The Pokemon franchise is having a pretty good year. It ought to, considering this is the franchise's 35th anniversary. Earlier this year, long-time fans finally got a successor to Pokemon Snap, a classic spinoff that many were nostalgic for. Nintendo further capitalized on nostalgia by announcing remakes of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, another thing the community has been asking for for years. On top of that, there's the exciting new venture for the franchise: Pokemon Legends: Arceus. Although this spinoff doesn't come out until January 2022, that's still a good release date. It'll be a great way to conclude 2021 as Pokemon's anniversary year.
However, some fans aren't fond of the release date and fear that it speaks to the quality of Pokemon Legends: Arceus. There's an ongoing fear in the entertainment industry that January is a bad window of release for movies and shows, coming after the holiday season and generally avoiding publicity. Some believe that the same thing is true in the video game industry, and that Pokemon Legends: Arceus releasing in January means it won't be a good game. That seems unlikely though. Burying bad games in January is generally a myth, and Game Freak is too consistent to suddenly drop the ball with another Pokemon game.
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There's lots of evidence that January isn't just used to bury good games. In fact, in the last few years, lots of high-quality and influential games were released in January. For example, over the last few years, Capcom has released two acclaimed entries in the Resident Evil franchise: the Resident Evil 2 remake in 2019, and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard in 2017. Capcom also released Monster Hunter: World in January a few years ago. Further examples of strong January releases include Kingdom Hearts 3, Darkest Dungeon, the first Bayonetta, and many more. Clearly, talented developers don't think of January as a bad time to release video games.
The specific talent of Game Freak can't be denied either. The Pokemon franchise has been in Game Freak's hands for many years, and it keeps delivering consistently good games. It's been working with Pokemon since the very beginning, and it's responsible for many extremely memorable games. Game Freak is open to experimentation, too. It made Pokemon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! successful, tinkering with the new model for Pokemon catching created by Pokemon GO. Pokemon Legends: Arceus sounds like an experimental game, set in an open world and with vastly different objectives from a traditional game. Those differences aren't an obstacle – Game Freak has the experience to handle them.
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It's important to remember that Pokemon Legends: Arceus is still being overseen by Nintendo, which takes the quality of its main IPs very seriously. Some fans might remember that in 2019 Nintendo announced that it was scrapping and restarting development on Metroid Prime 4, as well as putting the traditional Metroid Prime developer, Retro Studios, back in charge of the franchise. That's a really drastic series of steps to take, which shows how important Nintendo thinks it is to deliver on its IPs. Nintendo isn't the type of company to publish a game in January because it wants to keep people from noticing it.
Pokemon Legends: Arceus is definitely a big divergence from the traditional Pokemon model. A Pokemon action RPG where players can explore an open world is pretty unique. It's completely valid for fans to be worried about whether or not Game Freak and Nintendo can deliver on such a different concept. However, the Breath of the Wild comparisons that Pokemon Legends: Arceus gets are a good thing. Nintendo already knows how to convert a game into an open-world adventure that suddenly casts aside franchise conventions. As long as Nintendo instills that experience in Game Freak and supports the game as consistently as its other big projects, Pokemon Legends: Arceus has nothing to fear from releasing in January.
Pokemon Legends: Arceus releases for Nintendo Switch on January 28, 2022.
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