More fan outrage: Pokemon Sword and Shield producer doubles down on NO National Pokedex
Unless you’re a Pokemon trainer who has been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you will know about the Pokemon Sword and Shield National Pokedex controversy – Masuda has responded but this hasn’t appeased fans.
In short, the producer of Pokemon Sword and Shield, Junichi Masuda, announced at E3 2019 that Game Freak’s latest game wouldn’t include all Pokemon. This meant for the first time in the history of mainline Pokemon games that all Pokemon wouldn’t be catchable.
This news was met with fury throughout the community – a reaction that Nintendo or Game Freak wouldn’t have expected in their worst case scenarios.
Masuda (right) announced the news of the National Pokedex removal at E3 2019…Masuda finally responds
After a few weeks of enduring constant outrage from trainers, Masuda finally responded with a statement. However, this has only been met with more outrage since.
His statement was short and simply doubled down on their decision to remove the National Pokedex. “Just like all of you, we are passionate about Pokemon and each and every one of them is very important to us. After so many years of developing the Pokemon video games, this was a very difficult decision for me,” the Game Freak director said.
Some Pokemon fans remained optimistic that the decision would reversed, at least to a degree. This now seems unlikely as Masuda said: “I’d like to make one thing clear: even if a specific Pokemon is not available in Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield, that does not mean it will not appear in future games.”
Complete Pokedex is a must
One Reddit post got straight to the point, posting a meme showing that the National Pokedex fiasco was the final straw. They essentially said after 10 years of tolerating sub-par graphics that the National Pokedex removal was the nail in the coffin.
Elsewhere, another trainer stated that they would rather not have any new Pokemon at all, experiencing the Galar region and its new features with the old ones.
They said: “It’s upsetting that I’m having to bargain with a multi-million dollar company to implement something so simple and core to their franchise, but I feel like it’s come to this.”
They went on to make ask the question what will happen when there are 1500+ Pokemon. Perhaps this won’t be a problem for the eventual Nintendo Switch successor though.
Another fan reacted to the statement with their own cynical theory as to why Pokemon will be limited in Sword and Shield. They noted that by removing some Pokemon that they won’t be in Sword or Shield’s data – which means fans will need to subscribe to Pokemon Home to transfer Pokemon in future games.
As we lead up to the November 15 release date of Pokemon Sword and Shield, it will be interesting to see how this situation develops – stay tuned.