The Pokémon Company announced that Pokémon Go will once again celebrate Halloween with an in-game event. While we await further details about the promotion, however, it’s a much tinier tease that fans are most excited about: the possible arrival of more Pokémon, which sounds like it could be this Halloween’s biggest treat.
We first got word of the Halloween event through a small line about the Pokémon franchise’s overarching plans for the holiday on its website.
“The Halloween season is a special time in Pokémon Go,” the page reads. “Plenty of good stuff is coming to the game later this October, and we can’t wait to get out and about to see what sort of excitement we can scare up while catching new Pokémon to fill out our Pokédex.”
Players’ immediate read of this line is that those “new Pokémon” are new to the game itself — as in Pokémon from the third generation of monsters. As Niantic has slowly continued to release more Pokémon from the series’ second-generation lineup throughout the year, some members of the fanbase feel sure that it’s time for the release of generation three.
But gen three believers may be jumping the gun a bit. Other translations of the announcement, like the one on the Spanish-language Pokémon site, leave out the note about “new Pokémon.” Instead, it just focuses on the appearance of more ghost-type Pokémon, just like last year’s event.
Besides, it’s easy to read the English version of the announcement as simply referring to Pokémon that trainers have yet to catch, making these monsters new to their personal Pokédexes. This is the kind of speculating that comes naturally to diehard Pokémon Go fans, so we’ve reached out to Niantic for clarification. Until then, we expect players to continue quibbling over what this early announcement really portends for the game.