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SwSh Sword & Shield: Expansion Pass

You know, these expansion passes are gonna be a good opportunity to actually train some Pokémon I took out of my team in the base game along with some ones I had trouble level grinding in older games. Especially since three members of my team from the base game are on level 100.

My Raichu is a lock. As for an older Pokémon, I’m definitely using my Umbreon from Crystal (level 64). Slowpoke and Kubfu are also locks.
 
I feel like I’m in the minority that really doesn’t see SwSh as incomplete lol. Aside from a skimpy post-game which we’ve had for the past 3 generations, it had everything any other Pokémon game had except the full Dex availability.
Thank! You!

I I'm I'm gonna go post another "what are you excited for" thread like the one I did in the SwSh leadup.
 
1. It may not have been originally intended for that Regi. We've seen similar unusued dragons before, and uh, the Regi connection is awkward.
2. It might have been a concept initially considered for a separate game that turned into DLC.
3. Maybe the DLC was the plan even in June and they just didn't want to announce it a year in advance (just for the first part) while promoting the base game... This expansion is not that extensive.
4. This is getting into a conspiracy theory, but making fans uncertain about removed Pokemon is a good way to make them think that their return is the best thing ever. I am not so sure that they made an error...
So we are not just looking at the most logical option: simply they lied about dlc back in June.
Like they did when they said they would have never abandoned gyms, or that the presence of all pokemon in the games was a must for the serie cause people is attached to them etc...I mean aren't we used yet to the fact that they contradict themselves with every new game?
 
My only complaint is about us getting more Galarian Forms.. but the fact that Zapdos, Moltres, and Articuno are getting Galarian forms is what irks me..

And it has nothing to do Pokemon Sword or Pokemon Shield.

Game Freak has just given Niantic another excuse to recycle those stupid birds (this time thanks to the Galarian forms). Niantic needs to move on from those birds for a good while. I am tired of them.

That said, I'm thankful for the expansions. I'm sure I'll have my nitpicks later, but I am just thankful that Game Freak is going this route to keep fresh life in the games as opposed to going the route of releasing "third version" or "alternate storyline" games.

I think those are forms activated somehow, not generaly Galarian.
Probably the birds will transform like they did with gen 5 beast forms.

Dark/flying or Poison/flying Moltres? or maybe fire/poison with Levitate?

ghost/flying arcticuno and a electric/fighting zapdos cool.


Hmmm Slowking water/??? steel, ghost, fire , grass are good options especially steel,ghost and fire.
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maybe more expansion Passes in future? Scepter? Trident? Castle?

I think the shrine or sacred place will allow you to maybe transform legendary birds forms, change shifu formes and make pokemon we catch or our base starters get Gigantamax forms via a special training in a special place like Leons Charizard did.
Also we may get bulbasaur or squirtle.

Interesting is Slowpoke and Slowking getting new forms, hope water/fire or water/ghost with Dazzling or something even better.
 
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These are great news and I’m happy to see Game Freak making DLC. I hope this means enhanced versions are a thing of the past unless they make more sequel games like B2W2. Frankly, I’d like to see sequel games again some day, but that’s a topic for another day.

What concerns me is that DLC can be abused, and I sincerely hope this won’t encourage Game Freak to rush games out the door just because they can be “fixed” later via DLC. Sorry, but I find the base game to be very lackluster. I want SWSH to be the exception, not the standard going forward.

I will wait until we can see the full extent of the content the DLC offers before I judge it. It looks interesting so far, but I want to be cautious. USUM trailers were exciting too, but we all know how that turned out. That’s not to say the DLC will be bad or misleading; I’m simply waiting to see its full content before I decide what I think about it.

It’s good to know the base game will have the Pokemon patched for free so people can transfer their old Pokemon or trade for the new ones without having to buy the DLC. Who knows, maybe we’ll eventually get the full roster added to SWSH.

Overall, this is a mixed bag for me. DLC is a step in the right direction, but I will have to see how things play out from here.
 
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Will we need to spend $30 to buy each expansion pack (so, $60)? Or we're paying $30 to buy both (the Armor Island and Crown Trunda)?

$30 gets you both the Isle of Armor and the Crown Tundra, but only for one version of the game. If you have both Sword and Shield, and you want to do these missions on both versions, then you’ll have to buy two passes.
 
better question, is the map now full after revealing the expansions or are there still foggy and not used spots on Galars map?

Interesting how many pokemon and forms they have hidden and not shown in the trailers?
Feel that with Slowpoke we may get 5 more Galar lines then only slowpoke and birds, 16 more Gigantamaxes, in trailers only 7

We need to assume a third or maybe even fourth regi to those two we got or maybe with the others it will be 6 all together.
The electric regi looks like it could summon rain and electric terrain together.

Legendaries are new pokemon yes, 2 new pairs for new passes. Possible is that they will realese a extra pair of passes with others.

Maybe there will be more regular new pokemon too taking we get more galarian forms also.
 
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They've never made complete games or we wouldn't have had third instalments at all.


I don't feel like this is a fair comment - red and blue were definitely complete, Yellow was done to tie closer to the anime.

Gold and Silver were complete, the Suicune stuff in Crystal was obviously added after as a different approach to the same adventure.

I skipped gen 3 so can't comment on gen 3.

Diamond and Pearl never felt like anything was deliberately held back just for the sake of platinum.

Black 2 and White 2 were done more as direct sequels so don't thibk B/W can fairly be called incomplete either.



After that point I wouldn't argue to defend whether anything was deliberately held back or not but Sword and Shield do feel like the epitome of releasing a game with deliberately held back content.
 
I don't feel like this is a fair comment
It wasn't meant to be fair. This DLC package is as much additional content, as what we would usually see in third instalments, minus the patched in Pokemon. Which you won't need the Expansion Pack for. HOME and a previous game OR trading with other players will get you those (though you need NSO for either, but that's more of a Nintendo issue than a GameFreak issue).

You could argue those third instalments weren't 'complete' either. They could always add more. Complete is rather subjective here. I mean, I could even argue that if Red and Blue had actually been complete, they wouldn't still have been full of glitches.

Point being, you can pretty much always expand on a game, so no we never have had a 'complete' game. Do I mind? Hardly.

And SwSh is hardly my favourite Pokemon game, considering there really is very little to do after you beat the main game and the post-game (the latter which takes a couple hours at best). If you're not into battling, these games don't over anything to do afterwards at all.
 
I think I might have misunderstood your comment as being more about past games being as lacking as Sword/Shield which I don't think is what you meant - think I was more focused on the response that the post that it was responding to.
 
So we are not just looking at the most logical option: simply they lied about dlc back in June.
Didn’t they purposely phrase it as “we currently have no plans to make all Pokémon available”....? People want to paint them as malicious liars so badly lol. I’m not saying to give them unconditional benefit of the doubt, but please stop with the dramatics.
 
Didn’t they purposely phrase it as “we currently have no plans to make all Pokémon available”....? People want to paint them as malicious liars so badly lol. I’m not saying to give them unconditional benefit of the doubt, but please stop with the dramatics.
There’s no way they didn’t know that they were about to release DLC in June though. They also said that Dexit was going to be a company policy going forward.
 
Didn’t they purposely phrase it as “we currently have no plans to make all Pokémon available”....? People want to paint them as malicious liars so badly lol. I’m not saying to give them unconditional benefit of the doubt, but please stop with the dramatics.
I'm not saying they were malicious. They just didn't want to reveal It back then, like when they didn't want to reveal the change in gyms for s/m. It's normal. What I'm saying is that considering how bad was received the announcement of dexit, It was a mistake not to announce that through future dlc there was a chance to add some more pokemon to the games.
It's a question of marketing. Nothing really changes in the games development, what changes is the perception of the games by the fans.
If thousands of people complained everyday for like 6 months about dexit, what's the point of saying you have no intention ti add pokemon through dlc when you are actually working exactly in that direction?
 
I think those are forms activated somehow, not generaly Galarian.
Probably the birds will transform like they did with gen 5 beast forms.

Dark/flying or Poison/flying Moltres? or maybe fire/poison with Levitate?

ghost/flying arcticuno and a electric/fighting zapdos cool.

I was thinking that since these new regional/form birds still look like they're Ice, Electric and Fire..that probably means they might lose the flying typing. (also Zapdos was standing on its feet in one picture)

I keep thinking Ice/Ghost for Articuno because the colour palette reminds me of ghost form Oricorio.

Fire/Dark seems like a possibility for Moltres.

Zapdos is the hardest to figure out. It looks sorta like a Dark type but Moltres fits Dark better I think. Maybe Zapdos will get the Dragon typing? (or as you said I guess I could see Fighting)

Alternatively maybe they all get Dark as a secondary typing? I could see it for all three designs.
 
There’s no way they didn’t know that they were about to release DLC in June though. They also said that Dexit was going to be a company policy going forward.
I'm not saying they were malicious. They just didn't want to reveal It back then, like when they didn't want to reveal the change in gyms for s/m. It's normal. What I'm saying is that considering how bad was received the announcement of dexit, It was a mistake not to announce that through future dlc there was a chance to add some more pokemon to the games.
It's a question of marketing. Nothing really changes in the games development, what changes is the perception of the games by the fans.
If thousands of people complained everyday for like 6 months about dexit, what's the point of saying you have no intention ti add pokemon through dlc when you are actually working exactly in that direction?
What he said was that they aren’t adding all Pokémon. Which is still true.
They didn’t reveal and talk about USUM during Sun and Moon promotion. They didn’t reveal and talk about Platinum during Diamond and Pearl promotion. This is not really all that different. At the end of the day, your marketing should make people want to buy the game regardless of if it’s getting DLC or a future version. And, to their credit, it did.
 
They've never made complete games or we wouldn't have had third instalments at all.

I sort of agree with this, but coming at it from the opposite angle - if none of the third versions or sequels ever existed, I don't think there'd be as much of a sense that the base games were "incomplete," because our ideal of what a Pokémon game is expected to consist of would be far more standardized. Obviously this is just my take, but I don't get the sense that they've ever really held back content with the intention of making people pay for it in a second game; I feel like it's more that they have a lot of ideas that they'd like to implement, but only have so much time in which to do so, and focus primarily on getting what they consider to be the core experience into a stable package. And then third versions, where they can put a secondary team onto a side-project in which the heavy lifting has already been done, allows them to salvage some of those ideas that didn't make it in (for instance, Masuda has said that they thought about implementing something like Cosplay Pikachu into X & Y, but weren't able to do so at that time - but then the Hoenn remakes gave them space to work it in).

Even Sun & Moon, which are the only base games that I personally think feel "incomplete," strike me more as a case of "When Deadlines Attack!" as opposed to "lol let's sell 'em half a game now and half later"

(Though to be clear, I'm essentially saying here that third versions never needed to exist, and yet they did, because obviously we're dealing with a company and all companies operate on greed. So while I don't think they deliberately set out to make the base games feel "incomplete," I also don't think they ever had any ethical issue whatsoever with then taking that skeleton and adding more to it to entice people into another buy, and I think they've only changed track now because other game studios' move to DLC has made the practice of rereleasing more frowned upon by consumers.)

On a bit of a tangential note, one thing I am very glad to see here is the free patch for people with the base SwoShi games, not simply because it's just the right thing to do, but also because it avoids the crass situation we had with USUM in 2018 where competitive players had to buy the rerelease due to the existence of new Pokémon and battle assets that didn't exist in SM, which the game makers refused to patch in. That was pretty bad. Releasing third versions in general is one thing, but if you're going to do them, then I think they should always maintain an inessentiality so as not to exclude anyone looking to get involved in the fan community that the production company themselves directly foster and host events for.

I just thought of something: Sonia says at one point that Zacian and Zamazenta were originally born "somewhere beyond the Slumbering Weald". Could that be referring to the Crowned Tundra?

Indeed she did! You might be onto something.
 
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