Let's Play Pokemon Legends Z-A, Part 12: In Which I Get Distracted By A Museum

So this is going to be a huge detour as I explore the Lumiose museum, and also do a bunch of sidequests! Fair warning, I basically break down the entire museum which is full of easter eggs and continuity nods and I will ramble a lot. I recognize it's probably not the most exciting, but you can jump down after the line to see my reaction to doing all the other quests. 

Anyway, the Lumiose museum is gorgeous, with a lot of love put into all the artwork pieces. It is in stark contrast to the... questionable quality of the overworld buildings. As I enter the museum, a couple tells me that they have lost their twelve Spewpa in the museum, and asks my help to find them all. That's a nice little excuse to romp around the museum and look at every location, surely! Some of the Spewpa are just hiding in some sofas or corners or whatever, but there are a couple that picked rather adorable hiding places. Also, they tell me that Spewpa will unleash a black powder if attacked, meaning that I can't battle them. Not that I can bring out my Pokemon in this location anyway! 

The right-hand side of the first floor of the museum contains paintings, and the first one I wanted to highlight is 'Farmers and Pokemon', where a nearby NPC wanders what the mysterious white Pokemon with a long tail is. The style of the artwork and the fuzziness of the paint makes it a bit hard to tell if it's an existing Pokemon like Mew, or a foreshadowing of something from the upcoming generation!

There are other pretty cool paintings, too. There's a painting of Tsareena and Cacturne; a portrait painting of Diancie... and my favourite, which is a painting of a family of the Gothitelle line, with Mightyena and Poochyena as pups, and a Sinistea, Polteageist and Gossifleur as teacups and vase flowers. The description notes that this is a speculation of how Pokemon would relate to each other in a world without humans. This is a bit more humanized than what we see in Mystery Dungeon! 

Another side of this wing are paintings of the rest of Kalos... all these fancy areas that Legends Z-A doesn't actually let us visit. Glittering Cave! Parfum Palace! Coumarine Town! The fairy town of Laverre City! Which is a huge shame, because it really just makes me want to visit them a lot more. I don't know if these are art pieces that were concept art for XY and/or Z-A, or brand-new artwork commissioned for this game, but it looks cool. Perhaps the DLC will let us visit them? Most extensive are paintings of the Tower of Mastery from various angles, including a replica of the Mega Lucario statue that is in the tower.

There are also several interesting paintings. One is a painting of a king from 3000 years ago, clearly meant to be AZ. But the portrait just looks like a typical fancy European noble, and there's a little asterisk noting that the painting is likely commissioned off of one of AZ's descendants. There's also a funny Shakespeare-looking painting holding Mew -- but specifically, original Mew, the slightly more 'fetus-y' design from the original Japanese games before the international releases and anime gave it a cuter, cat-like design. I love the caption, noting that this particular noble forced the artists to add Mew to the painting to make himself look better than he actually was. 

There's also a samurai-looking knight with his mighty, looming Golurk. Again, I don't know if this is meant to represent someone like AZ (who uses a Golurk), Wikstrom's ancestor (Wikstrom being the knight in Kalos's Elite Four) or a brand new character.  As the paintings here remind me, Parfum Palace does have a statue of a knight and a Golurk in front of it. 

On the second floor is a nice showcase of every single Poke Ball model in 3D, including the ever-so-elusive Apricot balls. There is an artwork of the Pokeball factory... and one of the missing Spewpa is sitting there, pretending to be a Pokeball. Specifically, it's masquerading as the Nest Ball, which would be effective on it. 

More interestingly are a series of power plants images, with a nearby NPC wondering who has such an obsession with power plants. The power plant area in Pokemon XY is famous for being a location that seemed to be foreshadowing for something, but never amounted to anything with no Pokemon Z. Interestingly, in addition to some generic bits of lightning, the power plant is shown to be drawing energies from lava, and even a strange one where tornadoes are rampaging around it. With an entire wall devoted to the power plants, I wonder if this is, again, foreshadowing for anything in the future? 

On the second floor is a hole exhibition about Hisui, including art that is most certainly originally concept or control art for the development for the game. We've got some nods that the Hisui exhibition features some newly-recovered documents, including scribbles from Professor Laventon's Pokedex that is thought to be done by a mysterious 15-year-old assistant. That's me in another game!

A lot of props from Legends Arceus are shown on display. Things from the town like the teapots, equipment of the Suvery Corps, and an entire replica of the General Store, made up to look like a little shrine. And one of the Spewpa is hiding inside there, he's just chilling! He's a sight nicer than Choy! Another Spewpa is sitting on top of a crafting kit. I'm not even sure how it got around the glass panels. Yet another Spewpa is hanging out next to the uniforms of the two protagonist characters from Legends Arceus, pretending to be their partner Pokemon. 

I also do love the display of the Hisuian ancient Poke Balls, which actually makes a nice, stark contrast to the modern-era Poke Balls on the hall next door. Also seen are portraits of the strange ancestors to Archie, Maxie and Alder -- and the caption even notes that there is absolutely nothing concrete known about their identities. Indeed, there was actually never any explanation to these pictures showing up! Was there meant to? 

A wall filled with profile portraits of a lot of people in the Japanese style is noted to be 'ancient Hisuian haircuts'. Hey, apparently Arezu documented every hairstyle she did, and even did so in traditional artwork! A Spewpa, hilariously, sits in front of a bald hairstyle and is noted to be 'modeling the haircut on display'. Oh, Spewpa! Near those paintings are displays showing the kimono and battle armour of Kamado... and another Spewpa is sitting on top of the armour, pretending to be Kamado's head! Silly Spewpas!

Interestingly, with Wikstrom of the Elite Four being a Kalos native, the similarities between Wikstrom and Kamado's armour is highlighted. Even more interestingly, this game doubles down on the armour actually coming from Galar. Wikstrom apparently commented that the armour was probably a gift from ancient Kalosians to ancient Galarians, but 'it is difficult to verify such claims, given relations between Kalos and Galar during the era'. So I think this line kinda-sorta all but confirms that even if Galar wasn't the enemy nation that went to war with Kalos in XY's backstory, the two at least were in a kind of war. 

We've got statues of Dialga and Palkia; and the stone tablet from Spear Pillar showing all the legendary and alpha/guardian Pokemon in Hisui. There's also some artwork showing Jubilife Village. the Ancient Quarry and the restored Spear Pillar, with the retcon/canon-welding explanation that some archaeological findings have found out that the pillars there used to contain statues of local revered Pokemon. 

And ever-so-interesting is Volo's outfit. The description notes that it belongs to ardent worshippers of Arceus, which is fine and good... but the NPC in front of the glass case notes that "the person who wore this outfit donated it to the collection personally", and that the person also looked at the sketches done by Professor Laventon with a nostalgic air. Hmm??? Some time-travel shenanigans might be happening??? 

Again, lots of potential foreshadowing for future aspects of the game. And even if they're not, I was really enthralled with just going down the rabbit hole of the history of this franchise, honestly. It's been quite some time since I've seen a lot of these Kalos and Hisui nods, and being reminded of them really did make me nostalgic. 

The last Spewpa? It's actually hiding on a holographic map of Lumiose City, the same holo-map that so many trailers of Legends Z-A shows off. It's... it's actually pretending to be a kaiju menacing the city, and I actually spent like three whole rounds running around the entirety of the museum looking for this last one. After getting this one last Spewpa, I return to the couple... and turns out that a 13th Spewpa pops out of nowhere, and they decide to give it to me. Okay! I had a lot of fun running around the museum, so it's honestly a really nice showcase of what the rest of the city could've been if they had cared to give us a lot more of these well-crafted locations. 

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In addition to that, I also do a bunch of sidequests. An artist lady in an alley is trying to paint a fountain or something, but brambles keep popping up. This happens like three times, as I and the lady keep turning away from the fountain to have a conversation, then turning back and go 'egad!!!' as we see the brambles sprout back up. 

Turns out that there's a friendly Phantump hiding behind the fountain. The artist lady goes super-excited and decided to use the very confused Phantump as a model for her paintings. I don't know, I feel like this is one of those quests that tries to 'highlight' a Pokemon, but doesn't actually do anything interesting with it. Phantump's role could very easily be substituted with any Grass-type Pokemon, and it wouldn't change anything in the quest. One of the things that I love about Legends Arceus and Legends Z-A is that we get side-quests that highlight more obscure Pokemon and bring up something interesting from their dex entries or appearances. And Phantump is notorious for being one of the Pokemon with the most... interesting dex entries out there! Even if they're not going for the 'dead child' thing, surely there was more that they could do with Phantump? 

A random tourist called Marnole (Normal backwards, get it?) along those lines rants about the superiority of the Normal-type. He challenges me with a frankly pathetic team of Audino, Lopunny and Watchog, before admitting that the only reason he likes Normal-type so much is that he can't memorize the whole type effectiveness chart. He then asks me and tries to get me to agree with him that no one can ever memorize that... you... you're talking to the wrong person, dude. I've got almost three decades' worth of obsession with this franchise. 

Marnole's other dialogue also involves him grumbling that if only the accursed Ghost-type with its immunity against the Normal type doesn't exist, he can just always use Normal-types whenever he wants to. He also lampshades that Normal-types aren't particularly good at winning either, which, hey, what is that disrespect at the end?

A little boy in the Pokemon school wants to trade his Riolu for an Abra. I am not sure if Riolu is available in the wild elsewhere, but it is a rather popular Pokemon and one that can mega evolve. There's a short gag afterwards where the kid really wants to play tag with Abra, but the Abra first just goes to sleep, then just teleports away; which the boy takes as consent to play tag. Okay? Little boy, are you even sure your Abra is still around? 

Two trainers, Venin and Lyse, argue about which status condition is better or worse -- poison or paralysis. In this game? I find Poison to be back to form. With Toxic no longer being available to practically every single Pokemon out there, it's interesting how... annoying paralysis is, particularly since the Pokemon moving is a properly important part of battle now. I think I'm severely overleveled for the Venipede and Electrike that they sent out, but oh well, that's what happens when you don't do some level-scaling. 

Random Notes:

• Looking at my notes, there's also a side-quest about some old guy who fought me to demonstrate the power of berries in the Meditite area in Wild Zone 2. I genuinely have no memory of this side-quest, so it must not have been particularly interesting.
  
• Another side-quest is the scientist on the second floor of the Pokemon Lab, who asks me to buy a Kalosian fossil for him to resurrect... and even gives me the shopping money to go to the Stone Emporium! That's kind of neat. Basically, a free Tyrunt or Amaura, and I can go and spend money to get the other one. In a game with a sidequest system, though, I really wished that there was a bit more involved in activating the fossil-resurrection device. 
• Yet another thing that is unlocked is the restaurants being available for battle. For a price, of course. It's the same functionality that these restaurants had in Pokemon XY, and the sidequest that introduces this to me is a free trial in Restaurant Le Nah. It's just a battle against a trio of trainers, each of them using one of the elemental monkeys and another Pokemon of the same type. Yeah, not the most exciting thing. Paying 3K for three quick battles really isn't interesting either when the whole city always has repeatable battles every night.
• Twelve Spewpa, because it's six for each member of the couple. I just got it now. 
• To people who never played XY, I love the idea that they are reading all these badass lines and descriptions about the Tower of Mastery and how sacred it is, and randomly you've got a line saying "it also requires skill with roller skates to reach the top floor". 
• The Lumiose Museum is basically the Louvre, right? I will resist making the obvious joke, considering recent events. 
• Of course, among all of the items being displayed from Hisui... is the great and utterly indispensable POTATO MOCHI!