Pokémon Go receives numerous updates and visual upgrades

Michelle Brändle

8.5.2024

Translation: Patrik Stainbrook

Mobile game Pokémon Go has been around for eight years. Time for a visual upgrade! At least that’s what Niantic thinks, giving your avatar a new look as well as providing more landscapes.

Niantic, the developer studio behind Pokémon Go, is releasing a major visual update for their successful mobile game. It’s the last update for the time being in a whole series of innovations the company launched a few weeks ago. Here’s an overview of all the new features.

Update 1: Rediscover Yourself

To roam the digital map of Pokémon’s world, you have to create a character first. You can edit and dress it as you wish during the course of the game. I’ve changed the colour of my avatar’s hair as often as I change mine in real life – blue, pink, orange, black.

Until now, you had to choose between male and female characters. I opted for a lovely lady and was able to browse matching haircuts and the like.

Now, the character designer no longer differentiates between genders. You simply personalise your avatar by zones: hair, face, eyes and body. Hair is sorted by short, medium and long plus colours. Then you choose different facial features, skin and eye colour.

For body type, you can either use a preset or select «Custom». There, you can choose your weight, how many muscles you want your avatar to have, how broad the shoulders should be and how big you want the chest.

I think it’s cool that you don’t have to choose between male and female, and have more options. However, the change has stirred up quite a bit of discussion. Many fans find the old avatars more beautiful or are bothered by the new proportions.

Update 2: Rediscover Your World

The game environments in Pokémon Go have been given a new look that adapts to your real-life surroundings. The game also takes the weather and seasons into account. Depending on where you are, the map shows matching hills and mountains, lakes and other landscape elements. Niantic differentiates between biomes such as forests, cities, mountains and beaches.

Update 3: Rediscover Kanto

I wallow in nostalgia. The third update once again focuses on the first generation of Pokémon from the Kanto region. I probably know the names of those 151 Pokémon better than those of real-world animals. My poster, which hung above my childhood bed, definitely helped.

With the new update, you need additional knowledge if you want to catch Kanto monsters in-game. They can only be found in certain regions.

Biomes previously in Pokémon Go:

• Forest: here you’ll find Bulbasaur, Caterpie, Weedle, Pikachu and Oddish, among others.
• City: in bustling cities, you’ll find Caterpie, as well as Pidgey, Machop and Gastly.
• Mountains: mountains are home to Pokémon such as Geodude, Sandshrew, Clefairy, Zubat, Machop, Diglett and Charmander.
• Beach: Squirtle, Psyduck, Dratini, Seel, Goldeen and Magikarp are having fun on the beach.

In Pokémon games set in Kanto, there are also (page in German) Grass, Wilderness, Water and Cave biomes. So far, however, Niantic has only confirmed the ones listed above. The weather also influences which Pokémon you encounter. Certain bird species, for example, particularly like windy weather.

With the visual updates, a new event with a research task has also been added. Research comes in the usual form: collect Pokémon (from the Kanto region, of course), use berries when catching your little critters and collect hearts with the Pokémon that accompanies you. The event runs until 10 May 2024, and has advantages such as faster friendship growth. You can find out what else research can do for you here.

Update 4: Rediscover Your Reality

The last major update for the time being concerns the augmented reality (AR) function. Previously, when catching Pokémon on the catch screen, you could choose whether you wanted a virtual world to be displayed or whether the game should display your real world using your smartphone camera. Now you have the opportunity to play around with the AR function.

You can now take photos of several of your Pokémon together. This snapshot function can be found under the new camera icon in the menu – you can also grab your camera from the item bag.

Then, choose up to three creatures to start your group photo with. You can now place Pokémon on the ground, on an object or in the air. After that, take your photo and close the tool again. You can decorate the result with stickers. Niantic is giving you a few decorative elements for your sticker collection to start with.

The new features in the snapshot function aren’t yet working properly. There’s a series mode for group pictures so that you can take several AR photos at once – editing only works for the newest picture so far. Placing Pokémon also requires patience and enough space in your real surroundings. For your efforts, however, the Pokémon Smeargle will appear for you to catch, just like before with snapshots. It’s a really nice gimmick, and I can finally use up all my stickers.

Michelle Brändle

Editor

Michelle.Braendle@digitecgalaxus.ch

In my world, Super Mario chases Stormtroopers with a unicorn and Harley Quinn mixes cocktails for Eddie and Peter at the beach bar. Wherever I can live out my creativity, my fingers tingle. Or maybe it's because nothing flows through my veins but chocolate, glitter and coffee. more

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