So, the cat is officially out of the bag, and the next entries in the main series Pokemon franchise have been revealed. Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield will launch in the latter quarter of 2019 and are officially the first games in the 8th generation of Pokemon.
With it, we had some key reveals, such as the brand new Galar Region, which is essentially mainland Britain (sans Wales) flipped upside down, with various style of cute English towns. We also were introduced to the brand new starter Pokemon: Grookey, Scorbunny and Sobble.
So the information we have right now is very exciting, but also quite basic, which means it’s open to wild speculation, which is always one of the most exciting times for the Pokemon community. As those of you who read my wrestling articles will know, I love to make grand predictions for what to come, only to point and laugh at just how wrong I was when I look back on them.
With that in mind, I’ve come up with a whole bunch of predictions/wishes that I have for the new Pokemon games. They’re all over the spectrum, covering large aspects of the game and some smaller ones that only I will care about, in addition, some of these are things I actually think will happen, and others are just things I want.
So let’s not waste any more time get right into it.
Prediction: Starter Pokemon Evolutions & Types
So let’s look at the obvious first, what will these adorable new starter Pokemon transform into as you take them on your journey?
Let’s start with the one I’m most confident about: Sobble.
In the trailer, it showed Sobble camouflaged as it peaks its head out of the water. Combining that fact with the look of its tail and out it walks, I think it’s roughly based off of a Chameleon, with the head of something like an Axolotl. I think its evolutions will keep going down this route, keeping the lizard vibe, with the final evolution resembling something similar to a Komodo Dragon, with a chameleon’s tail.
As such, a Water/Poison type seems to make the most sense to me, you could perhaps even give it’s later evolutions fangs so it can learn a lot of the biting moves.
Moving onto Scorbunny, I’m not too sure about this one, but I have a lot of cool ideas.
It’s a little harder to tell where Scorbunny’s going to go, the most obvious one seems like it would take the form of a Fire/Fighting route, but I doubt that’s what we’ll actually get. The Pokemon Company are self-aware enough to not go down that route again though since many fans would be at best, disappointed and at worst, angry about it. So looking at some alternatives, the two that I keep going back and forth between are Fire/Electric or Fire/Fairy.
Electric is a bit of a stretch, but I can see it’s fur getting a bit more jagged and the small amount of yellow on its ear becoming more prominent. I could also see it going the exact opposite way, and its fur gets light and fluffier, as some of the red fades into pink and we get an adorable Fire/Fairy type instead.
I also have a couple more slightly out there theories, for example, perhaps it’s wings could grow out to be massive and it uses them as propellers to become Fire/Flying? Or what if it’s white fur is actually meant to be more snowy, as it’s flame starts to burn cold and we get a Fire/Ice type instead?
There’s a huge number of ways I can see this one going and as long as it’s not Fire/Fighting, I think it’ll be really cool.
Finally, we have Grookey, and I can really only see this one going one way.
The trailer here showed us Grookey hitting a rock with a stick in order scare off Sobble, which makes me thinks that when it evolves, it will start to use sticks or logs as weapons, similar to Delphox’s wand or Gurdr’s Gurder. This would naturally end up with it being a Grass/Fighting type.
Dependant on the design, I’d be happy with this, although it would be fairly similar to other fighting monkeys in the past like Infernape and Passimian, and we did get a Grass/Fighting type just two generations ago with Chespin, although that’s never stopped them before. You could also theorise that we would have a Grass/Rock type coming, which I’d be down for, as it grows to be fast and uses small rocks as weapons perhaps.
Wishlist: Doctor Who reference
This is one that’s almost definitely not going to happen, but I’d be so damn happy if it did. Just imagine it, you’re wandering around the back alleys in the big London-esque town when you come across a mysterious blue box, and when you interact with it, it says something like “You can hear noises coming from inside…”
It doesn’t actually have to do anything, (although giving Looker some sort of interaction with it would be amazing) I just think it would be a really cool Easter egg for Whovians such as myself.
Why stop there? You could potentially have references to loads of UK based elements of pop-culture, like a castle reminiscent of Hogwarts, or a house labelled “221B” where Looker lives, just something small like that to make us British Pokemon fans squeal with excitement.
Prediction: The cover legendaries will be based on the UK coat of arms
This one is a little bit of leap admittedly since Game Freak seldom themes the legendaries based on the region that it draws its inspiration from, but I like this idea.
As you can see pictured above the UK coat of arms features a shield in the middle, with a Lion (England’s national animal) on one side, and a Unicorn (Scotland’s national animal) on the other, so what better to base you cover legendaries off of?
The Lion is admittedly a bit problematic since we had Solgaleo in generation 7 which was also based off of a Lion, but we had two sets of Dragons in a row from gens 4 to 5, so it’s not like they haven’t done something similar before. In addition to this, if you were a bit creative with the typing and made it something like Electric/Poison, you’d be able to create something pretty unique looking so it wouldn’t be too much of a worry.
As for the Unicorn, I like the idea of upgrading it isn’t a Pegasus, to give it a secondary type of flying, however, I’m a little stumped for the primary type. Fairy seems like the obvious choice, but I’m looking for something a little bit more creative like that. The next one I jumped to was Water since we haven’t had a Water-type cover legendary in quite a while and you could quite easily explain it in law why it’s a water type (Maybe it’s responsible for it raining in the UK 99% of the time?).
That would create the issue that one of the legendaries is 4x effective against the other, which could be an issue, so maybe Fairy/Flying is the more likely type, I think Water/Flying would be cooler.
Wishlist: Gyms based on various English landmarks
Since we now know that Gyms are coming back (and at least one is going to be based on a football stadium), why not throw in other English landmarks to theme your gyms around.
The London Eye would be a great place to have a gym, with teleport pads going between each of the cabins until you fight the gym leader in the very top pod. It’ll probably have to be a normal type gym for it to make sense, but what a setting for a gym battle.
You want a steel type gym? Easy, just look to the abandoned steel mills in places like Sheffield, you could quite easily create a multilayered building where you’re walking over the metal walkways in a maze in order to reach the gym leader.
The one that I desperately want to see the most though, is one based on the London Underground. I don’t really know what type it would be (perhaps ground?), but I love the idea of a gym puzzle where you have to navigate a train network like the London Underground. Imagine Elesa’s Gym from Black and White but bigger. Making people read a simplified version of the tube map and navigate their way to the gym leader, battling trainers on the platforms, or maybe even on the trains would be a really fun time, and I hope we get something like it.
Prediction: The evil team will be based on cockney Victorian gangsters
Not really sure how likely this one is since there’s a whole bunch of things that the evil team could be based on, but I like this idea the best.
The evil team grunts are often presented to be bumbling idiots the whole time, and imagine how much funnier that will be if everyone involved has cockney accents while looking like they’re supposed to be somewhat high class. I’m imagining a design fairly similar to that of The Rooks in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate or the Peaky Blinders, with flat caps and thick jackets who just go around roughing people up and causing trouble for the local Bobbys.
The admins and leaders could then be based on notable British criminals (real & fictional) with visual designs reminiscent of Moriarty, The Kray Twins or Jack the Ripper (without the chainsaw) being personal favourites of mine. As for what their goal would be, revolution seems like the easiest one. If we make the Elite Four themed like a monarchy then the evil team’s goal could ultimately be to overthrow them using the powers of the legendary Pokemon and establish their own government.
So there you have it! There are my predictions and wishes for Pokemon Sword and Shield. Let me know what you thought, and give me your own suggestions @10ryawoo on Twitter since like I said, this is always a very exciting time to be a Pokemon fan. I’ll see you next time.
The Strong Style Smark 