The Pokemon Company – Why Pokemon Sword & Shield are expansions

The Pokemon Company – Why Pokemon Sword & Shield are expansions

GameInformer had a chance to chat with The Pokemon Company after they have released both expansions to the popular Pokemon Sword / Shield.

GameInformer asked them why they opted for the expansion route rather than create a new game for players. The Pokemon Company’s response was that they wanted players to spend more time exploring new environments in the game they have already purchased and use their favourite Pokemon that they have collected within the game straight away.

The choice for DLC

There was an element of apprehension in moving to a downloadable model, but we were confident that players would enjoy exploring the new environments, uncovering new storylines, and meeting new human characters and Pokémon in both The Isle of Armor and The Crown Tundra.

With past titles, players generally had to collect and raise their Pokémon completely from scratch, so with a DLC we thought players would enjoy being able to use their favorite Pokémon right out of the gate.

Crown Tundra DLC

With the second DLC contained within the Expansion Pass, The Crown Tundra, players were able to explore various Pokemon Dens as part of Dynamax Adventures.

This allowed them to catch Legendary Pokemon from past titles. The team say that they wanted to change how players catch these Legendary Pokemon and this paved the way for the Dynamax Adventures.

The idea for Dynamax Adventures started with the team wanting to introduce new elements to Max Raid Battles. We think Dynamax Adventures was the perfect way to achieve this. We wanted to change the way in which Legendary Pokémon are captured in our games.

Some of the Legendary Pokémon that appear in Dynamax Adventures differ between Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield. Only by joining up with players using a different version will you have a chance to catch them as well.

The Pokemon Sword or Pokemon Shield Expansion Pass is available via the Nintendo Switch eShop for current owners of the game. Alternatively if you’ve yet to buy either game they now come bundled with their respective Expansion Passes.