Mew is Coming to Pokemon Go Along With an Exciting New Game Feature

Pokemon Go is asking players to help with "field research" to find the Mythical Pokemon Mew.

In a surprise blogpost made this morning, Pokemon Go informed players that a "series of mysterious happenings" is occurring all over the world, and asked players to help research whether these events were connected to Mew. This appears to be the long awaited "quest" mechanic teased several months ago in a past update of the game.

Pokemon Go will offer two types of research: Field Research and Special Research. Players can collect Field Research tasks by spinning PokeStops. Each task has an objective like discovering and catching specific types of Pokemon or participating in gym battles.Completing a task will earn players rewards ranging from Potions to Rare Candies to Charged TMs.

Special Research will be assigned by Professor Willow himself. By completing tasks in that category, players will gain XP and also work their way to even bigger rewards. These will be more story-driven activities and unfold as players complete more tasks.

Completing at least one Research task a day will earn players stamps. When seven stamps are collected, players will achieve a "Research Breakthrough" that will earn them multiple rewards, including a possible encounter with a Legendary Pokemon.

This is a huge addition for Pokemon Go and potentially solves many of the issues that players have complained about for months. Not only does this break up the monotony of the game, it also gives players a chance to encounter Legendary Pokemon in the wild - something that wasn't previously available in the game. Legendary Pokemon encounters were previously limited to players who could participate in raids (which meant finding both a raid and other players), so this opens the game up to those who don't have easy access to gyms.

This also marks the return of Professor Willow to the game. While Willow was a popular figure when the game first came out in 2016, he had all but disappeared over the last year. Field Research could also open up Pokemon Go to having something that resembles a plot, especially during events. We could finally discover the backstory of various Team Leaders, or even fight Team Rocket and other antagonists!

Research tasks will be added to the game on March 30th. We'll have more coverage of this exciting new feature when it goes live.