The new age of the EXP Share is one of the biggest mechanical boogeymen in the Pokemon fanbase nowadays. In 2019, Pokemon Sword and Shield's game director revealed that experience sharing would be active permanently. The EXP Share is a very useful item, distributing experience points to a player's entire team of Pokemon, rather than only the Pokemon who get involved in the battle. Many fans disliked the permanent change to the item, but nevertheless, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl will have a permanent EXP Share as well. It seems that the Diamond and Pearl remakes don't plan to deviate from Sword and Shield's Generation 8 conventions.
A permanent EXP Share system in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl says as much about Pokemon's Generation 9 as it does about Generation 8. If this is the direction that the Pokemon franchise is going in today, then fans have to accept that the next big Pokemon game will probably also have permanent EXP Share, rather than suddenly going back on the new trend. Comments explaining the changes made to the item suggest that Pokemon's developers think that a permanent EXP Share is the most efficient and welcoming approach to the item. That means it'll certainly play a role in the next Pokemon generation for simplicity's sake.
The Evolution of Pokemon's EXP Share
The EXP Share has gone through a lot of changes over the years. Although it started out by sharing experience automatically in the first Pokemon generation, it spent most of its time in the Pokemon games as a held item. Any Pokemon holding an EXP Share would get a percentage of experience without participating in battle. In Generation 6, it turned into a Key Item that players could toggle on and off, distributing experience to the entire party rather than whoever held it. Then, in Generation 8, it disappeared. Pokemon Let's Go, Eevee! and Let's Go, Pikachu! converted the item into an inherent, permanent gameplay mechanic, as did Sword and Shield afterward.
EXP Share's transformation into a permanent part of the franchise was drastic, but it didn't happen without a reason. During a 2019 interview, Pokemon Sword and Shield game director Shigeru Ohmori gave Pokemon fans a glimpse into Game Freak's decision-making. Ohmori claims that Game Freak has data suggesting that the overwhelming majority of Pokemon players kept the EXP Share on all the time. To Game Freak, it seemed logical to design the Pokemon games in a way that catered to those EXP Share-loving fans. Thus, the item vanished from players' inventories and resulted in the permanent sharing of experience.
Even if Game Freak's data about the EXP Share is accurate, though, there's a very vocal part of the Pokemon community that doesn't like the new approach to the mechanic. The frustration is understandable. After all, there's plenty of reasonable balance questions to ask about a permanent EXP Share; it has a huge impact on how players train their Pokemon and how fan build their parties. Nevertheless, these fans' opinions don't seem to have swayed Game Freak. If Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl will inherit the permanent EXP Share from Sword, Shield, and the Let's Go titles, then BDSP will almost certainly pass the mechanic on to Pokemon's ninth generation.
The Pokemon Franchise Carries Ideas Forward
Putting a permanently active version of EXP Share in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl makes it a pretty concrete part of the Pokemon franchise's identity, rather than an experiment that Game Freak ran over the course of a couple of games. It must feel very confident that this is the right way to handle the EXP Share on the whole if it's using this angle on the feature in a third set of games. At that point, it's become common enough that fans should assume that EXP Share is permanent, not temporary.
It's not the first time that Pokemon has made drastic and controversial changes into permanent fixtures. For instance, in Pokemon's sixth generation, Game Freak introduced the first new Pokemon type in four generations: Fairy. Not everyone was happy about the dawn of the Fairy type, especially as Game Freak retroactively turned several classic Pokemon into Fairy-types. Nevertheless, Game Freak dug in its heels and committed to supporting the eighteenth Pokemon type. Eight years later, Fairy-types are an accepted part of Pokemon; doubt about them is largely a thing of the past.
The Fairy type's introduction and eventual acceptance speak to Game Freak's dedication to change, as well as the future of the EXP Share. Even if fans have extremely strong opinions about how Pokemon should approach mechanics like these, Game Freak clearly has strong opinions too, and in the end, the developer's opinions win out when designing the franchise. Game Freak never showed any sign of reversing its decision to introduce Fairy Pokemon. It has yet to show any doubt in its new angle on the EXP Share either. That means Generation 9 might build on this new model of experience distribution.
What Does EXP Share's Future Look Like?
One wonders what Pokemon will look like in a couple of generations if it keeps the permanent EXP Share forever. Inevitably, competitive Pokemon players who focus on EV training and honing the finest team of Pokemon will find ways to work around the permanent EXP Share, as inconvenient as it may be for them. Meanwhile, casual players will reap the benefits of the feature, never worrying if some of their Pokemon are falling behind, letting those players focus on enjoying the story and collecting all the Pokemon they like.
It's not every day that the Pokemon franchise makes these kinds of massive changes, but whenever they happen, they're usually here to stay. Game Freak rarely walks back controversial new ideas completely, no matter how many fans protest them. It prefers to adjust and build on whatever it adds to the Pokemon franchise, rather than stripping away new parts with mixed receptions, only to replace them with other new parts. Maybe it'll compromise with fans about the EXP Share again someday, letting fans toggle it off and on again somehow, but that probably won't be in the near future. Game Freak firmly believes in the institutional EXP Share, which means it'll probably rear its head again after BDSP.
Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl release on November 19, 2021 for the Nintendo Switch.