Official Pokémon Sword and Shield speculation thread (Updated June 5th, 2019)

[Synthaphone]

That's not only the ideal solution, it's also the most logical one, because that's how it should work in the pokemon world.

It's the most logical one from a story and worldbuilding perspective, for sure, but would need to be implemented carefully to not be confusing from a gameplay perspective- and from a game design perspective, it would be pretty unnecessary and a lot of extra work for not a lot of payoff.

That being said, I would really like to see it happen, it just seems unlikely.

Sidenote- I wish people weren't forming a nasty gamer mob about some of the Pokemon getting left out. I get that its upsetting, I'm really upset about it! But harassing the game developers and Gamefreak is hardly the way to go about inciting change, it just makes everyone else who cares about the issue look and feel like an asshole. Plus, we've only known about it for like, a day. I'm really hanging on for that follow up information- now that I've had time to think about it and calm down, I feel like there's a high likelihood that the problem gets rectified sometime in the future.

(This isn't really directed towards anyone in this thread, I'm just really disheartened by how people seem to be reacting on social media. Like, be upset, by all means!! Just don't harass people about it! It should be so simple...)

 

[Poke Dragon]

That's pretty rough if even their data isn't in the game, because in every single main series Pokemon game that exists (outside of LGPE), all old Pokemon have been coded into the game. (And all old items, for some unfathomable reason. The Red Chain will do zero for you in Gen 6, so why not scrub it?) If a Pokemon "wasn't available" in that gen, it simply meant that they weren't placed in some grass or something. Doing that kept compatibility issues down. This time, they seem to have invented a compatibility issue wholesale.

That's the result of them importing the data from the previous games rather than choosing to include certain parts of it.

 

[Boss1708]

The state of Bulbagarden Forums right now:

Spoiler

I don't blame you guys. Your salt is justified, even though I personally don't transfer my Pokémon, I still understand why others feel this way.

 

[Shrapnel Stars]

I'm actually willing to forgive the surfing bike thing since it seems to be Rotom possessing a bike, and Rotom can already float. It's not all that different from the Rotom forms that can battle, afaic.

 

[Poke Dragon]

Honestly, I'm fine with any feature that makes HMs obsolete. Sure we don't get to ride our favorite Pokemon, but honestly, that's nothing compared to the huge inconvenience of needing a specific Pokemon to perform one measly task to get through that one path in a cave or something, it's just not worth having it for just one measly task.

 

[Cresselia92]

I wonder if we’ll finally get some more widespread physical Fairy move. Play Rough isn’t a bad attack by any mean, but having something more accurate would be nifty.

Also, some new physical Electric attack, please. I dislike having to slap Wild Charge on my Luxrays and Zebstrikas and having to take unnecessary damage just to hit a bit harder — since, in both cases, their next best physical electric option is… Spark. ._.

 

[PkmnTrainerV]

Honestly, I'm fine with any feature that makes HMs obsolete. Sure we don't get to ride our favorite Pokemon, but honestly, that's nothing compared to the huge inconvenience of needing a specific Pokemon to perform one measly task to get through that one path in a cave or something, it's just not worth having it for just one measly task.

Or being screwed if you don’t want to raise a water or a flying type or bidoof for some reason.

I still feel sorry for my HM Slave Bibarel and how I treated it compared to my other party members. I didn’t even like it much and was desperate to give its spot to someone else, but it was necessary to progress the game.

It also disheartened me a little seeing it’s friendship with me increase but me forgetting it exists outside of certain situations.

HMs created HM Slaves, a concept that goes against everything the Pokemon franchise stood for... (but they seem to be forgetting this in Go and Let’s Go but that’s another issue)

 

[Darkrai8674]

Honestly game freak has somehow got me more interested in seeing older Pokemon in the games rather than newer ones because my favorite Pokemon hasn't been shown yet and I'm kind of nervous that it won't be.

 

[VelVoxelRaptor]

Obviously Thanos Arceus has something to do with this. Pokémon will be saved in Pokémon Infinite Diamond and Endgame Pearl XDXD.

Jokes aside I don’t think it’s a big deal atm. All it simply means is that you can’t have every single Pokémon in Sword/Shield, you can still however “catch them all”.

They said it has a two way transfer from Sword/Shield so Pokemon Home is obviously a storage system. Which means your Pokémon are not deleted, they will simply just exist in the cloud.

And this is the first new generation on the switch. By the time the next Gen comes out, they will likely have all Pokémon programmed in, I think people need to chill out atm.

Also, this is just me making things up, but maybe Pokémon Home will have some sort of reward for completing the national dex. Maybe.

 

[TheRealMattHunt]

Obviously Thanos Arceus has something to do with this. Pokémon will be saved in Pokémon Infinite Diamond and Endgame Pearl XDXD.

Jokes aside I don’t think it’s a big deal atm. All it simply means is that you can’t have every single Pokémon in Sword/Shield, you can still however “catch them all”.

They said it has a two way transfer from Sword/Shield so Pokemon Home is obviously a storage system. Which means your Pokémon are not deleted, they will simply just exist in the cloud.

And this is the first new generation on the switch. By the time the next Gen comes out, they will likely have all Pokémon programmed in, I think people need to chill out atm.

Also, this is just me making things up, but maybe Pokémon Home will have some sort of reward for completing the national dex. Maybe.

This basically. As long as I can bring my old Pokemon to Home and have them there, I'm content.
I'm wondering now if Home is actually some kind of interactive version of Bank? I mean, the name kind of sounds like a hub of some kind, and we know that it will be used for trading too.

 

[AngryBinacle]

What's next? A X-virus reboot like Digimon had in some of its universes?

 

[blitzle stan]

I wonder if we’ll finally get some more widespread physical Fairy move. Play Rough isn’t a bad attack by any mean, but having something more accurate would be nifty.

Also, some new physical Electric attack, please. I dislike having to slap Wild Charge on my Luxrays and Zebstrikas and having to take unnecessary damage just to hit a bit harder — since, in both cases, their next best physical electric option is… Spark. ._.

With Yamper looking to be a physical attacker, I'm hoping there in fact is a new, better physical electric attack for it that the older physical electrics can also use.

 

[Juizel]

I just find it so odd that Pokémon whose slogan is “Gotta Catch ‘em All!” now has a game where you...can’t catch ‘em all.

At this point I’m really hoping that they release updates/patches to gradually bring in old Pokémon like they do with Go, but I wouldn’t hold my breath that they won’t just expand the Pokédex in the next games either.

That being said, I do hope people aren’t too hard on Masuda-San and co. It seemed very difficult for him to make this announcement, and if you rewatch the treehouse he seems pretty uncomfortable. There are constructive ways to get our wants and opinions across, so I hope no one is joining these Twitter and YouTube mobs with pitchforks and insults.

Same here. I absolutely hate this decision (wow, what news, bet nobody caught on yet) but it just can't be blamed on a single person. No matter who suggested this, or why, it's never just a single person making the call. And from a "people will buy the games anyway, so why give them 900 monsters, if we can give them half of those, tops, for the same price?" point of view I do understand it.
Doesn't mean I have to like it, or reduce my salt, though.

I'm one of those people who actually liked third versions when they still were third versions (as in, focus on third legendary, can catch both former cover legendaries.... USUM did not offer this, and BW2 are a bad comparison because they are actual sequels and given that you'd usually go B -> B2 or W -> W2 you'd still get both legendaries) because they offered more. Granted, it was minor things, but in my honest opinion, in direct comparison, the third versions were more like complete versions. And if not for the fact that it was stated that this is more a general policy change related decision, one could hope for a third version with full Pokedex, or even next remakes to have them. But like this, it's more like (examples of Pokémon I am picking on random here, just so it's not any base of discussion lol):
I want to use a Pelipper, starts up Sword/Shield.
I want to use a Floatzel, starts up DP remake.
I want to use a Quagsire, starts up SWSH third version.

When how things were before, I could just use all of them on the same team (whyever I'd want to do that should be my own business) and now I have to buy 3 different games to just be able to use 3 Pokémon I grew to like over my years of playing Pokémon.

I don't mind approaches like BW of "new Pokémon only until post-game", and I wouldn't mind if there was some sorta block that you could only take Pokémon with same OT and ID etc. from Bank/Home until you beat the game to be forced to enjoy the game for what it is before you let non-native Pokémon to the region join the fun. Not necessarily the Swampert you picked on Ruby's release day as a kid, but maybe even just any Qwilfish because it just so happens to be your favourite Pokémon.

What's next? A X-virus reboot like Digimon had in some of its universes?

Digimon adapted to that, though, by becoming X-Antibody versions of themselves which look mostly pretty bad*ss tbh.

 

[Kallyle]

They said it has a two way transfer from Sword/Shield so Pokemon Home is obviously a storage system. Which means your Pokémon are not deleted, they will simply just exist in the cloud.

But that also means they are inaccessible to the player once transferred over unless your Pokémon is in the National dex. To me, that's more upsetting than not being able to use a good quantity of your Pokémon in SwSh. They could easily rectify this specific issue by having ways to interact with your Pokémon in Home whether it be through a battle simulator or a series of mini games (the latter seems more likely).

This basically. As long as I can bring my old Pokemon to Home and have them there, I'm content.
I'm wondering now if Home is actually some kind of interactive version of Bank? I mean, the name kind of sounds like a hub of some kind, and we know that it will be used for trading too.

That's exactly what @TRNatalie (I think) and myself have suggested. As long as we can still use our Pokémon in some capacity other than just waiting for a game where they're part of the region's Pokédex, I think there would be less complaints from a good portion of the fan base and the target audience who would otherwise be upset when they can't use their favorites.

 

[Minnale101]

12k likes and 17k dislikes

The first Pokemon video to have more dislikes than likes

 

[Juizel]

12k likes and 17k dislikes

The first Pokemon video to have more dislikes than likes

When I checked about 2, maybe 3 hours ago, it was at 12k likes and 13.5k dislikes. That's a decent growth.

 

[Pulsaro23]

I think saying they "eliminated" them is a bit melodramatic; they did the same thing with SM and life went on.

This is a kriffing lie! Yes, they removed the National Dex in SM, but you could still transfer old Pokémon (including those who weren't in the Alola Dex) to SM/USUM! However, for Sword and Shield, they strait up removed the non-Galar Dex Pokémon from the game (and with that, one's ability to transfer them to the games)! It's not the same thing! It's not the kriffing same thing at all!

 

[chickenperson52]

For me I feel like it's one thing to lock new features and a few Pokemon to a third version. But for them to wait until a third version to give us access to all 809 is so much worse. They'd be asking us to pay another 60 for the game, plus Pokémon Home, just to use Pokémon we already have. It'd be different if Home didn't exist; I'd be upset, but not as upset.

I actually like the idea of bigger regional dexes replacing National Dex completion as the big game end goal that unlocks fun things. That allows everyone to do it, regardless of whether they've been hoarding Pokémon in Bank. But if that's their goal, I expect the Galar dex to top out where USUM did , at 400ish...so that means close to 50% of Pokémon will be cut from SwSd.

I do love Yamper, though. It gives me the same warm and fuzzy feeling Lillipup did. Can't wait to put in on my team and have it stomp on my enemies while Dynanaced

 

[Juizel]

For me I feel like it's one thing to lock new features and a few Pokemon to a third version. But for them to wait until a third version to give us access to all 809 is so much worse. They'd be asking us to pay another 60 for the game, plus Pokémon Home, just to use Pokémon we already have. It'd be different if Home didn't exist; I'd be upset, but not as upset.

I actually like the idea of bigger regional dexes replacing National Dex completion as the big game end goal that unlocks fun things. That allows everyone to do it, regardless of whether they've been hoarding Pokémon in Bank. But if that's their goal, I expect the Galar dex to top out where USUM did , at 400ish...so that means close to 50% of Pokémon will be cut from SwSd.

I do love Yamper, though. It gives me the same warm and fuzzy feeling Lillipup did. Can't wait to put in on my team and have it stomp on my enemies while Dynanaced

That doesn't mean a National Dex must be gone, though. I mean, I'm all for getting stuff like the Shiny Charm for the regional dex (not everyone plays for years and kept old mons, etc., regional dex is more reasonable) but even if it was just some silly ingame-certificate, or for keeping track, I'd prefer the national dex still being a thing in general. I genuinely missed it in gen 7, even if it wouldn't get me anything to complete it.

 

[dvor]

Game freak are just bunch of clowns tbh