Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the most perfect of them all?
Like its sister games, Pokémon Desolation is a far darker tale than the usual Pokemon story, and comes with plenty of creep factor of its own.
Reminder that as a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked.
- Like Reborn and Rejuvenation, the game starts off with a terrorist attack, which tells you what kind of experience you're in for.
- Keneph Village. It's clear the figure all the villagers worship is brainwashing them. When you meet said figure, Kuiki, he's holding Scarlett and Ava captive, having declared them witches, and is about to make them fight a Donphan. As in, without Pokémon. Then Shiv shows up, coolly taunting and threatening him as he says Kuiki broke his end of a deal. After you defeat Kuiki in battle, he begs for his life just before Shiv teleports him away - and later in the Weeping Depths, you find a gravestone with his real name on it.
- Your first meeting with Baron is a stand out. You meet him shortly after the first badge, and very shortly after getting properly acquainted with the other evil team of the game, Crescent. At first, it seems like your bog standard encounter with a dickish evil team admin spouting off the usual nihilist rants - sure he's stronger than you, but you have Ava, a very high ranking gym leader, so surely it'll be alright? Well, the area where you're fighting in is a volcano, and Ava, the Grass-type gym leader, loses. Baron then proceeds to fucking kill her by throwing her into lava. Sure, she gets better, but it teaches you right from the get-go how dangerous antagonists in this game are.
- The Weeping Hill. It seems to be your regular 'haunted' area filled with spooky ghosts and apparitions, big deal. Then you start reading the gravestones, and find out that some of the names on them belong to people who are supposed to be still alive...namely, Shiv, Aurora and Nova...
- The twins are both creepy as fuck. Shiv, after becoming champion and discovering there was nothing left for him to do, started toying with people's minds out of sheer boredom. Due to his and his sister's Reality Warper powers, they ended up as puppets of Darkrai - unwillingly in his case, but his true personality is still pretty terrifying. When Nova disappears, he's prepared to blow up an entire island to get back at Team Crescent. As for Aurora, she's a Control Freak who once murdered a team of scientists for laughing at her, and is obsessed with revenge against Nova for betraying Shiv and stealing some of their powers.
- If you don't get enough insight into the Dreamscape by the time you face Darkrai, you get the worst possible ending. You lack the willpower to resist Darkrai, who breaks free into Ayrith and traps you in the Grid. Afterwards, the dialogue between Lilith and Nova strongly implies Darkrai is going to win.
- The fate of Tristan is not just sad, but has incredibly disturbing implications for the rest of the Dreamscape. To sum: Tristan, like the rest of the Dreamscape inhabitants, was never a 'real person', and only figured this out when examining the cave in the southern settlement (a cave which, by the way, drove half a village completely insane). The thing is, Tristan had aspirations and goals like any real person, things he learned were completely pointless for him, and it drove him into serving as Darkrai's puppet out of despair. Is the help you've provided to all the citizens of the Dreamscape via sidequests similarly meaningless? Will they all vanish as well like Tristan did, without ever knowing why? Would learning the awful truth be any better?
- The Dreamscape itself is essentially a hell world in and of itself. It's a gray, dismal forest filled with hostile Pokémon and sparse settlements, and everyone is miserable, starving and afraid of becoming forever lost in the dream. The fact you spend much of the game being tricked into thinking it's the real world, and all that you have as a home to return to, is disquieting.
- Waldenhall's meeting with the mirror entity, dear god. When you explore the ruins beneath Fairbale, you're greeted by the odd voice who's been pestering you throughout the chapter to turn back immediately. Of course, you have to press on...when the voice then shows you what happened during Waldenhall's trip earlier, while controlling him. After reading some creepy diary entries, Waldenhall investigates the back end of the ruins, where some strange ghosts rush at him, and he realizes the ghosts look just like him. The ghosts beckon him to a mirror towards the far end of the room, where the same voice claims that not only will Waldenhall perish, but so will all of humanity, turning his reflection into a grisly blood covered blank eyed version of himself. The entity then takes off its skin, revealing a demonic shadowy figure that taunts the now scared shitless Waldenhall, promising him he will never find salvation and that he will never be anything important.
- And the worst part is, it doesn't end there. When those ghosts touched Waldenhall earlier, and when they touch you on your trip to the ruins, they lodged some Perfection energy inside of both of you that will ensure both of you die a slow, agonizing death at the hands of decaying into nothing.
