Is Pokémon Legends: Z-A the long-lost Pokémon X and Y follow-up?

polygon.com:

The Pokémon Company is taking players back to Pokémon X and Pokémon Y’s Lumiose City in Pokémon Legends: Z-A, the new Kalos-region game that was announced Tuesday for release in 2025. The brief trailer shown during the Pokémon Day broadcast didn’t include many concrete details, except that Lumiose City is undergoing an “urban redevelopment” aimed at building a city that “belongs to both people and Pokémon.”

Pokémon Legends: Z-A is a new entry in the Legends spinoff series. The first game, Pokémon Legends: Arceus, was released in 2022 and brought players to a past version of the Sinnoh region, then called Hisui. In contrast, Pokémon Legends: Z-A looks to be a more current (or maybe futuristic) version of the Lumiose City from Pokémon X and Y. Those games were released in 2013 for the Nintendo 3DS handheld, and to this day, there are a bunch of unanswered questions, which gives us a place to start in thinking through what Pokémon Legends: Z-A could be about.

Pokémon Legends: Z-A could be the third version of Pokémon X and Y that players have been wondering about for years — let’s dive into what we know, as well as some speculation.

For years, The Pokémon Company had a pattern in how it released its mainline games. First, there were the two main versions — for example, Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue. Later, it would release a third definitive version, usually with minor changes, updates, and added content. Pokémon Black and Pokémon White, released in 2010 in Japan, were the first generation to break from that system, with The Pokémon Company skipping the third version and heading straight into the sequels, Pokémon Black 2 and Pokémon White 2, in 2012. Pokémon X and Y, which were released in 2013, didn’t get a third game, sequels, or enhanced versions.

But fans have long believed that the developers were leading into a potential Pokémon Z that never came. There are several reasons, the first of which is that Pokémon X and Y introduced three new legendary Pokémon. Two were