With Nintendo and The Pokemon Company set to launch remakes of Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl on the Nintendo Switch later this year, many Poke-fans out there have been wondering if a certain feature will make a return. This feature didn't come until Pokemon Platinum released, which added a surreal and creepy area known as the Distortion World.
The Distortion World was where Pokemon Platinum's final climax of the game's narrative took place, where players face off against the leader of Team Galactic and attempt to defeat or capture the Legendary Pokemon Giratina, which is also the star Pokemon of Platinum's DS box art. Many Pokemon fans found this newly added area of the game to be quite unique at the time, as players can defy gravity by surfing up waterfalls and go upside down. Two Pokemon fans even went out of their way to create a school project of the Distortion World but in the Unreal Engine.
Posted to the Pokemon subreddit, blackberrykin shared a video of the project in action. It's a faithful recreation of the bizarre home to Giratina, and the two classmates really did a stand-up job including what makes the area so special. The music is unsettling, the strength puzzle is still there that requires players to push boulders around to progress further, and the waterfalls are there as well.
A friend and I decided to recreate the Distortion World in Unreal Engine for a school final. from pokemon
Many folks in the comments expressed their support for the project, with one Redditor asking "So, when are you going to release this?" Blackberrykin responded to the user and mentioned that it all depends on the "response from the community and/or The Pokemon Company." They are worried if they were to release this, that Nintendo would hit them with a cease and desist, which the Japanese company is known for doing from time to time. They also said that the recreation of the Distortion World will need some optimizations in order to make it "player-friendly."
As to whether fans will be able to one day experience the Distortion World with a more modern art style, there's no telling when it'll happen. Although The Pokemon Company is releasing Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl this year, those games seem to be 1:1 remakes of the original games, and not Platinum, meaning that the Distortion World probably won't make it into the game.
Pokemon Platinum is currently only available physically on the Nintendo DS/3DS. However, the remakes of Diamond and Pearl are launching later this year on the Switch.