The Pokémon franchise is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, and recently announced the upcoming releases of three new games, Pokémon Brilliant Diamond, Pokémon Shining Pearl and Pokémon Legends: Arceus.

The first two are remakes of older games that fans have been clamoring for in YouTube comment sections for years. The latter title appears to be an open-world game based off the trailer that was released.

I think that Legends is the most promising of the announcements because it seems to stray from the traditional games in that it is set in a region that players are already incredibly familiar with, the Sinnoh region, but it takes place long before the concept of the Pokémon League, which in the other games is the player’s final objective and the end of the story.

The wandering that the player does in the trailer reminds me of two games I’ve never really played before, Zelda and Skyrim.

That’s what makes me think of Legends as an “open-world” game, since older games generally have the player confined to a route with storyline objectives that are required to advance in the game. It would be really interesting if Legends only had time as something preventing players from exploring.

Pokémon Diamond and Pearl were the introductions to the series for myself and many other fans because they were the first games to come out on the Nintendo DS. Looking back, the games are slow and I imagine this is one of the things the remakes can improve.

There is nothing like the feeling of starting a new game that you have no idea how to play, and introducing a new type of Pokémon game to the series is likely to give many fans the chance to reexperience that feeling. It might be too early to tell, but I think the open-world concept could be mined for years to come by making similar games in regions both new and familiar.

I’m excited for these releases even though I don’t have the Nintendo Switch, which I’d consider buying just to be able to play Pokémon Legends: Arceus. It’d be a great addition to a series of games that have already covered so many bases in the video game industry. Past games have offered competition and thrilling adventure, and now that an open-world aspect is being introduced, I imagine the popularity of the franchise will continue to rise.

Ryan Meyer is a sophomore journalism major. He can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].