When Temtem was released in Early Access at the beginning of this year, its sizable player base was largely comprised of fans of the Pokémon game franchise who had long been wanting a Pokémon game freed from the linear constraints of the established series. Whether or not Game Freak should make this game has ballooned into a big, touchy subject on which taking a side feels like an almost political opinion.
That aside, an open world Pokémon game divorced from this debate does sound like fun. An animator who posts to their YouTube channel The Pixel Kingdom recently shared a video depicting what it might look like if Pokémon began to inhabit the open world of Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
The video's vision of this likely-impossible mashup alters key details of the Animal Crossing world both big and small to Pokémon alternatives. As it opens, Tom Nook's travel agency Nook Inc. has been renamed Pokémon Inc., which is displayed in the opening of the video in a manner mimicking the opening of a new game. Instead of Timmy and Tommy walking up to the Nook Inc. desk to assist a new villager are two Chancey who even impersonate Timmy and Tommy's tendency to echo the end of each other's sentences.
As the Dodo Airlines plane flies a player-created villager to their new island, they watch Krabby scuttling across a beach, Growlith frolicking amidst a couple of apple trees and a common blue butterfly, and a Milotic majestically positioned in a river crossing surrounded by seasonal cherry blossom trees.
Then, in a wintertime version of the village, the video shows Freya, a wolf villager who wears a wintery sweater as her default outfit, politely conversing with a Delibird, the Santa-like Pokémon. Even this game world's balloons have been replaced by Pokémon, as the villager is soon firing a slingshot off at a Drifloon carrying a present in the sky.
Details like these, in which Pokémon take the place of or function alongside New Horizon's various natural resources, catchable critters and town residents, continue for the rest of the video. Overall it's a shockingly satisfying fantasy that will almost surely never see the light of day in a playable form, making this animation the best available version of a Pokémon-inhabited Animal Crossing town.
Source: NintendoSoup