The nextPokemongame was revealed this week and, given that the series is several ongoing mini-franchises in a trenchcoat at this point, it was a mild surprise to see that it was Legends' turn back in the spotlight. The next game in the subseries, which began in 2022 withPokemon Legends: Arceus, will bePokemon Legends: Z-A.
Z-A will be set entirely within X and Y’sLumiose City, which should give it a distinctly different feel than Arceus, and I really love that direction.Game Freak’s decision to let Legends be broad gives me hope that it can be a breeding ground for new and interesting ideas for the franchise.
Authors often use short stories as a way to experiment with new ideas that they don’t feel are quite ready to be the centerpiece of a full book. New filmmakers often make short films, then for their debut feature films, tell the same story. Wes Anderson did this with Bottle Rocket, Emma Seligman did this with Shiva Baby, and Jared Hess did this with Napoleon Dynamite (expanding on his short, Peluca, which also starred Napoleon himself, Jon Heder). The obvious difference here, I guess, is that Pokemon Legends: Arceus isn’t any shorter than the mainline games.
In fact,Pokemon Legends: ArceusandPokemon Sword and Shieldhave the exact same Main Story and Main + Sides estimates on HowLongToBeat.com.
Though Legends is still big, Game Freak’s developers likely feel a little less pressure because these aren’t mainline games. Legends: Arceus was just Legends: Arceus, not part of a pair of new games that were expected to push the franchise forward. It didn’t need to introduce new monsters or a new region. Instead, it was positioned as a side story set in the past of a region fans already knew. If it was unsuccessful (by Pokemon standards), Game Freak could have treated it as a one-and-done and kept it moving.
But it was a gigantic hit. And, not only was it commercially successful, but it also planted seeds that started sprouting in the next mainline games. It expanded the open-region approach of Pokemon Sword and Shield’s Wild Area, and gave players five open regions to explore. Game Freak carried that forward into Scarlet and Violet, the first Pokemon game with a full-on open-world. Legends may be a sub-series, but with the same developer working on both, successful mechanical innovations were likely to have a ripple effect.
I’ve often thought that it would be fun and healthy for the ailing games industry for big triple-A developers to take on smaller projects between the big ones. Naughty Dog and Arkane both did this in 2017 with Uncharted: The Lost Legacy and Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, and Insomniac did something similar withSpider-Man: Miles Morales.
For other studios, likeDon’t Nod, it can be difficult to tell where the experimentation ends and the “proper games” begin. This seems like a smart approach because making a rock climbing game may teach developers something they never would have learned by making another narrative adventure.Psychonautscreator Double Fine uses a two-week prototyping session called Amnesia Fortnight to generate new ideas, with teams within the studio working on small projects that have the potential to inspire full-length games. And, if they don’t, Double Fine can always just release a collection of the prototypes, as it did in 2012 and 2017.
Because Pokémon is Pokémon, though, the experiments may end up being sales monsters, too. That seems like a best of both worlds situation and, given that Z-A’s2025 launchgives Game Freak a little longer to work than usual, I’m hopeful that it will be both more polished than Scarlet and Violet, while still tweaking what exactly the franchise can be for the future. This is a series built around evolution after all.
