There was plenty of exciting news for Pokémon's anniversary, courtesy of a recent Nintendo Direct. Not only is a new Pokémon game on the way -- Pokémon Legends: Arceus, which looks like what fans hoped Sword and Shield would be --but two remakes are headed for the Switch, too. Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, two games fans predicted would be remade months back, are releasing later this year in a mix of Link's Awakening and Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee styles.
The hope is that these remakes are more than just graphical upgrades and will get some additional content and quality-of-life changes. One, in particular, would be useful, considering Diamond and Pearl comes from a generation that messed up whole parties: Hidden Machines, better known as HMs, and potentially needing a Pokémon just to use them or messing up a team's move sets with a needed ability.
If you haven't played the older Pokémon games, then it's been a while since you've had to worry about HMs. They were removed in Generation VII, Sun and Moon, and replaced with ridable Pokémon which had a special ability. Since then, it seems the developers will be changing how players access areas of the world for each game as Gen VIII, Sword and Shield, puts this access directly in the player's hands via the Rotom Bike. It's for the better, ask any Pokémon veteran.
In later generations, they began to reduce the number of HMs required to get through games. However, rather than removing them entirely, they often downgraded them to TMs and still had their mechanics in-game, such as Rock Smash, to access items. Prior to this, there were up to 8 HMs required to get through some games, which meant sacrificing some Pokémon's moves just to get through areas or having what was sometimes known as an HM slave – or two.
HM slaves were basically throw-away Pokémon who could learn as many HMs as possible and be taken with the trainer when needed to get past certain areas. In the case of games with more than five HMs, this sometimes meant having two of them ready. This also meant having to travel back and forth to Poké Centers to change out Pokémon, another annoyance which has since been fixed in Sword and Shield.
Since Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are remakes of Gen IV era games, it would be nice to see the use of HMs removed or improved as a quality of life change. However, since they were still an integral part of the mechanics, it's unlikely this will happen. At the very least, they could give trainers the Pokémon Box added to Nintendo Switch Pokémon games for ease of access rather than having to run back and forth.