Pokémon Legends Z-A – Nintendo Switch Forum – MyCyberBase

Wow, I did not see this one coming at all. I thought we might see a new Legends game, but I thought for sure it would be either Johto or Unova, not Kalos. What a shocker, especially when none of the leakers knew about this game, it came totally out of left field.

I did see NoA’s tweet that this game will only take place in Lumiose City, which is disappointing, but this game could still be fun. They might be able to squeeze out enough environmental diversity to sustain a full game with sub-biomes in Lumiose City. Stuff like parks for Grass types, sewers for Poison types, Power Plants for Fire and Electric types, the catacombs for Ghost types, etc. It’d need to be fairly smartly designed, but it’s doable.

I don’t think this game takes place in the past like LA. The architecture seems too modern. I actually think this might take place in the present day or near future actually.

I am firmly in the camp of people thinking this is a Switch 2 title, or at least a cross-gen title. It looks like they might be going for a much more detailed artstyle, and the 2025 release date lines up far too neatly with the rumors of the Switch 2 being internally delayed to 2025. That would explain why there’s no 2024 game, if they were developing something for Switch 2 that would be out of Game Freak’s hands and they would HAVE to delay it to 2025.

I was actually just thinking about this some more and I think the name could also be a hint that it’s cross gen, Z-A would be SUCH a fitting name for a cross gen title. With Z being the end of the alphabet, A being the beginning of an alphabet, and – sometimes being used for ranges/transitions, this game might have a strong theme of ends, beginnings, and transitions. We might be seeing that to some degree with the premise of this game being a Lumiose City redevelopment project, this game might take place in the midst of that project as the city turns into something new. Now wouldn’t that be appropriate for a cross-gen title? It would represent the last game on the Switch, the first game on Switch 2, and the transition to the next console generation. If they decided early on that this game was going to be cross-gen, they couldn’t have picked a better name.

Also, if it is just in Lumiose City like the tweet claims, that might indicate that this game is in a way, a Switch 2 tech demo (if I’m right about this being cross-gen they can’t get too crazy but they might be trying to experiment with new things they might be doing in Gen 10 on Switch 2). So I wouldn’t expect this to be a particularly large or lengthy adventure. But hopefully it at least tides us over until Gen 10, since it seems like that’s going to be next after this game. And if a 2025 release does mean Gen 10 in 2026, that might ultimately be for the best since Gen 10 would get a little more time. Everyone in the world and now pretty much fate as a whole feels like it’s begging Game Freak to wait until 2026 for Gen 10, hopefully they take the opportunity the universe is presenting them to delay them into being better overall.