Pokémon Legends: Arceus is an odd type of Pokémon game. It isn’t like any Pokémon game we’ve seen before. From what we have seen so far, it appears to be more Breath of the Wild than Pokémon Sword or Shield. Even then, despite pretty much everyone thinking that Arceus will be an open-world game like Breath of the Wild, Nintendo had to clarify that it won’t be. It’s actually more along the lines of a Monster Hunter game where you have a home base and then go out on missions to the open areas of the game.
In short, exactly what the game will be is still fairly uncertain and confusing to the average observer. That’s with just three months until the game releases too.
So, if it wasn’t clear what exactly Arceus will be before, it’s a whole lot less clear after the latest trailer. The latest trailer for the game features an unnamed person filming wild Pokémon. From how the person is narrating the video, we can assume they may be a Pokémon professor of some kind. The video starts out in a pretty standard way. The professor is filming the Pokémon and exploring different areas. Then, he comes across a Pokémon he can’t quite identify in some dark woods. As he’s trying to identify the Pokémon, a massive dark shadow sweeps over him and the camera falls to the floor, Blair Witch style. In a Pokémon trailer. What?
Is this just a Halloween trailer that gives us some sort of back story? Is Arceus some creepy Pokémon survival horror game? Well, probably not that, but what is going on in this trailer? What is the direction of Arceus? Is it going to be a darker, more mature kind of Pokémon game? We certainly haven’t been given that impression by anything else we have seen so far.
Normally, trailers for games a few months before release answer a lot of questions players may have about the game. The new Pokémon Legends: Arceus trailer has left me with questions that I didn’t even know needed to be asked.