What Pokemon On The Switch Will Look Like

Written by Ben Vollmer

When Nintendo announced that Pokemon would eventually be making its way over to the Nintendo Switch, the mind’s of many went wild. Why wouldn’t they? After the recent successes of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, it’s easy to imagine a Pokemon game of similar quality and design.

Theoretically, this would be the first mainline Pokemon on any home console. If the main pillars of a Pokemon are to capture, train, battle and explore, there really hasn’t even been a game that has come close. The franchise has found its home on portable consoles since the original Gameboy, with an isometric angle and a challenge to “catch ’em all”. The question, at this point, is how the franchise will translate and if any significant changes will be made as it finds its way to the new Nintendo Switch.

Pokemon Blue

The History of Pokemon on Consoles

Before we can get a good idea of what a Pokemon game on the Switch should look like, it would be helpful to take a look at what Pokemon on consoles has looked like in the past. The franchise actually has quite a history on consoles, more prolific than even some of Nintendo’s most popular modern IP’s like Pikmin or Metroid, and has added close to twenty games since the Nintendo 64.

Games like Pokemon Stadium and Pokemon Colosseum have had cult-like success, even if not quite the same as the mainline franchise. Colosseum (2004), for instance, sold around 2-million copies world wide while the Pokemon Fire Red and Pokemon Leaf Green (2004) sold closer to twelve million total. All the same, Nintendo has had relative success with the video game turned anime no matter where they put it.

So what kind of influence might the newest iteration on Switch take from former console titles? It’s hard to say. The franchise is so diverse (for instance, Pokemon Stadium takes the same battle system from Pokemon Red and Blue and made an entire game of it, while Hey You, Pikachu! focuses on the adventures of the series’ mascot in a voice-controlled game) that it’s almost impossible to determine which – if any – game mechanics will make their way to the untitled “Pokemon RPG“.

If there is one thing you can be just about sure of, it’s that the infamous JRPG-battle style will not see a whole lot of changes. The battle system has been a part of the Pokemon game loop since the incarnation of the series, with Pokemon Stadium, Pokemon Stadium 2, Pokemon Colosseum (Gamecube) and Pokemon: Gale of Darkness (Gamecube) all using the strength versus weakness type battle. It would be a huge surprise for the franchise to deviate from what it has sure of, but not totally impossible.

Pokken

Pokken Tournament, the odd mishmash of Pokemon and Tekken, is the latest game to make its way to console. It skirts the original battle mechanics and instead has the player use real-time fighting controls to battle other Pokemon. It’s been rumored that this combat system, which currently stores around a dozen unique Pokemon and move sets, could be the future of Pokemon. This seems very unlikely, however, as it would devalue other bullet points of the franchise, including the “collect-a-thon” capture system that is what made the franchise so popular.

Instead, I expect the unnamed Pokemon adventure to most closely resemble Pokemon Stadium. Yes, this will be largely familiar to anybody who has played the most recent entries in the mainline franchise, including Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon. Instead, with the added graphics power behind the Switch, you can probably expect a more visually detailed battle system that still functions around the same turn-based mechanics.

Pokemon X

What Do We Know?

First and foremost, we know that the game is in development and that it is considered part of the mainline franchise.

One of the most fascinating things about the Pokemon Switch game is that we know that Game Freak, the developer behind every main entry in the Pokemon franchise, is creating it. So why wasn’t Game Freak mentioned already? For one, they have never developed a console Pokemon game. Their talents have been largely reserved for the gameboy versions of the game and a few side projects where they developed games for large publishers such as Sega and Sony. This will be the first Pokemon game that Game Freak has developed for a console.

So what does that tell us, exactly? For starters, it means that the game will probably look an awful lot like we have come to expect. Game Freak is almost infamous for the lack of change that it has put the franchise for, leading to calls of “milking the franchise” and developing a franchise that has been unable to adapt to a more modern game world. While the former may be true, the incredible sales numbers of the most recent Pokemon titles Sun and Moon sold over a ridiculous 15-million copies. Whatever it is that Game Freak is doing, it has worked.

That could change with a new set of expectations, however. After The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild released to rave reviews, fans of the Pokemon franchise let their mind’s run wild. And while we will get to expectations in a minute, it might be unreasonable to assume that the two titles will have anything in common. Pokemon has never been given the same kind of AAA treatment that the Zelda franchise has, and Nintendo may choose to keep it that way. Pokemon is a low-risk, high-reward franchise and it’s difficult to expect that that will change moving forward.

Still, with the promise of new technology, it’s not unreasonable to hope for more.

What Can We Expect?

It would seem that Nintendo is trying to take the Switch into a new era of game development. We’ve already seen the Zelda and Mario franchises get a renewed focus to high-quality and large-in-scope development and we know that they’re listening to fans with the announcement of not one, but TWO Metroid titles. It has the makings of a trend, if we’re being optimistic: Nintendo knows that it has to step up its game to compete in the home-console market. Here are five predictions, after processing the information above, about the what we can expect for “Pokemon Switch”:

1. It’s going to be big. This one seems obvious, as Pokemon games are pretty sizable in general, but I think we can expect Pokemon Switch to be somewhere between a traditionally sized Pokemon title, like Pokemon Sapphire and a AAA title like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I expect that they’ll want it to open world, since that has proven to be a heavily effective marketing term — and in all reality, Pokemon already fits the bill.

2. It will retain the original battle system. As mentioned above, the biggest surprise that Game Freak could possibly give fans is a series of revamped battle mechanics on Pokemon Switch. Because Game Freak has never done anything else, and there is no indication that any outside studios are stepping in to help, it can be deduced that Pokemon Switch will play an awful lot like the rest of the mainline franchise titles.

3. The exploration and collecting will the focus. Where the power of a Switch should really come in is the ability to create new and substantial environments. Being able to explore the likes of Viridian City in a full capacity would send fans of the series over the edge, especially if you can do so with fully-functional capture and collect mechanics in place. If Pokemon Switch provides anything less than gorgeous areas to explore and find new Pokemon in (perhaps in a similar style to something like Xenoblade), it would be a massive disappointment.

4. It will rely heavily upon nostalgia. Make no mistake about it: bringing the franchise over to the Switch IS a risky play. Nintendo could be losing a large part of its base, as the 3DS is one of the best selling consoles in history and is owned by a crazy 70-million people. That is a lot of folks who have the potential to buy the latest Pokemon, where as the Switch will be closer to ten million by the time the game ships. With this in mind, you can expect that Pokemon Switch will use nostalgia, which has proven time and again to be a big winner for Nintendo (look at Pokemon Go as an example).

I’m not expecting a shot for shot remake of an older title, and neither should you. What you can expect is that we’ll see a lot of familiar names and Pokemon. In fact, I’d be surprised if we don’t see the entirety of the original 151. I also suspect that the franchise will return to gym battles, after moving away from them in Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon.

5. It will look good. We already talked about the potential for the environments, but I really do expect the game, as a whole, to look fantastic. If Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey are examples of what the Switch is capable of, I doubt that a Pokemon title two years down the line would look much worse. There’s also a really good chance that the franchise moves away from the isometric camera angle, which it has been doing more and more of for years now. Pokemon Switch would be the perfect opportunity for them to shift into an entirely 3-dimensional world.

Thanks for reading! As always, feel free to comment on what you think a Pokemon game on the Switch will look like or shoot me a tweet at @BengermanPlays on Twitter. If you’d like to support Epilogue Gaming for early access on articles or to help the site stay alive (as we are ad free), feel free to do so at our Epilogue Gaming Patreon.