Pokémon Sword & Shield: 10 New Details You Need To Know

A few months ago, Pokémon confirmed it would be bringing its main series game to home consoles for the first time, following the success of Pokémon Let’s Go! on the Nintendo Switch.

With that news of Pokémon Sword & Shield came information about the Galar region, and the three starter Pokémon. Galar is based on the UK, with locations mimicking the Welsh valleys, Scottish highlands, mountain ranges and a city similar to London.

The starters are Fire type Scorbunny, Grass type Grookey and Water type Sobble, who all seem to have been well received by the fanbase. Which one will become the most popular remains to be seen, but for now they’ve all started on solid footing.

Recently though, Nintendo put out even more information to sink our teeth into.

Typically, Game Freak gives us the starter evolutions, a handful of new Pokémon, the Legendaries, more info on the region and whatever the new gimmick is. While we didn’t get all of that, there was still a lot of things on offer for Pokémon fans.

Before we start the list proper, a little bonus thing we now know is the release date: November 15th, just in time for Christmas.

The rest of the list is filled with more concrete things, as in facts which were actually confirmed within the Nintendo Direct video itself. For now though, there’s room for a bit of speculation to kick us off.

Wild Pokémon appeared in the overworld in Pokémon Let’s Go!, with our Kanto favourites wandering through the long grass for us to walk right up to and catch (or in the case of Zubats in Mount Moon, desperately try and avoid). It seemed like this wasn’t going to happen in Sword & Shield, with the original trailer showing a more traditional encounter.

In the new Direct, we again see an exclamation mark pop up from the grass before the trainer gets a wild encounter. However, there is a lot in there to suggest we’ll see some wandering creatures.

To name but a few, the trailer shows Miltotic, Rhydon, Tyranitar, Duskull and many more walking (or swimming or flying) freely about the place. Regardless of any speculation, the whole thing looks gorgeous.

There’s a specific area which we’ll get into later which may hold the key to this mystery as well.