While most Pokémon fans predicted the announcement of Diamond and Pearl remakes, Pokémon Legends: Arceus came as a complete surprise. Like Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, Legends brings the player back to the Sinnoh region. However, whereas Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are faithful remakes of generation four, Legends is a new beast entirely. In many ways, it's a complete reimagining of Pokémon as a whole, injecting open-world design and action-RPG elements into the formula. For long-time Pokémon fans, Legends is a dream, but it’s a dream contextualized within a trailer rife with blatant technical issues that threaten the promise of a game that fans have wanted for so long.
After all, the premise of Pokémon: Legends Arceus is incredibly tantalizing. The player is tasked with exploring the feudal Sinnoh region to create its first Pokédex, long before the region developed into the Sinnoh fans know and love. But, while it's a thematic prequel, it's a mechanical sequel. Legends is shaping up to be the open-world Pokémon game that the community has been begging for. The lush, natural landscapes and rolling hills communicate a level of freedom unparalleled in the series. It's unclear how apt the comparison will truly be, but Legends seems to be taking cues from Breath of the Wild.
Realizing Pokémon's Potential
This is exactly what Pokémon fans have dreamed of: a living, breathing open-world Pokémon adventure. Each generation has inched in the direction of making the Pokémon world come to life. For as flawed as Pokémon Sword and Shield were, their Wild Area and the DLC's open environments offered a glimpse at a truly freeing Pokémon world that prioritizes exploration. That was unequivocally generation eight's greatest triumph. Legends takes that concept and runs away with it. It isn't just about the open-world either. It's about the new catching mechanics and dynamic battles. Having to sneak up on Pokémon and catch them in the overworld or be thrown into a battle exactly where a Pokémon stands is what fans have waited for.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus is finally advancing the series structurally and mechanically. This is the leap forward that fans have wanted ever since Game Freak started taking baby steps with each new title. For many fans, those who have imagined the magic of Pokémon coming to life, Legends almost doesn't feel real. Like Pokémon Go, this game is reviving interest in the series by offering something exciting and fresh. While Pokémon Go caught the community by surprise though, Legends is captivating the community by pulling this game from our collective imagination.
The Obvious Technical Shortcomings
However, the execution of this vision is not looking great. A reveal trailer needs to showcase a game as well as possible, but based on this reveal trailer, Legends may join Cyberpunk 2077 as an archetype of unfulfilled potential. The game looks incredibly rough. The environments are open, but they look vapid. Pokémon are moving at glacial frame rates. Texture work, models and lighting drastically swing in quality with every sequence of the trailer. Graphical fidelity and technical performance don't make or break a game inherently, but they're emblematic of larger issues.
Game Freak works on notoriously rushed timelines, and that is already being felt here. This ambitious, unbelievable Pokémon title needs to be a definitive hit. If the game doesn't hit the baseline presented by other open-world RPGs on Nintendo Switch like Xenoblade Chronicles, it will be a disappointment. In an adventure of this scale, immersion is so important. Getting lost in the game world is so important. But, if the game is running and looking like a mess, that level of immersion is just about impossible. These issues take the player out of the game and don't telegraph confidence about the mechanics underneath.
The best-case scenario is that Pokémon Legends: Arceus gets delayed until Fall 2022. If the game truly launches early next year, it's unlikely to make significant strides forward. A delay would give the team the room to truly polish this experience. Right now, Legends doesn't look like it's anywhere near ready to launch. Few upcoming games are more conceptually exciting than Legends, and now it's just a matter of seeing if Game Freak still has time to execute this vision properly.