The days of catching them all are sadly over now for fans of the Pokémon franchise, as the upcoming Pokémon Sword and Shield for the Nintendo Switch will be the first mainline title in the long-running series of games by GameFreak not to include every single Pokémon from every generation like.

What this means is that the complete Pokédex won’t be available in Pokémon Sword and Shield, according to an interview with producer Junichi Masuda on Famitsu. Instead, players will only be allowed to catch Pokémon available in the new Galar region.

Masuda also said that it would be too difficult to balance each and every of more than one thousand different Pokémon in battle. When asked if these Pokémon would be added in post-launch updates, he said that it is currently “undecided.”

Masuda said:

“The total number of Pokémon has exceeded 1000, including new Pokemon and the various forms of existing Pokémon.

As a result, it has become extremely difficult to make Pokemon with a new personality play an active part and to balance their compatibility.

That is the reason for this decision and we have decided that it is difficult to make all Pokémon appear in future works.

This decision is personally sad. Of course, I wanted to be able to bring all Pokémon if I could do it, but it was also a decision that I had to make some day. In the end, I had no choice but to choose the quality.”

However, fans should rest assured that the new Galar region in Pokémon Sword And Shield will still feature a wide range of fan-favorite Pokémon from previous generations, just not all of them.

Pokémon Sword and Shield are slated to launch exclusively for the Nintendo Switch on 15 November 2019. In the meantime, check out some new gameplay footage of Pokémon Sword and Shield from the recent E3 2019 below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmWu-f6L0Mo&w=560&h=315]