What is the Distortion World?

The Distortion World is the home of Giratina, and in Pokémon's telling it is a prison. Giratina was banished there by Arceus for its violence, and it watches the regular world from inside its own. Platinum, in 2008, was the first game to let a player walk in: the world is reached at the climax, when Giratina tears through at Spear Pillar and pulls Cyrus, and then you, inside.

Inside, the rules loosen. Time does not flow and space is unstable. Islands of rock float at right angles to each other in a dark sky, trees grow from ceilings, and you walk up walls and surf down waterfalls that fall sideways. There are no wild Pokémon and no map in the ordinary sense; the way forward is a chain of floating platforms, boulders to push between levels, and the lake guardians to free along the path.

Giratina lives here in its true shape, the serpent-like Origin Forme, and can only hold that form inside the Distortion World or while holding the Griseous Orb outside it. If you flee from it or defeat it at the climax, it waits again in Turnback Cave in its Altered Forme, the shape Diamond and Pearl players had met in 2006.

A second doorway stands in Turnback Cave after the credits, so the Distortion World can be revisited. It remains the boldest single area the series had built to that point: less a dungeon than a short visit to a place where the game's own geometry stops promising to behave.