Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are finally on the way. In some respects, these Generation 9 titles seem perfectly traditional; for instance, it looks like Pokemon fans will once again be cooperating with some kind of Pokemon professor to fill out the Pokedex. However, other elements of the experience sound totally alien. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are reportedly completely open-world, allowing players to explore the length and breadth of the yet-unnamed region from the very beginning. Core Pokemon games tend to be surprisingly linear in spite of their sprawling world maps, so Scarlet and Violet's level of freedom is a major change of pace.
The open world shift in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet isn't all too surprising, considering Game Freak's experimentation with the model in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, but it still raises many questions about what it'll make a core Pokemon game look like. One major upside of the open world is the higher availability of Pokemon that it can enable. Thanks to the open world, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet players may have unprecedented freedom to start sculpting their ideal team composition within the first hours of the game. In this way, Scarlet and Violet's monster-training elements sound very promising.
Type Accessibility in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's open world is extremely valuable in part because it could mean players have more access to all the Pokemon types than ever before. In most Pokemon games, individual monsters are understandably isolated to specific environments that they're adapted for -- Bug-types appear in forests, Water-types appear in the ocean, and so on. However, this occasionally means that certain types are a little hard to come by, since they live in extreme environments that players only access towards the later stages of the game. For instance, Ice-types are often hidden in the deep sea or in distant snowy regions, while some Steel-types are only found deep in challenging cave environments.
Game Freak has taken steps to make these rarer types more accessible in recent years, but an open world would be an incomparable leap forward. Thanks to an open world, players might immediately have the opportunity to take off towards whatever biome they like. A snowy part of Scarlet and Violet's region might be surprisingly accessible in an open world, and the same could be true for other extreme environments like deserts and mountains. The days of forests and grassy hills dominating the opening hours of a Pokemon game may be over with Scarlet and Violet's help, depending on how the region is laid out. Greater access to disparate Pokemon environments also means far greater access to all 18 Pokemon types, which in turn increases the amount of control Pokemon fans have over the types present in their teams.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Could Be Good for EV Training
Greater access to all the types is a boon for all levels of Pokemon players, but the open world could also be particularly helpful for fans who pay attention to their Pokemon effort values. EV training is a very important aspect of competitive Pokemon play, and training the strongest monsters possible is great fun for a lot of players. Due to the way Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's open world is likely to be designed, EV trainers could stand to gain a lot.
It's been said explicitly that Scarlet and Violet are open world throughout the story, which means that the levels of wild Pokemon could be slightly lower than players are accustomed to. Usually, wild Pokemon levels slowly get higher as players reach more "advanced" parts of the game's region, but since much of Scarlet and Violet will supposedly be accessible from the get-go, Game Freak will need to populate a lot of the world with low-level Pokemon so that players can feasibly explore the world however they like. In other words, trainers may have more chances to add low-level versions of powerful monsters to their party without hatching them from Eggs, giving players more opportunity to train Pokemon in detail.
Scarlet and Violet probably won't drop the traditional franchise level cap for Pokemon, so it's great to think that EV trainers might get to interact with powerful Pokemon at lower levels than usual. With a longer road ahead before a given Pokemon reaches level 100 or any other landmark level, players will have more time to perfectly hone a Pokemon's EVs in preparation for competitive play. Pokemon Legends: Arceus' lack of breeding casts the mechanic's future in the franchise in doubt, so a lower average level among wild Pokemon may help out competitive players if they can't raise a favorite monster from the moment it hatches anymore. At the very least, lower levels could make it easier to train strong Pokemon without the hassle of breeding and hatching Eggs when training a caught Pokemon would do the job.
Scarlet and Violet's Mysterious Region
Much remains to be seen about Scarlet and Violet's open world. It could be that the region is filled with forested gateways to more extreme environments, meaning its first few hours still feel like a very similar experience to older Pokemon games. Competitive players might also not get quite so many low-level monsters of note as they'd like, meaning they'll have to stick to traditional training methods. Still, the open world model means that it would make sense for Scarlet and Violet to give players access to lots of types and more low-level Pokemon than usual. These possible open world elements would help Scarlet and Violet players build momentum towards tackling the more challenging parts of the game no matter where they start.
It seems likely that Game Freak will spotlight the open world of Scarlet and Violet relatively soon. The region can't remain a mystery forever, after all, and since the open world is one of the game's big selling points, it would make sense to highlight how Scarlet and Violet's open world works sooner rather than later. Since the games are less than half a year away, the Generation 9 region's secrets shouldn't remain hidden for much longer. Hopefully Game Freak really does have a unique, free-form type of Pokemon game in mind, giving Pokemon fans more power to create the team of their dreams within the opening hours of the game.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet release November 18 for Nintendo Switch.
