The most pleasant surprise of the year came in the form of Nintendo’s Pokémon Day announcements, where we learned that the ninth generation of the mainline games is coming this year! Arriving in November 2022, fans of the franchise can look forward to getting stuck into Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, and after the brief glimpses we got of the environment and images of the starters it is safe to say I am already hugely excited.
It appears we are heading to a Spanish setting this time round with the choice of a Grass cat, Sprigatito, a Fire crocodile, Fuecoco, or a Water duck, Quaxly, to take with us on our adventure through the region we are yet to learn the name of.
The snippets of environment footage the teaser showed us look immediately promising in both graphical quality and variety. According to Serebii.net the setting is a seamless open world game which is already something I love in games, and so now I’ve got all the facts we know about Scarlet and Violet out of the way let’s get into some speculation on things I want to see in generation nine!
A Whale Legendary
You heard me right, I want a Legendary whale. Kyogre was excellent for what it was, but definitely played third fiddle to generation three’s incomparably cooler Rayquaza and Groudon. There was enough ambiguity in Kyogre’s design that while the most similar real-life animal it resembles would be a whale, it has enough differences going for it that anything else can rock up to be the Legendary whale Pokémon. Yes, I remember Wailord is already a thing, but as Eternatus came along in Sword and Shield to take its crown for biggest ever Pokémon, I want Scarlet and Violet to double down on the giant ‘mons!
Give us a Legendary whale and maybe a Steel type sentient warship Pokémon to balance it based off a Spanish Armada ship. You can’t convince me that wouldn’t be cool!
Dual Type Starter Final Forms
Sword and Shield was very good at keeping players speculating on what the dual types Grookey, Scorbunny and Sobble’s last forms would be, right up until the Pokédex leaked and we learned that for the first time since the second generation, these were just pure Grass, Fire and Water Pokémon. I was a little disappointed we didn’t get a Water / Ghost spy through Intelleon, but good old Reddit speculation points out that Fuecoco’s design may be based off a ghost chilli pepper, and so we could get a new Fire / Ghost this time around!
I don’t see Game Freak pulling the same trick as they did last time, but after the triple whammy of Fire / Fighting they pulled a decade or so ago I certainly wouldn’t put it passed them!
Personal picks for how I’d like them to end up would be a Grass / Dark panther from Sprigatito, a Fire / Ghost crocodile through Fuecoco and a Water / Psychic sea-bird (or similar) out of Quaxly.
Less Hand-Holding
I get that Pokémon is predominantly a children’s game but as a gamer of over two decades, whose very first ever video game was Pokémon Red, I and a lot of players like me have grown up with the franchise. That being the case, give us a choice of saying we’ve played these games before and know what to expect so we don’t get yet another tutorial on how to catch a wild Pokémon or what a potion is used for!
Diverse Gym Challenges
Gym challenges made a welcome return in generation eight’s Sword and Shield after a change to the formula with Sun and Moon, but now I’d like to see an additional spin put on the idea. Even as far back as generation three and six, where Double and Rotation battles were used as one-off Gym challenges, I want to see those brought back among the new ideas for Scarlet and Violet.
I loved Triple and Rotation battles in Black 2 and White 2, and would like to see the crazy knocked up another notch with four-a-side matches introduced. As keen as I am to advocate for full six-on-six matches that would quickly descend into an incomprehensible mess akin to the plot in the original Black and White.
Level Scaling / Brutal Opponents
I don’t mean a rival who trains his Pokémon through physical beatings, I mean the sort where the second they appear to challenge you, you immediately know you’re in for a tough time. Let’s return to the days where your rival would pick the Pokémon with the type advantage to yours instead of the opposite, and make it so that it doesn’t matter how many hours you pile into power-levelling as the Gym Leader’s team will always closely match yours anyway.
Whether you rock up to the first Gym with a level 5 Fuecoco or a level 100 Giratina you imported from Pokémon Home like a sore loser, let Scarlet and Violet challenges plan accordingly to deal with you. Maybe then players who don’t plan ahead (like me) won’t end up cheaply getting a team all the way through to the Elite Four which is half comprised of Poison types. Poison types are my favourites in case you couldn’t tell..
That’ll do it from me! Let me know what you want to see most in the ninth generation. Do you agree with my speculation for the starters final forms? Would you also like to see a Legendary whale? Let me know the answers to any of these in the comments below and I’ll be back with more Scarlet and Violet hype very soon. Thanks for reading!
