Do we have to leave accessibility behind on our Pokémon journey?

In the last ten or so years, the gaming industry has seen a significant surge in game accessibility. More and more game designers are realizing that everyone has a better gaming experience when their games are made accessible, especially from the outset of the creative process. There are several different types of accessibility features in games, such as customizable subtitles, colorblind options, and thorough button remapping. However, it seems like Nintendo and its first-party titles are falling behind.

In particular, the world's largest entertainment brand, Pokémon, is not progressing as well as it should in terms of accessibility. Considering the constraints of their technology, the previous Pokémon games have been rather easy to play; most can be completed with one hand, the plot and advancement are straightforward, and no button mashing or aim is required. However, some gamers have been left behind as the Pokémon main series shifts toward an open-world gameplay style.

Starting off with a positive, the quest system is something that both Pokémon Legends: Arceus and Pokémon Scarlet & Violet did well with their open worlds. Since I have ADHD, I find it very difficult to manage many objectives at once. In an open environment, waypoints help me avoid getting lost and forgetting my goal entirely. Quest waypoints are present in both Legends and Scarlet & Violet, which helps to make the large, open environment engaging for me. While it may not be as comprehensive as the mission list and personalized map waypoints of Genshin Impact, at least they avoided the Elden Ring method, or as I like to refer to it, "I dunno, figure it out."

I can't speak for many other handicapped gamers, but as a neurodivergent player, I've never really had any trouble with Pokémon games, and support for my unique access requirements appears to have only gotten better as the brand expands and changes. As Pokémon develops farther into the future, players with vision, hearing, and mobility limitations will often fall behind. What's worse is that in some cases, other fans may be the ones to silence these players' voices.

Shiny hunting is the specific instance that springs to mind. Over time, there have been a few changes made to the way shiny Pokémon function, one of them being an increase in the spawn rate to one in 4,000 Pokémon. The most significant update to the Switch generation of games is that, starting with Pokémon Let's Go, shiny Pokémon can now be seen in the overworld, so you no longer need to fight every shiny Pokémon you come across to find out whether it's shiny. Legends Arceus added a side quest dedicated to finding shinys, as well as auditory and visual clues that indicate when a shiny is detected, making it much easier to recognize a shine.

As a result, shiny hunting becomes much more accessible for gamers that are colorblind or visually handicapped, as they can now discern shining objects without having to see their color palette thanks to the sparkling effect and auditory cue. Many disabled players, like Laura Kate Dale, pushed for these accessibility features to be improved in generation nine so that hard-of-hearing players were less at a disadvantage. The audio cue plays whenever a shiny Pokémon spawns in, whereas the visual cue requires you to be looking at the Pokémon.

Unfortunately, some shiny hunters felt that the sport was "too easy" because of these accessibility features that help a variety of able-bodied and disabled players. It appears that The Pokémon Company heard these complaints over the compliments and suggestions for improvement from disabled fans.

Rather from enhancing the experience, Scarlet & Violet have made shiny hunting more difficult than it was in Legends Arceus. While color-switching between shiny Pokémon and non-shiny Pokémon in the overworld still occurs, aural indications for shiny spawning and locking onto a Pokémon have vanished. Like in earlier games, they activate when you combat them, but for visually challenged and colorblind players, this makes the shiny hunting process tedious and difficult in comparison to what able-bodied players may enjoy.

Worse, some of the Paldean shiny variants of Pokémon are only visible on certain parts of the Pokémon, like Charcadet's eyes, or are the most subtly altered color palettes in the history of the series. Because of the visual problems with Pokémon Scarlet & Violet, shiny hunting may become quite challenging. Although your friend won't battle shiny objects thanks to the game's new Let's Go autobattling feature, finding a shiny still takes much longer than just being able to recognize one in a bunch.

A lot of the things that irritate me about accessibility difficulties in games are that we, as handicapped gamers, don't expect devs to include every accessible element into the core game; we simply want the choice. Even though people may not realize it, functionality like text speed and sequence skipping are already accessible. Should I be able to disable cutscenes to prevent myself from being hyperfocused during a game, then why is it that a colorblind player cannot activate a colorblind palette or a glittery visual signal for shiny objects?

With just a few audio mixing sliders and the previously stated text speed settings, Pokémon games are infamous for having very small option menus. When you contrast it with titles like Hades and The Last of Us Part Two, you start to question why the greatest franchise in the world offers us so few ways to enhance our gameplay.

The Switch is especially terrible for fine motor control accessibility, not only Pokémon. Since you must use both analog sticks to operate the camera in Pokémon Legends Arceus and Pokémon Scarlet & Violet, which have an entirely open-world environment, playing these games one-handed is almost difficult. Although the Switch has some button remapping functionality, it is not practical to remap every button required to play a Pokémon game to a single JoyCon.

Since Pokémon is one of my favorite franchises, I really hope that Game Freak and The Pokémon Company take the input from players with disabilities into consideration and make some adjustments, either in the much-discussed Pokémon Scarlet & Violet DLC or wherever the games end up.

Check out our tutorials on how to evolve Finizen, how to evolve Riolu, and how to evolve Pawmo if you need assistance on your Paldean adventure. Consider updating your laptop with one of our most popular Pokémon wallpapers.