Pokémon Legends: Z-A is secretly one of the funniest games of the year, as I was reminded last night when I experienced something that was as annoying as it was hilarious.. I’ve finished the main story, and so I’ve been chipping away at all the remaining side quests, filling up my Pokedex, and trying to get everything in a place where I’m okay with putting the game down until the Mega Dimension DLC. So I’m spending most of my time chatting up citizens, battling wild Pokémon, and checking off research assignments without a care in the world. But last night, something happened that now has me putting my guard up. I was trapped in a conversation with a child about their special interest, and it was one of the funniest scenes I’ve encountered in the game.
In Lumiose City’s Rouge Sector, you’ll find a school called Académie Étoile. There are a few quests here, including one really cute one where you teach a group of curious kids about Mega Evolution, but there’s one student who’s just hanging out in a corner by herself. This nameless child’s speech bubble exclaims, “I’ve memorized a bunch of people’s names!” As someone who has become terrible with names in his 30s, that’s impressive to me. If someone doesn’t have a name tag on, I will forget what they’re called when they tell me. That happens with anyone, and it’s nothing personal. I used to have a mind like a steel trap, and then everything started sliding right out of my skull once I got old enough to rent a car. So I talk to this kid, and she tells me she has a “super amazing memory” and can remember every name she’s ever seen, even if she only saw it once.
She asks if I want her to show me, and I’m like, “Hell yeah, queen. Pop off!” because who wants to shoot down a child telling you about something they’re excited about? Then she asks me again if I’m sure because it’ll take her about six minutes to rattle off every Bob, Jan, and Jimbo she’s ever known. I fully expected the game to make me skip through a bunch of text boxes before we were interrupted by a teacher or parent who had been looking for this girl, but no, Pokémon Legends: Z-A did something even funnier: it started playing the game’s credits and would not let me skip or opt out of them.
For six minutes, I watched the credits roll a second time, and just laughed at how good of a fucking bit this is. Anyone who’s interacted with children knows they love to talk your ear off about whatever they’re hyperfixating on. If you don’t know anything about it, you just gotta kinda smile, nod, and say “oh, wow!” now and then so they know it’s okay to be excited about things. Game Freak emulating this by making you watch the credits is such an efficient gag that I couldn’t help but giggle at the mess I’d gotten myself into. The kid told me exactly what she was going to do, and for some reason, it didn’t occur to me that she might actually deliver. Hopefully, she gets a job in comms because never forgetting a face or a name is an invaluable skill in that field.
