A 24 hour live stream to reveal just 1 Pokémon? Oh dear…

The Glimwood Tangle, which fans got very intimate with over the 24 hour period! [Nintendo, Game Freak ©, Image Source: Dot Esports]

 

If only the title of this post was an exaggeration, but I’m afraid to say it isn’t.

It was announced at the start of this week (Monday 30^th September), that the official Pokémon YouTube channel would be holding a ’24 hour live stream from the Galar Region’ set to begin on Friday 4^th October. Not simply a Nintendo or Pokémon Direct, but 24 hours’ worth of footage from inside a location from the upcoming game; Glimwood Tangle.

Naturally fans around the world were excited to see what this lengthy stream would bring! In UK time, it began yesterday at 2pm and ended this afternoon at 2pm. While I never stayed awake for the full 24 hour stream, I did catch around half of its total run time. The image at the top of this post of the aforementioned Glimwood Tangle (minus the logos of course), was pretty much all we saw for 24 hours straight.

Now I’m only slightly exaggerating! Throughout the stream, various Pokémon would appear and run, float and fall across the screen, even random Pokémon cries would sound at random moments. For a complete breakdown of what happened and when then check out Serebii.net where they posted live updates as the stream went on. I know when I was watching, the Pokémon I saw were; Pikachu, Morelull, Shiinotic and Impidimp of the already established Pokémon. By way of anything new, we only got 1 (potentially 2 yet to be confirmed) brand ‘new’ Pokémon shown off.

At certain points throughout the stream, a bush will rustle and you’ll see something behind it. Not the whole image mind, just a head or a foot (hoof in this case). At even more stretched out moments, the Pokémon would gallop across the screen; clear enough to see it’s something new but not clear enough to see what exactly. Of course, eagle eyed viewers could tell a mile off what it was (also its cry sounded a bunch and, obviously, the galloping is a dead giveaway) and this mysterious new Pokémon was… Galarian Ponyta.

Seems to me that the new Ponyta might have a touch of Fairy type about it! [Nintendo, Game Freak © , Image Source: Amino]

While not totally new of course as it’s a new form of an existing Pokémon, it was great to see something new being shown off during this stream. However, it was the ONLY new thing to be shown off. Sure Impidimp, the new Fairy/Dark type Pokémon, hasn’t been officially revealed yet but fans have already known about him since a screenshot from the E3 demo this year. There was also one final Pokémon cry that went off as the camera went black during the streams close, that of a Rapidash (Ponyta’s evolution) but as many who have experienced the Pokémon gen 7 games (Sun and Moon) will know, a regional variant of a base evolution will evolve into a regional variant of that Pokémon too. E.G. Alolan Geodude evolves into Alolan Graveler, then into Alolan Golem. Having seen a Galarian Ponyta, it was only right to assume it will evolve into a Galarian Rapidash (although this wasn’t shown off).

Regardless of the new Pokémon however, numerous fans who tuned into the stream (myself included) were left very disappointed by the whole procedure. Only giving us 1 or 2 new Pokémon during a 24 hour period is pretty poor. While showing us 24 hours’ worth of gameplay would have arguably been too much, asking people to watch a 24 hour stream with the only payoff being right at the end is ridiculous.

While this hasn’t really dampened the excitement from many fans, this whole experience has left some with a bitter taste in their mouths. A new trailer or even a Pokémon direct would have served much better and would have been far better received than this. Keeping with their theme though, the official Pokémon site updated with a message from Sonia once the stream had ended.

Sonia is a new character in Pokémon Sword and Shield and the granddaughter of the regions professor, Professor Magnolia. The set up behind the stream was that Sonia intended to record footage from the Glimwood Tangle for 24 hours in order to help her grandmother in her research.

Going to the official website page for the stream here will show a message from Sonia that reads, “We saw some interesting Pokémon, didn’t we? I’ll collect everyone’s reports and create a summary for my gran soon. Thanks for the help!” This is likely to mean that we will be receiving a new REAL trailer for Sword and Shield soon. Which really begs the question; why bother with this whole stream in the first place??

Regardless of what everyone thinks of this stream, it’s clear that despite the game being just over a month away, Game Freak and Nintendo aren’t done with showing us new footage and information for the upcoming titles. We haven’t even seen the started evolutions yet! Here’s hoping whatever is shown next won’t involve us having to sit through 24 hours of what is essentially a desktop background.