(Pocket-lint) – The next mainline Pokémon games are on the way – The Pokémon Company used 2022’s Pokémon Day celebrations as the perfect time to announce Scarlet and Violet, the next two games in the series, which are coming for Nintendo Switch.
We’ve got the first trailer for the games, and glimpses of both returning and all-new Pokémon, so there’s plenty of information about the games out there. Here are all the key details you need to know.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet announcement trailer
You can see the first trailer for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet above, and happily it’s not a tiny snippet to tease their release, but rather a full three-minute look at the games in motion, with loads of gameplay clips cut throughout it.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet release date
The first trailer for the twin games ends with the information that they’ll be arriving in late 2022, which we would assume would mean around the holidays in winter, so there’s a little while to go before they come out.
That said, it’s still a great bit of news that they’ll be out this year, especially since 2022 has already seen the release of Pokémon Legends: Arceus to a really good reception. It’s not too often that you get more than one proper Pokémon release in a calendar year, after all.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet platforms
The two games have both been announced for Nintendo Switch, and will completely exclusive to that platform, which is no surprise at all, given the history of the franchise on Nintendo’s machines. They won’t come out on any other consoles, or on PC.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet gameplay
We’ll start where players will – the starter Pokémon for the game have been unveiled, and they’re looking mighty cute already.
They’re Sprigatito, a grassy cat; Fuecoco, a firey crocodile; and Quaxly, a duckling. It’s a really nice set of starters from a design perspective, in our opinion, with simpler and purer designs than recent generations have brought to the table, so we’re hoping they’re a sign of things to come from other new monsters.
While there will as always be a returning roster of Pokémon to go along with a range of new designs, the biggest details about gameplay that have emerged aren’t about the lineups. Rather, they’re based on how the game will actually play.
For one thing, developer Game Freak is calling the game’s truly open-world, and has said that you’ll be able to move from towns into the wilder areas between them without any transitions or loading screens, which is really exciting if they can pull it off.
We got a look at how open-world systems could help the series modernise in Legends Arceus, so this might be the next big step toward a new look and feel for the franchise’s main entries.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet story
While it showed off plenty of the world that Scarlet and Violet will be set in, the name of the region didn’t get detailed in the reveal trailer, and Game Freak hasn’t formally confirmed much about it.
However, over the last decade most Pokémon games have taken a real-world region as their inspiration, such as the United Kingdom for Sword and Shield.
That’s likely to have continued for the new games, and most observers are agreed that it looks like some combination of Spain and Portugal are in the limelight this time around.
The geography is a solid match, but it’s landmarks like an in-game version of Barcelona’s La Sagrada Familia that are really tipping the balance in those countries’ favours. We’ll have to wait for formal confirmation but watch this space.
We can also assume that, like normal, there will be a team of dastardly baddies to take on throughout our journey, as well as at least a pair of new legendaries to encounter, so there’s still a lot more to learn about Scarlet and Violet’s prospective story.
Writing by Max Freeman-Mills.
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