NintendObs Thinks: Valid skepticism on the upcoming Pokémon Sinnoh games.
Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Pokémon Shining Pearl, and especially Pokémon Legends Arceus, are not given the leeway they need to become mindblowing.
Earlier this week, The Pokémon Company announced the release dates for Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Pokémon Shining Pearl and Pokémon Legends Arceus, November 19, 2021 and January 28, 2022 respectively, out of the blue. In a sense, the announcements were expected since generally as of late, around May-June and around E3, Pokémon tends to make big press conferences to reveal their latest projects so the move could be seen as a replacement of those. I’ll tell you straight up, I am 100% unconvinced about the outcome of these two, rightfully anticipated titles. And in this analysis, I will tell you why.
The first red flag is how the release dates were unveiled. One tweet, game names, release dates: pre-order now. At most the sole new details from these announcements are the games’ box arts, which only makes sense because they illustrate the physical products people will indeed be pre-ordering. Yet you’ll noticed they didn’t reveal these release dates with any gameplay that would make you want to buy the games: just the hype, and just the brand, bolstered by its ongoing Pokémon 25th Anniversary celebrations.
The other red flag about these dates is how precise they are, that far off, and therefore how much they are set in stone. That means come hell or high water, The Pokémon Company will release Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl and Legends Arceus at these specific times no matter what happens over the course of development, and it seems clear to me from the lens of a Gen I Pokémon player what that same vision did to Pokémon Sword & Shield when compared to the expectations raised by the first core Pokémon games in high definition. Therefore, every single issue that ILCA will encounter with Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Pokémon Shining Pearl and that Game Freak will encounter with Pokémon Legends Arceus, which would otherwise have required more time, will be solved by makeshift workarounds that do not align in any way, shape or form with the advertised ambitions of the games. And speaking of ambition, you best believe any new idea along the way will not be given the time of day.