Pokemon Let’s Go! Pikachu & Let’s Go! Eevee Official Nintendo Switch Titles CONFIRMED

What will we get with the new Pokemon Switch titles?

What’s up fellow gamers?! Today I want to talk about the buzz going around lately regarding Pokemon. It has been confirmed by today that Nintendo has officially registered Pokemon Let’s Go! Pikachu and Pokemon Let’s Go! Eevee domain names online. Apparently the same tech contact that registered the domain for Pokemon Sun & Moon in the past has registered these new domain names. I’m not one to REALLY entertain rumors but as we get closer to e3 it seems like more credible information is being leaked, which actually coincide with previous leaks that surfaced a few months ago.

Below is a snapshot of what features we’re going to get in Pokemon Let’s Go! Pikachu & Eevee titles for the Nintendo Switch and the title artwork:

There’s a few things that I’d like to cover with you all. First and foremost, the snapshot of features to come is still technically a rumor. None of this has been confirmed by Nintendo yet, but some of what’s in the photo gives credibility to some of the past leaks. Let’s tackle (Ha! – see what I did there?) some of these points one by one so we can get a clear understanding of what remains a rumor and what is most likely to happen:

• Yellow remakes for Switch – It’s highly speculated that the new games are remakes of Pokemon Yellow, but that hasn’t been confirmed as of yet. It’s highly possible since doing remakes is the trend for Pokemon.
• Two versions, Pikachu and Eevee – We can confirm this because of the domain names. Also one of the pictures of a trainer riding a Lapras was with an Eevee on the trainer’s head would indicate this is true.On top of that, the official japanese twitter account for Pokemon has been tweeting pics of Lapras, Pikachu and Eevee multiple times. Their timeline is basically flooded with them, so I feel pretty sure these will be the titles of the new game. Check out the timeline and  check out the previous leak!
• Following Pokemon return, HMs still replaced by Pokeride – see the above point.
• Red & Blue play a role in the story, you and your rival are new trainers – this part is still a rumor. This one doesn’t particularly make sense because if this is a remake of Pokemon Yellow, then Red wouldn’t appear. The only one that would actually appear would be Blue because he’s your rival. If they were to go by the manga stories then Yellow is the trainer  you’d play as, and you’d team up with Blue to save Red( you’d really have to follow the manga to get the story). To me, that’s the only way those key characters can play a role in the new story. Other than that it would have to be a sequel of sorts. This point ties into the rumor of the new Pokemon Switch game being a remake.
• Online hub for players – this point is a no brainer because a lot of the Pokemon games have had online functionality in the past that enable players to battle and trade.
• Catching Pokemon, Pokemon Go! integration, Rewards for linking both games – This point has some credibility, because Game Freak, Inc. has confirmed they were looking into ways to incorporate Pokemon Go! with their new title according to Kotaku. Now I can see this working in some way because of how the Nintendo Switch is set up, and also because of the fact that Pokemon Go! has been a wildly successful. Total number of downloads  was 100 million (by August, 2017, Google Play market only) and their total revenue was $268 million (by August, 2017)*check out more of these stats here* 
• New announcement soon  – we’re waiting on this one to confirm all of these rumors so keep your eyes peeled!

All of this sounds very exciting but I’m still taking this with a grain of salt. We have the rumor about the two games being blended into each other, but what does that mean in terms of gameplay and mechanics? We know the Nintendo Switch is a hybrid system, so I would imagine if we wanted to play it docked, motion controls can be incorporated into the game somehow. Picture it: you’re out in Veridian City and you want to catch a Pokemon, after weakening it you can use the motion controls to throw the pokeball to catch whatever Pokemon you ran into. Having trouble imagining it? Think of how  you can play ARMS, except you’re throwing a pokeball instead of punches. If the system is in mobile mode, all you’d have to do is move the switch up in a way that can resemble throwing a pokeball (without actually throwing your system).

Going back to my blog post about the April Fool’s leak, the picture with Lapras raises quite a few questions for me. You can see from the picture that there are Pokemon in the sea that you can avoid, just like in Pokemon Go! How would this affect shiny hunting? If this snapshot is real, then the level grind that we all know and hate ( let’s be real with ourselves here, no one likes running around in tall grass all day) will be a thing of the past. How will this affect trainers that want to EV/IV train their Pokemon and catch other Pokemon with great EV/IV spreads?

I doubt it’s this will happen but if Game Freak, Inc. decides to make Pokemon an open-world styled game then they have me sold already. I mean I was sold to begin with because I love Pokemon, but this would just be out of the world! They can turn Pokemon around into an even better RPG by doing this, and giving us side quests. Let’s face it, the games so far haven’t been all that great after you beat it. Whatever other options you have for a side quest(if any) are rather small and forgettable in my opinion.

If they were to do something like The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild where you can go to different towns and do different missions to help people or Pokemon, be open-world, and run into random trainers instead of doing a once in a lifetime battle with them, than that would be great. Maybe even do rematches where that trainer becomes stronger, this can go in so many different directions! I don’t want to get my hopes up about what this game will be, so like everyone else, I’d have to wait to see what’s coming.