Pokémon Scarlet and Violet will be released on November 18

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet will be released for Nintendo Switch on November 18. It was previously announced that the ninth generation of Pokémon games would be released later this year, with no release date mentioned.

In the trailer published on Wednesday, it appears that the games support multiplayer for up to four players. It is not entirely clear whether the players can only travel together or whether they are free to come and go as they please.

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet will be the first open world games in the main series. This means players can discover the new region, without being required to follow a path dictated by the story, describes the official website. However, they are not the first games in the franchise to offer an “open world”. In January, Pokémon Legends: Arceus was released, a spin-off game where the focus is on completely filling and replenishing the Pokédex, rather than fighting.

Still, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet don’t deviate too much from their predecessors. Battles with NPCs and other players are still an important part of the games. The player is also sent out by a Pokémon professor. What is different is that this time there are two professors. With Scarlet it is Professor Sada and with Pokémon Violet it is Professor Turo. Whether the traditional Gym battles will return is not entirely clear yet.

The trailer also shows off five new Pokémon. Three of the five are Pokémon that the player encounters at the beginning of the adventure: the grass-type Smoliv, the electric mouse Pawmi, and Lechonk, a normal-type pig. The other two are legendary Pokémon, which are also the mascots of the games: Koraidon and Miraidon. Koraidon can only be caught in Pokémon Scarlet, and Miraidon is Violet’s mascot.