Back in May of this year, a 4chan user posted what they claimed were leaks from the upcoming Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield games. These types of leaks, especially on the entirely anonymous 4chan, are both frequent and often incorrect, so no one paid too much attention at the time.
However, now that several parts of the leak have been officially confirmed by Nintendo, perhaps it’s time to pay more attention to the last unconfirmed portion of the 4chan leak – the starter evolution lines.
According to the leaker, Sobble will evolve into Sizzle, then finally Intelleon. Despite Sobble’s initial appearance, the evolution line will center around a spy theme. Grookey will evolve into the final form of a gorilla with a large wooden drum. Finally, Scorbunny will evolve into a Pokémon named Raboot at the end of its evolution line. For those Pokémon fans who were hoping to avoid yet another fire-fighting starter evolution, there’s good news: Scorbunny will remain pure fire-type throughout its entire evolution line. However, it will still be able to learn fighting-type moves, and will mostly act like a fire-fighting type Pokémon.
Many of the details specified in this leak have been confirmed to be true, so it stands to reason that the starter evolution lines would be true as well. Most recently, Nintendo confirmed that Sirfetch’d, the knight-like evolution of Farfetch’d, will be included in Pokémon Sword. The leak also predicted the existence of Team Yell, the Galar region’s villainous team, and new mechanics such as Dynamaxing.
The only other piece of information (besides the starter evolutions) that hasn’t been confirmed is the Pokémon Eternatus. The leak said that Eternatus would be an “evil” legendary Pokémon. Unfortunately, that’s all the information we have about this mysterious Pokémon until Nintendo makes further announcements.
We can’t be sure whether this information on the upcoming Sword and Shield starters is correct, but with all the predictions that have already come true, it certainly looks like this is the real deal. Of course, we don’t know what the starter evolution lines will look like yet, so there’s still plenty to look forward to when Nintendo makes their official announcement.