Gallery: Here's A Look At The New Open World In Pokémon Scarlet And Violet

Why the quotation marks? It is open world!

"allowing you to explore freely in a richly expressed open world."

I wonder if they mean that literally. Would be cool if I could everywhere I want from the get go, battle gyms in any order I want (if there are gyms but I assume so) etc

Really hope catching Pokémon outside of battles is back for this one. Love that mechanic.

The most important is camera angle.
Free angle or fixed angle?

If it's building off of the same open world style in Legends then I'm excited

@nessisonett agreed. Idk if I can go back to just battling at this point. I’m afraid it’ll bring a lot grinding back into the game

@Anti-Matter It's open world, ofc you have free control over the camera
Also Legends Arceus already had free camera everywhere

Hmmm are the trainers more Disney/Pixar looking or is that just me?

The wording of this doesn't leave much debate up to if it is truly open world. They said that the towns and cities blend seamlessly without borders. This is true open world and I'm so happy! (Legends:Arceus was a great step, but this will be even better)

It looks Mediterranean

Honestly my hype for this is low since we just got two (or technically three) Pokemon Games in the last 4 months

it looks a bit simplistic, but after Arceus I am willing to overlook da grafix

@nessisonett @anextphilosophy I'm guessing the bit in the press release where it says "battling against wild Pokémon in order to catch them" is designed to head that sort of thinking off at the pass, sadly.

@FishyS The outfits especially emphasise their young age this time too, in my eyes.

Idea for new mechanic- in trainer battles, you can actually catch/steal the opposing Pokémon.

I wish the boy and the girl playable characters looked a little more different, like in older games but other than that thegame looks nice

Ooooo, looks perdy

@nessisonett Ditto. Also hoping there's no transition to a separate battle screen. The snappiness of battles in the overworld was one of my favorite aspects of PLA.

Arceus was a stepping stone to something greater. This is no surprise to me.

Wow… I might actually be tempted to play my first Pokémon game…

(Part if me wants to have a more classic style “GameBoy Color” experience, but… just seems too tedious and time consuming at this stage in my life… I do have a GB Color and I think Crystal? Whatever it’s called… is that a good one? Lol) That remake of Yellow seems like a fun starting point as well… hmm…

I’m open to opinions…

Confirmation that the games are true open world makes me happy. The open world-esque feeling of Arceus coupled with the contemporary towns and cities of typical Pokemon games sounds like a dream to me.

But why are the main characters so derpy-looking? They certainly don't look like Ken Sugimori designs. They just look...bland.

@RubyCarbuncle wouldn’t that be fun? Having to run from the authorities while they send Pokemon after you? Having the choice whether to keep the stolen Pokémon or sell it for a profit, creating a black market? Most Pokémon fans are probably adults now so lets get some adult themes in!

The characters look a bit odd, and it already looks like it's not going to run well.

But they can only improve it from this point! And the rest looks quite nice, or at least better.

@Greatluigi That was my first thought when seeing the screenshots. The human characters look very non-pokemon.

A region based on spain. Thats gonna be interesting!
I guess now you can make tapas and pinchos for your pokemon. And Gazpacho will be a new health restoring item (would be cool though).
I love how they put so many Gaudi Mosaics and building styles into it.
And the Square based on Madrid looks really cool, too

@Kimyonaakuma It really does look rough but go back and rewatch the announcement trailer for Legends Arceus. Cause that trailer was very rough too and in the end that game ran in (dynamic) 1080p/30fps

If they manage to get this game to run at 1080p (or 900p) and 30fps than this might actually be a very pretty game

The world and scenery look really nice. Curious on what elements will carry over from Arceus.

@Kimyonaakuma I don't think the visuals are going to be more detailed in the final release, but I imagine the resolution and framerate will be cleaned up a bit similarly to Arceus' reveal vs the final product.

The world looks nice but the main character designs... I legitimately would have assumed this were one of those "Pokemon-inspired" type fan games. Ones that try to simulate the overall feeling, but just don't quite hit that same art style. The overly similar outfits are probably part of that too, they don't strike me as memorable or unique.
I'm sure most won't care, but eh.

@Reiflo Well it looks like the region might be based off of Greece, Italy, or Spain which would explain the outfits. Remember the outfits and characters are based on the region's irl equivalent.

Now I'm torn between getting Legends Arceus or just waiting for this

...Yeah I'm not doing this again, already made the mistake of buying Arceus. Time for me to move on and away from this series.

@Joeynator3000 Why? Arceus is WAY better than any of the other recent Pokemon games. Yes it's too different imo. I had the same criticism for Breath of The Wild, that doesn't mean Arceus or BoTW were bad by any means, it was just a bit upsetting that Nintendo reinvented them into something different.

@TowaHerschel7 ....Um, yeah Arceus was just flat-out boring to me.

It's great to see GameFreak taking it's baby steps into freshening up Pokemon.

@TowaHerschel7
I don't have an issue with the design, it's the fact that they look to be almost a literal pallete swap between the two.

I was initially unimpressed but a closer look at these screenshots leave me much more optimistic. Sure, I know the framerate won't be amazing but it looks like a step up from Sword and Shield.

Looks great so far. This will be a significant step up from Sword/Shield if they deliver on the promise of a true open world.

Even Arceus, as good as it is, is split up into numerous zones rather than being a fully integrated open world.

2019:

2022:

@FishyS Heres a fun fact for you. The 10 year old rule for the avatars is an "anime" only thing. The only times the games have mentioned an age was in gen 7 stating around 11. PLA avatars don't really look all that different to me from any others and there mentioned to "look 15"

@Greatluigi regional Lampent confirmed

@Elioisgoodboy lam-what?

Other than the frame rate I can’t complain about this. It looks fantastic.

Are the girl and the boy wearing the exact same clothes?

@Mattock1987 they actually did that before with the 2 GameCube games (colosseum and Gale of darkness), very underrated games in my opinion and worth a shot if you can get hold of them.

@BlubberWhale the older gameboy games are very easy to get into and have held up very well. Not too bloated an experience either, should be a more than playable game even if you don’t have lots of time.
Crystal is considered one of the better ones though personally I think gen 1 (Red and blue) was better (as well as their fire red and leaf green remakes)

I wanted a 2H hd pokemon

Man the close up of the towel bacon strip on the clothsline got me good. I'm interested but the aliasing/ lighting needs a lot of work.

Also: YOU SEE THEM SCALES ON SEVIPER?

It would be nice if you could choose the age of the character and rival on your own like whether u want them to be 10,15,20 and acording to that ramp up the difficulty of the game.

Keep catching Pokémon outside of battle and you got me hooked.

Because if they do that there doing just what I wanted, and adding stuff from legends, and stuff from the mainline games into one.

@Shoyomon I definately agree these games need difficulty settings. Currently curb stomping my way through shining pearl with just the starter.

Looks half baked, like every Pokemon title

Good riddance if they are indeed scrapping the catching pokemon outside of battle. Pokemon were meant to at least square up with you before fighting on your team the rest of the game, NOT get domed by a metal rock from 12ft behind them.

Nobody should need to scoop up 30 field pokemon in under a minute like they're Team Rocket just to have a good time with this game. But I can already hear the reviews complaining that there's too much RPG battling in this RPG.

The whole "battling against wild Pokémon in order to catch them" piece could still be fine, so long as the keep the battling similar to PLA. I don't mind entering battle to catch, provided it's seamless, no loading a separate screen, battle animations, etc. Now that they've made the wild pokemon battles this way, I don't see how they go back. It's much more streamlined and removes that grinding feel.
I'd still enjoy that if it's needed for catching — wouldn't take away from the gameplay (in my opinion).

Looking forward to it!

@Nf157 I haven’t heard of Gale of Darkness, was that a Japan only one?

Pokémon finally getting an open world game is truly exiting.

I wonder what that weird spiky thing in the Japanese logo means?

@swoose jrpg you must mean and yea turn based battles are popular in jrpgs turn based battles are also a solution to a technical constraint so with more modern hardware sure keep turn based battles but you can make them even more flashy etc

They need to work on their tree models. Other than that it looks good. Don’t know if I want a new pokemon game so soon after Arceus though. Haven’t finished it yet. But starting to feel a bit bored now. Still have had lots of fun up to like a few hours ago. The game is pretty easy and it never feels very threatening when you battle big pokemon because you have very little to lose if your pokemon all faint. Wish the stakes were higher. Maybe they come up with something for the next game.

@Savage_Joe It looks like an improved version of the Wild Area's. Which is similar to Legends Arceus. To be honest, it all depends on how the flow is in these new games. And is way to soon to say anything about that.

Boi could the main characters look any more childish/frumpy n less cool lol. Literal goody too shoes/sheltered vibes. I sure hope we can get different clothes later at least and or facial changes lol

The world looks beautiful and dopeasf tho. So glad they are taking new leaps in a right direction.

I would assume they don't include the battle free catching from Arceus, since I could see them making Legends into a spinoff series with that mechanic.
Though I could be wrong and Legends could be defined by its old age idea with the gameplay being very similar.

Either way, this has me intrigued now. Interested to see more information.

@Mattock1987 - It is a Gamecube game that is a sequel to Pokémon Colosseum. Both games are amazing but unfortunately, they are really expensive these days, like all Gamecube games are.

The best thing here is it looks like Larvitar will be an early encounter. My favourite line for most of the game? Yes please.

I'm a bit antipathetic to the announced starters, but the game/world design here is giving off good first impressions for me. Always great to see any overtures towards integrating Pokemon into living, natural environments instead of sending them straight from tall grass to enballed battleslave.

@Nf157 Hey I really appreciate your input. I guess I also have Y and Sun for 3DS… know absolutely nothing about them though lol. (Don’t even have the cases.)

I don’t know much, but I tend to agree that gen 1 is probably the best, or at least my preference, but I’m bit sure if I care enough to snag one on eBay. I’d probably go for like Yellow, because isn’t that still gen 1? I get the feeling Hey You Pikachu/Eevee are like babified easy versions of Yellow right?

Meh, I should probably either play one I own or pony up for Red/Blue/Yellow, rather than getting any Switch remakes.

The anime was fun, just not sure a full grown man can appreciate the game without any real nostalgia attached to it.

It IS somewhat encouraging to hear from you that it’s pretty doable or easy, and not a huge time commitment. Hmm… I’ve flirted with playing Pokémon for a long time (maybe since I bought my DS Lite in ‘06 lol)… maybe someday, ha.

I'm just wondering how the trees look.

Is it just me or is the lighting/shading super off again. I don't so much mind the last gen-ish graphics, but that lighting just does not look good

The Pokémon in this game look much improved over Sword and Shield.

It may not be on the level of Zelda, but, coming from Gamefreak, this is a miracle. I don't understand how anyone can complain about this game's graphics in good faith.

@JaxonH seems like they are slowly grasping how to make the best out of the Switch(and assuming also improving their own engine), which is good!

@Anti-Matter Arceus Angle obviously.

@JaxonH My only complaint are the trainers, they look so out of place.

I freaked when I saw the shine on that thing, It didn't look like plastic, it actually looked like, well metal! And the scales, my god.

@Mattock1987 XD: Gale of Darkness did get a worldwide release, though I think Colosseum sold better, that might be why you haven't heard of it.

Great stuff Nintendo, yet another bloody Pokémon game!!!

@andyg1412
And then so what?

How do we all feel about having voice acting? Is it important to anyone else or is that just me?
Someone else said free camera control too.

For me to get as interested as I want to be, I’ll need free camera all the time and voice acting. That will truly feel like a next gen Pokémon game to me.

@IronMan30 oh, don’t you dare 😂

You’re all dreaming if you think this game isn’t going to be more like SW/Sh + than Arceus.

Going to be a grump here and say that the last Pokémon world that didn't look straight up amateurish in terms of visual design was Sun & Moon.

Wow I love what I see

@BlubberWhale no problem, and yes yellow is gen 1 and the let's go games on switch (whilst in their own right fun) changed and simplified the games considerably.

@Mattock1987 no it was available outside of Japan, it was a follow up to colloseum. Wish they continued that part of the universe or at least ported them to switch

@Bayjax I know, I wish they'd port them to switch or something, really underappreciated games

@Shoyomon neat idea, I would love that

@ChromaticDracula Voice acting? Turning that off would be the first thing I do. How people can have some of these voice actors in such high regards is beyond me. It's usually cringe.

I think this looks pretty good, and if they keep some of the elements of legends then that would make it even great in my opinion. Could be one of the best gens yet.

The appearance of the environments from what they've shown so far, coupled with the reveal so soon after Legends Arceus, seems to make it pretty obvious that a second team were working on this game and developing the open world design pretty much in tandem with the PLA team. It's cool to see Game Freak willing to incorporate elements of what's worked in other games and bring them forwards.

@Nf157 ok thanks- it’s just odd that I have never heard of that game despite having a GameCube and playing Colesseum

why does the protag look so young?

If capturing and battling is as seamless like Legends Arceus then I'm sold.
If not then I'm not interested. Easy as that.

As a Spanish person I see the references to Barcelona clearly, but the rest of the world (with the sole exception, maybe, of those lighthouse-mill things that might reference the wind generators) doesn't look a lot like Spain to me?

It's looking pretty similar to New Pokémon Snap. Why is it so hard to add some shadow filtering? And maybe it could benefit from ambient occlusion. It can be demanding in open world games, but both BoTW and Xenoblade 2 have it so...

Anyway, if this is being done with Game Freak's propetary engine, then congratulations for finally achieving volumetric godrays. lol

@Greatluigi

I'm with you. The game looks great but something feels off about the character models.