Just a little thing you forgot to point out, but both Dobbs and Yorke state that Nelle is related to a famous botanist. Who is obviously Brittany, and Yorke states that Dobbs had a partner on his missions he called ducky, likely Charlie, as Charlie seems to have a liking for ducks.
@davidmandel8960 he is, if u talk to nelle she says he's the older brother of the fifteen siblings, and his thirteenth younger brother is really good with engineering, and who is prob alph
One other thing to mention is when you start the quest to rescue the Koppaites, someone on the Rescue Crew mentions that Koppai is experiencing over population and is *soon* to start experiencing food shortage issues, implying that the events of Pikmin 3 haven’t happened in this canon yet. Would like confirmation on that
I'd also like to add that in louies last voyage log he mentions the golden pikpik carrots as if he's never had them before. So this game would technically take place before 2 but after 1? If I remember correctly doesn't he eat all the golden pikpik carrots in either 1 or 2? Pls correct meh if I'm wrong.
@@2000austinkennedyIk what u talking about, the golden pik pik carrots what was said to be lost that caused them to go in debt, but in one of Pikmin 2 endings reveal that Loui actually just ate them, and I also wanna add that in Olimar notes he says he had a nightmare about his work going into debt or something, but I remember seeing his boss as the image worried
@@2000austinkennedyfor Olimar nightmare it’s note #66 that states “Last night, I dreamt that one of my subordinates made a terrible mistake that put the company in a huge amount of debt. Too big for Hocotate Freight to pay back quickly... This is why I never take on debt. Anyway, when I woke up, I burst into a fit of laughter!”
A few things I noticed was although Olimar has a dream about Pikmin 2, Louie has a log foreshadowing the events of Pikmin 2. He talks about how much he loves Golden Pikpik Carrots and is waiting for his boss to give him the right job. In Olimar's notes for the Pikmin 3 menu music box, he says he feels like it's warning him of future disasters
Which heavily implies (among many other hints) that this game is a soft retelling of Pikmin 1 with a continuing story leading on to Pikmin 2 and Pikmin 3 still happening chronologically after the events of Pikmin 4.
@@altra1266 Yes, but I was referring to Pikmin 4's Louie entry where he says he's waiting for the right chance. He did not simply eat the carrots because he felt hungry, he had planned to take advantage of a shipment at some point. In my opinion it makes Louie worse because it was premeditated rather than just him being an idiot glutton.
My personal headcanon has just been that pikmin 4 takes place after 1 and 2, but before 3. The evidence is there to show that the events of pikmin 3 haven't happened. Especially with Olimar's log for the mechanical harp (Memory Song), and the talks about how koppai is on the brink of going through what it goes through in pikmin 3. It's a pretty bizarre thing... I don't know if it's just plotholes, but there seems to be evidence for a whole heap of scenarios.
If you look at Louie's voyage log, he states that his favorite food is rare but hard to come by and that he needs to wait for the "right delivery job". This is what caused the debt in pikmin 2, so i think 4 takes place between 1 & 2 or a alternate timeline
@@YoshiYT_GamingBut then to make things even more confusing Olimar knows who Louie is in 4, but the intro cutscene in 2 is his first time meeting him. I think Nintendo deliberately made this game paradoxical and absolutely no sense chronologically no matter where you try to put it
One of the card treasures (Talisman of Life) has an Olimar note in which he implies he has 'miraculously survived such dangerous situations' before, which feels like it is directly referencing his crashes in Pikmin 1 & 3.
I think that it is a separate time-line where Olimar did not go to Pnf-404 until much later. This would explain why Olimar knows Louie. Since Olimar was not stranded he probably took the golden pik pik carrot delivery in this time-line which is why the company is not in debt yet.
@@davidgeorge1943I had got the feel that Louie was known to Olimar... Louie just hadn't been on a solo shipment yet. Like he was still in training and ultimately Louie took the shipment that would have been entrusted to Olimar with falls into Louie's plan to wait until the right job came up. Pikmin 4 does seem to hint that the events of 2 might have not happened, but also maybe not yet. But considering Louie is still planning to take advantage of the potential situation... the bankruptcy seems inevitable.
In Pikmin 2 you get a email from the President saying that Louie is being working in the company for 3 months. When the president is talking about Louie first job in the beginning of Pikmin 2 he’s actually talking about Louie first delivery job.
While one part of me doesn't mind the soft reboot, another part of me is upset they may be retconning the first three games. I absolutely love the first three games, and especially the mysterious feeling they had about them. Pikmin 4 is awesome but it's much more jovial-feeling overall than the first three games, and I hope they just don't abandon the mystery aspect that made the first three special. ❤
It's in a weird spot. Obviously the game makes it look like it's forgetting the past 3 existed... but at the same time... Olimar states things like "surviving dangerous situations before", recalling to his past crashes, knows about Louie despite Pikmin 2 he never knew who Louie was, and the fact Olimar brings up BULBMIN despite the fact he wouldn't have ever know what Bulbmin were at the time. He even brings up some past points of Pikmin 3, even though he also says that he "feels like a music box (that was playing Pikmin 3's theme) is foreshadowing a disastrous event."
@@rayplaysgamesrpg7233 Yeah. There's so much conflicting information! It's crazy. I've gone back and forth on my thoughts with it, but eventually I came to the conclusion that the only possible way any of it makes sense is if its a soft reboot "of sorts". Like, it definitely soft rebooted, but not without a lot of recalls and references back to the older titles (which doesn't necessarily mean those things happened, it could just be Nintendo using a "I remember this in another life" trope or something similar).
It’s probably not a major plot element but PNF-404 does have canonical time paradoxes in that time slows down underground. The timeline being messed up might have something to with the mysterious force that makes all of the space ships crash land.
If it is a retelling, how did olimar document EVERY pikmin and the cave creatures? Other than glow pikmin, olimar has everything documented, even the ice pikmin were documented, but in his side game, he only has red, yellow, and blue available to him.
it was his retelling of his story not the full one since he got leafified and plus a month has pased ever since he sent that sos so things could have changed.
@@michaelcasiano9497 how and why would he document anything after his ship crashed because chances are that his tablet would still be on the ship if it didn't break
I think Olimar just lost his memory of 1 and 2 after turning into a Leafling, and Shipwreck Tale is unreliabily narrated. And 4 takes place between 2 and 3. Also Louie has been said to be working at Hocotate Freight for three months before the events of Pikmin 2. Its not a reboot imo, just vague to be inviting to new players. Olimar also mentions stuff from Pikmin 2, in his notes for the Ancient Statue Head or in a piece of dialog where he was about to mention the space bunny incident.
5:55 The Leaflings’ ID badges refer to the home planet as “PNF-404”. Olimar doesn’t say that because he is used to “the planet”. Koppai is the planet that gave it the name, not Hocotate. Also, maybe Yorke and his crew went to the planet knowing that the Pikmin 3 protagonists were successful and wanted to help out the planet. In Pikmin 3 Deluxe, Olimar went back to PNF-404 to buy back his ship. Maybe when he got it back he got hit by another meteor because there are a lot of space rocks. Think about how small his ship is compared to earth. Those are just small rocks, there has to be more.
Didn’t think anything could top Totk for goty but personally I think Pikmin 4 is my goty so far. Loved Pikmin 3 but this addressed a lot of the complaints of three, notably its short length and lack of environment variety. I like how the game incentivizes riding oatchi at times but not constantly because there are plenty of disadvantages to riding him everywhere especially when you increase his strength to at least 20 Pikmin or so and then he becomes crucial for transporting stuff, and then when you improve his ability to be controlled independently and round up Pikmin for you while you’re away from base. It really lets you play it like Pikmin 1-3 much of the time if you want to and you actually get some pretty big advantages for multi tasking/dandori if you do so. I like how after the credits finish the game really is just halfway through and a lot of the best content is still to come, in Pikmin 3 the additional content largely just reused existing environments, assets and enemies.
I’m Pikmin 4 it’s mentioned that the Kopai population is growing and if they continue at the rate they’re currently going at then they will experience a food crisis. This means that, if Pikmin 4 is supposed to take place in the original timeline then it would be before 3. Also, I don’t remember what entry exactly, but I think one of Louie’s notes in the Piklopedia mentions that he loves golden pikpik carrots and is waiting for the company to assign him “the right delivery job” so that he can eat some. As if he hasn’t already done that (or maybe this is something he continually does and the president hasn’t noticed).
There's also an Olimar Journal where he describes himself having a dream where Louie ate all the carrots and bankrupted the company and he's glad nothing like that could ever happen. In that sense it would have to be before 2 but doesn't make sense with the timeline since Louie is familiar with Pikmin in 4 already. If it isn't a complete reboot they are just kinda throwing continuity out the window, either way I don't really love the direction they went with the lore in this entry. Totally invalidates the past 3 games.
@@colepuryear2271 keep in mind that Louie was sent to the planet sometime during Olimar's shipwreck meaning he had a whole month to get familiar with the pikmin
@@colepuryear2271The log makes it pretty clear that Olimar is referring to the idea that Louie ate the golden pikpik carrots being preposterous, because he has no idea that it actually happened. Not the concept of debt. When he says "this is why I never take on debt", he doesn't say "I've never taken on debt ever". It's pretty clear he means "willingly", because every time he takes on company debt, he does it because he was commanded to, and not because he wants to. Plus, *he's recounting a dream*, of course the details are going to be vague.
There was actually a interview and in it they asked about pikmin 1-3 and how it fit into the plot and he said”Well I will leave that to the imagination of the players” or something like that
I’ve commented this elsewhere, but here it is again: It’s not a reboot. It’s an alternate timeline/story- a “what if Olimar didn’t make it home” scenario. Ignoring a few details that’d would have to be changed, Pikmin 2 and 3 could very well be canon in this timeline as well. Pikmin 2 AND 3 are both hinted at in the game through various dialogues insinuating that they are set to happen. So you could have Pikmin 1, 2, 3, or Alt Pikmin 1, 4, 2, 3.
They even retcon olimars favorite color. He said it was blue in Pikmin 2 treasure log for the blue rob block. Now he said it's red when talking about the red paint and said it again for the blue paint.
What I've gathered from my almost 50 hours of playtime in the game (good god) was that the game is a sort of retelling of the first two games and a prequal to Pikmin 3. You can obviously see how it's a retelling of the first game, Olimar finds the planet, gets the ship parts, falls back to the planet with Moss. You can see how it's a retelling of Pikmin 1. There is also the voyage logs that Olimar wrote that references Pikmin 2, stating that the game is a nightmare that Olimar had while he was still on the planet (voyage log #66 Bad Dreams). As for Pikmin 3 being a sequel to this game, after they find out about their being koppaites on the planet, one of the characters says something along the lines of "The Koppaites are losing more and more food resources and a famine could start soon." (Paraphrasing of course because I don't fully remember all of it). This is obviously referencing Pikmin 3, this evidence could also be backed up by what you brought up, that they don't call the planet pnf-404. even though it says it in the ID's of the leaflings, that could just be seen as the computer not knowing the planet, since pnf-404 is a heavy nod to the page not found 404 error, but instead being planet not found 404. the computer could have just filled it in as that, and then after the events of Pikmin 4 they decided to officially name the planet pnf-404. Although the Pikmin 3 evidence is much less conclusive than the others I must say, but this feels like the most reasonable conclusion I could come up with. So from all that pieced together, the Pikmin series starts with Olimars Shipwreck tale, all of Pikmin 2 takes place in one of Olimars dreams, then after Olimar becomes a leafling the events of Pikmin 4 take place, then after that the Koppaites go through their famine and the events of Pikmin 3 happen.
One of Louis logs mentions that he is waiting for the perfect shipment to come along so he can eat all the golden carrots he wants. I think the events of pikmin 2 & 3 could happen but differently from how they actually happen since some things don’t line up.
But you're missing other logs and dialogues where Olimar says things that implies he's already been through the events of Pikmin 1 and 2 (and possibly Hey Pikmin although I'm fine throwing that trash in the bin)
@@mjc0961 not really, he talks about how he's dealt with danger before but that doesnt mean he was talking about dealing with pikmin he could just be referencing the events during his shipwreck tale
Interestingly enough, in Olimar and Louie's notes, there is evidence that it may take place BEFORE Pikmin 2. Olimar has a note titled "Bad Dreams" where he says that he had a dream where his coworker made a terrible mistake that put the company in debt. And in Louie's notes, there's one titled "Golden Pikpik Carrots" where Louie talks about his favorite food being Golden Pikpik Carrots, and that they're super rare. Then straight up says "If I did find some, I'd devour them all to my heart's content. I'm just waiting for the right delivery job." So either those are just references to Pikmin 2, and Louie's basically saying "I'll freaking do it again", or the events of the second game haven't happened yet.
I am surprised seeing no mention of olimars journal clearly showing the events of pikmin 1 and 2 as nightmares aswell as in louies journal him talking about possibly getting the job to transport the golden pik pik carrots
My head canon is that pikmin 4 happened after 1 and 2 and the crash landing gave olimar a concussion, making him forget pikmin but still remember Louie and the events of pikmin 2, with the pikmin 3 protagonists being absent because they aren’t apart of the space crew yet.
I came to the realization today that PNF-404, could stand for Planet Not Found. As of Pikmin 3, only 6 people have actually been on the planet. It would make sense no wide spread study has been conducted on the planet, leading to limited knowledge of its existence, thus not being recorded or named in a database.
Frankly, I think this is almost certainly a translation issue. I've not seen a single person do a deep dive into the Japanese version, and I almost guarantee it uses ambiguous language that the localization team decided needed to be more concrete.
considering the heap of evidence, no its not a translation issue. 1) Olimar acts like this is first time being here and like this is the first time hes discovered pikmin 2) Olimar states in one of logs that he has a nightmare about the events that would cause Pikmin 2, meaning they did not or have not happened yet; the images accompanying it support this so its not a translation error there 3) Similarly, Louie wishes how he could get his hands on Golden Pikpik carrots and specifically schemes in his head to try and take a job with them, meaning he has not done the events that cause pikmin 2; the image supports this 4) The events that cause Pikmin 3 are beginning to happen, as they mention a few times that Koppai is having a population boom, and they will soon run out of food. 5) If Olimar experienced Pikmin 3, he would know about the pikmin 3 captains, but he doesnt, and the three Koppaites are known to be related to the Pikmin 3 captains 6) One of the melody boxes plays a Pikmin 3 song, and Olimar says that it sounds like a warning of "future" events to him Translation is not an issue. Too many things add up even if you take the dialogue with a grain of salt.
@@thekirbycrafter7229 Your evidence is literally all from the English translation, which doesn't prove anything. We've seen direct evidence in past Nintendo Treehouse translated games of entire plots and subplots being butchered in English. I have no reason to assume Pikmin 4 is any different.
@@AfroRyan bitch the images prove my point. Regardless, I can also read Japanese and Spanish, and the very few videos I find that showcase them also say similar things.
@@thekirbycrafter7229 "Olimar acts like this is first time being here and like this is the first time hes discovered pikmin" No he doesn't. Various dialog and treasure logs have Olimar talking about how he's survived dangerous situations like the one he's in now before. That cannot be possible if this game is rebooting Pikmin 1, Pikmin 2 was a dream, and Pikmin 3 hasn't happened yet. Pikmin 4 frequently contradicts itself which I agree points to a possible translation issue. I too want to see a deep dive into the original Japanese version.
A big detail that’s easy to miss that implies the game takes place before pikmin 2 and 3 is that in the treasure catalogue for the mechanical harp (memory song) which plays the pikmin 3 theme Olimar says that the song despite its calming tones makes his palms sweat and sends shivers down his spine and that it’s as if it’s sending him a warning about unexpected troubles in the future, clearly indicating pikmin 3 hasn’t happened, but will happen. In my mind they’re just gonna slot pikmin 4 in between 1 and 2 and retcon the inconsistencies
or i think pikmin 4 takes place in an alternate timeline of pikmin 1 where Olimar meets Louie earlier, and he doesnt land in the impact site and meets moss and discovers other types of pikmin etc. He also sends an sos signal which he doesnt do in the original pikmin 1 if i remember
The mechanical harp (*MEMORY*) is a meta joke about Olimar getting kidnapped right after the game starts, which is naturally after the title screen where you hear the music in-game (plus the pikmin sing the music too which was stated by olimar). Nothing about the game not happening after 4
I completely get your point that Olimar doesn't know the planet (as he calls it 'unknown' in the intro), but the rescue crew seems to know the planet at least by it's name - or the ID reader does, since it says that every leaflings homeplanet seems to be PNF-404. But there is no 'person' calling the planet PNF-404, so far as i can recall.
PNF-404 also means “page not found, error 404” which implies alongside a bunch of treasure dialogue and the Shepard family history, that the people we meet are all descended from humans, and that the data for earth was wiped. PNF-404 is also the only planet in the series without a true name
Well the reason why the ID reader seems to know... is because the ID reader actually does NOT. PNF-404 is a term that is actually used by NASA.. minus the 404. Meaning Planet Not Found. The 404 then is just of course the error page number. The fact this is only used when the ID reader card receives an Error means that really the ID card does not know the planet and is just saying PNF-404 as a way of saying "cannot identify planet". So really it wouldn't be until Koppai perform their big SPERO search and find this planet again that they would name it PNF-404.... working name.
Olimar doesn’t find the Interstellar Radio first, it is the 24th part he finds. Edit: 25th if you count the part he found in the game’s opening cutscene.
I think Olimar knowing who Louie is does not throw a wrench into any theories. Olimar likely was there when Louie was hired because Hocatate Freight is a small business who only had one employee, Olimar, until Louie came along. What I am saying is that Olimar was likely there when Louie was selected to be hired.
Actually, there it was an interview, look up "Ask the Developer Vol. 10, Pikmin 4-Part 2"! (can't link because CZcams eats links) It talks a bit about the story being somewhat "inviting" to new players (it does keep it kinda vague however) and gameplay being kinda the same too. There's also a lot of super interesting stuff about the franchise as a whole on it, so it's worth checking out.
I always thought that Louie was already Olimar's coworker before Pikmin 2 but the mission he screwed up was his first solo mission, before that he likely either worked missions alongside Olimar or did stuff like loading up the cargo for the ships, etc.
I like to think of this "soft reset of the timeline" idea as just more of an alternate timeline, similar to how the legend of zelda timeline splits apart. Not really altering the existing plot, but just making 2 different paths through the story.
Fun fact: there is a peice of flavor text that states along the lines of "due to kopai's booming population they may run out of food" making me think that the timeline will look something like 1,4,2,3
I just assumed the timeline is now 1, 4, 2, 3 as 1 has obviously happened but with some new differences, and 2 and 3 being implied to be future events. With Louie waiting for a golden pikpik carrot delivery to eat and the Koppaites not _yet_ being in a food crisis, that just makes the most sense to me. When it comes to lore in Pikmin and how it is implied to be a post apocalyptic earth, my favourite new theory that came out of this game is *SPOILERS* how the Ancient Shirehound is implied to be a human's pet dog that is still alive and well.
one thing to note is that one of the discussions the crew can have at night after saving Olimar and seeing that Koppaites' are on the plan is the crew talking about how the Koppaites planet recently went through a population boom and it could lead to a food shortage indicating that this game happens before 3 regardless of if it comes after 2 or an alternate timeline to 1 and 2 so even if this retcons 1 and 2, but 3 could still be a sequel to 4
The new koppains do have connections to the protagonists of Pikmin 3: Yorke is Alph's older brother, Dobbs is Charlie's friend/former companion and Nelle is most lilkely Brittany's cousin.
While I think it’s probably just a reboot/retelling of the first game, if you really wanted to fit it into the timeline, putting it between Pikmin 2 and 3 makes the most sense. Multiple people talk about overpopulation and the possibility of a food shortage on Koppai and Olimar having the Dolphin again may mean the company was able to buy it back with all the treasure (and then have to sell it off again before 3).
not exactly, Olimar talks about in his logs how its his first time being on the planet and meeting pikmin etc meaning it has to be a reboot/alternate timeline, Louie also talks about how he would like to try a golden pikpik carrot meaning the events of 2 never happened or hasnt happened yet
Nelle is a relative of Brittany, but it is never fully stated what's their familial relationship. Don Bergman is a colleague of Charlie, because Don references a colleague nicknamed Ducky because of their fondness for a rubber ducky. I think Pikmin 4 is a prequel to 3. Koppai's food shortage seems like it's going to become a problem soon. It would make sense that Pikmin 4's a prequel, because Olimar called PNF-404 simply "the planet", because it was the Koppaites who gave PNF-404 its name haven't met at the time of the naming. So when Olimar went back in the extra story to get back the Hocatate Freight Ship, he referred to it as PNF-404 now that it received an official name after the Koppaites rescue.
there is more reasons to back up the theory of this being a reboot of pikmin 1. The water wraith in the engulfed castle, and I saw some dialogue about news of koppai, and how it that planet is gaining a very high population there, which can lead to starvation.
That doesn't make the Pikmin 1 reboot theory impossible considering that it wuld be a retelling of it and can lead to similar things happpening just in slightly different ways
that's actually the reason why the pikmin 3 cast goes to pnf-404, and since they outright stated that they haven't hit starvation quite yet, that means that this takes place BEFORE pikmin 3, meaning this has to be a reboot.
In my opinion. This is a timeline reset and Pikmin 3 happens the same way in both timelines. People are likely to play Pikmin 3 deluxe after playing Pikmin 4, so they probably added some dialogue to make Pikmin 3 work as a sequel to Pikmin 4 narratively.
@@Jam-bp6lp he forgot what olimar looked like because he just didn't care, not because he'd never met him before. also, in the first timeline, it's kind of implied that louie is new, and he'd never met olimar before, so that's more proof that this is a timeline reset, if it wasn't already obvious.
4:17 in Olimar's story that unlocks after you save him, the radar *is* in the last area which you can only reach after collecting all ship parts in preceding levels
In Olimars voyage log #52 he hints to having some sort of memories of the water wraith from Pikmin 2, recalling that his blue Pikmin couldn't do anything against it
That’s the one confusing part. Olimar apparently went through all the caves in Pikmim 4, including the Engulfed Castle with the Water Wraith, but in his Shipwreck tale they all get skipped. We see him write he last few logs before he became a leafling, so that can’t explain anything either. Probably just an oversight.
When you rescue louie, you can see his notes on your koppad and there is an entry where he says "I wanna try some golden pikpik carrotts.....I just have to wait for the right delivery" Also olimar has an entry where he says he had a dream about hocotate freight going into debt because of a bad delivery. Olimar then says "yeah like thats ever gonna happen" Also the reason the koppites are in PNF-404 is so they can find treasure to sell so they can buy food from other planets due to food shortage. So pikmin 3 dosent happen......Yet
I don’t think it could possibly be a Pikmin 3 prequel because PNF-404 simply hasn’t been discovered by the Koppaites by that point. In the opening cutscene of 3 they send out SPEROs in search for food and one of them discovers PNF-404. How could Yorke, Nelle and Donny be on the planet if it hadn’t been discovered yet?
@@mrpigg5446 well.... if they are gunna retcon olimar knowing louie before pikmin 2 then i can believe that they were scouting for treasure before sending the drones, or better yet they DID send the drones to scout just for a different purpose
Also in one of the evening conversations someone (i dont remember who, but i think collin) asks if anyone knows what kind of place Koppai is, the scientist (i at least think it was the scientist) says, that Koppai is flourishing right now, but has insane population-growth, so they will probably face a famine soon, which once more implies this game taking place before Pikmin 3
A note in the treasure catalog for the music box that plays Pikmin 3’s opening theme has Olimar saying it makes him fearful of future events (or something along those lines) possibly suggesting this game takes place before Pikmin 3?
I don’t think this is a reset of the timeline, but rather a telling of an alternate story of what would happen if the series continued from the bad ending from Pikmin 1, since the 3 koppaites look similar to Alph, Brittany, and Charlie. And Olimar mentions how he wanted to return back to his family, which is another big piece of evidence of Pikmin 4 happening during the bad end of Pikmin 1
Some of the late game conversations that the Rescue Corps members have during the end of day results also refer to Koppai. Yonny at one point says "I hear Koppai is experiencing a population explosion. If this keeps up, they might have to deal with a food crisis in the near future."
I hope we see more of charlie, alph and brittany they were honestly really refreshing after only hearing about hocotate i hope pikmin 5 has something to do with them im kinda disappointed with nintendo’s decision of not including them
One (mostly unrelated) thing about Pikmin 4 lore is that in Olimar's piklopedia entry for the Water Wraith, he talks as though _several_ different people have come across it, and moreover that it (and many other species on PNF-404, for that matter) are known and studied by a wider community of scholars. This seems to suggest that research teams have been dispatched to PNF-404 and have come back safely prior to Pikmin 4. But personally, I can't for the life of me figure out how this fits in to the series chronologically, since most folks (including several scholars) only found out about the planet thanks to Olimar's distress signal.
It seems from the logs that Olimar is older with adult children. Either that or he's dreading his daughter being a rebellious teen and eventually get married very early in their development. Lmao.
Another thing you missed is the music box treasures, the third one plays a song from pikmin 3 and olimar says something about it giving him a feeling of the future, seeming to confirm this takes place between pikmin 2 and 3
theres also the big problems like: Olimar seemingly not knowing of pikmin when he crashed onto the planet Him not knowing the water wraith Him dreaming of the events of 2 and describing it in a way that implies its not happened Louie still planning on eating golden pikpik carrots the issue that raises of Koppai not knowing of PNF-404 during the crisis (did the treasure crew just Not tell them that they found a stable food source on the planet people went to after olimar sent his distress signal??)
The planet is called PNF-404 in Pikmin, when ever you save a leafied castaway their ID will regiter their planet as "PNF-404" instead of their original home planet.
In Louie's expedition logs that you get once you start chasing louie he mentions that he really likes golden pikpik carrots and is just waiting for the perfect job over at hococatate freight, so pikmin 2 can still happen.
Actually, PNF 404 is mentioned in the game, when you save one of the leafy castaways, their ID will say their home planet is PNF 404, so that is worth mentioning.
Sort of? "PNF 404" itself means "Error 404- page not found" Technically it's an error message due to the bizarre biological data not matching up with any known planets. The characters in universe simply call the planet that sometimes error abbreviation since there's no preexisting information on it
@@OriginalGameteer i'd still say it feels like an intentional call-back to the in-universe name of the planet, it could just serve as a clever double-meaning.
My headcannon would be that Olimar managed to escape from PNF-404 with a treasure he wanted to give to his son like in Pikmin 2, then when he arrived at Hocotate and somehow the president managed to discover the value of the treasures at PNF-404 and would send Olimar back to PNF-404 without Louie and with the Dolphin which would end up being partially destroyed due to the typical atmospherical catastrophe that happens in all Pikmin games, after that would come the Pikmin 4 intro and the Pikmin 4 game which would replace Pikmin 2 in the timeline while at the same time happening before Pikmin 3
I think Pikmin 4 happens between Pikmin 2 and 3, there's a treasure that plays the Pikmin 3 theme and Olimar says that it could be a sign of a bad thing that could happen in the future Also, I don't remember when exactly, but some characters talk about how Koppai is beggining to have a food crisis
I'd like to point out you didn't bring up Adventure login I think it's 86 where Olimar says he had a dream that he had to collect treasure for a debt accrued by his company which confirmed that Pikmin 2 was just a dream
It's definitely a re-imagining of Pikmin 1, a "what if Olimar actually used the interstellar radio instead of saying it was too late" retelling. As a small correction, Olimar gets the radio late in both Pikmin 1 & 4; the prologue of Pikmin 4 starts in the final area of Olimar's Shipwreck Tale... re: Louie's relationship with Olimar, I always read the context of "Louie's first mission" not as "Louie is new", but as "Olimar was on vacation so we had no choice but to send Louie". Especially given Olimar's quips about him in Pikmin 4, just seems like he wasn't all that competent / trusted. The only thing that doesn't fit smoothly into the timeline is Louie's presence on PNF-404 in Pikmin 4, as obviously Pikmin 2 was Louie's first time seeing a Pikmin, which does not line up with this timeline. Pikmin 3 occurs later in the timeline, as the Koppaites in Pikmin 4 state there's an imminent - but not current - food shortage situation on Koppai. Ironically they came to PNF-404 for treasures to sell to help the crisis, and not fruit which they would later come back for, but this choice allows Pikmin 3 to still work within the same timeline. (If they hadn't realized PNF-404 had edible fruit yet). Again the only thing that doesn't really add up is how the freak does Louie still have a job with the company, but the president did seem very out of touch lol.
I'm pretty confident they reset the timeline just because they had a good idea for it (expanding on the concept of the Pikmin 1 bad ending with leaflings, and the cure system). I like it.
4:17 No, he recovers his interstellar radio as soon as he reaches the Hero's Hideaway, as seen in Olimar's side story thing when talking to Olimar in Pikmin 4. I don't even know what error you could have made to get to that conclusion, lmao
Not sure if anybody else mentioned it, but you can look through a bunch of logs written by rescue corp officers and other captains, and in there you can find one written by olimar where he talks about a bad dream he had where his company was going into unsavable debt. It def made it imply Pikmin 2 was a dream? But at the same time it already happened twice so he could have just dreamed about it happening again.
interesting tidbit of info, according to the cutting room floor the three koppaites, yorke nelle and don, have their model filenames as alph brittany and charlie. makes me wonder if they were initially intended to be the game at first but then the devs changed their mind last second.
I really dislike how Nintendo usually throws away the current canon of one of their franchises to avoid continuing it. It's as if they couldn't maintain a coherent story followed for more than 2 games, there aren't many games to justify such a decision, I was really surprised to see Olimar's reactions when discovering the pikmin, it doesn't make sense.
It’s one of those situations where if you don’t look at it closely, you’ll get it wrong cause there’s one voyage log where Sheppard says that sense they don’t pay her father because he’s too generous to not accept they got into dept
I thought Olimar mentions something about brittney saying how something reminded of him of her, I can’t remember whether it was cave notes or a pikmin log but I do remember him saying something like “I should go see them again”
in my opinion, pikmin 4 takes place in an alternate timeline of pikmin 1 where olimar didnt land at the impact site and instead met moss, meets Louie much earlier than in pikmin 2 and has worked with him before the events of pikmin 4, got all his ship parts, and sent out an sos before failing to leave the planet due to his life support system malfunctioning
and the pnf 404 thing most likely just means planet not found or page not found indicating that there is not yet any data for the planet, the 404 is also probably just a reference to error 404
in one of the chat logs at the end of the day between Captain Shepherd and the kopais shows that their food shortage hasn’t happened yet as they mentioned that they’re starting to run low at their planet but it hasn’t happened yet so if it is connected it’s pre-pikmin three
One major thing to mention is Olimar and Louie's logs, Olimar saying he had a nightmare about the company going into debt like the events of Pikmin 2 were just a dream, or Louie who talks about his administration for Gold PikPik carrots and "waiting for the right job to eat a whole shipment"
It seems like they are hinting at the events of the second games as if they didn’t happen, but are GOING to, such as Olimar’s debt dream and Louie saying he loves golden pikpik carrots, and is “waiting on the right delivery job.” Maybe Pikmin 5 will be a Pikmin 4esc remake of the 2nd game
Another point to this being another timeline is that Koppai (however you spell it) is still starving. Supposedly Koppai is saved from starvation in Pikmin 3 but I’m pretty sure that it’s mentioned many times that they are starving and overpopulation is a huge issue there. Almost foreshadowing the events of Pikmin 3 (since this game is sort of a retelling of Pikmin 1)
I keep hearing people say how Pikmin 4 is a alternate timeline and a reboot and how it takes place between 2 and 3 making it a interquel. But what I think is those ideas sound absurd and they just don't make sense. When I checked the Pikmin wiki. It said Olimar lost his memory as a leafling. So maybe the reason why Olimar is recounting his experience with the Pikmin and the Onion as if he saw them for the first time was some of his memory was distorted. He also mentioned how the events from Pikmin 2 which is the Debt story was a dream and how a song from a music box makes him think something terrible is going to happen like in Pikmin 3. Maybe after being turned into a leafling, maybe he started to think of those things as dreams. Louie says Olimar's stories were always boring and Olimar hardly got mad at him whenever he made a mistake. Maybe that was referring to Pikmin 2 and 3 when Louie and Olimar were working together. Louie starts to say that he doesn't remember what Olimar looked like, maybe Louie might have short term memory loss like Dory from Nemo, the Disney fish movie. The Koppaites from Pikmin 3 came to PNF 404 to collect treasure and fruits to stop a population crisis. The crisis didn't happen yet, but in pikmin 3. Speros were sent to pnf 404 to look for food. Nobody actually came there until Britany Alph and Charlie went there first. It didn't say other people went there. Only the speros went there first. The food crisis was solved at the end of pikmin 3. Maybe brittany alph and charlie told the three new koppaites who are their brothers and sister to go to that pikmin planet in order to prevent another food and poverty crisis from happening again. Pikmin 4 is more of a indirect sequel and it does bring back so many references and easter eggs from the first three games. Maybe the reason why they sort of reset Olimar's memory is to make the new audience get to know the basics in Pikmin. Yeah the evidence and the text in particular does seem very inconsistent, scattered, and all over the place.
Before going through the final cave, Nelle mentions that she wants to have a little chat to Louie about stealing her team’s food, which is something Louie does in pikmin 3.
I think one thing some people are missing is that the planet IS referred to by PNF-404. Specifically, the glitched Castaway ID tags when they're leaflings. The computer clearly recognizes these lifeforms as from the planet PNF-404, meaning the planet has already been classified as such. I think it's more likely that this game takes some time after 3, but with most characters simply not learning from experience.
I have a theory that the timeline splits from depending on where on PNF-404 olimar lands. Hence why the game feels like a glorified pikmin 2 remaster and a setup for Pikmin 3. Notice how none of those locations were in Pikmin 1 or were referencing any of them at all? That’s because he crash landed at a different spot on PNF-404. One timeline is the usual Pikmin 1-3 and then the other timeline is where Olimar crash lands somewhere else (Olimar’s Shipwreck Tale being a Pikmin 1 experience in Pikmin 4 this is also where this timeline starts), the gameplay being pikmin 2 basically, and then post game is hinting at Kopai (where Alph, Charlie and Brittany) about to be going through a famine and their planet dying because of overpopulation and starvation, which is basically happening in Pikmin 3. I think it’s a timeline split.
In the last log written by Louie, he says that he’s always wanted to try a Golden Pikpik Carrot. He also states that he’s just waiting for the right job for him to finally try some.
If we assume Olimar knew Louie before getting stranded in Pikmin 1, what if this is an alternative time fleshing out what would've happened if Olimar failed to escape PNF404? I speculate maybe Olimar's story is effectively a retelling of Pikmin 1's events.
I did find it kind of weird when first playing how olimar acted like he knew nothing about the pikmin. My theory is that this is the original timeline but instead of taking the same path (the one pikmin 2 and 3 take), it shows what happened after the bad ending in pikmin 1, kind of creating a fork in the timeline
If you think about it: If Olimar hadn’t encountered moss his story would most likely have been the same as in Pikmin 1. Moss causes the events of the timeline to change. So maybe moss is some kind of anomaly? Or alternate timeline?
I think it's honestly just a "Star Wars: Force Awakens" or a "Dark Souls III" thing where it is canonically the 4th installment but practically the same exact events occur. It's referencing all previous games but keeps it more akin to easter eggs than previous events. It's fine for the most part but the one annoying thing I don't like about it is that Im suppose to believe Olimar crash lands on the planet like 4 times or something. Im okay with new characters crash landing like in 3 and 4 but 2 shows that it's perfectly fine to do a Pikmin game without someone's ship crashing.
When rescuing a leafling it says in that they are from pnf-404 in their introduction card, which means that it was already being called that, so pikmin 4 maybe happens after pikmin 3.
Just a note that I didn’t see pointed out in other comments, the interstellar radio is not the first thing Olimar finds. It’s just the first thing he finds in that area. I personally think this is simply the Pikmin 1 bad ending timeline, which is just a different thing!
Basically pikmin 1, 2, and 3 are a timeline and then theres the pikmin 4 timeline where olimar crashes in a different area causing the events of pikmin 4 (he also dreamt about the alternate timeline and they hint that pikmin 3 hasnt happened yet by saying that Koppai will face a food crisis in the near FUTURE
I’m no expert in Pikmin lore, but one thing I remember seeing is in Olimar’s Shiowreck Tale, Olimar doesn’t seem familiar with how Yellow or Blue Pikmin function, suggesting that he’s never seen them before discovering them. So I think that at the very least, that side mode is a retelling of Pikmin 1 or a reboot of the first time Olimar crash-landed.
The intro to pikmin 4 could've been a recount of the first game, while him finding the navigation module could've been at a different time or visit? Would explain the discrepancies somewhat, but not entirely
Just a little thing you forgot to point out, but both Dobbs and Yorke state that Nelle is related to a famous botanist. Who is obviously Brittany, and Yorke states that Dobbs had a partner on his missions he called ducky, likely Charlie, as Charlie seems to have a liking for ducks.
i was about to comment something similar lol
Must have missed that one in post. Good eye! 👍👍
Also, yorke is the grandson of Drake, so he is probably alph's brother pr cousin
@davidmandel8960 he is, if u talk to nelle she says he's the older brother of the fifteen siblings, and his thirteenth younger brother is really good with engineering, and who is prob alph
also, theres a good chance that people from Koppai live far shorter lives than those from Hocotate, considering they're different planets
One other thing to mention is when you start the quest to rescue the Koppaites, someone on the Rescue Crew mentions that Koppai is experiencing over population and is *soon* to start experiencing food shortage issues, implying that the events of Pikmin 3 haven’t happened in this canon yet.
Would like confirmation on that
Once you rescue the koppaites they mention that they're reaching a point that might lead to a food crisis
I can confirm, I came across this dialogue too
I'd also like to add that in louies last voyage log he mentions the golden pikpik carrots as if he's never had them before. So this game would technically take place before 2 but after 1? If I remember correctly doesn't he eat all the golden pikpik carrots in either 1 or 2? Pls correct meh if I'm wrong.
@@2000austinkennedyIk what u talking about, the golden pik pik carrots what was said to be lost that caused them to go in debt, but in one of Pikmin 2 endings reveal that Loui actually just ate them, and I also wanna add that in Olimar notes he says he had a nightmare about his work going into debt or something, but I remember seeing his boss as the image worried
@@2000austinkennedyfor Olimar nightmare it’s note #66 that states “Last night, I dreamt that one of my subordinates made a terrible mistake that put the company in a huge amount of debt. Too big for Hocotate Freight to pay back quickly... This is why I never take on debt. Anyway, when I woke up, I burst into a fit of laughter!”
A few things I noticed was although Olimar has a dream about Pikmin 2, Louie has a log foreshadowing the events of Pikmin 2. He talks about how much he loves Golden Pikpik Carrots and is waiting for his boss to give him the right job.
In Olimar's notes for the Pikmin 3 menu music box, he says he feels like it's warning him of future disasters
Which heavily implies (among many other hints) that this game is a soft retelling of Pikmin 1 with a continuing story leading on to Pikmin 2 and Pikmin 3 still happening chronologically after the events of Pikmin 4.
@@StathioAlso makes Louie even worse by revealing the bankruptcy causing "accident" was premeditated. Louie is the worst coworker.
@@verdantmistral442 Yep but we learn that in pikmin 2 true ending tho
@@altra1266 Yes, but I was referring to Pikmin 4's Louie entry where he says he's waiting for the right chance. He did not simply eat the carrots because he felt hungry, he had planned to take advantage of a shipment at some point. In my opinion it makes Louie worse because it was premeditated rather than just him being an idiot glutton.
@@verdantmistral442 Yeah right he is definitely the bad guy
My personal headcanon has just been that pikmin 4 takes place after 1 and 2, but before 3. The evidence is there to show that the events of pikmin 3 haven't happened. Especially with Olimar's log for the mechanical harp (Memory Song), and the talks about how koppai is on the brink of going through what it goes through in pikmin 3. It's a pretty bizarre thing... I don't know if it's just plotholes, but there seems to be evidence for a whole heap of scenarios.
But Olimar acts as if this is his first time on the planet. I’m his shipwreck tale he talks like he doesn’t know anything about it.
@BobbyJenko but if you read olimars piklopedia descriptions, he knows a whole lot about it and for a long time
If you look at Louie's voyage log, he states that his favorite food is rare but hard to come by and that he needs to wait for the "right delivery job". This is what caused the debt in pikmin 2, so i think 4 takes place between 1 & 2 or a alternate timeline
@@YoshiYT_GamingBut then to make things even more confusing Olimar knows who Louie is in 4, but the intro cutscene in 2 is his first time meeting him. I think Nintendo deliberately made this game paradoxical and absolutely no sense chronologically no matter where you try to put it
@@nowun6043 We have a new Zelda Timeline, boys.
One of the card treasures (Talisman of Life) has an Olimar note in which he implies he has 'miraculously survived such dangerous situations' before, which feels like it is directly referencing his crashes in Pikmin 1 & 3.
also, Olimar's ID mentions that he is frequently unlucky
THANK YOU! Finally someone is able to see that.
finally someone who doesn't stretch the timeline like a spider
He never crashed in 3 tho
@@flamsey You're right, but still a dangerous situation
I think that it is a separate time-line where Olimar did not go to Pnf-404 until much later. This would explain why Olimar knows Louie. Since Olimar was not stranded he probably took the golden pik pik carrot delivery in this time-line which is why the company is not in debt yet.
If I do recall, I believe there's an email where the President states that he hired Louie about three months prior.
@@davidgeorge1943I had got the feel that Louie was known to Olimar... Louie just hadn't been on a solo shipment yet. Like he was still in training and ultimately Louie took the shipment that would have been entrusted to Olimar with falls into Louie's plan to wait until the right job came up.
Pikmin 4 does seem to hint that the events of 2 might have not happened, but also maybe not yet. But considering Louie is still planning to take advantage of the potential situation... the bankruptcy seems inevitable.
Yes, I also believe that pikmin 4 is a different timeline
In Pikmin 2 you get a email from the President saying that Louie is being working in the company for 3 months.
When the president is talking about Louie first job in the beginning of Pikmin 2 he’s actually talking about Louie first delivery job.
While one part of me doesn't mind the soft reboot, another part of me is upset they may be retconning the first three games. I absolutely love the first three games, and especially the mysterious feeling they had about them. Pikmin 4 is awesome but it's much more jovial-feeling overall than the first three games, and I hope they just don't abandon the mystery aspect that made the first three special. ❤
It's in a weird spot. Obviously the game makes it look like it's forgetting the past 3 existed... but at the same time... Olimar states things like "surviving dangerous situations before", recalling to his past crashes, knows about Louie despite Pikmin 2 he never knew who Louie was, and the fact Olimar brings up BULBMIN despite the fact he wouldn't have ever know what Bulbmin were at the time. He even brings up some past points of Pikmin 3, even though he also says that he "feels like a music box (that was playing Pikmin 3's theme) is foreshadowing a disastrous event."
@@rayplaysgamesrpg7233 Yeah. There's so much conflicting information! It's crazy. I've gone back and forth on my thoughts with it, but eventually I came to the conclusion that the only possible way any of it makes sense is if its a soft reboot "of sorts". Like, it definitely soft rebooted, but not without a lot of recalls and references back to the older titles (which doesn't necessarily mean those things happened, it could just be Nintendo using a "I remember this in another life" trope or something similar).
It’s probably not a major plot element but PNF-404 does have canonical time paradoxes in that time slows down underground. The timeline being messed up might have something to with the mysterious force that makes all of the space ships crash land.
Pikmin 1 makes you feel alone and scared and it’s awesome for that.
It seems from some in-game lore, that it might actually be Pikmin two and a half.
If it is a retelling, how did olimar document EVERY pikmin and the cave creatures? Other than glow pikmin, olimar has everything documented, even the ice pikmin were documented, but in his side game, he only has red, yellow, and blue available to him.
That was his shipwreck tale, before he turned back to the planet. He could have encountered everything after going back but before being leaf-ized.
it was his retelling of his story not the full one since he got leafified and plus a month has pased ever since he sent that sos so things could have changed.
@@michaelcasiano9497 his life support fails as soon as he turns back for moss
@@michaelcasiano9497 how and why would he document anything after his ship crashed because chances are that his tablet would still be on the ship if it didn't break
@@Valtieldan so we're just Nintendo's money rats fighting about whether or not a seed is red or yellow but its actually turquoise?
I think Olimar just lost his memory of 1 and 2 after turning into a Leafling, and Shipwreck Tale is unreliabily narrated. And 4 takes place between 2 and 3. Also Louie has been said to be working at Hocotate Freight for three months before the events of Pikmin 2. Its not a reboot imo, just vague to be inviting to new players. Olimar also mentions stuff from Pikmin 2, in his notes for the Ancient Statue Head or in a piece of dialog where he was about to mention the space bunny incident.
5:55 The Leaflings’ ID badges refer to the home planet as “PNF-404”. Olimar doesn’t say that because he is used to “the planet”. Koppai is the planet that gave it the name, not Hocotate.
Also, maybe Yorke and his crew went to the planet knowing that the Pikmin 3 protagonists were successful and wanted to help out the planet.
In Pikmin 3 Deluxe, Olimar went back to PNF-404 to buy back his ship. Maybe when he got it back he got hit by another meteor because there are a lot of space rocks. Think about how small his ship is compared to earth. Those are just small rocks, there has to be more.
The ship is also extremely small, so it makes sense that they would be more prone to crashes after getting hit with space debris
Pikmin deserves so much more, this 4th one was really great! 😄
Didn’t think anything could top Totk for goty but personally I think Pikmin 4 is my goty so far.
Loved Pikmin 3 but this addressed a lot of the complaints of three, notably its short length and lack of environment variety. I like how the game incentivizes riding oatchi at times but not constantly because there are plenty of disadvantages to riding him everywhere especially when you increase his strength to at least 20 Pikmin or so and then he becomes crucial for transporting stuff, and then when you improve his ability to be controlled independently and round up Pikmin for you while you’re away from base. It really lets you play it like Pikmin 1-3 much of the time if you want to and you actually get some pretty big advantages for multi tasking/dandori if you do so. I like how after the credits finish the game really is just halfway through and a lot of the best content is still to come, in Pikmin 3 the additional content largely just reused existing environments, assets and enemies.
I’m Pikmin 4 it’s mentioned that the Kopai population is growing and if they continue at the rate they’re currently going at then they will experience a food crisis. This means that, if Pikmin 4 is supposed to take place in the original timeline then it would be before 3. Also, I don’t remember what entry exactly, but I think one of Louie’s notes in the Piklopedia mentions that he loves golden pikpik carrots and is waiting for the company to assign him “the right delivery job” so that he can eat some. As if he hasn’t already done that (or maybe this is something he continually does and the president hasn’t noticed).
There's also an Olimar Journal where he describes himself having a dream where Louie ate all the carrots and bankrupted the company and he's glad nothing like that could ever happen. In that sense it would have to be before 2 but doesn't make sense with the timeline since Louie is familiar with Pikmin in 4 already. If it isn't a complete reboot they are just kinda throwing continuity out the window, either way I don't really love the direction they went with the lore in this entry. Totally invalidates the past 3 games.
@@colepuryear2271 keep in mind that Louie was sent to the planet sometime during Olimar's shipwreck meaning he had a whole month to get familiar with the pikmin
@@colepuryear2271The log makes it pretty clear that Olimar is referring to the idea that Louie ate the golden pikpik carrots being preposterous, because he has no idea that it actually happened. Not the concept of debt. When he says "this is why I never take on debt", he doesn't say "I've never taken on debt ever". It's pretty clear he means "willingly", because every time he takes on company debt, he does it because he was commanded to, and not because he wants to. Plus, *he's recounting a dream*, of course the details are going to be vague.
@@Thatcooldude_Kinghe wasn't
Louie was sent to the planet when olimar sent the SOS signal
Koppai is going to another crisis
Pikmin 3 told us multiple times another crisis was possible
There was actually a interview and in it they asked about pikmin 1-3 and how it fit into the plot and he said”Well I will leave that to the imagination of the players” or something like that
Why am I not surprised?
sounds like nintendo dont even know where to put pikmin 4
In other words, "How the fuck should I know?"
I’ve commented this elsewhere, but here it is again:
It’s not a reboot. It’s an alternate timeline/story- a “what if Olimar didn’t make it home” scenario.
Ignoring a few details that’d would have to be changed, Pikmin 2 and 3 could very well be canon in this timeline as well.
Pikmin 2 AND 3 are both hinted at in the game through various dialogues insinuating that they are set to happen. So you could have Pikmin 1, 2, 3, or Alt Pikmin 1, 4, 2, 3.
They even retcon olimars favorite color. He said it was blue in Pikmin 2 treasure log for the blue rob block. Now he said it's red when talking about the red paint and said it again for the blue paint.
People can have different favorites you know?
What I've gathered from my almost 50 hours of playtime in the game (good god) was that the game is a sort of retelling of the first two games and a prequal to Pikmin 3. You can obviously see how it's a retelling of the first game, Olimar finds the planet, gets the ship parts, falls back to the planet with Moss. You can see how it's a retelling of Pikmin 1. There is also the voyage logs that Olimar wrote that references Pikmin 2, stating that the game is a nightmare that Olimar had while he was still on the planet (voyage log #66 Bad Dreams). As for Pikmin 3 being a sequel to this game, after they find out about their being koppaites on the planet, one of the characters says something along the lines of "The Koppaites are losing more and more food resources and a famine could start soon." (Paraphrasing of course because I don't fully remember all of it). This is obviously referencing Pikmin 3, this evidence could also be backed up by what you brought up, that they don't call the planet pnf-404. even though it says it in the ID's of the leaflings, that could just be seen as the computer not knowing the planet, since pnf-404 is a heavy nod to the page not found 404 error, but instead being planet not found 404. the computer could have just filled it in as that, and then after the events of Pikmin 4 they decided to officially name the planet pnf-404. Although the Pikmin 3 evidence is much less conclusive than the others I must say, but this feels like the most reasonable conclusion I could come up with. So from all that pieced together, the Pikmin series starts with Olimars Shipwreck tale, all of Pikmin 2 takes place in one of Olimars dreams, then after Olimar becomes a leafling the events of Pikmin 4 take place, then after that the Koppaites go through their famine and the events of Pikmin 3 happen.
I think you hit the nail on the head! I really love how every major plot point in the series is somehow included in Pikmin 4.
One of Louis logs mentions that he is waiting for the perfect shipment to come along so he can eat all the golden carrots he wants. I think the events of pikmin 2 & 3 could happen but differently from how they actually happen since some things don’t line up.
But you're missing other logs and dialogues where Olimar says things that implies he's already been through the events of Pikmin 1 and 2 (and possibly Hey Pikmin although I'm fine throwing that trash in the bin)
@@mjc0961 not really, he talks about how he's dealt with danger before but that doesnt mean he was talking about dealing with pikmin he could just be referencing the events during his shipwreck tale
Interestingly enough, in Olimar and Louie's notes, there is evidence that it may take place BEFORE Pikmin 2.
Olimar has a note titled "Bad Dreams" where he says that he had a dream where his coworker made a terrible mistake that put the company in debt. And in Louie's notes, there's one titled "Golden Pikpik Carrots" where Louie talks about his favorite food being Golden Pikpik Carrots, and that they're super rare. Then straight up says "If I did find some, I'd devour them all to my heart's content. I'm just waiting for the right delivery job."
So either those are just references to Pikmin 2, and Louie's basically saying "I'll freaking do it again", or the events of the second game haven't happened yet.
i feel like pikmin 4 is or between 1 and 2 or after pikmin 2 but idk
I think it's just a reference like when you get enough treasure and the crew joke about plating the ship in gold like in 2.
I am surprised seeing no mention of olimars journal clearly showing the events of pikmin 1 and 2 as nightmares aswell as in louies journal him talking about possibly getting the job to transport the golden pik pik carrots
My head canon is that pikmin 4 happened after 1 and 2 and the crash landing gave olimar a concussion, making him forget pikmin but still remember Louie and the events of pikmin 2, with the pikmin 3 protagonists being absent because they aren’t apart of the space crew yet.
I came to the realization today that PNF-404, could stand for Planet Not Found. As of Pikmin 3, only 6 people have actually been on the planet. It would make sense no wide spread study has been conducted on the planet, leading to limited knowledge of its existence, thus not being recorded or named in a database.
Frankly, I think this is almost certainly a translation issue. I've not seen a single person do a deep dive into the Japanese version, and I almost guarantee it uses ambiguous language that the localization team decided needed to be more concrete.
Definitely possible!
considering the heap of evidence, no its not a translation issue.
1) Olimar acts like this is first time being here and like this is the first time hes discovered pikmin
2) Olimar states in one of logs that he has a nightmare about the events that would cause Pikmin 2, meaning they did not or have not happened yet; the images accompanying it support this so its not a translation error there
3) Similarly, Louie wishes how he could get his hands on Golden Pikpik carrots and specifically schemes in his head to try and take a job with them, meaning he has not done the events that cause pikmin 2; the image supports this
4) The events that cause Pikmin 3 are beginning to happen, as they mention a few times that Koppai is having a population boom, and they will soon run out of food.
5) If Olimar experienced Pikmin 3, he would know about the pikmin 3 captains, but he doesnt, and the three Koppaites are known to be related to the Pikmin 3 captains
6) One of the melody boxes plays a Pikmin 3 song, and Olimar says that it sounds like a warning of "future" events to him
Translation is not an issue. Too many things add up even if you take the dialogue with a grain of salt.
@@thekirbycrafter7229 Your evidence is literally all from the English translation, which doesn't prove anything. We've seen direct evidence in past Nintendo Treehouse translated games of entire plots and subplots being butchered in English. I have no reason to assume Pikmin 4 is any different.
@@AfroRyan bitch the images prove my point. Regardless, I can also read Japanese and Spanish, and the very few videos I find that showcase them also say similar things.
@@thekirbycrafter7229 "Olimar acts like this is first time being here and like this is the first time hes discovered pikmin"
No he doesn't. Various dialog and treasure logs have Olimar talking about how he's survived dangerous situations like the one he's in now before. That cannot be possible if this game is rebooting Pikmin 1, Pikmin 2 was a dream, and Pikmin 3 hasn't happened yet.
Pikmin 4 frequently contradicts itself which I agree points to a possible translation issue. I too want to see a deep dive into the original Japanese version.
A big detail that’s easy to miss that implies the game takes place before pikmin 2 and 3 is that in the treasure catalogue for the mechanical harp (memory song) which plays the pikmin 3 theme Olimar says that the song despite its calming tones makes his palms sweat and sends shivers down his spine and that it’s as if it’s sending him a warning about unexpected troubles in the future, clearly indicating pikmin 3 hasn’t happened, but will happen. In my mind they’re just gonna slot pikmin 4 in between 1 and 2 and retcon the inconsistencies
or i think pikmin 4 takes place in an alternate timeline of pikmin 1 where Olimar meets Louie earlier, and he doesnt land in the impact site and meets moss and discovers other types of pikmin etc. He also sends an sos signal which he doesnt do in the original pikmin 1 if i remember
The mechanical harp (*MEMORY*) is a meta joke about Olimar getting kidnapped right after the game starts, which is naturally after the title screen where you hear the music in-game (plus the pikmin sing the music too which was stated by olimar).
Nothing about the game not happening after 4
I completely get your point that Olimar doesn't know the planet (as he calls it 'unknown' in the intro), but the rescue crew seems to know the planet at least by it's name - or the ID reader does, since it says that every leaflings homeplanet seems to be PNF-404. But there is no 'person' calling the planet PNF-404, so far as i can recall.
PNF-404 also means “page not found, error 404” which implies alongside a bunch of treasure dialogue and the Shepard family history, that the people we meet are all descended from humans, and that the data for earth was wiped.
PNF-404 is also the only planet in the series without a true name
Well the reason why the ID reader seems to know... is because the ID reader actually does NOT.
PNF-404 is a term that is actually used by NASA.. minus the 404. Meaning Planet Not Found. The 404 then is just of course the error page number. The fact this is only used when the ID reader card receives an Error means that really the ID card does not know the planet and is just saying PNF-404 as a way of saying "cannot identify planet". So really it wouldn't be until Koppai perform their big SPERO search and find this planet again that they would name it PNF-404.... working name.
@@rayplaysgamesrpg7233 thanks for clarifying!
@@MoistTheWetOne yes, that makes a lot of sense
Olimar doesn’t find the Interstellar Radio first, it is the 24th part he finds.
Edit: 25th if you count the part he found in the game’s opening cutscene.
Exactly what I was thinking
I think Olimar knowing who Louie is does not throw a wrench into any theories. Olimar likely was there when Louie was hired because Hocatate Freight is a small business who only had one employee, Olimar, until Louie came along. What I am saying is that Olimar was likely there when Louie was selected to be hired.
Olimar would have been stranded in 1 when Louie was hired, he's stated to be their sole employee in 1.
@@AmiiboDoctordamn Olimar was about to die and his boss just replaced him 💀
Actually, there it was an interview, look up "Ask the Developer Vol. 10, Pikmin 4-Part 2"! (can't link because CZcams eats links)
It talks a bit about the story being somewhat "inviting" to new players (it does keep it kinda vague however) and gameplay being kinda the same too.
There's also a lot of super interesting stuff about the franchise as a whole on it, so it's worth checking out.
I always thought that Louie was already Olimar's coworker before Pikmin 2 but the mission he screwed up was his first solo mission, before that he likely either worked missions alongside Olimar or did stuff like loading up the cargo for the ships, etc.
I like to think of this "soft reset of the timeline" idea as just more of an alternate timeline, similar to how the legend of zelda timeline splits apart. Not really altering the existing plot, but just making 2 different paths through the story.
Fun fact: there is a peice of flavor text that states along the lines of "due to kopai's booming population they may run out of food" making me think that the timeline will look something like 1,4,2,3
you mean 1,2,4,3 cuz Olimar meets Louie in 2 for the first time
@@justafox0 Not necessarily... Olimar and Louie's notes imply that the Golden Pikpik carrot shipment that caused the debt in 2 hasn't happened yet.
I just assumed the timeline is now 1, 4, 2, 3 as 1 has obviously happened but with some new differences, and 2 and 3 being implied to be future events. With Louie waiting for a golden pikpik carrot delivery to eat and the Koppaites not _yet_ being in a food crisis, that just makes the most sense to me.
When it comes to lore in Pikmin and how it is implied to be a post apocalyptic earth, my favourite new theory that came out of this game is *SPOILERS* how the Ancient Shirehound is implied to be a human's pet dog that is still alive and well.
one thing to note is that one of the discussions the crew can have at night after saving Olimar and seeing that Koppaites' are on the plan is the crew talking about how the Koppaites planet recently went through a population boom and it could lead to a food shortage indicating that this game happens before 3 regardless of if it comes after 2 or an alternate timeline to 1 and 2
so even if this retcons 1 and 2, but 3 could still be a sequel to 4
Koppai is going through a second famine
The new koppains do have connections to the protagonists of Pikmin 3: Yorke is Alph's older brother, Dobbs is Charlie's friend/former companion and Nelle is most lilkely Brittany's cousin.
Pikmin 4 does mention "PNF-404" in the ID badges when identifying leaflings being their "home planet".
While I think it’s probably just a reboot/retelling of the first game, if you really wanted to fit it into the timeline, putting it between Pikmin 2 and 3 makes the most sense. Multiple people talk about overpopulation and the possibility of a food shortage on Koppai and Olimar having the Dolphin again may mean the company was able to buy it back with all the treasure (and then have to sell it off again before 3).
not exactly, Olimar talks about in his logs how its his first time being on the planet and meeting pikmin etc meaning it has to be a reboot/alternate timeline, Louie also talks about how he would like to try a golden pikpik carrot meaning the events of 2 never happened or hasnt happened yet
Nelle is a relative of Brittany, but it is never fully stated what's their familial relationship.
Don Bergman is a colleague of Charlie, because Don references a colleague nicknamed Ducky because of their fondness for a rubber ducky.
I think Pikmin 4 is a prequel to 3. Koppai's food shortage seems like it's going to become a problem soon.
It would make sense that Pikmin 4's a prequel, because Olimar called PNF-404 simply "the planet", because it was the Koppaites who gave PNF-404 its name haven't met at the time of the naming. So when Olimar went back in the extra story to get back the Hocatate Freight Ship, he referred to it as PNF-404 now that it received an official name after the Koppaites rescue.
Going from Pikmin 2 to Pikmin 4 without having played 3 was truly trippy as all hell. Felt like a shot in the foot.
there is more reasons to back up the theory of this being a reboot of pikmin 1. The water wraith in the engulfed castle, and I saw some dialogue about news of koppai, and how it that planet is gaining a very high population there, which can lead to starvation.
That doesn't make the Pikmin 1 reboot theory impossible considering that it wuld be a retelling of it and can lead to similar things happpening just in slightly different ways
that's actually the reason why the pikmin 3 cast goes to pnf-404, and since they outright stated that they haven't hit starvation quite yet, that means that this takes place BEFORE pikmin 3, meaning this has to be a reboot.
In my opinion. This is a timeline reset and Pikmin 3 happens the same way in both timelines. People are likely to play Pikmin 3 deluxe after playing Pikmin 4, so they probably added some dialogue to make Pikmin 3 work as a sequel to Pikmin 4 narratively.
@@Jam-bp6lp he forgot what olimar looked like because he just didn't care, not because he'd never met him before.
also, in the first timeline, it's kind of implied that louie is new, and he'd never met olimar before, so that's more proof that this is a timeline reset, if it wasn't already obvious.
4:17 in Olimar's story that unlocks after you save him, the radar *is* in the last area which you can only reach after collecting all ship parts in preceding levels
In Olimars voyage log #52 he hints to having some sort of memories of the water wraith from Pikmin 2, recalling that his blue Pikmin couldn't do anything against it
That’s the one confusing part. Olimar apparently went through all the caves in Pikmim 4, including the Engulfed Castle with the Water Wraith, but in his Shipwreck tale they all get skipped. We see him write he last few logs before he became a leafling, so that can’t explain anything either. Probably just an oversight.
When you rescue louie, you can see his notes on your koppad and there is an entry where he says "I wanna try some golden pikpik carrotts.....I just have to wait for the right delivery"
Also olimar has an entry where he says he had a dream about hocotate freight going into debt because of a bad delivery. Olimar then says "yeah like thats ever gonna happen"
Also the reason the koppites are in PNF-404 is so they can find treasure to sell so they can buy food from other planets due to food shortage. So pikmin 3 dosent happen......Yet
I don’t think it could possibly be a Pikmin 3 prequel because PNF-404 simply hasn’t been discovered by the Koppaites by that point. In the opening cutscene of 3 they send out SPEROs in search for food and one of them discovers PNF-404. How could Yorke, Nelle and Donny be on the planet if it hadn’t been discovered yet?
@@mrpigg5446 well.... if they are gunna retcon olimar knowing louie before pikmin 2 then i can believe that they were scouting for treasure before sending the drones, or better yet they DID send the drones to scout just for a different purpose
Also in one of the evening conversations someone (i dont remember who, but i think collin) asks if anyone knows what kind of place Koppai is, the scientist (i at least think it was the scientist) says, that Koppai is flourishing right now, but has insane population-growth, so they will probably face a famine soon, which once more implies this game taking place before Pikmin 3
A note in the treasure catalog for the music box that plays Pikmin 3’s opening theme has Olimar saying it makes him fearful of future events (or something along those lines) possibly suggesting this game takes place before Pikmin 3?
I don’t think this is a reset of the timeline, but rather a telling of an alternate story of what would happen if the series continued from the bad ending from Pikmin 1, since the 3 koppaites look similar to Alph, Brittany, and Charlie. And Olimar mentions how he wanted to return back to his family, which is another big piece of evidence of Pikmin 4 happening during the bad end of Pikmin 1
Some of the late game conversations that the Rescue Corps members have during the end of day results also refer to Koppai.
Yonny at one point says "I hear Koppai is experiencing a population explosion. If this keeps up, they might have to deal with a food crisis in the near future."
Koppai is going to have a second food crisis
Pikmin 3 literally talk about this countless times
I hope we see more of charlie, alph and brittany they were honestly really refreshing after only hearing about hocotate i hope pikmin 5 has something to do with them im kinda disappointed with nintendo’s decision of not including them
One (mostly unrelated) thing about Pikmin 4 lore is that in Olimar's piklopedia entry for the Water Wraith, he talks as though _several_ different people have come across it, and moreover that it (and many other species on PNF-404, for that matter) are known and studied by a wider community of scholars. This seems to suggest that research teams have been dispatched to PNF-404 and have come back safely prior to Pikmin 4. But personally, I can't for the life of me figure out how this fits in to the series chronologically, since most folks (including several scholars) only found out about the planet thanks to Olimar's distress signal.
It seems from the logs that Olimar is older with adult children.
Either that or he's dreading his daughter being a rebellious teen and eventually get married very early in their development. Lmao.
Another thing you missed is the music box treasures, the third one plays a song from pikmin 3 and olimar says something about it giving him a feeling of the future, seeming to confirm this takes place between pikmin 2 and 3
Personally I believe it’s a continuation right after 2 and is a prequel to 3 this game is just laying groundwork for the future games like 3 did
The SS dolphin throws a big wrench into this as olimar still didn’t have it by the events of 3 but does have it in 4
theres also the big problems like:
Olimar seemingly not knowing of pikmin when he crashed onto the planet
Him not knowing the water wraith
Him dreaming of the events of 2 and describing it in a way that implies its not happened
Louie still planning on eating golden pikpik carrots
the issue that raises of Koppai not knowing of PNF-404 during the crisis (did the treasure crew just Not tell them that they found a stable food source on the planet people went to after olimar sent his distress signal??)
I'm pretty sure the planet is called PNF 404, but only once.
The planet is called PNF-404 in Pikmin, when ever you save a leafied castaway their ID will regiter their planet as "PNF-404" instead of their original home planet.
In Louie's expedition logs that you get once you start chasing louie he mentions that he really likes golden pikpik carrots and is just waiting for the perfect job over at hococatate freight, so pikmin 2 can still happen.
Actually, PNF 404 is mentioned in the game, when you save one of the leafy castaways, their ID will say their home planet is PNF 404, so that is worth mentioning.
Sort of? "PNF 404" itself means "Error 404- page not found"
Technically it's an error message due to the bizarre biological data not matching up with any known planets. The characters in universe simply call the planet that sometimes error abbreviation since there's no preexisting information on it
@@OriginalGameteer i'd still say it feels like an intentional call-back to the in-universe name of the planet, it could just serve as a clever double-meaning.
My headcannon would be that Olimar managed to escape from PNF-404 with a treasure he wanted to give to his son like in Pikmin 2, then when he arrived at Hocotate and somehow the president managed to discover the value of the treasures at PNF-404 and would send Olimar back to PNF-404 without Louie and with the Dolphin which would end up being partially destroyed due to the typical atmospherical catastrophe that happens in all Pikmin games, after that would come the Pikmin 4 intro and the Pikmin 4 game which would replace Pikmin 2 in the timeline while at the same time happening before Pikmin 3
I think Pikmin 4 happens between Pikmin 2 and 3, there's a treasure that plays the Pikmin 3 theme and Olimar says that it could be a sign of a bad thing that could happen in the future
Also, I don't remember when exactly, but some characters talk about how Koppai is beggining to have a food crisis
I think one of the logs mentions Louie was getting ready to go on the mission with the golden carrots before the distress signal was received.
I'd like to point out you didn't bring up Adventure login I think it's 86 where Olimar says he had a dream that he had to collect treasure for a debt accrued by his company which confirmed that Pikmin 2 was just a dream
It's definitely a re-imagining of Pikmin 1, a "what if Olimar actually used the interstellar radio instead of saying it was too late" retelling. As a small correction, Olimar gets the radio late in both Pikmin 1 & 4; the prologue of Pikmin 4 starts in the final area of Olimar's Shipwreck Tale... re: Louie's relationship with Olimar, I always read the context of "Louie's first mission" not as "Louie is new", but as "Olimar was on vacation so we had no choice but to send Louie". Especially given Olimar's quips about him in Pikmin 4, just seems like he wasn't all that competent / trusted. The only thing that doesn't fit smoothly into the timeline is Louie's presence on PNF-404 in Pikmin 4, as obviously Pikmin 2 was Louie's first time seeing a Pikmin, which does not line up with this timeline.
Pikmin 3 occurs later in the timeline, as the Koppaites in Pikmin 4 state there's an imminent - but not current - food shortage situation on Koppai. Ironically they came to PNF-404 for treasures to sell to help the crisis, and not fruit which they would later come back for, but this choice allows Pikmin 3 to still work within the same timeline. (If they hadn't realized PNF-404 had edible fruit yet). Again the only thing that doesn't really add up is how the freak does Louie still have a job with the company, but the president did seem very out of touch lol.
As someone who played Pikmin day one on GameCube and all the other games in the series Pikmin 4 is my favorite in the series now. I just loved it.
I'm pretty confident they reset the timeline just because they had a good idea for it (expanding on the concept of the Pikmin 1 bad ending with leaflings, and the cure system).
I like it.
4:17 No, he recovers his interstellar radio as soon as he reaches the Hero's Hideaway, as seen in Olimar's side story thing when talking to Olimar in Pikmin 4. I don't even know what error you could have made to get to that conclusion, lmao
Not sure if anybody else mentioned it, but you can look through a bunch of logs written by rescue corp officers and other captains, and in there you can find one written by olimar where he talks about a bad dream he had where his company was going into unsavable debt. It def made it imply Pikmin 2 was a dream? But at the same time it already happened twice so he could have just dreamed about it happening again.
interesting tidbit of info, according to the cutting room floor the three koppaites, yorke nelle and don, have their model filenames as alph brittany and charlie. makes me wonder if they were initially intended to be the game at first but then the devs changed their mind last second.
I really dislike how Nintendo usually throws away the current canon of one of their franchises to avoid continuing it.
It's as if they couldn't maintain a coherent story followed for more than 2 games, there aren't many games to justify such a decision, I was really surprised to see Olimar's reactions when discovering the pikmin, it doesn't make sense.
It’s one of those situations where if you don’t look at it closely, you’ll get it wrong cause there’s one voyage log where Sheppard says that sense they don’t pay her father because he’s too generous to not accept they got into dept
Also it is kinda like if the timeline was altered and not destroyed as a whole
I thought Olimar mentions something about brittney saying how something reminded of him of her, I can’t remember whether it was cave notes or a pikmin log but I do remember him saying something like “I should go see them again”
in my opinion, pikmin 4 takes place in an alternate timeline of pikmin 1 where olimar didnt land at the impact site and instead met moss, meets Louie much earlier than in pikmin 2 and has worked with him before the events of pikmin 4, got all his ship parts, and sent out an sos before failing to leave the planet due to his life support system malfunctioning
and the pnf 404 thing most likely just means planet not found or page not found indicating that there is not yet any data for the planet, the 404 is also probably just a reference to error 404
Pikmin 4 is just another timeline. The timeline where pikmin 4 is the first pikmin game.
in one of the chat logs at the end of the day between Captain Shepherd and the kopais shows that their food shortage hasn’t happened yet as they mentioned that they’re starting to run low at their planet but it hasn’t happened yet so if it is connected it’s pre-pikmin three
One major thing to mention is Olimar and Louie's logs, Olimar saying he had a nightmare about the company going into debt like the events of Pikmin 2 were just a dream, or Louie who talks about his administration for Gold PikPik carrots and "waiting for the right job to eat a whole shipment"
Yorke actually mentions that koppai is close to a food shortage meaning 3 has yet to happen
Olimar bonked his head when he crash landed and lost his memories of his previous adventures on PNF-404
If I remember right, the planet is called PNF-404 but mainly on the leafling nametags when you rescue them under home planet
There's also a log entry for Olimar that mentions Pikmin 2s plot as a dream he had.
If you play Olimar's Shipwrecked tale, you find out that the Interstellar Radio is actually the 24th ship part Olimar finds.
It seems like they are hinting at the events of the second games as if they didn’t happen, but are GOING to, such as Olimar’s debt dream and Louie saying he loves golden pikpik carrots, and is “waiting on the right delivery job.” Maybe Pikmin 5 will be a Pikmin 4esc remake of the 2nd game
Another point to this being another timeline is that Koppai (however you spell it) is still starving. Supposedly Koppai is saved from starvation in Pikmin 3 but I’m pretty sure that it’s mentioned many times that they are starving and overpopulation is a huge issue there. Almost foreshadowing the events of Pikmin 3 (since this game is sort of a retelling of Pikmin 1)
Olimar didn't find the SOS signal first. He literally says the house is the last area he needed to explore.
Also the leaflings are described as being from PNF-404 whenever you rescue them.
even stranger is the fact that Collin points out the Koppai would go on a hunger strike due to the juice supply skyrocketing
Pikmin 4 Most Definitely Takes Place Before 3.
I keep hearing people say how Pikmin 4 is a alternate timeline and a reboot and how it takes place between 2 and 3 making it a interquel.
But what I think is those ideas sound absurd and they just don't make sense. When I checked the Pikmin wiki. It said Olimar lost his memory as a leafling. So maybe the reason why Olimar is recounting his experience with the Pikmin and the Onion as if he saw them for the first time was some of his memory was distorted. He also mentioned how the events from Pikmin 2 which is the Debt story was a dream and how a song from a music box makes him think something terrible is going to happen like in Pikmin 3. Maybe after being turned into a leafling, maybe he started to think of those things as dreams. Louie says Olimar's stories were always boring and Olimar hardly got mad at him whenever he made a mistake. Maybe that was referring to Pikmin 2 and 3 when Louie and Olimar were working together. Louie starts to say that he doesn't remember what Olimar looked like, maybe Louie might have short term memory loss like Dory from Nemo, the Disney fish movie. The Koppaites from Pikmin 3 came to PNF 404 to collect treasure and fruits to stop a population crisis. The crisis didn't happen yet, but in pikmin 3. Speros were sent to pnf 404 to look for food. Nobody actually came there until Britany Alph and Charlie went there first. It didn't say other people went there. Only the speros went there first. The food crisis was solved at the end of pikmin 3. Maybe brittany alph and charlie told the three new koppaites who are their brothers and sister to go to that pikmin planet in order to prevent another food and poverty crisis from happening again. Pikmin 4 is more of a indirect sequel and it does bring back so many references and easter eggs from the first three games. Maybe the reason why they sort of reset Olimar's memory is to make the new audience get to know the basics in Pikmin. Yeah the evidence and the text in particular does seem very inconsistent, scattered, and all over the place.
Before going through the final cave, Nelle mentions that she wants to have a little chat to Louie about stealing her team’s food, which is something Louie does in pikmin 3.
I think one thing some people are missing is that the planet IS referred to by PNF-404. Specifically, the glitched Castaway ID tags when they're leaflings. The computer clearly recognizes these lifeforms as from the planet PNF-404, meaning the planet has already been classified as such.
I think it's more likely that this game takes some time after 3, but with most characters simply not learning from experience.
This makes the most sense
I have a theory that the timeline splits from depending on where on PNF-404 olimar lands. Hence why the game feels like a glorified pikmin 2 remaster and a setup for Pikmin 3. Notice how none of those locations were in Pikmin 1 or were referencing any of them at all? That’s because he crash landed at a different spot on PNF-404. One timeline is the usual Pikmin 1-3 and then the other timeline is where Olimar crash lands somewhere else (Olimar’s Shipwreck Tale being a Pikmin 1 experience in Pikmin 4 this is also where this timeline starts), the gameplay being pikmin 2 basically, and then post game is hinting at Kopai (where Alph, Charlie and Brittany) about to be going through a famine and their planet dying because of overpopulation and starvation, which is basically happening in Pikmin 3. I think it’s a timeline split.
In the last log written by Louie, he says that he’s always wanted to try a Golden Pikpik Carrot. He also states that he’s just waiting for the right job for him to finally try some.
If we assume Olimar knew Louie before getting stranded in Pikmin 1, what if this is an alternative time fleshing out what would've happened if Olimar failed to escape PNF404? I speculate maybe Olimar's story is effectively a retelling of Pikmin 1's events.
I did find it kind of weird when first playing how olimar acted like he knew nothing about the pikmin. My theory is that this is the original timeline but instead of taking the same path (the one pikmin 2 and 3 take), it shows what happened after the bad ending in pikmin 1, kind of creating a fork in the timeline
If you think about it: If Olimar hadn’t encountered moss his story would most likely have been the same as in Pikmin 1. Moss causes the events of the timeline to change.
So maybe moss is some kind of anomaly? Or alternate timeline?
From what I've heard during the leaks that happens when the demo came out it's implied that the prior games were all just dreams
I think it's honestly just a "Star Wars: Force Awakens" or a "Dark Souls III" thing where it is canonically the 4th installment but practically the same exact events occur. It's referencing all previous games but keeps it more akin to easter eggs than previous events. It's fine for the most part but the one annoying thing I don't like about it is that Im suppose to believe Olimar crash lands on the planet like 4 times or something. Im okay with new characters crash landing like in 3 and 4 but 2 shows that it's perfectly fine to do a Pikmin game without someone's ship crashing.
5:50 you can see its called pnf 404 when you rescue leaflings on their origin planet section
When rescuing a leafling it says in that they are from pnf-404 in their introduction card, which means that it was already being called that, so pikmin 4 maybe happens after pikmin 3.
I think Pikmin 4 is just an alternate timeline 🤷
Amnesia maybe? The crash might’ve caused him to forget everything
Im thinking Olimar and Louie were coworkers but Louie just didnt work in transporting goods until olimar was gone
Just a note that I didn’t see pointed out in other comments, the interstellar radio is not the first thing Olimar finds. It’s just the first thing he finds in that area. I personally think this is simply the Pikmin 1 bad ending timeline, which is just a different thing!
Basically pikmin 1, 2, and 3 are a timeline and then theres the pikmin 4 timeline where olimar crashes in a different area causing the events of pikmin 4 (he also dreamt about the alternate timeline and they hint that pikmin 3 hasnt happened yet by saying that Koppai will face a food crisis in the near FUTURE
I’m no expert in Pikmin lore, but one thing I remember seeing is in Olimar’s Shiowreck Tale, Olimar doesn’t seem familiar with how Yellow or Blue Pikmin function, suggesting that he’s never seen them before discovering them. So I think that at the very least, that side mode is a retelling of Pikmin 1 or a reboot of the first time Olimar crash-landed.
Then explain olimar knowing about the rest of the pikmin
The intro to pikmin 4 could've been a recount of the first game, while him finding the navigation module could've been at a different time or visit? Would explain the discrepancies somewhat, but not entirely