A massive list of rumours about the upcoming Pokemon X and Pokemon Y titles has hit the web, and while a lot of people are calling these things speculation, we wanted to take a look at break everything down. There are a lot of things on this list (and we aren’t even covering all of them), so the actual rumours are bolded, and our commentary is in unbolded text.
Main characters are Jean and Jane; names are non-customizable – We’re not so sure about this one. It’s the first time it has happened, and we just don’t think there’s a reason for the formula to be changed.
Trainer appears in the bottom screen during battle – This is kind of cool, but pretty irrelevant as it is just a design change.
Trainers now have their own leveling system – This could make the game dynamic much more unique and complicated, albeit in a good way. Ni no Kuni features a similar kind of levelling system which means that your own personal levelling dynamic would affect how you capture certain Pokémon, how they react to you, and how well they listen to you. We like this. We like it a lot.
“Bond” level replaces the happiness meter from past games – This ties in with trainers having their own levelling system, and we really like the bond system in the way that we’ve heard of it. Past games monitored Pokémon happiness, while X and Y seems to take more account of your connection with your creatures. This rumour sounds like it also mixes with the rumour that Sylveon, the new Eevee evolution we saw, evolves based on its happiness and connection with its trainer.
New item, the Bond-EYE, allows players to see wild Pokémon capture rate – This of course is linked to the bond level rumours, and we think it would be an interesting item you use. It also seems to be a further evolution of the user interface of the game. In Pokemon Red & Blue, you had to pause the game and look up your Pokémon to see when it would level up. That has changed in past games to a meter just below your creature, and it looks like the Bond-EYE might do something similar for wild Pokémon.
Wireless co-op; one player will lead, the other will aid in battle – This rumour actually scares us a bit. How would you have co-op Pokémon games. Will one just be forced to follow the other around? What about when there are only single-Pokémon battles? This rumour asks a lot more questions than it answers.
Time travel 30 years into the past to fight different characters and Pokémon – We love this rumour, if it is implemented properly into gameplay. Going back in time or perhaps to a different region is a perfect way to include older Pokémon in the game without making the whole thing seem bizarre and out of place. Of course, time travel could do exactly that, but if it’s done right, we could see this being ah huge new feature in X and Y.
Team Gear is the new enemy and they mess with time – Of course, this links with the rumour about time-travel being a new element in the game, and it is said that Team Gear wears purple bodysuits and have clock hands on them. It does make sense given the very odd, very Japanese design of Pokémon rivals in the past, and we’re super stoked about it.
The new generation consists of 99 new Pokemon – For an entirely new generation, less than a hundred Pokémon seems far too few to be a true next step, so we’ll take this with a grain of salt (along with all the other rumours), and hope that 99 is only half the story.
There will be six total legendary Pokémon – This is another first for the series. Rumour has it that, in addition to Xerneas and Yveltal, we’ll have four additional legendary Pokémon based on card suits; a cobra with a heart-shaped hood and tail, a tiger with diamond stripes, a tyrannosaurus rex with spade-shaped eyes, and a peacock with club-like tail. As much as we discount a lot of rumours like this, we have to say that they’re quite creative and could easily come true. Then again, if six of the new 99 Pokémon are legendary, that’s the highest ratio of legendary-to-standard Pokémon than we’ve ever seen before.
Pokemon will be dual-type combinations – Apparently, a lot of the new Pokémon we’ll see will be combinations between Fire and Ice types, or Dark and Electric types, and so on. The types of the final evolutions are also said to be Grass/Flying (Chespin), Fire/Psychic (Fennekin), and Water (Froakie), though the fact that Froakie remains a single type is odd.
That’s the majority of the rumours, and all the big ones, wrapped up. This is a metric ton of information, and it’s coming in such a bucketload of well-crafted information, we really have a hard time believing that it isn’t true. A lot of people throw out rumours about titles that are scattered shots of information hoping to get something right, but there’s so much detail in each individual rumour here, we’ll be shocked if a lot of it isn’t true.
Take everything with a grain of salt, of course, but get excited for the next generation of the Pokémon franchise. Even if these rumours aren’t true, we know that a lot of new gameplay mechanics (and of course, new Pokémon) are coming, and we can’t wait to see what they are.