New Pokemon Snap has enjoyed an enormously successful launch week, so it’s no surprise that a lot of people are already approaching or have completed the endgame scenario. Naturally, this has led to discussions pertaining to whether or not DLC is on the horizon - we certainly hope it is.
But even if there is DLC planned for New Pokemon Snap, we have no real idea as to what it might focus on. I’d personally love for Professor Mirror to lump a load of rocket fuel into the NEO-ONE and send us to take snaps of Naganedel in space, but I recognize that might be wishful thinking - although it’s worth noting that Gen 7 got the short end of the stick in Snap. Sure, there are no Gen 6 starters, but Xerneas’ presence more than makes up for that, as well as Diancie’s. Gens 5 and 7 have the second-lowest number of starters with just one a piece, and let’s be real - Gen 7 Legendaries are way better than the ones from Gen 5.
If we don’t go to space, my next most-anticipated premise would be DLC based on Pokemon Twilight Wings, the revered animated miniseries based on Gen 8. Just like Sword & Shield, it’s set in Galar and includes trainers like Marnie and Bede, as well as beloved Gym Leaders like Nessa, Allister, Raihan, and Piers. However, all of its design principles would lend themselves particularly well to the New Pokemon Snap formula - come to think of it, it’s difficult to imagine a more suitable genesis for DLC.
New Pokemon Snap is all about capturing Pokemon in their natural habitats - the interactions they have with one another, the scenarios that spontaneously arise based on their surroundings, and just their average, day-to-day lives as Pokemon. Lure Seviper out of its hiding place in the bushes and it will do battle with Zangoose, while lobbing loads of Illumina orbs into the eye of a whirlpool will cause Blastoise to erupt out of the foam - although this should have been Gyarados, for what it’s worth.
This is why Twilight Wings is such a perfect DLC concept. There are no urban areas in New Pokemon Snap - the closest we come to that is the pastoral research camp, where Stoutland plays with Eevee in the grass while Meowth tries to take a cheeky swipe at Rattata. In Twilight Wings, Pokemon also have specific functions. There are Corviknight taxis - in fact, the unnamed Corviknight taxi driver is the makeshift glue holding all of the disparate episodes together - while Ghost-types haunt graveyards and Fighting-types clobber boulders as if they’re made of warm dough. That’s another thing - we didn’t get enough Ghost or Fighting types in Snap (there are a grand total of six Fighting-types in the game), and an urban setting would be perfect for including both of them. This could also open things up for the similarly underrepresented Steel-types, offering a biome that’s not just “trees” or “water” or “ice” or “volcano.”
The thing that makes Twilight Wings really special is that it never feels like a standard Pokemon series, and it’s nothing like the games either. I’ve already written about how it showed that Game Freak dropped the ball with Sword & Shield, as well as how it should be the gold standard for all Pokemon games going forward. After watching it again and pondering on my previous thoughts about it, I eventually settled on the idea that, actually, we should go back to Galar instead of leaving it with Sword & Shield. I didn’t necessarily mean we needed another mainline game there, but I do feel as if it deserves another crack on Switch - now that I’ve played Snap, it seems as if the final piece of the puzzle has revealed itself.
As a region centered on battling, Galar is a bit rubbish. The Galarian Star Tournament doesn’t interest me and the Gym Leaders are much better as characters in Twilight Wings than they are as people to defeat in Sword & Shield. I feel that Nessa in particular was done pretty dirty in the game, being an early Gym Leader with weak ‘mons and barely any involvement in the story. She’s a much bigger and better character in Twilight Wings, and I think that says a lot about the degree of care it affords the region, its inhabitants, and its Pokemon.
What I’m getting at here is that maybe Galar is the perfect region for us to eschew our Pokedex for the much more intriguing Photodex. There are brilliantly unique biomes like Glimwood Tangle to explore, while Pokemon are integrated into daily life and infrastructure like in no other region, bar possibly Alola in a very different way. Sure, I’d love to jump through a wormhole to get a four star photo of Buzzwole’s biceps, but I’d also love to snap a few photos of Dragapult being the mischievous little ghost dragon it is. Grimmsnarl, Obstagoon, Spectrier, Morpeko… Come on, Bamco. Have a crack at Galarian Snap, eh?