Modders Are Adding Pokémon Sword and Shield’s Axed Characters Into the Game

What could have been.

Although Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield do have plenty of characters to go around, some fans are disappointed that the game doesn’t include a complete National Pokedex. To that end, some modders have taken it upon themselves to add deleted characters into the game.

As previously reported by NintendoLife, one of those modders, a Twitter user named SciresM, has already chronicled adding such characters into the game. In this case, it’s Omastar, and you can see how that progress is coming along in the tweets below.

Yay, animations! pic.twitter.com/5D3Cv0r56Q

— Michael (@SciresM) November 18, 2019

Since apparently this needs clarification: yamper is still in the game with this edit. This is a new entry inserted into the model table using Omastar’s species ID (139).

The one in my party/shown in battle was a yamper that I just lazily edited the species of with PKHeX.

— Michael (@SciresM) November 18, 2019

The tech stuff, though, is pretty amazing, with SciresM noting his progress in a tweet from earlier this morning:

Bringing back old pokemon seems hard but doable to me.

It’ll require:

-Tool dev, to work with the formats and to be able to use USUM models.

-Community sourced animations/etc for capture withdrawal/battle entry.

-Textures could probably use waifu2x or similar for a first pass?

— Michael (@SciresM) November 18, 2019

While SciresM has noted his progress with the project, they’re not willing to take on all challenges—like adding in characters from the Let’s Go games, for instance. Other modders, however, may give that a shot somewhere down the road. Where there’s a will…

Granted, this doesn’t mean they’ll be unlocked in-game across the board for everyone to try. But it’s interesting to see what SciresM has come up with, and what could have been added to the game.

Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield are available now for Nintendo Switch.