8 Video Game Spin-Offs That Broke EVERYTHING
7. Pokémon Legends: Arceus
Whilst we’ve all been keen at one point in our lives to set off on our very first Pokémon journey, it’s a series that has a lot of conveniently ignored questions about animal fighting rings and child labour laws.
In the original games, the main drive of the experience is the wizened Professor Oak seeing your latent potential and sending you out into the world with his new device, the Pokédex, to catalogue the various species of fighting animals. It’s a fun excuse to go and catch ‘em all and a noble pursuit of knowledge.
In 2022’s Pokémon Legend Arceus we go back about 150 years into the past of the Pokémon world. At this point in history these creatures are still largely a mystery and in many cases even feared by human settlements. Similarly, it’s your task to learn about Pokémon and write the very first encyclopaedia on them.
Ostensibly, you are creating the first Pokédex - over a century before Oak supposedly came up with the idea.
Now, digitally preserving previously physical media is an important thing indeed but it’s really not enough to warrant Oak the lofty title of “The Pokémon Professor”. Despite his fame and the reverence that surrounds him, all Oak really did was copy a book into a tablet and then send kids off to update it.
Essentially, Professor Oak is a fraud and a criminal.