Let’s get this out of the way: I’m an old-school Pokémon fan. I was there when the anime first started airing, and I played each generation on the day of launch for years. As a child, Pokémon was my obsession. Like most people I’ve grown up a bit, diversified what I fixate on (have you read One Piece?), and while I still play new Pokémon games at launch, I’ll rarely play past the main story. Sorry endgame content, I’m just too busy with being an adult to catch ’em all.
But I’m still here, still watching Pokémon livestreams like it’s my job, and believe it or not, I’m still excited for a brand new Pokémon generation on Nintendo Switch. As outlined in our biggest Violet and Scarlet announcements list, this new generation is doing a lot right. It’s going full open-world, has a gym battle system that you can approach in any order, and even has multiple storylines you can find and follow across the land of Paldea. This obviously more Breath of the Wild-inspired approach looks like it will be a breath of fresh air for the Pokémon franchise, and Game Freak has clearly learnt lessons from the semi-open-world Pokémon Legends: Arceus which released earlier this year.
