Game Freak looking to Make More Pokemon Competitive

Recently, Game Informer (you know, the peeps who got crushed by GameStop, their owners) published their next big digital issue – and this one is all about the upcoming Pokemon Sword and Shield games, which are due to come out November 15th. There’s no shortage of new information revealed in this digital issue, but there’s one particular change that was both extremely interesting and curiously vague.

Specifically, when it came to the issue of “competitive” Pokemon.

As you may or may not know, there is a competitive scene for Pokemon, but the bar for entry is… high. On top of the fact that there’s only a handful of competitive-tier Pokemon, you also have to manage a whole bunch of background information, like personalities, EVEs, IVs, and more. It’s basically prohibitive to anyone who doesn’t want to spend countless hours grinding away to create the perfect team.

According to planning director Kazumasa Iwao, however, Game Freak is looking to make things a bit more accessible.
 

"Traditionally in the series, you start with your starter Pokémon and then you catch a lot of Pokémon in the beginning, and those are with you throughout your whole adventure, and the player gets attached to them. But a lot of times, they get into the competitive battles and they find they can’t actually use those Pokémon or they’re not competitive, so they have to go out and find the exact right Pokémon or breed them in a certain way to make sure they’re viable in competitive battle. This time around, we really wanted to introduce some systems that help the player be able to take those Pokémon they caught in the beginning, and the first one they chose, and actually take them straight into competitive battle. There’s a lot of hidden parameters to Pokémon that aren’t surfaced to the player. We're doing a lot of stuff in the back end introducing systems that allow players to make sure that Pokémon they want to use in competitive battles are viable."

When asked for more details by Game Informer, he refused to elaborate, so they clearly plan to keep things on the down-low for the time being. Although why they would keep this specifically a secret is certainly worth raising an eyebrow or two.

Hopefully it’s for good reasons.