“For a version of virtual reality that feels genuinely inviting,” chaykak writes, ”games like Arceus might offer a better model: an open-ended path that lets the player decide exactly where she wants to go.”
One of the more famous scenes in recent video-game history can be found at the beginning of Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, from 2017. The player’s avatar, Link, starts on a plateau high above the land of Hyrule. It’s a test zone in which to familiarize oneself with the mechanics of the game. But a paraglider tool, obtained at the end of the introduction, makes it possible to leave the plateau behind and enter the rest of the environment.
The cartoonish plot is fitting for a game designed to be suitable for children, yet it features some darker imperialist undertones. In the course of the story, the player takes commands from various officials stationed at the headquarters of the Galaxy Team in the frontier town Jubilife Village, and becomes the peacekeeper and seeming civilizer of Hisui’s two indigenous tribes.
A player’s mission in Arceus is similar to butterfly collecting. To rise in the Galaxy Team ranks, her avatar must capture multiple specimens of the same Pokémon, watch them evolve, and observe their moves in battle, then report back to the professor stationed at various wilderness camps. Rather than the usual repetitive grind of levelling up in role-playing games, Arceus is driven by serendipity. Catching a particular Pokémon might require scaling a cliff or crafting a smoke bomb.