Where the Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl remakes are offering fans all the Pokemon nostalgia they'll need, Pokemon Legends: Arceus is exploring new frontiers. Up until now, The Pokemon Company has teased Pokemon Legends: Arceus as a world where they'd be able to explore and encounter Pokemon in a much more grounded environment. Many were even expecting Pokemon Legends: Arceus to be an open world. However, new images of Pokemon Legends: Arceus' map paint an entirely different picture.
The basic idea behind an open-world game is that players are able to explore the full world without it being segmented. That was the hope for Pokemon Legends: Arceus, but the game's newly released in-game map shows that's unlikely. The map shows the environment of Pokemon Legends: Arceus split into different regions, each with its own borders meant to distinguish it from its neighbors.
Pokemon players will likely immediately understand the implication of the segmented borders from Pokemon Legends: Arceus' map. Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield both featured an open area dubbed the Wild Area. The Wild Area wasn't open in either game, but rather had loading screens separating different sections of it. The Crown Tundra expansion was similarly structured. Both featured maps with similar segmented lines separating the different explorable areas within them.
In other words, Pokemon Legends: Arceus players may find that they'll be able to explore individual areas openly, like certain islands or sections of forest, but there will be loading screens between these areas. Some of these areas may be small while others may be significantly larger, but invisible loading walls will still separate them.
It's entirely possible that the map that's been shown is misleading, of course. It's possible that Pokemon Legends: Arceus offers much larger open areas to explore than Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield's Wild Area did. The Pokemon Company has not officially commented on the matter, nor has it shared official gameplay for Pokemon Legends: Arceus that would clarify the issue. However, the lack of communication regarding just how open Pokemon Legends: Arceus' world truly is may be telling.
The decision to segment Pokemon Legends: Arceus' map, if it's true, is certain to be a controversial one within the Pokemon community. But what Pokemon fans want and what The Pokemon Company is capable of don't necessarily align. Pokemon fans very much want a Pokemon game of similar openness to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The Pokemon Company, however, is making annual iterations of a franchise that's never provided a 3D open-world before, and on the very limited Nintendo Switch hardware, at that. At the very least, feedback will prompt The Pokemon Company to continue exploring these ideas in the future.
Pokemon Legends: Arceus releases January 28, 2022 on Nintendo Switch.