SPARK, WHAT DID THEY DO TO YOU?

The other day, I opened Pokemon Go as normal, to do some research, catch some Pokemon, you know. Normal stuff. I did a Team Rocket battle and got a Shinx with a hat on it. That was weird. But what was weirder was when I appraised my Shinx.

Spark was… different. He was very suddenly not very cool. Normally, Spark wears this cool black leather jacket with yellow trims and an awesome Zapdos necklace. But that look was clearly no more. For some reason, Spark ditched his normal clothes and made himself look like a stoner. He didn’t even have a Team Instinct emblem on him.

After my surprise left me, I went and appraised another Pokemon, to see whether it was a one-off thing. It wasn’t. I then went and checked the Team Leaders via the trainer battles screen. I kinda wish I hadn’t. All three leaders had been horribly downgraded. It was as if they were just normal, random people. Not the bosses of three major factions.

While Spark looked like a basic bitch, so did Candela. But the worst hit was Blanche, who looked like the stereotypical nerd with massive, ill-fitting glasses. Heck, just look at them all, they all look awful! Were these supposed to be upgrades? Because they look like downgrades.

Seriously, they all look like vaguely hipster college kids. I’d say that these changes might have been for Fashion Week, but that event is pretty much over. Why would you change clothes for an event that finished already, surely you’d put the hipster looks on at the start of Fashion Week?

Speaking of Halloween, at first, the new Leaders looked scary  What’s worrying though is that I was lucky. I didn’t get to see these terrible, twisted broken versions of the new leader models. Something about them was rigged up incorrectly, and we ended up with these monsters.

Those are genuinely terrifying. Sure, they’re glitched, but these distorted freaks were in the game and visible to players for a little too long.

Horrific glitches aside, the new Team Leaders really don’t look great. Like, Professor Willow got a small visual upgrade, but he actually looks okay in his new jacket. He looks way, way better than these three chumps.

That being said, I don’t actually blame the artists who created these. If they weren’t supposed to be Team Leaders, they would look fine as NPCs. Nope, the boss of those artists is to blame for approving them in the first place. That’s why you have an art director, who is supposed to keep everything in line. Someone made these, yes, but they were also approved by their higher-ups. Higher-ups that clearly want to seem hip.

I don’t get it. Clearly someone wanted to shake things up with the leaders. But why is the end result so… basic? And if this is what they did with the Team Leaders, I have no idea what the fuck they’ll do to other characters. What about our avatars? Will they change too?

Either way, I’m not a fan. But at least I can wear Spark’s old clothes and look cool in his place. And, as a plus, at least Spark doesn’t look as bad as Blanche does. I foresee

people switching teams in the near future…