How Pokemon Legends: Arceus is Seemingly Influencing Scarlet and Violet

gamerant.com:

There's only a short time left before Pokemon rolls into its ninth generation. Leading this charge is Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, a pair of mainline entries that promise to be the most ambition the series has ever seen. This time, Pokemon is committed to implementing open-world gameplay after experimenting with larger play spaces in its past couple entries. On top of that, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are allowing multiple players to explore the same world together, and there will be three story paths for trainers to follow at their leisure.

These games wouldn't be where they are without plenty of past titles to build on. Chief among these are their immediate predecessors, Pokemon Sword and Shield and Pokemon Legends: Arceus. The through line of mainline Pokemon’s jump to Switch for the first time is the Wild Area. There are several other details that Scarlet and Violet owe to these past games, especially Pokemon Legends. Even as Scarlet and Violet iterates on things like Sword and Shield’s Max Raid Battles, Pokemon Legends appears to be the necessary step for Generation 9 to reach its potential.

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The expansion of the Wild Area into a true open world can be seen across the Nintendo Switch Pokemon titles. Pokemon Sword and Shield first implemented the idea, but many thought it fell short. The Wild Area in Galar is simply a giant field with branches leading to more traditional routes on all sides. The Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra DLC expansions showed clear improvement, both taking place in their own Wild Areas. This would grow into the massive, sprawling environments found in Pokemon Legends: Arceus’ areas, but not just in terms of size.

Pokemo