Pokémon GO Fest 2021 had no Hoopa and no end of festival

This past weekend offered the world Pokémon GO Fest 2021. This year’s biggest annual mobile gaming event attempted a more outgoing vibe, but still managed to end it all on the wettest firecracker imaginable: a questline focused entirely on Hoopa, which doesn’t absolutely in no way included Hoopa.

The global event was split into two very distinct halves, with Saturday’s activities focused on gathering pocket monsters and a half-baked and deeply disappointing story about getting a bunch of Pokémon together to put on a concert. A concert that never happens. But that was nothing compared to the slow, miserable farting sound the emphasis on Sunday’s raid delivered.

POGO the creators of Niantic seem to have really lost track of late when it comes to writing event quest stories. As has been the case for the past five years, appears the benevolent-faced Professor Willow, too enthusiastically espousing the latest mysteries uncovered by her research, and then you’re faced with typically generic challenges to unlock each next step in the game. mini-story. These will likely be “Catch 20 different species of Pokémon” or “Make three good throws” or “Defeat two grunts of Team GO Rocket”. They have little or nothing to do with the story, but you need to actively play the game in order to unlock the next round of rewards and, most importantly, specific Pokémon to catch.

This is the last part that makes most quest chains worth playing. Saturday was pretty cute in that regard, forcing you to choose between a Rock Pikachu or a Pop Pikachu and then between various other monsters that you would collect with a unique novelty hat. Not a hat that in any sense had something to do with “rock” or “pop” of course, but rather, for some reason, much more “marching band”.

Willow has told you all along that this all leads to a concert, and today’s room was decorated with musical notations falling across the world like confetti. Previously POGO has had music-themed events, and they indeed culminated in a delightful musical number. I couldn’t wait to see what my rawk Pikachu, along with Gardevoir and Galarian Ponyta, was going to deliver. The answer: a photobomb. It was literally that. They photobombed a snapshot of the last step of the requested quest. And then did it a bit more later, just to highlight how colossal this was. After months of real world musical numbers being out, how could they even not have a clip for Katy Perry’s Electric?

(I must add here that the game did offer players a Meloetta at this point, which would have been a bigger deal if it had been over 1600 2 *, and the story had been about it.)

Maybe they were saving Sunday for a big finish, I wondered. It was designed to be pretty special: Every Legendary Pokémon the game saw in its five years had to be available in raids, at the same time. And yes, absolutely, thanks to the (surprisingly) generous offer of the Remote Raid Passing Game (there were 11 available for free), and a small expense of coins collected from Gyms on others, j was able to fill all my gaps and collect all the legendaries that I had missed so far. Including a brilliant Altered Shape Giratina. (All this despite POGO outrageous bullshit about setting capture rates.) But what about the story? Well, the hopes were high enough.

The day before the event started, POGO’s current loading screen has subtly changed. Floating above the idyllic evening ship scene appeared Hoopa, the star of one of my son’s favorite Pokémon movies, Pokémon the Movie: Hoopa and the Clash of the Ages. Hoopa never appeared in mobile gaming, despite appearing in major post-Gen VI games. So he was coming, right ?!

Then Willow’s script made it clear. These magical rings appeared in the sky and the legendaries were pouring in! That’s all Hoopa’s thing. He then names him. “Look here, it’s the Mythical Pokémon Hoopa.” In fact, he’s starting to prepare players to catch the Mythical Shape-Shifting Beast.

“This explains why these Legendary Pokémon appeared the way they did. Hoopa uses these rings to move objects from place to place, including himself. It won’t be easy to catch.

“Based on reports from the team leaders, it does not appear that Hoopa is in the area at the moment. Let’s use this time to prepare to catch it, eh?

…

“For now, why don’t you go challenge raids with other Trainers and catch Pokémon?” You will need your sharpest skills to catch Hoopa. Now let’s go! “

Yeah, we’ll catch it! He said it !

It was only a two-part quest, which sounded odd, but half of it won five raids, so it would take a little longer than usual. As it happened, I had the particular joy of a GO Fester, trapped at home as I was by the UK Covid-19 contact tracing system, my plans to take the boy to the city la nearest to participate in the event were sorely wiped out. So I used remote raid passes and the magic of the Poke Genie app to do this.

And once finished? The great finish? The end of Pokémon GO Party 2021? I swear to God there was none. You’ve got your 10,000 XP, three Silver Pinap Berries, and 3,000 Stardust, and Willow hasn’t even said a word. It just stopped. Pllrrlllbbtthhhbbthhhh.

Who do this ? Who hosts the big annual event, changes the loading screen with that tease, then literally tells you you’re on the hunt for a fan favorite Pokemon that’s never been in the game before, and then just isn’t? What’s Niantic’s thing about creating such an anticlimax?

I am not really bothered. I thought it was stupid and was disappointed that all efforts to complete the quests despite my government-imposed house arrest resulted in nothing of interest. But I’m also 43 years old and I can cope when I don’t see a cartoon appear on my phone screen. But my six year old son? This is a whole different matter. He handled it well, but damn it, why make the kids so disappointed? For money.

I’m more frustrated with the simply bad narrative design and minimal effort. It’s a game that catches up Billions for Niantic, with such a huge player base that Saturday’s global bonus tasks like “catching 20,000,000 Pokémon” were completed in just a few minutes. They charged money to attend GO Fest, although less this year than before. They couldn’t put together an animation of the Pokémon giving a little concert ?! They couldn’t really prepare Hoopa and into the game despite literally telling the players they were going to catch him? (Yes, those who look at websites that analyze upcoming events and report what prizes will be available would have known that already – most people aren’t.)

He feels so half-silly, so cobbled together. They put weird hats on a handful of Pokémon, and let legendaries appear previously established in raids. The promise of brilliant transport didn’t materialize either, at least in my experience. I caught at least 400 Pokémon over the weekend and got a grand total of of them. It is much less than usual!

Niantic could deliver therefore much more if they wanted. Instead, he feels so stingy, almost to the point of being contemptuous. Of course, they have to balance not to just throw everything at the players at once, to the point that it breaks the allure of continuing to play. But come on, Something Special would have been nice, beyond Pikachu wearing yet another bloody hat.