Hot professors! Four-player co-op! Lechonk! Today, the Pokémon Company dumped a trove of info about the next mainline Pokémon versions for Switch, Scarlet and Violet, including the release date (November 18, 2022). But a new trailer also pulled back the curtain on the two new version-specific legendary Pokémon, Koraidon and Miraidon, teasing them in a brief pre-rendered cinematic. They look very silly.
The mainline entries in Game Freak’s series of monster-hunting RPGs are most clearly differentiated by their legendary Pokémon — enormously powerful, one-of-a-kind beasts you typically can’t capture until late in the game. Some, like Gold and Silver’s Ho-Oh and Lugia, became instant icons. Others, like those patently ridiculous wolf-beast-things from 2019’s Sword and Shield, have fallen into the series’ recent pit trap of genericism.
Koraidon and Miraidon are at least inspired in their designs, and are available respectively in Scarlet and Violet (if their colours didn’t give it away already). The official description doesn’t get into the weeds about what makes them, y’know, legendaries — their types and movesets and stats — but says, “These two Pokémon are said to have powers that far surpass those of other Pokémon.”
Noted.
Still, Braviary-eyed fans quickly spotted how these two legendary Pokémon could be…motorcycles. The two circular spoked segments on Koraidon’s torso look a whole lot like wheels. Miraidon, meanwhile, seems to have a set of jet-engine boosters for legs. (Because this is the internet, some observers took away some PG-13 inferences from Miraidon’s silhouette.) Both Pokémon have tendrils arced such that they look like handlebars. Does this mean we’re in for a new traversal technique called “Vroom Vroom?”
Though today’s trailer showed Koraidon and Miraidon perched on two rocky outcroppings, it’s unclear where exactly you’ll meet them in Scarlet and Violet’s region (which has yet to be named, by the way). Mainline Pokémon games have you battling eight strong trainers called gym leaders, whom you typically come across in a linear procession. For the first time in the series, in Scarlet and Violet, it appears you can tackle gyms in any order — a true open-world. Historically, you’ve gained the option to capture legendary Pokémon pretty late in the game, sometime around the seventh gym. It’s unclear how that formula might map to a more open-ended structure.
Whatever the case, there’s no real reason to pine for Koraidon and Miraidon, as they’re both far weaker than a Pokémon you’ll meet in the early goings: Lechonk.
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