Pokemon Legends Arceus: Diamond and Pearl Clans, Ginkgo Guild merchants and more

Over the last week or so the official Pokemon Twitter feed has been dropping lots of interesting new information regarding Pokemon Legends: Arceus, starting with the reveal of the newest Hisuian Pokemon variant. Voltorb is the newest Pokemon to get a Hisuian form and, honestly, it’s the best choice.

For years people have wondered how a Pokemon happened that looked like a Pokeball. But seeing that there’s one that’s partially wood that is filled with seeds that will eventually sprout from its head providing berries gives this confusing Voltorb an origin that seems to make sense. It’s almost as if the Pokeball was inspired by the Voltorb and not the other way around.

But they went on in the last day or two and just dropped a ton of lore on us. Almost as much as their original reveal which already gave us a ton of info. Let’s get into it after the trailer.

This narration-less trailer, set to rejected Mario Kart music, dropped a lot of information on our laps. First off, there are new clans. There’s the Diamond Clan which is run by Adaman. Then there’s the Pearl Clan which is run by Irida. Adaman and Irida are very interesting characters in the fact that not only do we know precious little about them but they also don’t seem to be visually connected to any characters in the future. This more than likely means they’ll be filling in the role of rivals. And the fact that one is dressed in red and the other blue has not escaped me either but that’s just me grasping at straws.

Irida is very interesting to me too. Not just because of her “what are thooooose” inspiring Pokeball shoes, but also because of how she talks about Sinnoh. We already know that this Hisui region is the place that eventually gets to be known as Sinnoh, but she keeps referring to Sinnoh as a being. She seems to pray to it and honor it and it almost makes me wonder if it’s the “Dialkia” that Nintendo brought up years and years ago and has never ever mentioned again. If you’re unaware, Dialkia is what many people call the statue that you encounter in Eterna City in Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. A statue that looks like a merger of Dialga and Palkia. Thus the name. It’s also appeared in the manga, much to the surprise of the main characters.

It will be interesting to see if Dialkia is a thing that shows up and is somehow forced to split over the course of the game. Or maybe I’m just looking too much into something Nintendo probably did to save sprites between Diamond and Pearl.

In addition to all this, they also revealed the Gingko Merchant Guild. The Gingko Merchant Guild seems to be who’s helping supply you with everything you need and, considering this game is going to require some HEAVY resource management you’ll probably see them a lot.

The guild is run by someone named Ginter and when he briefly showed off the shop in the trailer you could get a hint at what some of the items do. For example, it looks like the berries can be thrown as a distraction to lure wild Pokemon in a particular distraction. There are also items like a “Vivichoke” which can be used for crafting as well as an item called “Swordcap” which says it can raise strength and is needed for crafting “Aux Powers”.

They also showed one of Ginter’s guild merchants, a man named Volo who seems like the spitting image of famous Pokemon Trainer, Cynthia. From the trailer, it looks like he’ll be a large part of your story.

The other neat thing that was announced is that they added another save data bonus. It was already announced that Let’s Go save files will give you either Pikachu or Eevee festival masks and that Sword/Shield save files will give you the chance to catch land forme Shaymin as well as getting a cool Shaymin themed kimono. But now it’s been revealed that if you have save data from Pokemon Brilliant Diamond or Shining Pearl, after the game has been beaten you’ll get a special new mission where you can catch Darkrai. Not only that but you’ll get a Team Galactic uniform which…I feel really spoils what’s going to happen with the Galactic Research Team by the end of the game.

All in all, it feels like so many cool things are happening with this game and I cannot wait to tackle it head-on when it drops on January 28th of 2022.