Pokémon Sword and Shield open more or less the same as any other in the series: wake up in your room, chat with your mum, check the telly for a little Nintendo console reference. You know the story. Right the way through to the usual little fetch quest for the professor and battle with your rival, Sword and Shield’s opening is a mostly pretty, sleepy, comfort-food affair. There’s a little diversion in there, which I won’t spoil, but really that aside it’s business as usual.
Where things do change, though, is right after that. Not more than an hour or so into Sword and Shield you’ll visit the Wild Area, and for that spot at least Pokémon’s world finally opens up.
The Wild Area is a large, mostly grassy expanse in the middle of the Galar region’s map. In it Pokémon roam freely on the overworld, like they do in all of Sword and Shield’s long-grass areas, in a system similar to that of Let’s Go. (There are now three types of encounter: visible, roaming Pokémon you walk into, traditional random encounters in the long grass, and “exclamation mark” encounters in long grass that you can either provoke for an encounter with a rarer Pokémon or sneak by to avoid.)
Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield Gameplay – Tour of a new Town in the Galar Region – Gamescom 2019 Watch on YouTube
The significant difference with the Wild Area is, if you wander into the wrong part of it, you’ll discover that the wild Pokémon can now be drastically overlevelled. It’s a series first, and it honestly feels like the bravest thing Game Freak has done for a little while. You could always dip your toe into the odd higher-level route on the other side of a city, say, but never get caught in battle with a level 50, third-stage evolution ‘mon with your starter and a level 6 Pidgey. In Sword and Shield it has a striking effect. It reminds me of some of the oldest games in the series where there was a real element of intimidation from some areas. Back then this was because of a fear of the unknown, and a spot of imagination filling in the blanks, but now it’s because seeing a whopping great Pokémon five times your level is enough to intrigue and inspire.