In what has turned out to be a very exciting 24-hours for Pokémon related news, the 8th Generation of Pokémon is on the way. Today Nintendo announced Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield for the Nintendo Switch console and unveiled the new starting Pokémon in the process. The three new starters follow the fire, water, and grass trends set by the original game, and each looks adorable as per usual. You can check the full trailer below!
The new starters look like a lot of fun, and for me personally, it will be hard to gravitate away from Scorbunny. The weirdest one of the bunch appears to be Sobble, the water…tadpole? Lizard? Grookey is also amazingly adorable. All three look to have cool evolution paths and should make for some fantastic starters.
The gameplay for the latest Pokémon games looks gorgeous, and the move to the Switch makes a ton of sense. The rollout for Let’s Go, Eevee and Let’s Go, Pikachu went extremely well, and based on personal anecdotes, inspired at least a half-dozen of my friends to actually purchase a Switch.
With the console’s popularity continuing to rise, Pokémon has had its own boom in popularity. Ever since the first games turned 20 and Pokémon Go emerged on the scene, the RPG series has returned to the top of popular gaming. While the number of die-hards never really went down, casual fans have returned en mass.
The questions about when a new Pokémon game would release had not really ramped up yet, but the franchise has been known for its prolific output. After all, Pokémon has almost always released two games at a time, with the slight differences between the versions making it easy for co-op play. In some cases, gamers just buy both. With Sword and Shield on the horizon, expect the gaming world to become all consumed by Pokémon over the next ten months.
