There have been some recent updates with Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield that are leaving fans pretty upset with the upcoming installments. At E3 Game Freak, the Pokémon series game developer announced disappointing news about the national Pokédex.
For those that do not know, the national Pokédex is what players typically get when they beat the main story of each Pokémon game. This national Pokédex, or national dex for short, is an item that allows all of the Pokémon from previous installments of the series to be imported.
In each new Pokémon game, the players only have access to the new creatures from that generation and a subset from the older ones for the main portion of the game. Upon beating the Elite Four (the top Pokémon trainers in each region) and/or a combination of other objectives, the Pokédex is upgraded to the national version.
This national dex then allows all Pokémon from other versions to be imported into the game, even if they are not naturally found in the region. The Pokémon Bank was even created to help manage everyone’s favorite Pokémon and bring them all into the latest games in the series. This is a paid service that allows trainers to transfer favorite Pokémon from all installments of the game (including Pokémon Go) into a cloud storage system where they can then be placed into the latest version. The games were designed so trainers could actually have the opportunity to “catch ‘em all.”
However, the producer of the game, Junichi Masuda, has stated that only the Pokémon from the Galar region will be available to be caught and collected in the newest installments. This means that only the creatures found in the new games will be made available to be captured and collected. This quite literally takes the possibility to “catch ‘em all” out of the games, making the slogan ironic. All-in-all, this is incredibly disappointing.
The explanation given to fans is that it is too time intensive for the development team to create animations for all of the Pokémon currently in the series. Masuda has said this is the expectation moving forward for Pokémon games. Players have captured Pokémon and traded them to the latest versions for years. They’ve spent countless hours training and perfecting their team, developing relationships with them, and getting them ready to be seen the in latest fidelity graphics. This recent news, this will no longer be possible. I, for one, have never had the patience to collect all of the catchable Pokémon but share in the frustration with those that have. Losing the potential to play with my favorite Pokémon or to try to complete the Pokédex has made me less interested in playing the latest games.
Click on the below link to see our article discussing the June Direct.