The Nintendo Direct opened on a four minute segment about the Pokemon Scarlet and Violet DLC, but players have come away absolutely none the wiser about what to expect.
For those of you doing the maths at home, that's almost 10% of the entire showcase given over to a trailer that doesn't really tell you anything about the new expansions. Eagle-eyed viewers spotted a few Pokemon now making their way to the game after failing to make the cut in the base game (shout-out to Flygon). Beyond that, we got the setting of each part of the expansion - one part will take place at some kind of rural festival, while another will be set at a futuristic oceanic academy.
Beyond that, there was nothing - not even a voiceover - to explain anything about these expansions. Over on Reddit, players have started to speculate about the potential for some kind of battle academy from the second part, but there's a definite sense of frustration that we're having to piece together clues rather than being given any concrete information.
Add the game's ongoing performance issues to that trailer, and there's a recipe for some serious disappointment. As one comment noted, "this trailer is three and a half minutes long and we have literally no more substantial information than we did before. And there's clearly still issues with frame rate…why even show it?"
Another commenter suggested the lack of content suggested Game Freak really didn't have much to show, while others say that the base game's issues were enough to sour them on the DLC ahead of time. Despite a lifetime of Pokemon games, I bounced off Violet pretty hard, and I can't say there's anything in this trailer that suggests that I'd want to give it another go. And if those performance issues are still hanging around, I predict Gen 9 will go down as one of Pokemon's deepest low points.
Now Detective Pikachu 2 - there's a Pokemon game I can get behind.
