Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s open world needs better cities

The Pokémon Company promised a big, expansive world with Pokémon Scarlet and VioletThere are many cities, towns, and villages that extend into forests and fields and onto sandy beaches. A great open world feels alive, as if it’s going on without you — the main character it all revolves around.

Pokémon Scarlet VioletThis feeling is only possible in part. The games’ sprawling, wild areas are awe-inspiring and packed with Pokémon; deserts and mountains are split by a craggy mountain wall, and icy rivers flow into massive lakes with thriving ecosystems. These areas are small compared to the rest of the world. Pokémon Scarlet Violet’s biggest Paldean cities feel paltry. Scarlet Violet’s academy hub of Mesagoza, in particular, is superficially outsized.

Image: Game Freak/The Pokémon Company, Nintendo via Polygon

Mesagoza clearly is the biggest city in Pokémon Scarlet VioletStudents and residents alike gather at the city’s center and in the courtyard of the academy. You will notice that there are only a few areas of interest in the city. Many alleyways wind behind buildings, and are a dead end. The city’s stores are largely just fronts where you’re kicked to a menu to buy items rather than wandering around an actual store. Only a few shops allow you to enter the stores, such as the sandwich shop. It wasn’t particularly promising, as the first city your character encounters; it felt disappointing to enter from a lush wild area into a stark, superficial city.

While not all cities have this configuration, most of them do tend to have restaurant-style storefronts instead of actual shop interiors. Many other cities have small and densely packed areas which allow for better movement from the towns to the wilds. This smaller size makes such towns feel fuller — even as many of the stores vendors in these smaller towns are the same as the ones in Mesagoza.

But it’s the wide-open spaces where Pokémon Scarlet and VioletReally thrive. These biomes tell stories about the world that we can’t see in Mesagoza. It’s much more interesting to climb into a watchtower and scan the area; sparkling light shines up from Terastal Pokémon, glimmering colors lighting up the sky. You can choose a landmark to start your journey, and then use the Miraidon/Koraidon as a glider for traversing valleys. Pokémon ScarletAnd Violet’s map provides a lot of context and serves as a pretty extensive guide on the landscape, but the real moments of magic are in stumbling upon something exciting or unknown, even if it’s a wild Pokémon that’s about to wreck your Lv. 14 creatures.

Different areas have unique habitats with Pokémon that spawn there, each with their own Pokémon interactions. Pokémon separate into little groups in some spots, with one big Pokémon surrounded by little guys following the big Pokémon’s lead. During battles, wild Pokémon hop around in the background, some bumbling over to watch the action. Each Pokémon species reacts a little bit differently when you pass by; certain Pokémon are aggressive and looking for a fight, but others seem to just want to follow you around. Sometimes it is easy to ignore certain visual difficulties when there are more unique things in the world.

My instinct is that this sense of size and scope in Paldea’s open areas will only be expanded with the inclusion of multiplayer, which wasn’t in action during Polygon’s pre-release playtime. Exploring environments alongside other players — something we’ve never been able to do before in a Pokémon game — will make this world feel even more alive.