characters with story roles and a bunch of faceless recruits, but they've got a story focused on that main character anyway. Maybe I'll think about how they went about it, do some brainstorming...