Let's Play Pokemon Uranium: Part 24: Please Explain Your Plot

The final entry in my Let's Play of the fan-game Pokemon Uranium! This project honestly ended up taking a bit longer than I thought it would, in no small part due to the... interesting way that the story is spaced out in the game. And it's not that Uranium's story is bad or anything. The main concepts are solid, if pretty much similar to most anime and manga out there, and especially for a fanmade game, it's actually pretty neat to see them strike a neat balance between serious drama and light-heartedness. But on the other hand, it really does come through at some points that chunks of the game are created after some others, because particularly in the Eastern Tandor stuff onwards, so much of the story are just given to us in huge lumps of text that could really be streamlined a lot.

Still, again, for a fanmade effort, it certainly is a pretty awesome effort. Uranium isn't a perfect game. It's buggy, some of the gameplay mechanics are a bit questionable, some of the comedy choices don't exactly end up coming off pretty well and the storytelling is a bit wobbly, but all in all I did have a fair amoutn of fun playing through it.

Anyway, enjoy the last huge story dump for the game! I'll probably post one or two post-game segments after this, maybe if/when I play through Sword or Shield (and apparently the internet's like, set on fire because of those games). But this has certainly been a fun trip!



Oh yeah, this HUGE plot revelation. I do actually think that despite me realizing this basically around the Larkspur Labs segment (which wasn't brought up at all), it's still done subtly enough that anyone who isn't paying as much attention or anyone who skipped through that wall of text would probably miss it.


Bambo'o doesn't care about Kellyn's angst, he's just surprised at the sheer durability of humans in video games. Apparently the CURIE suit and interface doesn't just protect you against radiation, it also protects you from going into the subterranean, lava-filled lair of a legendary Pokemon.


Apparently Lucille is still young, because of the trope of cryogenic tanks preserving you at the age you're put in. It's not something I'm going to be too bothered by, since it's such a common sci-fi trope.


Oh no, here come Kellyn's angst.

It just has to be about you, doesn't it? Your wife dies and you abandon your son and leave him to his elderly aunt and leave the two of them to such a state that auntie can't even financially support Ura. A hazardous, abandoned power plant is about to be destroyed and renovated for the good of the region and Kellyn throws a passive-aggressive tantrum because his wife died there.

And now your wife turns out to be this supervillain nuclear terrorist that has partnered up with a living weapon, and the first priority is "YOU HID THIS KNOWLEDGE FROM ME". Not "is she okay?" or "how did this happen?" or "what will happen to her?" No, it's all about Kellyn, the self-absorbed prick. It's about how they hid the knowledge from him.

And you were starting to slightly be less of a dick, too!

Piss off, Kellyn.


Cameron is actually being very, very reasonable here. In addition to doing some interpol investigation stuff, he really didn't have much of an idea that Lucille was alive or that anyone survived the nuclear plant explosion until Ura stumbled along.

Also, y'know, because Kellyn will probably overreact and camp out in the ruins of Epsilon and be all angsty and wangsty about it. Piss off, Kellyn.


Oh yeah, and Cameron is also investigating the fact that Lucille is also, y'know, a freaking criminal even before she got turned into Curie. Sure, Lucille isn't as evil as Larkspur or anything, but, y'know, she's still a criminal.


Because, Kellyn, you're an unstable, obsessive man with very shitty priorities that'll blow things out of proportion.


Yep, more or less right, Cameron.


Aaaand this childish reaction is exactly why Cameron didn't tell you this, Kellyn, you man-child.

Honestly, I'm not sure if the writers actually intended Kellyn to be so loathsome. Because he is. There is grief-stricken, and there is "EVERYTHING IS ABOUT ME WANGST AHH" like what he's being right now.


Theo is confused. Poor kid hasn't been following all the Big Plot Episodes.


No offense taken, Theo, because everything you've been saying actually has a point.

But maybe you should say that out of Kellyn's earshot. He's liable to get his ape to rip the limbs off of anyone who shit-talks his wife. Kellyn's kinda unstable.


Yep, she's unstable, insane and hurt a lot of people. That describes 90% of Batman's rogues' gallery. She belongs in an asylum or a prison. Or both.


Yep, yep, some goobledeygonk explanation to try and handwave how she wasn't in control of her actions and how she shouldn't be punished.

Incidentally, one of the tropes I loathe the most in fiction. I don't mind redemption arcs, but I loathe it when the supposed 'evil acts' that a character does is done outside of his or her control, which just ruins the whole point of the redemption in the first place.


Basically, the Curie interface solves all the plot holes.


Really could've said that in a lot less words, Cameron, but with a name like "Cameron Stormbringer" I suppose grandiose exposition speeches is your right.


Again, this whole sequence could've been easily be inserted into Cameron's speech. Pretty damn obvious that the cryo-chamber thing that she stuck Theo in was involved in some way. I don't mind any of the plot points, but they go in such a roundabout way to introduce them into the dialogue.


More exposition.


Poor Kellyn? Piss off on Kellyn. Poor Theo, poor Cameron, poor Staraptor ranger girl and poor everyone else who was injured or traumatized or killed by the multiple nuclear disasters.

Also, yeah, thank you, Bamb'o, for actually pointing out that she has to answer for her crimes as Curie.


...actually a fair concern by Kellyn there. I don't trust Kellyn with Lucille, honestly, he'll probably try and spirit her away out of jail, but he is the only cop-Ranger man among the people present.

No, wait, Cameron Stormbringer is an Interpol agent. He should be arresting Lucille, surely? Either way, exit crazy comatose parent and asshole neglectful parent.


WAAAUGH, the screen just shook around and everything.

The cutscenes and dialogue ain't over yet, people.


Oh, hey, Actan, you were completely useless in that fight against Urayne, and I really wish I kept my UFO dude around, you complete jobber.

Seriously. Actan lost off-screen to a weakened Urayne and got corrupted. Then it got easily taken out by... shit, someone in my party. Probably E. coli, that little bacteria dude is awesome. Then it squeezed its way to the front of my party to be one-shotted by super saiyan Urayne without even getting an attack off. Actan, you're shittier than Yamcha.


Oh shit, it can talk!

Yu know what would be awesome here? Ura using the PST to communciate with Urayne, both making use of an item that was supposedly a major plot device that the game completely forgot about, and also showing that Ura is willing to acknowledge Urayne as a living thing and not just an abomination.


...but no, just regular old telepathy. Okay then.


Apparently, despite being completely horrible in battle, Actan has the plot device powers of pulling random superpowers out of his ass. In this case, fixing Urayne's problem.


So yeah, Actan can just do that.


Apparently, Actan can just give other Pokemon the ability to generate energy indefinitely. Y'know, we really should be befriending Actan and have him solve the world energy problems. You don't need coal or nuclear or steam energy, just befriend this clearly intelligent creature and ask nicely.


Urayne is a small scared friend who doesn't understand what he did. Poor small friend.


Basically, Urayne is driven crazy by hunger. And Curie is trying to help Urayne out by feeding it. Very sympathetic motivations for sure, but, y'know, Curie is talking about the whole destruction of mankind and putting people into stasis to feel the pain that she felt and everything. Again, just because you have a sympathetic backstory doesn't mean you can do whatever you want and be forgiven.


God damn it Cameron didn't you investigate stuff? We learned all of this in the Larkspur Laboratories, god.


Backstory time!

Admittedly, Urayne's backstory of being created and being confused because he's alone is way, way cooler and far more sad than Curie just going ga-ga insane and becoming a G.I. Joe villain.


Oh, it's their first encounter, how cute. Apparently Lucille already dressed herself up in Power Ranger villain garb even from day one.


"This is what you are. you are a Pokemon".

This is the sort of extended dialogue that I don't mind, actually. We get a bit more of Lucille-Curie and Urayne talking, but this is a lot more interesting and less asinine than Theo and Bamb'o being confused and recapping things we already know.


I was confused about what's going on, but apparently Urayne refers to Lucille as 'they', the same awkward gender-neutral way that the game refers to the protagonist. Which is nice and inclusive and all, but I really wished that the dialogue was framed in a less awkward manner.


"92" is a number that comes up a lot, and, of course, it's the atomic number of the element Uranium.

I do like this scene, where Lucille actually acknowledges that Urayne is sentient and isn't just a number. He needs a name! That's where Urayne came from. Admittedly, Lucille isn't the most creative of name-givers, but it's the thought that counts.

And, hey, since in this continuity her child is called "Ura", in exactly this continuity, it gets a sweeter double meaning since she probably views Urayne as a second child.


And thus Urayne began to learn about the world and their friendship grew!


And there was the oh-so-noble purpose of Urayne supposedly being used as... uh... I kinda forgot. A power source, I guess? The evil organization really should've spent their time catching Actan instead, it doesn't just generate infinite power, it apparently can grant other Pokemon the ability to generate infinite power.


And now the tragedy! This is why Lucille ran into the basement during the prologue!

"Goddamn coward" indeed, because swearing is so adult. Larkspur is a goddamn coward, though, the asshole.


Oh no, you are a thing that was never supposed to exist! It's actually a pretty well-written line, again, and I actually don't mind reading through this particular sequence.

It's just that with the sheer amount of inane dialogue that prefaced this, I really wished that the game found a way to break the cutscenes up with gameplay segments between them. Maybe make a separate side-quest after Curie's defeat to go and discover Urayne and Actan within the lava mountains, which would lead to this? Or something?


Very, very noble, actually. Lucille was fully willing to take responsibility for this life she helped to create and have befriended, and is willing to risk death to rescue Urayne.


Awww.


Oh no red screen that is a bad!

Also, this is where the stasis tank plot device comes into play. Which in addition to preserving life, also has the plot convenient ability to survive nuclear explosions as well as to wipe out memory to give a dash of that super convenient anime amnesia.


They'll be connected and be friends, but they'll also be frozen together. I'm not sure why this is a better idea instead of just putting Urayne (who is a Pokemon, right?) in a Pokeball, escape the exploding nuclear plant and then figure things out from there.


I mock the plot devices, but, again, the story of saving a creature that should not exist, a scared little child that just wants to live, is a very well-executed one.

Lucille did end up sort of abandoning her own human family and driving Kellyn into an insane, obssessive angsty brooding piece of shit, but that's more Kellyn's fault than Lucille's.


Oh, and this is when Ura stumbles into the nuclear plant and ends up accidentally freeing Urayne and Lucille.

Honestly, how shitty of an interpol agent is Cameron? Did he really not find that one room? I understand it if he's just a regular schmoe joe contractor or whatever, but he's actually an interpol agent in disguise explicitly investigating this nuclear plant explosion. Really? You didn't think to check for hidden rooms?


It's one thing to feed your hunger. It's another to cause nuclear explosions, attempting to murder Rangers and Interpol agents, and to unleash hordes of insane, nuclear-corrupted creatures upon the region.


Yeah, Urayne's a scared, superpowerful little child. Got it. Anyway... story time's over!


Y'know, considering how one of the first humans Urayne met after being awoken from his slumber was Kellyn spouting all sorts of nonsense about how "that thing is an abomination!"... chalk one more failure for Kellyn there. God, what a miserable piece of shit Kellyn is.


Oh, hey, the typical legendary Pokemon wants to join my party because they want to see the world and because the player character is the worthy one trope.


The Atom Ball is apparently a ball exclusive to Urayne in this game. We've seen it before in trainer battles against Curie.


Y'know what? I liked that backstory, and a huge part of that backstory is that Urayne was basically a person when Lucille/Curie decided that he's special and sentient enough to have a name. So "Urayne" you'll be.


You don't get to travel with the party, though.


Wait, what? All that shitty performance, Actan, and you don't even have the decency to stay in the ball?

Man, Actan is kind of a shitty creature, huh? I really want to capture him just to give him an embarrassing nickname and shove him into the box forever and ever. What a loser.


Oh, yay! Actual gameplay after that long, long sequence of cutscenes! C'mon, Theo, 1v1 me!


...you pussy. Come on, man, Curie didn't even battle me with a full party or anything.

At least in Black and White the not-champion boss fight was with two trainers, back to back, with full parties, y'know? This is actually very anticlimactic from a gameplay point of view.


But now apparently I'm the champion. Yay?


This is the HALL OF FAME and it is capitalized. The same speech given in every single official game about the Hall of Fame is given, but at this point I was so tired of screencapping things that I didn't bother.

And, awww, because of the stupid stunt Actan pulled, LV-426 is still in the box and so I only get to register five Pokemon. God damn it, I feel genuinely bad for LV-426. It isn't fair, that chump Actan wasn't worth LV-426 missing out on his glory!

-sigh-


Anyway, we've got Cerebella, my beautiful Brainoar, a grinning fish with an exposed dome-brain and the most glorious lips ever, who is easily one of my favourite designs from the fakemons in this game. She is defensive and shoots psychic blasts and water waves and beams of frost and everything.


My ever-faithful starter, Charlie, the burning raptor monster who mega evolves into an even more burning raptor monster and unleashes hell by wielding the power of the elements themselves, hitting fast, hitting hard, and basically being a bro throughout the entire adventure.


Blight the Nucleon, my literal nuke. A one-trick pony and another one of my favourite designs, he unleashes nuclear devastation on everything with a dual-type, a fragile cannon that nukes everything in his path and also gets nuked by anything he fails to kill. Very neat, and a fun little showcase of the new gimmicky type in this fan game.


Slayer of Gods, Killer of Kings, officially Hokage of the Ninjas, the unkillable, mightiest member of my party, E. coli. Starting from the humble beginnings of a tiny little amoeba, E. coli has grown into a lightning-generating, life-draining monstrosity that's been such a pleasant pleasure to use and murder kill everything in my path.


The Mother of All That Crawls, the God-Queen of the Bugs and Worms, Sovereign Overlord of Ant-Hell. The Queen is the Seikamater, the mother of all insects, and canonically eats sacrificial humans. She's a glorious legendary bug, and she can unleash all sorts of elemental destruction upon her foes. I actually feel like I didn't utilize her enough in my playthrough, actually, probably because I sort of kept holding on to her as "no, she's a legendary, better save her for emergencies".


And, yeah, Ura is a champion! Saved the region from nuclear crisis and all that. Huzzah!


The credits roll, and... aww, it's set against fan art that people make for this fan game. That Raptorch plush is adorable!


Fade to black.


And... fuck I'm in my room and LV-426 was my flier shit

Technically, this is post-game, but it's another long cutscene conversation so I'm going to lump it here too since it acts as sort of an epilogue.


Hey it's Aunt May!


...wait, you didn't bring her to the prison, or the hospital, or even that fancy medical bay in the Ranger base, but to Aunt May's house?

What the utter fuck, Kellyn, no wonder she's not waking up.

Also, piss off, Kellyn. I still remember that you didn't give Aunt May child support to raise Ura, where do you get off squatting here? What, didn't your precious Ranger leader job come with your own room?


No it's not, Aunt May. Stop coddling Kellyn.

Also, piss off, Kellyn. You haven't been 'family' to Ura for ten years.


Oh, wow, don't act like you had anything to do with any of this, Kellyn. You spent half this adventure being injured because you taunted the huge living weapon, and the other half wangsting about the wrong things, you selfish prick.


...god bless you and your cookies, Aunt May.


She should be in jail. Or the hospital.

But hey, please, by all means, step down from the chief of the Tandor Rangers. It's not like you did anything right while you were there anyway. Get Staraptor Lady in your place, she was cool, and clearly more competent than you.


Not if you just have her resting in a bed without actual medical support you won't.

God, Kellyn, you're a dumbass.


...seriously, god bless you, Aunt May.


Ah, fan mail. Perfect! Ura is the saviour of Tandor after all.


Okay, Lucille's just in a coma.

Y'know, without actual medical support like nasogastric tubes and IV lines and whatnot, she's going to starve, yeah, Kellyn? But you probably think that your stupid obssessive love will get her to open her eyes in no time. Dumbass.


HAHAHAHA even the monkey realizes that Kellyn's a shit person and left him!

Y'know what, that's actually hilarious.


An oh so enigmatic letter from the supposed 'avatar of the gods' or whatever. Man, they are shitty god wannabes, huh?

Also, this letter actually leads to nothing, because poor Pokemon Uranium got hit with Nintendo's cease and desist before they were able to implement a lot of the post-game Angelure Town storyline.


What, those dumb Jack Sparrow wannabes? Seriously, Hinata and Kite are supposed to be like the avatar of the gods with an army of ninjas (some of them with surfboards) and like Yatagarayus and whatnot. And pirates are what they're afraid of?

I suppose maybe in the Angelure plotline that we'll never see, the pirates weaponize the giant aquatic legendary beasts? That'd actually be badass.


Foreshadowing about Angelure Town, pity I can't reach there.

How the fuck, by the way, is a 'scenic resort area' also a 'haven for riffraff'? Is this Tahiti or Somalia? Make up your mind!

...by looking at her really hard and wishing she wakes up. Dude, you need help.

And with that, the main story and epilogue of Uranium is done! Hooray! I've played through the post-game enough to know that there's enough content, at least for one or two more Let's Play segments, so yeah, this let's play is going to go on for a bit more.