How to skip cutscenes and dialogue in Pokémon Sword and Shield

Time to stop watching those pesky cutscenes and get right to the meat.
Screengrab via Nintendo

Pokémon Sword and Shield finally gave players the option to skip movie cutscenes and even some of the most annoying bits of dialogue in the game, which saves a lot of time for people playing through for the second time. 

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This is an all-or-nothing option that will disable all of the cutscenes for the entire game, however. So if you want to save time, you can’t cherry-pick which cutscenes to skip once you make the choice. 

Once you start your game and get out of any opening lines of text, all you need to do is press the X Button to open your main menu. From there, navigate to the Options icon and open it up too.

You will see a lot of options lined up, a lot of which can also be changed to decrease your game time, but the main setting you are looking for is one labeled ‘Skip Movies.’ Once you scroll all the way down to it, simply switch it on.

The audio options will not be unlocked at the start of the game.

The game will ask you to confirm your selection, asking if you have already played through the story to make sure you aren’t just accidentally lessening the game’s experience. After making your decision on that prompt you should be set to do a cutscene free run of Sword and Shield

Now, even though you have eliminated the actual cutscenes, there will still be moments when you run into sections filled with heavy dialogue that you will be unable to skip through. But there are a few extra settings you can change to get done with the story slog sooner rather than later. 

The main option you want to change outside of the Skip Movies setting is your text speed. Make sure it is set to fast so you won’t need to worry about mashing the A Button while talking to Hop or any of the other important story characters. 

Other than that, you can turn off nicknaming and set your game to automatically send any Pokémon straight to the PC so you save a little time while completing your Pokédex, too. And hey, at least you can skip the Pokémon Center and catching tutorials, so that is a huge plus.


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Cale Michael
Lead Staff Writer for Dota 2, the FGC, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and more who has been writing for Dot Esports since 2018. Graduated with a degree in Journalism from Oklahoma Christian University and also previously covered the NBA. You can usually find him writing, reading, or watching an FGC tournament.