Before the Pokémon portion of Nintendo’s E3 Direct presentation in June, a 4chan post talking about Pokémon Sword and Shield from May started gaining traction. And now, nearly four months after the initial post, more than half of that information has been proven correct.
We’re just under two months away from Sword and Shield being released, and the most recent reveal gave fans the long-awaited Farfetch’d evolution, Sirfetch’d. That was one of the key points many people latched onto from the leak, meaning that its credibility is at an all-time high.
The leak has proven a lot, from basic information about important characters to correctly predicting Sirfetch’d, Pokémon Camps, and other things like completely breaking down Cramorant and its ability, Gulp Missile. So if fans want to take the remaining information at face value, there’s still a lot from the leak that hasn’t been confirmed.
Gym challenge sponsors
The leak claimed that trainers would need to get an endorsement before they compete in the gym challenges. Since Galar’s Pokémon League is set up in a similar fashion to professional sports, this holds a lot of weight.
An early quest to find a sponsor could easily drive the story forward, especially if your rivals, Bede and Marnie, already have them when you first meet and battle them.
Eternatus
The anonymous user also claimed that the equivalent to this game’s Giratina or Necrozma would be named Eternatus. Although the secondary portion of this claim hinted that there would only be one wolf legendary, it could easily have been a typo since both Zacian and Zamazenta look like a split evolution line.
This second legendary could be a late-game plot point, acting like the other legendaries mentioned above and causing some problems for the player, which makes sense because Team Yell doesn’t seem to be the main threat.
New Pokémon and forms
We’ve already seen certain Pokémon change forms due to the special variation of Dynamaxing called Gigantamaxing, but it appears a few classic Pokémon might get that ability, too. The leak talks about Meowth becoming more of a traditional cat with a longer body, Lapras getting more layers added to its shell, and Pikachu becoming more reminiscent of its original design from early games.
On top of that, Meowth is apparently set to get another evolution, which will likely be different from Persian—unless the wording is wrong and the leaker means that Meowth will just have a Galarian form where it’s gray and spiky.
Two new Pokémon based on chipmunks named Skwovet and Greedunt are allegedly going to hide in berry trees and jump out if a player tries to shake too many berries out. If attacked, the player will lose half of the berries they obtained from the tree and have to battle the Pokémon.
If that prediction comes true, each game will likely have one of the chipmunks as a version exclusive, much like Plusle and Minun in Ruby and Sapphire.
Gym challenge trials
The biggest hit against this leak is that it predicted that the fourth gym in Galar would be the “first” Fairy-type gym, led by someone named Opal. Part of this isn’t true since X and Y had this typing nailed down in Laverre City’s Valerie, who handed out the Fairy Badge to anyone who defeated her.
This means that the next set of predictions is less-believable since the one before was incorrect.
Prior to fighting a gym leader, you’ll need to complete something similar to the Island Trials from Sun and Moon. This varies wildly between gyms since Milo will reportedly have you herding sheep, Nessa will allegedly have a maze set up, and Kabu will reportedly have a catching contest using the game’s party system.
The trial portion sounds plausible, but Pokémon has never implicitly forced a player to use online to progress in a game, which makes that last prediction highly suspect. If anything, it’ll be an NPC like your rival Hop who helps you. While the idea is fun, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for the single-player aspect of Sword and Shield to implement that into a gym challenge.
Starter Pokémon evolutions
The last big prediction that has yet to be realized is this leak’s take on the starter evolutions:
- Scorbunny will reportedly have fighting moves but be a pure Fire-type.
- Evolves into Raboot
- Remains humanoid
- Sobble will evolve into Sizzile and then Intelleon.
- The entire line is based on a spy-themed chameleon.
- Grookey’s final stage of evolution is a big gorilla that has a drum.
All of these evolutions and themes check out with what fans are expecting and the outlines of what the starters look like now. Having the Fire-type end up as the most generic of the trio in terms of typing and theme is also right up Game Freak’s alley.
Even if this leak has proven to be extremely on point this close to release, not all of this information has been confirmed and some of it is wrong. Don’t listen to content creators or people who try to pass it off as truth until an official Pokémon account or source verifies the information.
Pokémon Sword and Shield release worldwide on Nov. 15 for Nintendo Switch.
