Are Mythical Pokemon Coming to Pokemon Go?

Dataminers have discovered some big surprises lurking under the surface of Pokemon Go‘s latest update.

Yesterday, Pokemon Go announced that a new update was being rolled out later this week, which was to fix several longstanding bugs in the game. However, dataminers discovered that (as always) Pokemon Go was hiding some big surprises underneath the surface.

The big news coming out of the new update is that 3D models for Ho-Oh and Celebi have been added to the game. Ho-Oh is the last Legendary Pokemon from the first two generations of Pokemon games that still hasn’t appeared in Pokemon Go and Celebi is a Mythical Pokemon, a type of Pokemon that hasn’t yet appeared in the game yet.

Unlike normal or Legendary Pokemon, Mythical Pokemon aren’t usually obtainable in main series Pokemon games, so players have to rely on giveaways and other distributions to get them for their collections. So far, Pokemon Go hasn’t given any indication whether Mythical Pokemon like Celebi will be Raid Bosses, or if they have other plans for this special subset of Pokemon.

However, don’t expect these Pokemon to appear in Pokemon Go tomorrow. Developers haven’t added 2D image assets for either Pokemon in the game’s files, which mean they aren’t ready to roll out yet.

You can check out models for both Pokemon below.

Other Big Additions in the New Update

The two new Pokemon models weren’t the only big teases found in Pokemon Go‘s new code. Animations for seven new moves were also discovered in the game, hinting that Pokemon Go is continuing to prep for the upcoming Gen 3 release. 

Animations for Surf, Take Down, Yawn, Waterfall, Draco Meteor, Doom Desire, and Psycho Boost were all found in Pokemon Go‘s code. Interestingly, three of those moves (Take Down, Yawn, Waterfall) were added as fast moves, while two of the new moves are signature moves for two powerful Gen 3 Pokemon. Doom Desire is Jirachi’s signature move and Psycho Boost could initially only be used by Deoxys, so this could mean we’ll finally see some reasons to use some of these Legendary Pokemon in battle, even if their stats aren’t all that great. 

Mandatory Buddy Distances?

The other interesting change found in Pokemon Go‘s code were new line items related to “buddy distance requirements” for every Pokemon in the game. 

When Gen II rolled out in the spring, Pokemon Go added an interesting twist to the “friendship” requirements some Pokemon had to evolve. In order to evolve Eevee into either Umbreon or Espeon, Pokemon Go players had to walk Eevee 10 KM as a Buddy Pokemon. 

It appears that Pokemon Go liked this mechanic and has added similar code to all Pokemon species. This doesn’t mean that every Pokemon will have a minimum distance they need to be walked to evolve (after all, Pokemon Go can just set the distance requirement to zero) but it looks like several Gen III Pokemon will need to be walked before they can be evolved. 

We’ll have more on the new Pokemon Go update when it officially comes out sometime in the next few days. In the meantime, Pokemon Go players should be happy that the game developers are ramping up plans for the end of the year and beyond! 

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