New Pokemon Sword and Shield Trailer Shows Off Raids and Wild Area

Pokemon Sword and Shield fans got another look at the pair of games due out this month thanks to a new trailer released this week. The trailer comes from the Japanese Pokemon account on YouTube, but even if you're not fluent, it has plenty to show the Pokemon community. It clocks in at over five minutes and shows off everything from the Max Raid Battles against giant Pokemon to the lighter features like customizing your characters and eating.

Serving as an overview for everything we've seen about Pokemon Sword and Shield to keep people up to date on what they might've missed, the trailer touches on all the most important parts of the game and the smaller ones built around the key features. You've got looks at the new Trainers and, more importantly, the new Pokemon like Sobble, Scorbunny, and Grookey, though we of course still haven't seen their evolutions yet.

Following a highlight reel of many of the new Pokemon including their Galarian forms, the trailer moved on to the much more open part of the game called the Wild Area. This is where players can explore the Galar region as they make their way to other points of interest around the map. Between those locations lies the Wild Area where different species of Pokemon and Max Raid Battles exist.

These Max Raid Battles present players the chance to do battle with a Dynamax Pokemon which is essentially a much larger and much stronger version of a normal monster. Players will have to team up with others to take on these Pokemon whether that means bringing on another person or some normal NPCs to help. These Max Raid Battles were partially inspired by Pokemon Go's feature that worked similar to the one in Sword and Shield, though the developers told Game Informer that the idea for raids was in place before it ever came to the mobile game.

While it's not mentioned in the trailer, it was revealed recently approximately how long it'd take to beat the game when the game's director Shigeru Ohmori said the amount of content was comparable to previous Pokemon games. The games are also now available to pre-load on the Nintendo Switch to make sure you're ready for the release when the games unlock later this month.

Pokemon Sword and Shield is scheduled to release for the Nintendo Switch on November 15th.