I Thought the New Pokemon Teaser Was Detective Pikachu and am Now So Sad

I Thought the New Pokemon Teaser Was Detective Pikachu and am Now So Sad

I’m as happy as any Pokemon fan to have seen the first glimpse into Pokemon Scarlet & Violet yesterday during the Pokemon Presents stream, but goddamn, it truly felt like a bait and switch after a live-action teaser that seemed to almost overtly reference the Detective Pikachu subseries.

A sequel to the original 3DS adventure game was announced in 2019, shortly after the live-action film adaptation came to theaters. We haven’t heard pretty much anything from it since, though job listings confirm it’s still in development. Those job listings had the game on my mind again, and I really thought this live-action bit was leading into a proper reveal. But really, I should’ve known something else was up when Game Freak’s logo showed up, because the team that develops the Pokemon RPGs isn’t the one making the Detective Pikachu sequel.

 

The live-action section begins with a security guard flashing his flashlight around a building, eventually heading into a lone office at the end of a hallways. Inside is a room full of books and other artifacts. Something you’d expect in a library in a mystery novel. Seems ripe for a Detective Pikachu tease, right? There’s even a corkboard covered in papers. This is a detective’s room, y’all. But the fucking kicker was at the one-minute mark, where the camera lingers on a cup of coffee. The titular mystery-solving rodent in both the original game and the Ryan Reynolds movie was addicted to coffee. Where it was played as a charming character trait on the 3DS, Reynolds’ version of the character was a sicko for the bean juice, and it played into some of the movie’s best running gags. “This has to be Detective Pikachu tease,” I screamed into a voice chat with friends. I was gonna get to go solve some mysteries with the Greatest Mouse Detective.

You may also like:

But then suddenly, the wind picked up, the lights started flickering, the clock starts moving, and then…we see an open Pokemon world. This is not Detective Pikachu. Instead, it’s the next generation of Pokemon. And sure, I’m stoked. Even after having just played through Pokemon Shining Pearl and Pokemon Legends: Arceus, going to a new region in the Pokemon universe sounds extremely appealing to me. But man, I was hoping it was finally time to head back to Ryme City, which is probably my favorite setting in the Pokemon universe. Guess we’ll be waiting a little bit longer. But at least we’ll have a new region to explore in the meantime.

Pokemon Scarlet & Violet are coming to Switch later this year.

Author: Deann Hawkins