The high anticipation for Pokemon Sword and Shield has come alongside disappointment from some players after the announcement that the National Pokedex would be excluded from the franchise’s newest entries. Developer Game Freak made it clear that the divisive approach would become the new norm for the series Sunday, and confirmed that there were no current plans to add the missing Pokemon back into the newest games with a future update.

Pokemon games typically feature both a Regional Pokedex, containing the Pokemon capable of being collected in the game itself, and a National Pokedex, with all known monsters in the series up to that point. Pokemon Sword and Shield are the first entries in the franchise to break from this tradition by omitting the National Pokedex, limiting the number of Pokemon appearing in the game to the monsters players can encounter in the game’s Galar Region.

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The change was met with some heat from fans of the franchise, with players lamenting the loss of longtime favorites like Bulbasaur and Squirtle for the series’s debut on the Nintendo Switch, and the departure from the “gotta catch ‘em all” ethos of its early entries.

pokemon sword and shield pokedex size

“We now have no plans to make the Pokemon that are missing in the Galar Pokedex in-game available,” Game Freak producer Junichi Masuda said in an interview with Inside Gamer. “That is an approach that we want to continue in the future with Pokemon games.”

Masuda pointed to the upcoming launch of the Pokemon Home app as a way for fans to continue hunting down each and every creature in the series for their collections. The games’ signature feature of allowing players to transfer their Pokemon between games will continue to be available through the app, but will only be enabled for creatures present in Pokemon Sword and Shield’s Regional Pokedex.

The producer also made it clear that the exclusion of particular Pokemon in Sword and Shield would not be the end of the road for them in future installments. “We encourage people to use Pokemon Home to collect their Pokemon from their old games,” he said. “From there, they might be able to take it to other games in the future. So take good care of your old Pokemon, because you might be able to go out with them again in the future.”

Pokemon Sword and Shield will both release on November 15, exclusively on the Nintendo Switch.

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Source: Inside Gamer