These games wouldn’t be where they are without plenty of past titles to build on. Chief among these are their immediate predecessors, Pokemon Sword and Shield and Pokemon Legends: Arceus. The through line of mainline Pokemon’s jump to Switch for the first time is the Wild Area. There are several other details that Scarlet and Violet owe to these past games, especially Pokemon Legends. Even as Scarlet and Violet iterates on things like Sword and Shield’s Max Raid Battles, Pokemon Legends appears to be the necessary step for Generation 9 to reach its potential.
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Pokemon Scarlet and Violet’s Open World Is Built on Legends’
The expansion of the Wild Area into a true open world can be seen across the Nintendo Switch Pokemon titles. Pokemon Sword and Shield first implemented the idea, but many thought it fell short. The Wild Area in Galar is simply a giant field with branches leading to more traditional routes on all sides. The Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra DLC expansions showed clear improvement, both taking place in their own Wild Areas. This would grow into the massive, sprawling environments found in Pokemon Legends: Arceus’ areas, but not just in terms of size.
Pokemon Legends crafted more interesting open environments using plenty of verticality and various Ride Pokemon. There are plenty of things to find in each individual area, even after returning to earlier locales hours in. The only thing left was to bring them all together, which is exactly what Pokemon Scarlet and Violet plan to do. Examining the Paldean map, various areas and routes can be picked out at a distance. Even so, many of them feed into one another, and the player is often presented with a choice of paths to take. The Paldea region will be an open experience like Pokemon has never seen before.
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Legends’ Sense of Exploration is Maintained in Scarlet and Violet
The way Pokemon Legends was formatted allowed players to take extended trips outside of Jubilife Village to gather Pokemon and resources for as long as necessary. Players have the tools to manage and heal their Pokemon in the field, as well as craft any items they might need. Because areas are massive and contain a wide variety of Pokemon and secrets to uncover, these trips could be quite long. Pokedex progress checks encourage players to do this exploration constantly to unlock the entirety of a given area.
Presumably, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet trainers won’t need to wait for as much of Paldea to unlock. These games are built for prolonged exploration, though with slightly different mechanics in mind. Crafting may not come back, but players will still be able to refuel in the field at gas station-like Pokemon Centers. These checkpoints allow for healing and managing Pokemon, buying items, and using online functionality. With that, players are free to explore all around the region, pursuing story opportunities when they find them and catching tons of Pokemon. In this respect, Scarlet and Violet are even more free-form than Pokemon Legends, as that game used linear progression with many progress gates.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Have Plenty of Similarities to Pokemon Legends
There are a variety of other elements in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet that take some inspiration from Pokemon Legends, like changing where Pokemon battles can take place. Both Legends and the Generation 9 games have fights occur in the open world. It’s unclear how Poke Ball throwing works in Scarlet and Violet, but Legends’ special long-range Poke Balls for attracting or catching flying Pokemon could make a return. Scarlet and Violet do allow for permanent follower Pokemon, while their equivalent in Pokemon Legends amounts to Pokemon being thrown near objects for context-sensitive actions.
Other similarities between Pokemon Legends: Arceus and Pokemon Scarlet and Violet remain to be seen, with leaks proposing everything from time travel to a new form of boss Pokemon. One last point of interest seems to be rising above the rest, however. For its many choke points, Pokemon Legends still asked players to do something completely divorced from the normal Gym Challenge. Scarlet and Violet have brought gyms back, but they allow players to focus on unrelated tasks to progress.
Fans can only speculate what the two remaining story paths in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are, but they likely involve emphasized exploration and plot elements. Going down these paths could feel more like the narrative-driven Pokemon Legends: Arceus than a normal Pokemon game. The prospects of Pokemon’s different ideas for console entries finally crystallizing in Scarlet and Violet are exciting, and hopefully they do their predecessors justice once players are let loose into the Paldea region.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet release on November 18, 2022, for Nintendo Switch.
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