Right on the tails of Nintendo showcasing their three upcoming Pokemon games, the Twitter account CentroLeak has just revealed that Pokemon Legends Arceus development is apparently finished, and the game is 13 gigabytes in size. Obviously nothing is confirmed yet, especially since the game is still five months from coming out.
Pokemon Legends Arceus presents a significant departure from the normal Pokemon formula. Players are now in an open, three-dimensional world set in the Pokemon world’s ancient past, where the Hisui Region (which will later become known as Sinnoh) is still being explored.
Rather than battling other trainers and attempting to become Champion of the Elite Four, players in Pokemon Legends are part of a research expedition, catching Pokemon and exploring the region to uncover more, ranging from new regional variants such as Growlithe and Braviary, to entirely new Pokemon like Basculegion and Wyrdeer.
Considering there hasn’t been an actual announcement that Pokemon Legends Arceus development is now over and the game has gone gold, it’s probably for the best that for the time being we take this leak with a grain of salt. The game comes out on January 28, and it’s only August 18 now, after all.
With five months left to possibly fine-tune things, there’s no telling when the game’s development will actually be finished. Nintendo might not even actually announce that the game is done and has gone gold, either, trusting in its release date of January 28 of next year to tide Pokemon fans over.
Release dates can, after all, be changed, and since Nintendo previously delayed Animal Crossing: New Horizons by a month in order to prevent crunch, if development isn’t finished, who’s to say that Pokemon Legends Arceus development won’t see a similar situation?
Either way, all we can do is wait and see if the game actually is through with development, or not. Pokemon Legends Arceus is slated to come out exclusively for the Nintendo Switch on January 28 of 2022.
