Sword & Shield **Official news only** DLC Crown Tundra 22nd October

[dodiabla]

Woo! It's good to be back in speculation mode!

So here we are, Gen 8! Galar sounds like an interesting region, and the UK has a lot of history to draw upon for inspiration, so I'm approaching the game with tepid optimism. Anyway, here are my first impressions:

The Map:

• The region does seem a bit small and linear, but then again, its a pokemon game, and while I hope there won't be alot of hand-holding, it's not going to give you free reign.
• I feel like the railroads are gonna help shape things in terms of movement, ala Poke Ride in Alola, especially with the nix of HMs. Instead of getting a pokemon to ride this time I'm guessing you'll be getting a train ticket? Hopefully you'll be able to battle to pass the time while on it.
• Galar having one port makes me think that post-game (assuming there is one) is off-island, probably Kalos (more on that later).
• The region not having alot of coast towns/islands/lakes makes me think we won't be getting a large number of Water pokemon, which I think is a nice change.
• That lonely watchtower near the two big lakes if giving me Haunted Chateau vibes. Also, doesn't Loch Ness have something similar (might be an old monastery) nearby? Hmmm
• I think the large city in the north is this gen's version of Celadon.
• The giant castle in the middle seems plot related, after which it seems like it'll serve as the Pokemon League.
• Lots of caves and open fields, with snowy mountains to the north. Seems like these terrains are where we'll be encountering most of the pokemon.

The Starters:

• I like them. They seem a bit daring but not so far out there that we don't recognize them as starters.
• Is it me, or does Grookey kinda look like he's wearing a mask? Like a superhero mask? And he likes standing at the top of buildings? Maybe his final evolution is Grass/Fighting with him using his sticks to fight ala Nightwing (Inb4 Sound Type gets revealed next Direct).
• Scorbunny is interesting in that it seems fast and has a plethora of directions it can evolve. Personally I'm leaning to Fire/Steel or Fire/Electric with the way it was running up those gears with ease.
• Sobble is the one I'm most lost on. You'd think that they would stay away from a rehash of Greninja, at least this quick, but who knows? Does the UK even have any reptiles this could be based on (not that its a requirement). I can see the final evolution being Water/Fairy to complete the triangle but also feel strongly about Water/Ghost for some reason.

New Pokemon Speculation:

• Based on the size of the region and where the pokemon franchise is at this point in time, I'm not expecting alot of new Pokemon. I would wager around ~100. This game seems more like a platter of old fan favorites being available with some new mons being thrown in for variety.
• I'm hoping regional forms make a return, but I would be okay with no new Megas (though wouldn't count it out), and new Armored Pokemon (more on that later)
• If the 4chan leak is real, the snake might be the Beithir, so maybe a Dragon/Electric or Poison/Electric legendary?
• If the 4chan leak is real, the horse might be the Each-uisge, so maybe Water/Dark?
• Obviously, hoping for a Banshee, Kelpie, Loch Ness, fire-fly, elf/fairy, new Eevolution, bog-type Pokemon.

Armored Pokemon/Kalos Connection:

• Kalos lore mentions that there was a great war once, but it doesn't mention (as best as I recall) who the war was against. While they may be at peace now, the UK and France are historically enemies, and have had dozens of wars between them. And they are very close to each other, influencing trade, culture, and even language, with a similar ancient (Roman) history.
• If Mega Evolution was discovered by Kalos first, it would give them a huge upper-hand in the war. Perhaps their enemies also discovered a way to evolve their pokemon, but not quite exactly Mega-Evolution. This would make Armor Evolution seem plausible.
• Each new generation needs a gimmick, and this would be in line with what Game Freak has been doing the last few generations.
• If Kalos is the post-game, I can see new Megas being introduced that they didn't have a chance to implement, and felt like they would be out of place in Alola.

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[Girlinwales]

Also I would like to point out that the steampunk ‘London’ looks more like a mix of Manchester and Cardiff

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Honestly, balance in Pokémon is not possible by any stretch of the word.

It would be nice to see some changes like Hail boosting Defense for types riddled with problems like Ice. It definitely needs more offensive mons too, the only two that immediately come to mind are Weavile and Froslass

 

[Worldie]

• Sobble is the one I'm most lost on. You'd think that they would stay away from a rehash of Greninja, at least this quick, but who knows? Does the UK even have any reptiles this could be based on (not that its a requirement). I can see the final evolution being Water/Fairy to complete the triangle but also feel strongly about Water/Ghost for some reason.

Something that was pointed to me when I mentioned "hey, it's a water Chameleon, it surely will have Protean as HA" was that it could actually end up having Color Change instead.
Which at this moment is still a signature ability of Kecleon I guess.

Unless that thing significantly changes shape when it evolves....

 

[porneon]

I think we will get the red dragon and white dragon as legendary Pokemon. I got taught about the myth in school where the two last dragons were fighting (the red won, but that doesn’t matter) I think that this game might be trying to increase dragon and fairy number as the UK has many folk laws.

I was thinking about something similar to the birds/beasts/golems/whatever trio.
But looking at the map layout, it's just too big and standing there right on our face from the beggining just to be ignored.

 

[PsychicAcademic]

To be honest, I still think the issue isn't that Ice typing has problems, but rather that there's too few offensive Ice types. Ice's a insanely strong offensive type but for some godforsaken reason they decided to make a billion defensive Ice types instead.

Well, to be fair, philosophically, Ice is usually more defensive than offensive in many medias. Ice is usually depicted to be more sturdy like icebergs than they are offensive like winter storm.
To not be fair, this causes Ice to be caught in such dilemma. Add aforementioned Water mon with Ice Beam and everyone forgets most Ice mon that exists other than Weavile and Alo-9tails and maybe Froslass.

Still, Water resistant to Ice but not the other way is one of my annoyances. Fine, if Ice have many weaknesses as so far those are pretty logical, but at least add some resistances to them too.

... I've had enough ranting on Ice as I'm getting out of topic... but yeah, open possibility for them to rework that type chart and I'd welcome it if it's reasonable. Bug resisted by Fairy was also one of the past complaints as Bugs already had hard life with only 2 types weak to it.

 

[s_aman]

Since it is based on Great Britain, I need at least 1 Harry Potter reference in the game. Please gamefreak please.

 

[jas61292]

One other thing I wanted to note as a counterpoint to the idea of this game being overly linear. A lot of the linear arguments I've seen seem to suggest that this will be a straight line, south to north affair. While I've already addressed how the map design does not at all support the straight line notion, there is one other aspect I wanted to mention. London.

As has been noted by some, this region seems to be England (and maybe Scotland) but inverted. London is at the top (as evidenced by Big Ben and the London Eye). London is (at least to non British people like me) the English city. It seems unfathomable to me that it would not be some sort of focal point like Lumiose (Paris) or Castellia (NYC) was in their regions (yes, I know Unova itself was NYC, but Castellia was the specific city designed to replicate it).

So with that being said, the idea that you just make your way north, not arriving in London until endgame, seems nonsensical to me. Far more likely, imo, is the idea that you make your way north to it by train earlier on. Not necessarily right away, but with the train connections that exist, there is also no reason for it to be late game. If the plot wants to take you there, there's no reason it can't be the third or fourth place you visit.

 

[Girlinwales]

Since it is based o Great Britain, I need at least 1 Harry Potter reference in the game. Please gamefreak please.

I doubt it. If anything, I would think Harry Potter would reference Pokemon. Although I think there will be plenty of things similar to Harry Potter.

 

[Siggu]

Calling it right now, the most plausible one would be the Ichytosaur. Look up the story of Mary Anning, she'd make a wonderful side character and fossil maniac. She found the first-ever complete skeleton of an Ichytosaur at age 12. She was later instrumental in discovering the Plesiosaurus too; coincidentally, another fossil creature that has not yet been Pokémon-ified.

Uhm... are you entirely sure about the last point?

 

[porneon]

Uhm... are you entirely sure about the last point?

View attachment 162800

Honestly, placing a lake THIS BIG just to host a single small plot pokémon seems worse than Kanto milking for me.

 

[Girlinwales]

I think the lake is the Lake District
It has probably got lots of new Pokemon, like water types.

 

[Nelson Tangela]

Honestly, placing a lake THIS BIG just to host a single small plot pokémon seems worse than Kanto milking for me.

Lapras has gotten a lot of special treatment in the history of the games.
Take Johto's Union Cave for example. It is not much more than a location for Lapras to appear at once a week.
It has also been a unique gift Pokémon a bunch of times
Surfing sprites have been typically depicted as Lapras and it is the only surfing Pokémon with a unique model in XY.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if there is just a random stationary Lapras chilling in those lakes, waiting for you to come and catch it.

 

[porneon]

I wonder, will we see a Galarian Snubull or any regional variant?

 

[chuckeroo777]

While I do agree that new type is very unlikely (after all, after gen 2, it took 5 gens to get a new type again), I do think chances of some type chart adjustment are possible.
Expecially regarding fairy or steel types. The current VGC state gives a clear hint on the fact the influx of strong Fairy types overdone his "antidragon" work and combined with Steel resistance almost completely destroyed every dragon in the game.
If you look at the VGC usage for both last and this year, there's extremely few dragon types with more than 5% CP winrate, even including ubers / legendaries.

I'd hope GF realizes they overshot with making strong antidragon Pokemon and either Dragon type needs some love, or Fairy/Steel need some tuning.

If they do do some type re-balancing, I hope they do something about Bug's offensive effectiveness. It is resisted by a whopping 7 other types! There was no need for Fairy to make Bug even worse. The only explanation I can think of is them trying to keep U-turn reasonable, but its at the expense of every single Bug type Pokemon.

 

[Ryolain]

LGPE vs Gen 8 model comparison:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1101118647945183233

So they did change the shading to make them look more like cartoons instead of CGI. I like it.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Fairy and Ghost have no business resisting Bug.

 

[Girlinwales]

If they do do some type re-balancing, I hope they do something about Bug's offensive effectiveness. It is resisted by a whopping 7 other types! There was no need for Fairy to make Bug even worse. The only explanation I can think of is them trying to keep U-turn reasonable, but its at the expense of every single Bug type Pokemon.

Bug type is meant to be terrible. If bugs were good then you would keep them for the whole game. The fact that bugs are bad encourages people to explore and catch more Pokemon and lead people onto a later game. I really hope, if we do get a new type, it will NOT be resistant to bug. Although if we do get a new type I don’t want it to be overpowers like fairy or dragon

 

[11pikabro]

Isn’t the Premier League the most watched football league in the world?

(Pardon the late response)
Yes, Premier League is the most watched football league in the world. I didn't mean to undersell the sport's relevance to Britain. As a pastime and seasonal sport, I see football as the most relevant one and as such happily accept it as part of Galar's culture.

Admittedly though, I don't tune in to soccer/football as regularly as I do golf and tennis. As such, when I think of iconic once-a-year sporting events held in Britain, Wimbledon comes to mind first, so seeing tennis getting acknowledged in Sword and Shield would be neat, even if it's a brief acknowledgment.

 

[Sacrificed]

Bug type is meant to be terrible. If bugs were good then you would keep them for the whole game. The fact that bugs are bad encourages people to explore and catch more Pokemon and lead people onto a later game. I really hope, if we do get a new type, it will NOT be resistant to bug. Although if we do get a new type I don’t want it to be overpowers like fairy or dragon

But that does not mean that they should need nerf bug even more.Also early game pokemon that good in competitively is not new just look staraptor which is always picked in sinnoh every situation so early game bug that actually good competitively isn t impossible.

 

[Sulfurian]

Bug type is meant to be terrible. If bugs were good then you would keep them for the whole game. The fact that bugs are bad encourages people to explore and catch more Pokemon and lead people onto a later game. I really hope, if we do get a new type, it will NOT be resistant to bug. Although if we do get a new type I don’t want it to be overpowers like fairy or dragon

Don't agree with this. Volcarona showed that bug does have potential if you give it the right tools. It's just half of them don't have the stats to compete, BECAUSE of that balancing factor. If you introduce more bug types late game that goes against your statement. "Type is meant to be bad" because of the story flies out the window when you're done with the story. The fact I can't click my bug stab half the time without tinted lens is a balancing issue.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

That protag entering the stadium sequence definitely felt like Football (Soccer) to me. Uniform style fits too.

Could it be that the successor to Pokeathlon is the beautiful game?

If you introduce more bug types late game that goes against your statement.

Seconding this. The early forest bugs are supposed to be bad since they're crutches for early-game. The moment you see bugs with actual stats showing up mid to late-game like Scyther, the argument falls apart.

The current chart makes some sense, and I can see that they tried to make Bug an anti-meta type with it being the OG Psychic weakness (except it didn't work) and having Dark weak to it too.

The problem is that it's resisted by too many types. If you clip Ghost and Fairy from the resist list, it becomes quite a bit safer to just click a Bug STAB. Sure, it will never be really good because it's resisted by a lot of common types, but that's how the cookie crumbles.

 

[Girlinwales]

Don't agree with this. Volcarona showed that bug does have potential if you give it the right tools. It's just half of them don't have the stats to compete, BECAUSE of that balancing factor. If you introduce more bug types late game that goes against your statement. "Type is meant to be bad" because of the story flies out the window when you're done with the story. The fact I can't click my bug stab half the time without tinted lens is a balancing issue.

Everyone, I know some bug types are good ,like Scyther, I just meant early bug types in the game. Maybe they should balance it out so bug types later in the game have a chance, however I don’t really want bug types to have much of a combat advantage as it could make people stick to Pokemon from early in the game instead of trying to evolve Pokemon from later in the game.
Honestly, I just believe that we should keep the push to get new Pokémon, but I am not saying the bug types later in the game do not deserve a chance.

 

[TMan87]

I just found another thing that strengthens my belief in the plesiosaur idea: The Loch Ness monster is commonly referred to as one. Here is Urquhart Castle by Loch Ness, courtesy of Wikipedia:

And here is a little tower seen next to a lake on the world map:

It is a round tower and not a square one, but it features the exact same damage as Urquhart Castle does: A collapse of half the turret, with the other side remaining relatively intact. It also lies next to a lake.

Or that lake could be filled with Lapras, that might be a thing instead.

What if Lapras is a common encounter and you have, in the midst of all of these decoy Lapras, the "real" Ness-like Pokémon at like 5% catch rate, maybe even lower?

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

What if Lapras is a common encounter and you have, in the midst of all of these decoy Lapras, the "real" Ness-like Pokémon at like 5% catch rate, maybe even lower?

Ok. Bear with me everyone, this could get crazy.

Catchable Totem Lapras.


In a more serious note, I hope they recycle the aura stat boost stuff from SM in this for some battles. I can't help but wonder what will be the gimmick for this gen though. Really wish they gave us legit gameplay footage.

Also, just saw the direct in HD. Graphics are good enough. Nothing mindblowing, but it fits the artistic style well and it looks pretty good. Really hoped the battle animations took a note from PBR and gave us the contact illusion. Seems like they recycled the 3DS engine.