Nintendo Direct 27/02/19 Pokémon Direct

So you might have missed it, but there was a Nintendo Direct today, a mini Pokémon-centric one.

The whole thing was only roughly seven minutes long, but thankfully we saw some substance in that seven minutes.

The direct started with Tsunekazu Ishihara, the President and CEO of The Pokémon Company, letting us know that he’s here to introduce us to the next two entries into the Pokémon series, Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield. The game itself is in full 3D, which we would all expect given the last few games in the series. The region setting for these now Pokémon games is called Galar, which looks quite impressive, with areas and buildings sporting lots of detail and a very classic Western style of architecture. The region of Galar itself will also have a diverse topography to explore, as is the case in Pokémon games. We were also given a look at the three new starter Pokémon by Shigeru Ohmori, Director for the games. There’s Grookey, a small and green monkey like Pokémon, Scorbunny, as it’s name suggests is a bunny and the ‘Water Lizard Pokémon’ Sobble.

Shigeru Ohmori Said that the people at Game Freak have challenged themselves to make ‘the greatest Pokémon experience’ to date, while Junichi Masuda (Producer) said these games will be ‘role-playing games’ that will ‘get any player fired-up and excited’. If those promises turn out to be true it will certainly be welcome to the fans who found the Let’s Go games a little too far in the shallow end of the swimming pool, while at the same time maybe acting to guide those new fans to the series into the more complex aspects of the series.

The short Direct ended with Tsunekazu Ishihara confirming a broad release window for Sword and Shield worldwide in ‘late 2019’, then teasing other ‘works for the Pokémon brand’ to look forward to.

of Game Freak and Producer for Sword and Shield.