Pokémon Sword & Shield: 10 New Details You Need To Know
3. The Professor
A huge part of a region’s personality is made up by its Professor. They tend to be the first person you meet (sometimes along with your rival), and they will pop up frequently throughout the journey to offer advice, items, or ask for favours.
For only the second time in main series history, we’re getting a a female prof with Professor Magnolia, after Juniper in Black & White’s Unova. If you take all of Pokémon into account though, we have anime exclusive Professor Ivy of the Orange Islands and manga exclusive Professor Berlitz, but it still makes a nice change up to the norm.
Her speciality is Dynamax Pokémon, which is to be expected given they’re the new gimmick being pushed in Galar.
Though Mangolia is the main Professor who’ll hand over our starters, explain our quest in an unskippable tutorial etc., she might not be our main point of contact through the game.
Her granddaughter Sonia has been given a task (no word on what yet), so she’ll be the one out doing the research, and it’s likely her we’ll bump into. Given that Magnolia seems to be fairly elderly, it makes sense in canon that Sonia is the active one.