Pokemon Go Fans Won’t Be Able to Catch Them All Unless They Play Scarlet and Violet

Since its initial inception, the tagline of the Pokemon franchise, at least here in the west, has been “gotta catch ’em all.” Now, you’d perhaps think that, in our modern internet-connected world, catching ’em all would be an easier prospect. Maybe if you didn’t have to play more than one game to do so, but that’s not the world we live in. No sir, Pokemon Go fans won’t be able to catch them all unless they play Scarlet and Violet.

Pokemon Go Fans Won’t Be Able to Catch Them All Unless They Play Scarlet and Violet

With the recent announcement of the new Pokemon Gimmighoul, The Pokemon Company has divulged that, sometime in 2023, copies of Pokemon Scarlet or Violet will be capable of linking with Pokemon Go accounts. Presumably, this’ll work as it has in previous examples, allowing you to transfer caught Pokemon and items. However, there’s an additional wrinkle here: according to the announcement, players will only be able to catch Gimmighoul in Pokemon Go, specifically in its Roaming Form, by linking the games together. This effectively means that, without playing Scarlet or Violet, catching every Pokemon in Pokemon Go is impossible.

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On the one hand, this is obviously pretty lousy. Not everyone has or can afford a Nintendo Switch, to say nothing of a copy of either Scarlet or Violet. Part of Pokemon Go’s appeal is that it’s free-to-play, but enacting this kind of restriction is arbitrarily limiting to a potentially large portion of the game’s player base. Even if money weren’t a concern, it’s just kind of baseline irritating to be required to play a completely different game just to progress in the game you actually care about.

Gotta Catch Some

On the other hand, though, unlike in the mainline games, completing the PokeDex in Pokemon Go isn’t really that important. In fact, Scarlet and Violet link or not, you literally can’t complete the PokeDex in Pokemon Go because the game is still missing a bunch of Pokemon from the previous generations. While the link requirement is undoubtedly unfair, it’s not really a problem that will actively manifest itself any time soon. Of course, you could argue that assuming Pokemon Go outlives Scarlet and Violet by a significant degree, the link would become even more limiting since it would require the use of outdated software. Again, though, that’s the future’s problem, not the now’s problem.

Whatever your take on the matter, we’ll know more when the games are officially linked up sometime next year.