Following the Hidden Treasure of Area Zero expansion announcement, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet players came across a surprising tease for the content long before its announcement. This week has been an exciting one for fans of the long-running Pokemon franchise as The Pokemon Company held its first presentation of 2023 to reveal new surprises for players. The annual Pokemon Day celebration brough with it plenty of updates for games currently available like Pokemon Unite, while also finally showing off the anticipated Pokemon Sleep. For many fans though, the biggest announcement came at the end of the presentation as it was finally confirmed that Pokemon Scarlet and Violet would be getting two new expansions in 2023. Combined together as Hidden Treasure of Area Zero, Part 1 is called The Teal Mask and takes players on a field trip to a new location called Kitikami and introduces a legendary known as Ogerpon. The second expansion is known as The Indigo Disk, adds a world turtle legendary called Terapagos, and transfers students to a new school called Blueberry Academy. As exciting as those announcements were to fans of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, it seems Game Freak hid a not, so subtle reference to The Teal Mask right inside the base game. Hilariously enough, players seemed to have overlooked it until the expansion pack's reveal, transforming a simple poster inside the game into a clever tease at what was to come. The discovery seems to have been made by a Twitter user named LumiosePost, who shared the find with another Pokemon fan known as SoulSilverArt.
Expressing excitement over the discovery, screenshots were taken at the Treasure Eatery location in Medali. While this area is an important one for Scarlet and Violet players as Medali features the Normal Type Gym Leader Larry, in one of the windows of his gym can be seen a poster that clearly features the design in the marketing for The Teal Mask DLC. During the real world portions, a billboard can be seen with a green background and 3 types of masks, with unique lettering on the left side.
While both expansions still have awhile before they're readily available, Game Freak also announced a new limited-time Tera Raid event that brings two new and exclusive creatures to both games. For Scarlet players, they'll battle against the Water/Dragon Paradox Pokemon known as Walking Wake, an interesting take on the legendary Suicune. For Violet players, they'll face off against the Grass/Psychic Paradox Pokemon known as Iron Leaves, who seems to be based on Virizion.
Pokemon Scarlet & Violet are available now on Nintendo Switch.
