Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are out in the wild, street date broken ahead of launch, and spoilers are floating around.
I want to share two specific pieces of info, one specific to Character Gender Selection, and one specific to Shint Hunting Accessibility for Disabled players.
The following thread will not contain spoilers for Scarlet and Violet. It will not show any leaked screenshots or footage, and will not spoil any new Pokémon.
It is also not a review.
I did not recieve a review copy, and as such am under no obligation not to discuss.
Basically, you will be offered 8 initial character models to start character creation using. Two sets, each containing four skin tones.
If you pick one of the four on the left you will be presumed male, and the four on the right female, with gendered terms being applied.
Skin tone and gendered pronouns seem to be the only aspects you cannot alter after initial character creation.
The game opening up all customisation to all players has not done away with gendered pronouns based on starting character choice.
Secondly, let's talk shiny hunting accessibility.
TLDR; Shiny Pokémon are overworld visible, but they no not make a distinct sound, or visible sparkle, upon spawn.
They also do not get labelled as shiny when you lock onto them, only when initiating battle.
Go and watch this video I made back at the start of this year, about how shiny hunting in Legends Arceus was less accessible for deaf players, because they had less obvious spawn cues than hearing players.
In Legends Arceus you could see a shiny sparkling as it spawned in if you were looking at it. You could hear it spawn if it was nearby but out of sight. You could lock-on target the Pokémon, and see a sparkle icon to tell you it was shiny before encounter.
ALL of that is gone.
This is a particular issue for certain species of shiny, which have minimal colour variation from their defaults.
In Legends Arceus, the shiny Gengar below would at least have had a shiny icon when targetted. For low vision players this is infiniately less accessible.
Also, probably important to note, Scarlet and Violet introduce multiple new Pokémon whose Shiny forms fall into the category of Gengar above, incredibly minimally visibly different.
I might have felt differently if EVERY new shiny introduced was visally dramatically distinct.
Laura Kate Dale
Why Not Zoidberg? 🦑
RoAnna Sylver 
Ember 
