Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon Violet coming to Nintendo Switch this year

I knew there was a Pokemon Direct this morning but as Brilliant Diamond, Shining Pearl, AND Pokemon Legends Arceus all came out within the last few months, and the biggest event in Pokemon GO ended yesterday, I figured this was just going to be one of those things where Nintendo would thanks us for supporting them and encourage us to stay tuned for more throughout the year. I figured I would wake up and not have missed anything particularly newsworthy. But no.

Instead, Nintendo took this morning to first talk about some light updates coming to all their mobile games.

But then they announced that starting today, Brilliant Diamond and Shinin Pearl players can download Oak’s Letter as a Mystery Gift. This is a special item that not only allows you to meet Professor Oak in-game but also gets you the chance to encounter Shaymin. This Mystery Gift is available until March 27th. After that, if you want the letter, you’re not getting it cause that’s how Pokemon do.

They also announced that Pokemon Legends Arceus, a game I’ve covered extensively, will be getting a new update that focuses on a new research mission that’s caused outbreaks to appear all over the place. The update, titled Daybreak, launches later today. They’ll also add new battles to the training ground.

Not only that but using the Mystery Gift code “ARCEUSADVENTURE” will get you 30 Jet Balls, 30 Gigaton Balls, and 30 Ultra Balls. So dang.

They also talked about an Arceus-based online animated series that focuses on Hisuian Zorua. It’ll be interesting to see how they handle this adorable Pokemon whose entire existence seems to be based around the fact that it used to be a regular Zorua who traveled north and then froze to death painfully. Should be fun.

But… then… Game Freak dropped a new trailer that revealed an entirely new open world game: Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon Violet.

The game is easily one of the prettiest looking ones I’ve seen and it looks like it could be a return to the traditional Pokemon-style though, gym leaders and all that.

Personally, I hope the Pokeball mechanics from Arceus are still there. Pokemon Legends Arceus showed me how fun Pokemon could be when they did away from the super boring setup the series has had forever, but as of yet nothing has really been revealed in that front. The only thing you can really see is the new open-world, the new change to character models (which might take a bit to get used to) and one of the most perfectly ugly/cute set of starters I’ve ever seen.

Oh, and it’s coming out this year for Nintendo Switch. Game Freak really went hard for those 15 minutes.