Even in a month with a long-awaited Nintendo Direct, Pokémon Legends: Arceus is certainly one of the highlights to come out of February's Nintendo Switch reveals. Pokémon fans are finally getting an open-world game to shake things up after 25 years of formulaic RPGs, and countless fans are already eagerly awaiting their chance to explore ancient Sinnoh. The game also has title that seems implicative of a new spin-off series. It's possible Pokémon Legends will become a new game series, separate from the usual mainline Pokémon RPGs.
Ever since the original Pokémon games on Game Boy, the franchise has followed a strict formula when it comes to its mainline games. Players choose between one of three starters, take on the Pokémon Gym Challenge, and defeat an evil organization along the way. Each entry has been fun to play, but they've recently become some of the least ambitious games on each Nintendo system.
Pokémon Sword and Shield were highly anticipated because they were the first mainline entries to be released on a home console, but they failed to deliver what many fans had been clamoring for. They ultimately followed the same structure as every Pokémon game before them, and they rarely took advantage of the extra power the Switch was capable of. The good news is that it seems like Pokémon Legends: Arceus will be the console game fans have been dreaming of. While The Pokémon Company hasn't confirmed whether Arceus is the start of a new "Pokémon Legends" series, it did call it "the Pokémon video game series' new journey" in the Pokémon Presents livestream, and the game's title and setting imply Game Freak is setting itself up to create a new series focused on this concept and style of gameplay.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus takes place in an ancient version of Sinnoh, the region introduced in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl. There's an obvious emphasis on Arceus, an important Legendary Pokémon from those titles, and many other Gen 4 Pokémon also make an appearance. Even the designs of the playable characters resemble Diamond and Pearl's protagonists. It's possible Game Freak is simply strategically connecting Pokémon Legends: Arceus to the Pokémon Diamond and Pearl remakes for marketing purposes. However, it's also possible this is only the first Pokémon Legends game, and future games in the series will focus on the ancient history of similarly accompanying remakes.
Game Freak might develop new titles under the Pokémon Legends name that follow the story of the other legendary Pokémon or other events in the franchise lore. For example, Pokémon Ruby and Saphire's Groudon and Kyogre used their devastating powers against each other in the ancient past, so it would be fun to see how this all started, much like how Age of Calamity showed Zelda fans what happened before Breath of the Wild. This formula is applicable to each of the Legendaries in the series, and it could help break up the monotony of traditional Pokémon storytelling. Ultimately, though, the sales of Pokémon Legends: Arceus will most likely be the biggest indicator of whether Game Freak will continue making more games in this side-series.
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