Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's Indigo Disk Terarium is Proof…

The long-awaited Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Indigo Disk DLC has been released, allowing fans to dive into all that the Blueberry Academy has to offer. Along with the challenge of the BB League and story connections to The Teal Mask's Kieran and Carmine, the DLC lets players tackle exploration at their own leisure. The Indigo Disk's approach to environmental design is a unique one that works on multiple levels, allowing players to get the most out of its setting.

As an open-world terrarium operating under the power of Terastal energy, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's cleverly named Terarium serves as the primary setting of the Indigo Disk DLC. Operating as a space for those in the Blueberry Academy to study different Pokemon types and climates, the Terarium creates a sense of vast exploration through its differing topography. With four biomes to explore, the Indigo Disk DLC makes the most out of its environmental design to not only accommodate its roster of returning Pokemon, but also maintain a sense of discovery within the confines of its dome.

How Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's Indigo Disk Terarium Makes For a Compelling Setting

Giving the Past Pokemon Roster a Home

One of the main design issues that the Scarlet and Violet DLC had to face was the question of returning Pokemon. Given that the base game's Pokedex was incomplete, the rosters of the two-part DLC had to factor in several different Pokemon types and regional variants from previous generations. Kitakami was able to utilize its Japanese inspirations to tackle a lot of earlier Pokedex entries, with some speculating that the Teal Mask location was set in Johto given its plethora of Gen 2 Pokemon. The Indigo Disk's Terarium, on the other hand, had to consider other missing Pokemon that didn't fit as neatly into one setting.

The decision to design biomes to accommodate this ended up being a clever way to tackle this issue -- one that, ironically, lets its Pokemon feel organic to the environment despite being an artificial setting. Considering this, the use of "real-world" terrain wouldn't have been able to deliver the same results without being overly jarring, especially when factoring in the scale of the DLC's map. The Indigo Disk's open world isn't quite the same size as an entire region like Paldea, so having a smaller map with a bunch of discordant Pokemon types and climates would have run the risk of feeling irrational had it not been for this intentional separation of biomes.

The Scale of The Indigo Disk's Terarium

This setting design is what allows Alolan variants to exist alongside the grazing Pokemon of the Savanna, letting regional differences shine despite being technically set in one environment. Similarly, because the map is separated into four distinct climates, exploring the Terarium winds up feeling more varied and purposeful to experience. One of the chief complaints about the Paldea region was that some of its terrain felt quite empty; while there was a lot of land to explore, there wasn't as much discovery in that exploration. The Terarium skirts this issue by keeping its map more contained, while still adding visual interest in its topography and Pokemon variation to help incentivize the player's travels.

Something as simple as the tropical foliage of the Coastal Biome winds up adding a lot to its visual interest, and how the topography changes between areas, like different land elevations and bodies of water, for example, gives the illusion that the Indigo Disk's map is as vast as Paldea itself. Having the NPCs of the Blueberry Academy be seen around each biome also helps bring a sense of liveliness to the setting that makes contextual sense of its environment; while NPCs standing idly around Paldea waiting for the player to challenge them felt a bit odd, its use here in the Indigo Disk DLC feels more fitting given the Terarium's purpose as a space for studying. For these reasons, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's Indigo Disk Terarium makes for a compelling setting that works well for its exploration.

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