Pokemon Scarlet and Violet: Everything we learned from the 14-minute trailer

I know this is not the most professional two words to start an article with but…YOU GUYS. Seriously, I want to really be skeptical of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, especially after how much I loved Legends Arceus and wanted to see more of THAT. But every time I see a new Pokemon Presents I get more hyped for the silliest reasons.

But instead of just going off and waxing poetic about Pokemon, let’s get into the Direct if you didn’t have time to watch the 14-minute badboi below.

Now to break down some of the stuff in order.

One of the first new things we see is a glowing Jigglypuff in the distance. We found out that if we see glowing Pokemon in the wild, they’ll have a Teratype different to their normal type. In this instance, we find out that this Jigglypuff’s Teratype turns it into a water type.

We then find out more about the “Let’s Go” battle system in which you can send your Pokemon out to autobattle. You can send it out like throwing a Pokemon out in Legends Arceus where they’ll autobattle a nearby Pokemon, grab items, or interact with stuff. It seems like you’ll have a lot more control over it than the internet doomsayers feared.

During this moment we witness a Litleo defeated in autobattle and the trainer gets an item called a “Litleo tuft,” meaning there are actually going to be drops. We’ll go over that in a bit.

Not only does the open world have a minimap, but you can go into a larger map and add waypoints to help you remember where you’re going.

We then find out more about Team Star who, I guess…are kind of the most organized school bullies of all time? After we witness a “Let’s Go” battle in which you have to defeat 30 of their Pokemon, the trainer then faces off against Mela, who you have to fight in a traditional Pokemon battle.

The caption bothers me though: “Boss of Team Star’s Fire Crew.” I know they keep playing her off as the boss but I don’t think she’s THE boss. I think she’s a high-ranking grunt like Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter in Team Galactic. Just seems weird that she’s the boss of Team Star’s Fire Crew. Makes me think there are more crews.

After that we get to find out what those Litleo tufts are for. Apparently, as you psychotically collect bits of the Pokemon you defeat like a soldier with a necklace of ears, you can trade them into the machine that I promise is called the “Technical Machine Machine,” which makes me think of every time someone says ATM machine. Here you can take your various drops and, along with something called “League Points,” you can turn them into various TMs which can teach your Pokemon attacks.

We then find out that one of the things you can focus on in the game is the Path of Legends where you have to search for something called “Urba Mystica.” Side note: if there isn’t a headshop selling Herba Mystica after this, I’m going to be very disappointed in them.

It’s a quest that seems similar to Legend Arceus’s research tasks where you need to seek out and solve mysteries and find discoveries while, occasionally, encountering giant Pokemon called Titans.

The best part of this trailer, for me anyways, happens next. A trainer received a Girafarig. A Pokemon I’ve said MANY times needs an evolution. And it finally gets one! After battling it evolves in the wild to become the amazing-looking Farigiraf. Here’s a quick peek at my new main.

This Normal/Psychic type that totally looks like a Dark/Psychic type can have one of two new abilities introduced in this game. Cud Chew in which it can use a berry twice. And Armor Tail which prevents priority moves like Sucker Punch. I love it. I can’t wait to find one with a Ghost Type Teratype so I can make it the tallest boi.

I, personally, already plan to name my Farigiraf “Aibohphobia” which is both a palindrome, but also the word to describe the irrational fear OF palindromes.

Right afterwards, pay attention to the minimap. As they enter the town to talk about Victory Road, look at it. Three different Pokemon we’ve never seen before appear on it.

It’s a little hard to zoom in on clearly, but there are. Two white mice, a weird green parrot, and what appears to be a mushroomy rock thing? Just interesting.

But speaking of Victory Road they explain it for a moment. It’s the traditional path that takes you to eight different gyms on your way to reach Champion Rank. Much like in Sword and Shield, you have to complete some sort of puzzling mini-game before you can face off against the gym leader. In the example you have to find and run with so many Sunfloras that they seem to dip framerates down to 2FPS.

From there we move on to character customization in which they showcase the ridiculous amount of hair styles, hair color, and even eyebrows you can pick from. One of the things I really appreciated was that they brought in a character that looked traditionally masculine and completely femmed it up. I felt it was a good way for them to show that nothing is really gender-locked.

They then went on to showcase the camera. Not only can you take all sorts of pictures and cool selfies but you can use the pictures as a profile image other trainers see, similar to the trainer cards from Sword and Shield.

It also helped showcase the fact that you can look in all directions in towns. I know this is something most games have had for years, but Pokemon hasn’t really had a lot of towns where you could turn the camera in. In fact, as far as mainline games go, I’m pretty sure the closest we ever got was X and Y.

After that they showed off the new picnic mechanic. In the picnic mechanic you can do a lot of things similar to the curry mechanic of Sword/Shield. You can wash off your Pokemon that got dirty which reminded me of Pokemon Amie from previous games. You can play with them using toys. You can even occasionally find Pokemon Eggs on picnic sites.

As for cooking, this game’s food du jour is sandwiches. Using ingredients you have with you, you have 10 minutes (jesus why so much time) to throw together a sandwich. The careful creation of a sandwich has more benefits than just healing Pokemon and providing a quick XP boost. As shown in the trailer, it also can do things like increasing your likelihood of discovering Pokemon of certain types, give you catching bonuses, and more.

And finally, they gave us a better look at Tera Raid Battles. After seemingly receiving one million complaints about how slow some people were in the Sword/Shield raid battles, they found the perfect solution. Automate the majority of it! Each of the four trainers involved pick a Pokemon and send it to battle. There’s a time limit and all Pokemon attack in real-time. From the sidelines, you can choose to occasionally cheer to raise states or heal. If you win, you get a chance to catch the rare Pokemon you just battled.

All in all, it seems like there’s going to be a lot to do next month. Honestly, with how little I understand about the world while still finding out all this, I feel like the surface has barely been scratched. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet is set to release on November 18, 2022 for Nintendo Switch.