After what feels like years of speculation, The Pokémon Company finally today said "Sinnoh Confirmed!" - not once, but twice!
Coming later this year, and developed by ILCA, Inc - whose experience includes games such as Code Vein, NieR Automata and Yakuza 0 - under Game Freak's direction, Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are incredibly faithful remakes of the 2006 DS originals. Brought bang-up-to-date with a chibi-style to match the original's overworld sprites and promising to keep hold of player-friendly conveniences of later releases (No HMs, please!), these games promise to really capture the original gameplay and visual style of the originals on the Switch.
We'll have to wait and see whether we'll get a sniff of any of Platinum's changes in these releases, but there's still some good news in store if you're a little let down by how similar they are to the original Diamond and Pearl.
Sticking to the Sinnoh Region, early next year Game Freak will be bringing out an entirely new kind of Pokémon game: Pokémon Legends Arceus.
Taking heavy inspiration from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, this seems like a true evolution of Sword and Shield's burgeoning open-world design in the Wild Area and DLC locations.
Set in Sinnoh's Fuedal past, your mission will be to explore and create the Sinnoh Region's first ever Pokédex. We don't know much else of the story beyond that, but with Arceus playing a literal title role, it seems likely there'll be a lot more to the game than just filling up your Pokedex.
While there is a continuity of basic capture and battling features from previous main series Pokémon games, Pokémon Legends makes all of these seamless acts rather than fading into and out of pre-defined battle scenes. We'll have to wait to find out a lot more about it, but it definitely looks like an exciting evolution of the main series games.
