Nintendo decided it was best to go big or go home when Super Mario had its 35th anniversary last year. While it announced a hugely anticipated collection of ports in the form of Super Mario 3D All-Stars, Nintendo also had some totally new games for fans to look forward to. That celebration may be winding down, but it’s set the bar for Nintendo’s other celebrations this year. One of those is Pokemon‘s 25th anniversary, and things are already looking up. Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are the ports that everyone was hoping for, and Pokemon Legends: Arceus is the kind of new and innovative game that’s great for celebrating how far the series has come.
Pokemon Legends: Arceus looks like it’ll be a fascinating new way to experience the Pokemon world. Details are limited, but it’s been presented as an open world experience unlike the core Pokemon games with more linear narratives and travel. What’s more, this is the first game to focus on the mysterious and powerful Arceus, creator of the Sinnoh region and possibly the whole Pokemon world. The Sinnoh region isn’t all about Arceus, though. It has a lot of legendary Pokemon, some of which have ties to Arceus that seem hard for Pokemon Legends: Arceus to ignore. How will all of Arceus’ Legendary peers influence its plot?
Arceus is an interesting choice as the star of Pokemon Legends: Arceus. It’s certainly an important figure in the franchise’s lore. It’s said to be responsible for creating Dialga, Palkia, and Giratina, the stars of the previous games in the Sinnoh region. Arceus also butts heads with Mew in some ways, since Mew was thought to be a possible ancestor of all Pokemon until Arceus was introduced as another possible creator of reality.
In spite of all this importance, Arceus has never been the focus of a game. In fact, there hasn’t even been a legitimate way to catch Arceus in the wild to date. The item meant to be used to find Arceus in Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum was never distributed, so unless players hacked the game or exploited glitches, the only way to get an Arceus was from other events distributing it directly. With that legacy in mind, it’s very significant that Arceus is now set to be the star of a new Pokemon game. It’s simultaneously one of the most important Pokemon in the franchise’s lore and also one of the most elusive.
Therefore, fans mostly know Arceus through the other Pokemon that it’s connected to. Although Arceus may not have gotten all the visibility that it was meant to, the creation trio of Dialga, Palkia, and Giratina are very visible and remain fan favorites. Since fans love these Legendaries — and many others from the Sinnoh region — so much, it’d be strange if they didn’t make an appearance in Pokemon Legends: Arceus. However, it’s possible that Nintendo would find a game crowded with Legendary Pokemon appearances distracting. Therefore, they could just as easily make no appearance at all.
The main Legendary Pokemon of Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum aren’t the only ones directly connected to Arceus. The Sinnoh lake guardians were also directly created by Arceus, and so they could just as easily be crucial to finding Arceus as a part of Pokemon Legends: Arceus‘ plot. Uxie, Mesprit, and Azelf aren’t too distant from the player in the Sinnoh region games. Rather than climbing to the top of Mt. Coronet for the Pokemon at the center of the game’s plot, they can be met for the first time by visiting the important lakes of the Sinnoh region. These lakes, and therefore the lake guardians by extension, seem like they’ll probably be easy to visit in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, and so it’s likely the trio will come up in the plot.
There’s many other Pokemon that probably won’t have an impact on the game’s plot, even though they’re beloved parts of the Sinnoh region mythos. For instance, Darkrai is very distant from Arceus, both in terms of lore and geography. Darkrai and its counterpart Cresselia are so far from Arceus that they’ll probably remain side content, unrelated to whatever plot unspools around Arceus in the new game. Other Pokemon that fall in this category are Shaymin, Heatran, and Regigigas. Although these Legendary Pokemon have their fans, they just aren’t close enough to Arceus to reasonably be an important part of the new game.
It’s a shame that not every Legendary Pokemon can be important to the plot, but that’s also nothing new. The Pokemon franchise is full of sub plots and optional adventures focused on discovering a Legendary Pokemon that didn’t have anything to do with the protagonist’s main journey. It’d just be too crowded it Nintendo tried to make every single Pokemon it came up with be important to the game’s plot somehow. Besides, a lot of the fun of the Pokemon postgame comes from looking for these other Pokemon if the player hasn’t caught them already. Maybe Pokemon Legends: Arceus will preserve that tradition.
Above all, it seems likely that Nintendo will be stressing the importance of Arceus in Pokemon Legends: Arceus. That seems terribly obvious, of course, but it’s important to keep in mind. The creation trio of Dialga, Palkia, and Giratina may have been the stars of the Sinnoh region before, but they aren’t at the heart of this game. Arceus will stand above all else; the creation trio is likely to make an appearance, but odds are they won’t be nearly as important as their creator.
Nothing is set in stone until Nintendo talks about Pokemon Legends: Arceus more concretely, of course. It could decide to lean into the game and make the game very heavily about Legendary Pokemon and some strife involving them or even between them. That’d fit the name, after all. Still, it seems more likely that Arceus is finally getting its much deserved day in the sun with this new game. Dialga and Palkia get to star in remakes of their original games soon, so it’d be strange if Nintendo put them at the forefront of Pokemon Legends: Arceus. Legendary Pokemon are a fascinating institution of the Pokemon universe. No matter how important they end up being to this spinoff’s plot, it’ll be very exciting to travel freely across the Sinnoh region to find them all.
Pokemon Legends: Arceus releases for Nintendo Switch in early 2022.
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