Nintendo is as eager as ever to expand thePokemonfranchise, and fans are reaping the benefits.Pokemon Brilliant DiamondandShining Pearllook more and more like the high-qualityDiamondandPearlremakes that fans have been hoping for, in spite of the mixed reception that these remakes got when they were first announced. From upgrades to many ofDiamondandPearl’s most appealing features to the seeming use of the expandedPlatinumPokedex, there’s a lot to like aboutBrilliant DiamondandShining Pearl.Still, there’s a lot of questions to be answered about the game, including whether or not it has a National Pokedex.
The closer fans get to the remakes' release, the more worried they get thatthere’s no National Pokedex. In fact, some fans speculate thatBrilliant DiamondandShining Pearlwill only have Pokemon from the first through fourth generations, up to the days ofDiamondandPearl.That could send a worrying message. If developer ILCA isn’t putting every Pokemon in the base version of the game, then it and Nintendo might have a broader plan to add the rest of the franchise’s Pokemon as paid DLC. The last thing that theBDSPremakes need is for the National Pokedex to be kept behind a paywall, though that could be happening.
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The Potential National Pokedex DLC
The rumor thatBrilliant DiamondandShining Pearlwon’t feature all eight generations of Pokemon stems in part froma post by Nintendo of Francethat said the games will feature monsters that appeared in games through Generation 4. That phrasing heavily suggests that Pokemon fromBlack and Whiteonwards will be missing fromBrilliant DiamondandShining Pearl. This would be a major break in precedent forPokemonremakes. Usually, whenPokemonreturns to a region, the old region brings in all kinds of new Pokemon that’ve been introduced since that region first appeared.HeartGoldandSoulSilverfollowed this precedent, as didOmega RubyandAlpha Sapphire.
As important as it is to the game, Nintendo has generally avoided talking about exactly what Pokemon will appear inBrilliant DiamondandShining Pearl’s Pokedex, in spite of all the publicity that the game has gotten. The trailers only showPokemon that first appeared in the Sinnoh regionor the regions that preceded it, so there’s no clear sign that a National Pokedex will appear. That could very well be because ILCA only plans on putting Pokemon from the first four generations in theBDSPbase games, with the intention of releasing the other four generations as post-launch content.
It wouldn’t be surprising for Nintendo to turn the National Pokedex into a DLC. Nintendo has found a ton of success selling DLCs recently, after all.Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s many DLC fightersare best-sellers, andThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s DLCs prosper too. As paid expansions become more and more comfortable as a part of the Nintendo brand, a National Pokedex expansion fromBrilliant DiamondandShining Pearlseems less and less out of the question. On the contrary, it seems increasingly likely.
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Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl Should Avoid DLC
If this is really the angle that ILCA and Nintendo are taking, it could be a disaster. One only needs to look backas far asPokemon SwordandShield,which faced widespread criticism for cutting hundreds of Pokemon and featuring an incomplete Pokedex at launch. Game Freak and Nintendo relied onSwordandShieldDLCs to add tons of missing Pokemon back into the games, but fans remained very frustrated that Pokemon were missing at all. As thePokemonworld grows, fans are extremely anxious to have all of their favorite Pokemon available to them, meaning there’s just no way to cut Pokemon without upsetting fans.
Putting missing Pokemon behind a paywall doesn’t solveBDSP’s potential Pokedex issue.TheSwordandShieldDLCsmay have brought back a lot of Pokemon, but they also introduced new storylines, areas, and Legendary Pokemon that made the investment much more worth it.Brilliant DiamondandShining Pearl,in contrast, don’t take place in totally new regions that could suddenly get new areas and Legendaries through DLC. There’s not a lot of content that ILCA could whip up that would simultaneously make sense as an addition to the Sinnoh region and satisfy fans who are skeptical of buying aPokemonDLC.
In a broader sense, a National Pokedex DLC forBrilliant DiamondandShining Pearlsets a bad precedent. Some fans and critics feel that the game industry is increasingly reliant on DLC as a way of ‘finishing’ a game after its release, generating some extra revenue in the process. Nintendo can’t fall into that trap.Pokemonfans tend to see aPokemongame as incomplete or missing something if it doesn’t featureevery Pokemon in the franchise, so it’d be very hard for ILCA and Nintendo to frame a National Pokedex DLC as anything other than patching an incomplete game at an additional cost in the eyes of fans.
Diamond and Pearl Deserve Complete Pokedexes
Hopefully Nintendo is just playing coy when it comes to a National Pokedex. It’s entirely possible that ILCA has already put the totality of some 900 Pokemon inBrilliant DiamondandShining Pearl,but Nintendo just hasn’t advertised it yet. As theBDSPrelease date draws near, there’s definitely some value in saving the National Pokedex for a reveal until weeks or days before the games release. A big trailer revealing a complete National Pokedex inBrilliant DiamondandShining Pearlcould stimulatea surge in sales that Nintendo can ridethrough the end of the holiday season.
Nintendo seems to be releasingBrilliant DiamondandShining Pearltrailers a little more frequently than before, which makes sense in the last months before the remakes release. As such, maybe the National Pokedex’s reveal is right around the corner. The entirety of thePokemonfranchise really deserves to be in these games, no matter how the National Pokedex gets incorporated.Fans have wantedDiamondandPearlremakesfor so long that it wouldn’t feel right to return to the Sinnoh region without inviting Pokemon from Kalos, Galar, and so on to visit. Hopefully the National Pokedex makes the cut inBDSP,and it would be best if this was not accomplished through DLC.
Pokemon Brilliant DiamondandShining Pearlrelease on May 29, 2025 for Nintendo Switch.
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