Under 100 Days until Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield
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With under 100 days until the launch of Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield, fans are having mixed reactions to some of the news that has come out since the games original announcement. The biggest problem most Pokémon fans are having is that you won’t have access to the National Dex, which houses the information of all the Pokémon ever found.
And it should be fairly obvious why the National Dex won’t exist this time around. Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield might represent one of the bigger changes in the franchises video game history, and therefore, a ton of work would be required to recreate all the available Pokémon in this style and design.
Does that mean that Pokémon Sword and Shield – or perhaps future Pokémon releases – won’t have the National Dex? Of course not, and I’d fully expect the next release to incorporate all available Pokémon. But for this release, it is quite obvious that resources were focused on creating a new design and a new experience for Nintendo Switch owners, and adding the National Dex would have prolonged the games development phase, which could have pushed the official release deep into 2020.
Since Game Freak is working on another title, on-top of Sword and Shield, it should be obvious why they would not want to prolong the development cycle – the game has already been in development for a while, and a holiday 2019 release puts the game in a great position to succeed at retail.
While I can admit that I’m also disappointed by the lack of a National Dex, there will be so much new content packed into these games, that by the end of my play through, I won’t really care that the National Dex wasn’t a part of the experience.
Who knows though, Nintendo and Game Freak might surprise us with an update down the road! While I wouldn’t hold my breath for that, it would be incredible!
Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield release worldwide this November!
Learn more about their upcoming release here: https://swordshield.pokemon.com/en-us/