After first seeing this new region with the unveiling of the generation nine games in February, then seeing a bit more of it with the trailer in June, a new Pokémon Presents earlier today gave a third visit to the region – and gave us its name. The Paldea region is home to a varied amount of Pokémon, including a few new ones that were seen in this trailer. There’s also the new regional battle gimmick of crystal Pokémon – called Terastal forms.
This new form – that all Pokémon can utilise – will crystalise (or Terastalise) a Pokémon to give it stat boosts and sometimes even a new type. Certain Pokémon will even get neat head ornaments – including Pikachu gaining balloons to turn it into a flying type. Raid battles return to allow you – and friends if you invite them – to capture Pokémon with rare Terastal forms.
The trailer showed off new locations around the Paldea region, including new towns – and a look at the school where we start off the adventure. The legendaries that we saw in the last trailer are our travelling companions, growing with us and providing us various ways to get around the world. This is our HM slave. It can fly, climb, swim, and ride, with the Violet one configuring itself to be the machine needed for the job. Yeah, we can be cool riding around on a motorbike-looking Pokémon. Who else can say that?
It was confirmed within the Presents that there’s three stories to uncover as we adventure through this world, with one of them being the Gym challenge. Back with my Concepting Generation Nine article, I did say how I would have three stories being a part of the game, with one of those being the Gym challenge. The other two stories I talked of in that concept were allies and rivals. But this Gym challenge is the same, yet not the same. Considering this is a seamless open world, it would be wrong to still restrict the order you tackle the Gyms.
And so, there’s choice in how you do so. It’s a completely open Gym challenge, where you could head for the nearest to where you currently are, or explore the world and hunt down the strongest challenge. Though you’d obviously need to prepare for that. Neither of the other two stories have been revealed, but information on the official game site does state that you can progress these stories how you want. It’s pretty much a regular Pokémon adventure, just with the freedom to drop in on the story as and when you want.
As for those other two stories, if you’ll allow me a bit of speculation, I expect they’ll be more specific than what I talked about in that concept. The second story will tie into the school. The trailer talks of a treasure hunt, which is not a literal hunt, considering the line of “find something to treasure” later in it. Instead, this is an experience. A project away from the school to see what the region has to offer, growing as a person and encountering many people. With a few school friends who you’ll be meeting, too.
As for that third story, we need our evil team still. Or do we? What if there was no evil team? While I feel we might have got a small look at something that could be them, it’s difficult to say yet if that is true. However, there still needs to be some sort of conflict, so… what if there was a festival that takes place across the region, but the ones running it seem to not care about the damage they cause when setting up or moving between places?
The confirmation that this adventure is going to be just as seamless as I had hoped is good news for me. It’s something I’ve always been wanting and always been speculating that was being experimented with during generation eight, so to see all of it paying off with the start of this next generation is fantastic. With just over three months to go until it arrives on the Switch, I’m very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
