More Sword and Shield info coming your way! Take a peak into the world of the Galar region!
A new video has been released containing more information about Pokémon Sword and Shield. It showcases one of the towns that the player can visit. While the town remains unnamed, it contains several staple features to the franchise and shows off a few new ambiance designs.
This first is the Pokémon Center. While the interior has been shown a select few times through glimpses at the PC and other features, the outside of a Pokémon Center had yet to be shown. This is our first glimpse at the redesign for the Pokémon Center. It looks fairly different from previous iterations, with lanterns on the door and an older style to it. It also has a sign on it that seems to indicate it contains a shop. While it is not much to go off of at this time, it’s possible that different centers may have varying shops featured in each one that will be indicated by the sign featured outside of the center.
The next main feature is another form of cross-regional transportation. While the Corviknight taxi service was previously revealed during the pokémon’s initial introduction, trains as another form of transportation have also been briefly hinted at. This trailer provides a view of the inside of one of the stations. These transport hubs provide another way for players to travel city to city. It’s unclear if the trains will have any additional features, such as battles or items. Though, in the past, when trains have been included in the games, they have usually led to some sort of far away location, ranging from another town such as Anville Town in Unova or Kiloude City in Kalos to an entirely different region, like from Goldenrod City in Johto to Saffron City in Kanto. Thus, it is possible these trains will have some sort of additional destinations that can be unlocked in the later part of the game.
Finally, the Pokémon Research Lab where Professor Magnolia researches the Dynamax phenomenon was featured. This design is in a similar design to the Pokémon Center, though this is not the first time the Pokémon Lab has gotten a unique appearance based on the region it is in, with both Professor Sycamore and Professor Kukui receiving relatively unique labs compared to their predecessors. The inclusion of the lab in this town appears to imply that this may be the starting town where the player receives their starter pokémon. That said, it could also be a similar situation to Pokémon X&Y where the professor is actually stationed in another town.
Several other minor environmental details were also revealed. As featured above, it appears when players interact with or get close to random pokémon, textboxes with now appear in a similar fashion to other games like Persona. We saw something similar to this in Castelia City during Generation Five, but have not seen it since, so this is possibly marking the return of this type of speech bubble. The inclusion of shops and boutiques have also been confirmed. While players are quite familiar with boutiques and this inclusion was expected due to the previous confirmations of character customization, the shops are something relatively new. The shop is specifically mentioned to sell fresh produce. It is unclear if these are meant to function similar to Vitamins or Smoothies as items that enhance friendship and stats, or if they have some alternative function. It is possible these items function similar to Poképuffs and Pokébeans, but instead of being obtained for free, players must purchase them. In exchange though they may boost affection at a much higher rate. It also could mark the return of a Pokéblock or Poffin type item.
Following the release of the trailer, additional info regarding Pokémon Home was also announced. It has been confirmed that the Pokémon Global Link, which has been running since 2010 in conjunction with Pokémon Black & White will not support Pokémon Sword and Shield. Instead, functionality such as checking rankings, distribution regulations, and the event calendar will be available in the Pokémon HOME app on iOS and Android from early 2020 and the joining of online competitions will be done directly in the game due to lack of need to Game Sync. It is unclear if a Dream World or Global Link style replacement will be created for Pokémon Home that could possibly allow connectivity between a user’s phone and their game. However, this does seem to forward the idea that Nintendo is moving more towards phone based Pokémon connectivity, which could allow for more ways to interact with one’s pokémon partners in the future.
