#bringbacknationaldex is trending everywhere due to an interview in Nintendo Treehouse where Masuda stated that you simply won’t catch ’em all in the Galar region…
Unsurprisingly fans of the series all over the world started posting their discontent online. #bringbacknationaldex is trending all over the world as a cry for change towards Game Freak’s new adoption of the regional dex only! While we’ve seen something similar in Black & White it wasn’t permanent. In B&W you only encountered new Pokémon from that generation until you completed the game and then you unlocked the national pokedex. An understandable choice that really made you change your team layout to play the game instead of transferring your own team from other games and completing it with the same Pokémon again. It worked in Black & White but if the interview is to be believed, Sword & Shield will have a permanent Galar regional pokedex where you won’t be able to transfer a Pokémon if it doesn’t appear in the Galar dex.
Bad news for fans of the series who were actually applauding the all new Pokémon Home system where they could finally transfer all their Pokémon from other games and devices to use them in the beautiful world of Galar. Pokémon Home was going to be the solution the fans were willing to pay for. But now, what’s the point? Why pay for a service on release when you don’t even know if you’ll be able to transfer your shiny Wailord to Sword & Shield? We all know that’s the only one we want to see a Dynamaxed form of! Jokes aside, this is a very unpleasant surprise for the longtime fans of the series. The same fans on which Game Freak built their empire, the most influential pop culture brand in the world. A brand worth 90 billion dollars…
And that’s why we, the fans are spamming hashtags and thinking of a possible solution. Game Freak themselves say that they aren’t able to complete the 800+ creature models in time for release and are thus limiting the final selection of the regional dex. Furthermore the game won’t be balanced anymore. But that can be fixed with 3 simple letters and a specific area in the game…
DLC in the Wild Area
I can understand Game Freak is on a short deadline for the release although all the assets are clearly there in the Sun and Moon source files. They even have walking animations for every single Pokémon! And I can understand they need to balance the game on its first play-through. But the post game could add a lot of the national pokedex already to please us a little. And while we play the game itself they could work on seasonal DLC. Every month they could add 20-30 Pokémon to the Wild Area. Like the different generation updates in Pokémon Go. That way we keep our interest in the game after completing it and everyone’s happy. The fans will eventually have their national pokedex for competive play and Game Freak can actually please all their fans and redeem this harsh mistake. Wether or not they charge us with every DLC or make it freely available for Pokémon Home users is up to them.
What do you think? DLC is not new anymore for Nintendo franchises. Zelda had a great run of DLC content! Would you forgive Game Freak with national dex DLC? Would you be willing to pay for Pokémon Home if you get the seasonal DLC for no extra charge? Let us know! We sure want to catch ’em all!
