Pokémon Winds and Waves was announced at the 30th anniversary stream today. The Pokémon Presents showed off a lot of things, but the biggest was the confirmation of the long-awaited 10th generation. We haven’t seen any gameplay from the newest entry, but so far, everything looks pretty good.

We Can Be Excited About Pokémon Winds and Waves

The Pokémon Presents from this morning included a lot of exciting things, including updates for Pokémon Unite and the Trading Card Game. There’s also a new fighting game, Pokémon Champions, for the Switch era coming, but none of it is as interesting as a new generation. So far, I’m excited.

The more I look at the starter trio for Pokémon Winds and Waves, the better it looks. My first glance at them was not kind, but they look good in action in the trailer. I always like Fire-types, and I love dog Pokémon, yet I am incredibly drawn to Gecqua, the Water-type starter. The evolutions may make my decision for me, but the fact that there are two that I am considering suggests my initial feelings about the trio were inaccurate.

The cinematic trailers always look more, well, cinematic than the gameplay actually does, so it’s possible that Game Freak has once again mailed it in graphically and with the world design for the actual game. They came under heavy fire for Pokémon Legends: Z-A‘s bad assets and Scarlet and Violet‘s empty, bland open world.

So, given that and the fact that the trailer looks pretty good visually, I’m inclined to think they might have taken a step up in that area. The setting looks beautiful, and it is really nice that there seems to be finally the ability to go underwater.

Certain hardware limitations made it hard for older entries to run underwater sections or underwater spawns, but that hasn’t been the case in a while, so it is really cool that Game Freak and The Pokémon Company have finally done something like this. Assuming we can go underwater to catch the Lumineon and Frillish that were under there, that’s already a huge plus for Pokémon Winds and Waves.

The open world doesn’t look as bland as it was in Scarlet and Violet, too. They are in the wild, so there aren’t buildings or houses nearby, but the backdrop has lush, dense forests and cool terrain to explore. Again, this could be for the cinematic trailer, but the way the Pokémon look on those backdrops is really exciting.

Of course, with a few things, the bar is literally on the floor. Putting anything in the open world is a step up. Making sure 3D assets are actually 3D is a step up, too. The Pokémon Company has been lazy before and will be lazy again, but at least based on the first look, they seem to have course-corrected a bit.

The game is not out until 2027, so it’s going to be a while before anyone sees Gen 10 in action. There’s still a good chance the performance and graphical issues pop up again. We’ll know more about the gameplay, too, in the next several months as the launch approaches, and that could determine how good the game actually looks. For now, though, I have very few complaints.

Conclusion

We’ve known for a while that Generation 10 was coming, and certain leaks about it revealed some information beforehand. Still, as far as anniversary celebrations go, this announcement and the first actual look at Pokémon Winds and Waves are pretty exciting. They still have a ways to go before the launch, but it looks good as of now.