Headscratchers / Pikmin 3

• So, when Alph and Brittany are discussing Hocotatian feeding habits (they're vegetarian, as it turns out), why are they only going after fruit, then? There are massive sources of meat in this planet, what's the objection they have to eating bulborb or snagret?
  • Could be they're too squicked out at the ideal to consider it. Afterall, so far the only one whose considered eatting the planets creatures is Louie, and he has noted that a lot of the creatures have some nasty side effects if you eat the wrong ones. Besides, the fruit seeds give a more sustainable food scource due to being able to cultivate them as opposed to the rather dangerious task of hunting the creatures on the planet.
  • It's possible that Koppaites are herbivores (specifically, frugivores), and so don't go after meat due to not being able to get sustenence from it (similar to how humans can't eat dirt, even though earthworms can.)
  • It's explained in-game that the Koppaians actually look for seeds to bring back to Koppai. You weren't thinking that they were hoping to feed an entire planet just with the food the three could find if it's barely enough to feed them, right? Meat is much less practical. It kinda begs the question of why they don't eat the creatures, then. Though that's probably because the Pikmin won't let them have what they can feed to the Onion instead.
  • It's also explained in-game that Koppaites only gain nutrition from a vitamin known as "Piktamin U". This is also why the Koppaites couldn't get help from the Hocotations - vegetables contain very little Piktamin U. Judging by how meat is never shown to be an option, it likely has little-to-none as well.
• In the end, why is the onion so different from the onions in Pikmin 1 and 2? They have this weird technological look, and they merge into only one (OOC, obviously because a landing point for one ship and 5 onions would be hella big), but that was never explained or touched on.
  • Most common theory is that the Onions in Pikmin 3 are Onions at a later stage in their evolution cycle. Could also be a different species of Onion all together though, like how there are many different types of Bulborbs.
• In the final level, they say that you can't go up the geyser with Olimar. Why? It was perfectly safe for the Koppai trio to go up. Better yet, why not just have Winged Pikmin carry him up?
  • Well, they do mention that the Pikmin seemed confused about where to go when they start carrying Olimar back, and have to be guided by one of the captains back to the Onion and ship. It could be that the Plasma Wraith can mess with their natural ability to know where their onion is in some fashion. As for why the Winged Pikmin can't just fly up and over the geyser... Maybe it's a deal where they can only fly so far off the ground, even though they've managed to fly higher in game before? Other than that, only other thing I can think of is "gameplay reasons".
• Okay. So in one of the many character conversations Alph, Brittney, and Charlie have, they make mention of how they actually can breathe oxygen, but PNF-404's oxygen levels are way higher than what a Koppaite can normally handle. Later on when the crew brings Louie aboard their ship, whose a Hocotatien, which oxygen is highly poisonous too, he's seen there without his helmet on. This brings the question, if the Koppai crew is breathing oxygen in their ship, albeit lower levels of it than what's on PNF-404, how come Louie doesn't end up dying during the time it takes for the Koppai crew to track down Olimar and gather all the fruit?
  • Most likely they "can" breathe oxygen in the same sense that humans "can" breathe carbon dioxide; they can tolerate a certain amount, but they don't actually use it in their life processes, so there's no reason to put any in their ship's artificial atmosphere.
  • Alternatively, it was an oversight and the destructive behavior witnessed later can be traced back to oxygen poisoning.
• How did Louie get to the Twilight River? The Hocotate Ship is found in the Garden of Hope, having been heavily damaged and presumably rendered broken by the Mireclops, but you find Louie on a completely separate land mass than that, with nothing but ocean in between. How'd he get over there if the ship is firmly planted in one spot? The only possible way I can think of is that, like in Pikmin 2, the ship hit something and he fell out, then it landed in the Garden of Hope where the Mireclops got a hold of it, but that's never really hinted at, so...?
  • Louie seems to be pretty good at getting places on PNF-404 without any Pikmin to help him — him getting to the bottom of the Dream Den in Pikmin 2, for example. And looking at the map, the Twilight River is roughly between the Garden of Hope (Where he crashed) and the Formidable Oak (Where Olimar was taken). So my guess? After crashing, he set off from the Garden toward the Oak to find Olimar, only to wash downstream and end up where he's found in-game.
• How do the data files work? Is it like an SD card? Why would Olimar save each note or journal entry separately and how did they get to some of these places? He also left one as a note "to the survivors" when he found Charlie's crash site. Why did he put it in water?
  • While I'm not sure about the first part, Olimar likely put it in the water so that only the Koppaites would be able to reach it — I can't recall there being any enemies in the area of that message that could enter water, so it would have been a safe place to leave it.
• When you find all 66 pieces of fruit and talk with the crew before the next day, Alph says that they have found every piece of fruit on the planet. Wait, what? There's no way they've looked through the whole planet for fruit. The areas are likely only a few square feet out of each continent, and we don't even see half the globe!
  • And then you think about it a bit more and the Fridge Horror creeps in as the question changes from "What about the fruit in the other hemisphere?" to "Why is there no fruit — no fruit at all — on an entire half of the planet?"
    • They do specify that they're looking for seed-bearing fruits a couple times throughout the game, since they're intending to bring the seeds back to create a more permanent solution to the food shortage on Koppai. It's possible that there are other fruits on the planet that they could gather, but that they don't have seeds that could be successfully cultivated on Koppai.
• Why do all the returning enemies keep their names? Alph, Brittany, and Charlie don't meet Olimar or Louie until long after they meet these old enemies, and I highly doubt that Alph, Brittany, and Charlie would have come up with the same names (the Bulborb is named after Olimar's dog), especially since most new names sound different to old ones.
  • The Koppaites were picking up numerous data logs left by Olimar. This is how they learned what the Pikmin and Onions are called. Presumably, among the logs they picked up were Olimar's notes on native wildlife.