#BringBackNationalDex

In the DLC alone

Two brand new Regis. My favorite Legendaries.

A dark looking Legendary bird trio that may hint at fucking Shadow Lugia being canon. Btw the typings are Electric/Fighting, Ice/Psychic and Fire/Dark.

Pure open world exploration

Actually trying to build the legendary farming gimmick into the game.

So, the “Shield’s non-Galar Pokemon Spotlight” was a bit difficult to keep up with, but I’m still interested in pointing out Pokemon still used in advertising the games that aren’t in the games themselves.

So, now that Pokemon.com have uploaded the first episode of Pokemon Journeys, I’ll be pointing out all of the Pokemon kids can see in the latest anime but not obtain in the latest games!

Just further proof that there was no reason GameFreak couldn’t have delayed the game. The anime has nothing to do with Sword and Shield.

(The unobtainable Pokemon list I’m using is current up to the Isle of Armor DLC)

You know, I would have more respect for Dexit if the DLC didn’t exist. That’s the part that really bugs me. All’a y’all are bothered by the fact that they trimmed the Pokedex, but it’s the DLC that pisses me off.

Here’s the thing.

Dexit was always inevitable. It’s something that other roster-based games such as fighting games have to deal with all the time. I main Fighter Guy in Combat Stars 12, but when Combat Stars 13: The Brawlening comes out, Fighter Guy might not make the list of playable fighters. And even if he does, his movelist might not be the same.

Pokemon, for years, has been insulated from roster changes by the franchise’s ongoing determination to make every Pokemon playable in each new version, regardless of whether that Pokemon can actually be found in the game. But they also add 100-200 new Pokemon with every version.

This was always going to hit a point of unsustainability. There was always going to come a time when Game Freak has to look at their roster and go, “Okay. We can go back to every Pokemon being a static image with almost no movement whatsoever in order to save time on animation, OR we can finally have the conversation about trimming our list of 8,765 monsters that all need to be individually rendered and given a set of personalized animations.”

T’was never a matter of IF, but of WHEN. Especially as graphics improved and new features came along, quantity of Pokemon versus quality of Pokemon became a looming elephant in the room. When is it going to stop being sustainable? When are the developers going to say, “Look, either you get four Gyms and the entire roster plus another 100-200 mons besides, or we can give you a full game campaign but cut out the Pokemon we aren’t actually using. You get half a game one way or the other; pick one.”

I say that facetiously, but Sun and Moon actually did only have four of the Not-Gym replacement challenges. Huh.

Anyways.

Point is. I’ve been waiting for this for a while now. Didn’t expect it to be this soon, but I’ve always figured it would happen some day. A lot of people would be angry, some might even ragequit the franchise, but eventually the controversy would die down as it always does and the new status quo would settle in.

That’s not quite what happened. Instead, there’s DLC, and that just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It suggests that Dexit happened not because the franchise hit the unsustainability point, but because Game Freak saw an opportunity to jump on the AAA bandwagon, carving out features to resell to the audience later. And that’s not okay.

And it’s not like this just happened recently. There was a guy in the game hyping the DLC right from the start. They had an event with a Slowpoke you could catch that isn’t included in the regional Dex, so that an in-game salesman could be like, “Keep an eye out for that sweet, sweet DLC down the road, yo.” Game Freak knew exactly what they were doing.

Anyway back to topic, the fact that the Nat Dex was not included and the returning pokemon of Isle of Armor did bring me a moment of excitement, I'm talking that child hood giddy shit. So I was looking up pokedex leaks and confirmed Pokemon, looking for one specific Pokemon, (maybe I wasnt looking in the right places or not hard enough, but when I couldnt find confirmation on this pokemon I was convinced it did not make the cut.)

Anyway got to the Isle Beat Klara headed to the beach saw a Slowpoke, I turned to the grass, the second, THE SECOND pokemon I saw on the Isle of Armor was my Boy Abra, I jumped up and shouted. The first pokemon I caught was Abra. It was the kind of Stupid Joy you had as a kid getting that toy you wanted from Santa.