Let's Play Pokemon Violet, Part 23: Area Zero: The Demise

Last we left off... Turo's a robot! Miraidon's a bullying victim! Time machine! Dead professor! Future Pokemon! Sad Arven! System is crazy! 

Anyway, the Zero Lab computers detect a threat to the time machine, and declares that an obstacle is preventing the time machine from performing as intended. "Paradise Protection Protocol" is being activated to prevent this obstacle, and A.I. Turo is shocked that the real Professor Turo would go to such lengths to protect his time machine. As foreshadowed earlier, the Poke Ball ID lock activates, locking all four of our Pokeballs from activating.

A.I. Turo starts to crystalize, too, being corrupted by those nasty Terastralizing crystals. A.I. Turo pleads that we run... and then suddenly the computer announces that A.I. Turo has been disabled. And A.I. Turo, or rather, the Paradise Protection Protocol (the P.P.P.? The Peepeepee?) declares that none of us are getting in his way. There is a very cool effect as the screen briefly states that 'A.I. Turo' is challenging us before a mass of static effects state that 'you are challenged by the Paradise Protection Protocol', except there are missing letters and censored letters. Man, this Skynet went crazy!

And he sends out Miraidon #02. 

I toss my Pokeball out, but there are orange chains around it that prevent it from happening. The actual battle interface shows up, and I can actually go through all options. Trying to send out my Pokemon, trying to run, trying to use an item... and Nemona, Penny and Arven all have something to say. Penny can't unjam the signals from there, running is impossible, I can't switch Pokemon... until, of course, the only option is to select the "Miraidon" on my Pokemon page that has always been there. 

At which point I finally send out Miraidon. #02 roars in rage, and our Miraidon sees his human friends cowering in fear... at which point it nods, smiles, and...

...assumes its Ultimate Form. And... you know what? I gave this form a lot of grief before. I still don't like it a lot. But holy damn, this game really does a great job at making me get attached to the Cyclizar/Koraidon/Miraidon body shape, and the story behind this guy is so great. And, I mean, I think I still like the under-powered Miraidon a lot better, but even I can root for Miraidon as it goes all Super Saiyan and explodes with electrical energy and here he comes! Miraidon, the Pokemon of the Future, against Miraidon #02, the Guardian of Paradise.

Both of the Miraidons benefit from their automatic abilities, Hadron Engine, which activates Electric Terrain and boosts both of their Special Attacks. 

The enemy Miraidon has more health since I think it's treated as a Titan Pokemon or something? It spams Taunt and Charge, though, which aren't the most useful attacks, while my Miraidon has Power Gem, Endure, Tera Blast and Electro Drift. Now Miraidon resists Electro Drift, but I have to use it to see what it looks like -- it curls up into a wheel! It goes from a dragon with wheels into a wheel itself, and then spins around, zaps and goes through the enemy! Cool animation. Minimal damage. 

Double-AI-Turo talks about how I will fall within this garden paradise and achieve nothing in the end, as his Miraidon starts to go on the offensive, unleashing its own Power Gem and... HYPER BEAM! Oh yeah, that old-school Hyper Beam sound effect was pretty threatening. My dickery with Electro Drift kind of forced me to Hyper Potion my Miraidon. 

All through this, Penny, Nemona and Arven have choice words to encourage me while Possessed-AI-Turo rants about obstacles and paradise and goals and the future and data and shit. The cheering is kind of like that thing in Ryme's gym or in raid battles, and it keeps buffing my Miraidon's stats! And my Tera Orb is glowing, and Arven yells at me to Terastralize and finish it off. 

Now... I don't like the Terastralization gimmick. But... in this case, sure. I'll humour the story and have a climactic end, yeah? Plus, this #02 bullied my Miraidon and killed Real!Turo, so the most powerful blast is coming his way. Miraidon terastralizes, gains the dragon totem thing on its head, and now its Tera Blast is Dragon-type and also super-effective against the Electric/Dragon enemy Miraidon. My Miraidon unleashes a Tera Blast, which explodes into a shower of diamond sparkles, as it finally takes down its bully.

And I have defeated the Paradise Protection Protocol. A.I. Turo returns back to normal, and talks about how this has surpassed all of the original Turo's calculations. He talks about how we showed wisdom, courage and fortitude to face off the brink of despair, and we children are powerful enough to face the challenges of the future. Or something like that. Mostly, I beat up a bunch of robots and a lightning-motorbike robot dragon. 

A.I. Turo then reveals that he can't stop the time machine with him still there, because his A.I. is part of the system that ensures that the time machine will reboot when it is stopped, and apologizes because he must self-destruct, in a fashion. A.I. Turo does more 'robot with a soul' talk, admitting that he is jealous at us humans and our adventures... but most of all, he envies our freedom, since he wants to be free to seek out what he might deem as his treasure. So he will use the time machine to throw himself into the future -- not just to stop the time machine, but to finally be free of the bounds of his mechanical duties. 

He also finally apologizes to Arven for keeping the truth this long, despite understanding the wishes of the real professor. Arven is just kind of flabbergasted, but... yeah, you gotta feel for the big guy. He found out that his super-distant dad isn't actually distant, or a bad parent, but just dead, and also is being impersonated by an A.I. that is literally incapable of being a proper father despite its desires. Man, poor, poor Arven. 

A.I. Turo says goodbye to Arven, Miraidon and myself, before we get a cutscene of him taking the Violet Book and disappearing into the time machine, teleported all the way to the future. Goodbye, you Tron-spandex-wearing Mr. Fantastic lookalike! The time machine closes up, and all the crystals shut back down to black.

Arven gets sad, and when Nemona asks him about it, Arven admits that deep down, he already kinda knew it, knew that A.I. Turo was fake, but there's still a huge twinge of emotion there, y'know? A very, very interesting situation, and I absolutely love that we don't just have Arven go "he's a good dad/he's as much a dad as my real dad" because A.I. Turo certainly is not a good dad... but Arven kind of understands the circumstances, somewhat, and feels a sense of sadness and nostalgia. Or something.

...and then Nemona gets distracted by Miraidon's battle form and goes all ga-ga about it. Penny is terrified that if Miraidon asks for belly rubs when it's all huge like this, she might actually die. Penny then tries to comfort Arven a little, telling him that the A.I. Professor must certainly be having a real fun adventure of his own in the future. 

Then we cut away to the exterior of Area Zero, and we're all walking along with Miraidon... and in an effort to cheer Arven up, we all decide to take the 'long road' home to milk out the adventure a bit more. 

End credits!

Which features the single 'Celestial' by Ed Sheeran, released a while back before Pokemon Scarlet & Violet, but while I knew that he's making this, I didn't actually realize that it's going to be the ending song for the game itself. Good job, Ed Sheeran, you're officially the coolest contemporary music person I know of now. The credits roll and we get a bunch of fun stickers and artwork, before finally closing out with me, Nemona, Arven, Penny and Miraidon in a selfie. 

We get a bit of an epilogue after this. Clavell praises us for our bravery, though also notes that while we did enter an area that's off-limits (are we at fault, though, when Professor Turo told us to?) and that we saved all of Paldea, the events have to kinda remain a secret. Neat! Clavell gives out Master Balls to all of us, as well as a Hall of Fame badge that are given out only to the most prestigious of students and champions. 

Arven gets a couple of lines, saying that he finally has some closure about his dad's death and his research, accepting all of what's happened, and that he's putting all of that behind him and moving on. He's done being a sad little kid and is resolved to enjoying the res of his academic life... before Clavell reminds him that he's actually kind of a dropout and that he doesn't have enough credits to graduate unless he really puts his back into it. Oh dear! 

Nemona then suggests something like a Pokemon battle contest to celebrate all of this, and while Clavell sees Nemona's obvious battle-lust, he and later Geeta acquiesces to it. This is the post-game, I guess, where the Pokemon League is organizing the contest which will feature all of the students and teachers. Nice! More battles! We also get the revelation that Geeta is also the chairwoman of the school board as well as the Pokemon League, making her also eligible for the school tournament.

Okay! Interesting!

Geeta also gives me a post-game side-quest. She wants to inspect Paldea's various gyms, seeing if the gym leaders are fulfilling their duties as beacons of strength and inspiration for those aiming to reach the top... by battling all of them. All the gym leaders are expecting La Primera herself to challenge them, so they would be battling all-out with their most powerful teams, so yay for gym leader rematches! I have to bring my 'full might as champion' to test them out! Very cool. 

Also, Geeta basically strongarms Penny into helping her out into looking into the computer system of the Pokemon League, taking 'no' for an answer with a 'thank you in advance for your willing and eager cooperation'. Poor Penny, she has so much anime to binge! I love that that is Penny's answer.  

And, with that... I completed Pokemon Violet! Obviously there's a lot to do in the post-game. There are those rods that unleash the four demonic legendaries, the equivalents to the Regis of this game, I guess. I want to go back to Area Zero to check out and capture the Paradox Pokemon. I still have a couple of new Pokemon that I haven't encountered. There are all those post-game battle sequences I have just got introduced to. Hell, I still have Scarlet's story to complete! And most importantly... I need to do my classes! Man, those classes!

...but yeah. This is easily one of my favourite Pokemon games that I have played, and I enjoyed its main story a lot more! 

Random Notes:

• 
  I played through the contents of 22 and 23 in a single playing setting, but obviously I had to split up the article because it's getting a bit long. 
  
• Such an amazing thing they did, making me travel around with the cover legendary and making it a genuine part of the main cast instead of it feeling like the last-minute ally we have to gain or the main threat to stop. 
• I still think I like the Team Star music and the Area Zero ambient music best, but the bombastic music of the Professor Turo fights are pretty damn great!
• I have been informed that the mysterious 'disc Pokemon' from the Scarlet and Violet Book that is discovered by the Area Zero expedition team is a no-shower, similar to the 'original dragon' in Black and White. If this is a sequel or DLC storyline, though, it would actually be amazing for them to foreshadow Discy so early on, and tie him to much to the mythology of the story but not have him actually do anything in the main story -- the way Kyurem or Rayquaza or Necrozma were in their original versions.
• I reread the copy of the Violet Book in the library again, and there is a specific segment where it talks a lot about dreams and whatnot... and the A.I. Professor did talk a lot about the dreams of the original Professor. So there is a certain possibility that I think has been discussed a lot in the online forums about how the Time Machine might be drawing from dreams, given life by either Discy or the Tera Crystals, instead of actually the future (or the past for Scarlet)? Interesting idea, if that's true...
• I like that Crown Tundra and Isle of Armor both had their very, very standalone stories with Calyrex and Kubfu respectively, but having the 'third game' storyline exploring Discy (the equivalent to Sword/Shield's Eternatus) would definitely make the DLC feel less... less detached?
• I'm not sure how I'm going to handle the post-game. I'm a bit busy going through the climax of Violet so my Scarlet exploration has been very limited. I think I'll just go through most of the Violet storyline before doing Scarlet's version of Area Zero and talking about the version differences after I'm properly done with Violet's postgame, which... not going to lie, is a lot more interesting to me than repeating a lot of Nemona's dialogue.