The Pokémon franchise has made efforts to be educational, producing spin-off titles and other media dedicated to informing on various subjects. One notable example comes from the core games themselves, which taught many players a new alphabet. However, the practical applications of this were slim for most players, making it hard to say if this design choice was genuinely effective.
The Legendary Titans are a unique group of Pokémon. They began with three members in Generation 3 – Regirock, Regice, and Registeel. However, unlike prior examples like the Legendary Beasts, the Titans went without a so-called trio master until Regigigas was introduced in the next Generation. Later, Pokémon Sword and Shield introduced Regieleki and Regidrago in The Crown Tundra, bringing the total number of Regis to six. Despite the unusual size of this sub-group of Legendaries, the Regis have another unusual association that makes them stand out from the rest – their connection to the Braille alphabet.
Players were not left without help in finding the Regis. A helpful guide to Braille was included in the games’ instruction manuals, something which was later repeated in Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen when Braille puzzles were used once more – this time as part of the post-game quest to enable trading with the Hoenn-based games. Curiously, no such guide was included in the Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire remakes, but by this point the internet was sufficiently developed to make this a non-issue. Players could now look up their own Braille guides or find walkthroughs with ease. In the end, the method used made little difference to most players.
The problem with using Braille was not that it was hard to learn, or even that many would ignore the puzzles and look online for the solutions. Rather, it was the simple fact that for the vast majority of players, learning how to read Braille didn’t matter. Generally, outside any who went on to directly work with Braille, or whose vision worsened later on in life, it was and is simply not needed, leaving fans no better off for solving the educational puzzles. This is something that Nintendo seems to have acknowledged; when the Legendary Regis appeared in The Crown Tundra, simple English was used for the new puzzles.
Although the Legendary Titans’ association with Braille has somewhat persevered, it is perhaps little wonder that the Unown alphabet has supplanted it in most cases where the Pokémon franchise uses readable ciphers of ancient text. Although it should be noted accessibility options do exist for blind players, Pokémon’s teaching of Braille exists in a primarily visual medium, as two-dimensional dots on a screen. The players who encounter Braille like this will naturally have little need to learn it, and so the true educational value of including it at all is unfortunately rather low.
2023-05-28 22:30:03
Original from screenrant.com
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