New Pokémon Sun And Moon Trailer And Major Gameplay Details Have Surfaced!
A new Pokemon Sun and Moon trailer is available and it packs a punch! More details have been revealed on the two new legendary Pokemon, more footage of the Alola region, character options and reveals, and even a shocking twist on the Pokedex!
The name of Pokemon Sun’s legendary Pokemon is Solgaleo, with its signature attack being Sunsteel Strike and its ability being Full Metal Body. The name of Pokemon Moon’s legendary is Lunala with its signature attack being Moongeist Beam and its ability being Shadow Shield. Both Sunsteel Strike and Moongeist Beam are attacks that disregard the opponent’s abilities. However, Full Metal Body and Shadow Shield are different–with Full Metal Body, “a Pokemon’s stats will not be lowered by the effects of an opponent’s moves or Ability.” With Shadow Shield, “a Pokemon will take less damage from an attack that lands when the Pokemon has full HP.” These abilities sound all too familiar right? They sound like the exact representations of the Abilities “Clear Body” and “Multiscale” which are described the same way… ALMOST. The choice of name for these Abilities–“Full” and “Shield” as well as the verbiage “a Pokemon” instead of “THIS Pokemon” leads me to believe that these abilities may protect teammates as well. With recent major changes to Video Game Championships rules in 2016, such as the ability to use two legendary Pokemon in your team from a limited list, with double battles being VGC standard, this may fall well in line with that direction and I’m excited to see where it could take the metagame! Their typings have also been revealed–Psychic/Steel for Solgaleo and Psychic/Ghost for Lunala… the secondary types remind me of the Sinnoh Legendary Pokémon, which happen to be Dragon/Steel (Dialga), Dragon/Ghost (Giratina), and the third–Dragon/Water (Palkia)… perhaps the third Legendary pokemon for sun/moon will be Psychic/Water? More information on Solgaleo and Lunala can be found on Pokemon’s website.
There’s some new footage on the Alola region as well. Although I’m sure the internet will find eggs in this footage, but what I’ve seen so far is a comparison to real-world scales. In other words, the scale between the character and buildings have been somewhat unrealistic in previous Pokemon games. However in this footage, a Mountain is so much bigger than the character, that it really makes the world appear infinitely more enormous and realistic. We are reminded of the many options available for character customization, such as the many different shades of skin, and some more details on Professor Kukui, his assistant Lillie, and your friend/rival Hau. I find the professor most interesting because he specializes in Pokemon Moves, which is something I have not seen in the past.
The last interesting tidbit is with the Pokedex! While in previous games these devices served little more function than electric encyclopedias, this new one is inhabited by the Rotom Pokemon, and with it comes benefits! They have just detailed on the Pokemon website that there will be a QR scanner built in. This can be used to capture information on Alola Pokemon habitats into your Pokedex, among your friends. We imagine this can be used to interesting effect for Augmented Reality promotional efforts for the Pokemon Company (Pokemon GO integration, anyone?).
Please check out the video and let us know your thoughts! How do you feel about the new mechanics and reveals?
