Wiglett is this week’s announcement for the upcoming Pokémon Scarlet and Violet games, but you’ll be forgiven for missing the news about it. While The Pokémon Company did put together a pretty cool video, complete with multilingual actors and with interaction in what parts you want to see of the new region, Paldea, this was not obviously available.

You’d need to visit this website for the “Pokémon World Ecological Society” which is in Japanese, make a mock account with choice of a Starter Pokémon as a profile icon, decide if you want to grant the website permission to your mic and camera (not necessary, luckily), and only then can you watch the video. The whole video was a neat watch, showcasing other parts of Paldea and showcasing size variation in Pokémon. The most interesting part was focused on Wiglett, but there is no other official way to watch this as of the time of writing. You can however view it below (video courtesy of Serebii).

The website was linked from the official Japanese Pokémon Twitter account, but otherwise this seems to be a stealthy release of a new Pokémon – the tweet did not even mention that there was a new Pokémon! It’s not the first time – Impidimp went for months before being officially announced – but it at least had been seen in official media in multiple regions. It’s a bit puzzling to have made what is a great piece of advertising media, and then only really highlight it on a Japanese website, and furthermore not coordinate releases of information across all bases (something that has already happened multiple times this year). This writer feels The Pokémon Company (International) could do better here.

As for Wiglett? We’ll see what official information we get, but it’s apparently definitely not Diglett, despite the base shape, similar behaviour, and distinctive red nose. In fact, its name is only mentioned in a caption that was on screen for less than a second. It may be (part?) Water type, but this is speculation for now, based on the fact it lives on the beach and in the sea. Its name in Japanese is ウミディグダ (Umidiguda), a combination of ウミ= 海, meaning sea/ocean, and ディグダ (Diglett’s Japanese name). It may be based on the garden eel.

One could make the point that while it has unique and distinctive behaviour, it is a bit odd that Game Freak did ultimately choose to base its design on a Kanto Pokémon. It will now always be compared to Diglett rather than its own merits, and could have been made to look more like a garden eel. Given many Kanto Pokémon have now enjoyed multiple forms, including Diglett itself (its Alolan form), it seems a continuation of what is the “overuse” of Kanto in more recent titles.

[Updated] The Overuse of Kanto

What do you think of Wiglett? If you prefer the original, well, fear not – the Kanto form of Diglett made it to Paldea too.

Edited by Sheep.