Free exploration in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet has been often advertised as a revolutionary system due to the fact that Gen 9 comes with three main storylines, meaning that players can hypothetically focus on any of them first, all at once, or even skip them entirely. The full experience is still intended to be that of finishing all three paths, but being able to explore the region with no boundaries and completing missions or objectives gradually is indeed a first for the series. However, as time passes, this aspect of free exploration becomes seemingly less so by the day, and it poses questions as to what it really entails.
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Why and How Pokemon Scarlet and Violet’s Exploration Could Be Limited
It’s not a mystery that pretty much the entirety of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet’s Pokedex was leaked by Riddler Khu and other sources over the past few months, and it’s likely that Gen 9 will go down as one of the most comprehensive leak seasons in the franchise’s history. Recently, Riddler Khu said that new Bug-type pocket monsters are all available early on, whereas critters like the so-called poisonous flower and the pseudo-Legendary are late game, with Paradox Pokemon being endgame content.
While it makes sense that some mons will be found earlier than others based on their locations on the map, dividing the Pokemon Scarlet and Violet experience into time-gated progression bits contradicts all the talk about free exploration. The logic is that if players could really go wherever they want from the get-go, then there wouldn’t be a “late game” subset of Pokemon, maybe just some that require a bit more time to find because they don’t spawn in the routes at the beginning of the game, but maybe far back in the Paldea region. For example, Pokemon Legends: Arceus has free exploration up until players need the various travel critters to access other areas.
The consequence is that technically players can explore parts of the Hisui region freely, but the whole package only comes when they get the story done, and at that point, can it be considered free exploration? Pokemon Scarlet and Violet’s Legendaries could serve the same purpose, meaning that players could be required to unlock all the forms of Koraidon and Miraidon to access given areas of the map, and unlocking them might require completing certain story quests.
Even worse, because Pokemon Scarlet and Violet will have three main story paths, some travel upgrades could be locked behind each of them, meaning that players could theoretically ignore them, but they shouldn’t if they want to get their adventure going or if they are after specific Pokemon. The whole concept is very reminiscent of Game Freak’s classic “HM case,” which typically limited players from accessing specific areas in the playthrough until they unlocked moves like Cut or Surf to explore the region by backtracking to points of interest. Overall, there’s a fair chance that Gen 9 won’t allow players to truly explore Paldea freely, and that alone makes the entire concept of an open-world setting less relevant.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are set to release on November 18, exclusively for Nintendo Switch.
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