Pokemon Shrink Themselves Down To Fit In Poke Balls, Apparently

Pokemon Legends: Arceus is out now, and a snippet of new Pokemon lore revealed in Arceus has set gaming Reddit ablaze. Supposedly, Pokemon themselves “possess the odd power to shrink themselves down,” and that’s how they fit into the Poke Balls.

We need a Pokemon professor here to see if that runs counter to any existing lore–maybe the Pokemon consultant hired by Tencent would like to chime in–but prior to Arceus, the general body of players assumed that the Poke Balls–not the object of capture–possessed the technology to minimize Pokemon.

Apparently not! It’s something Pokemon are just born with, the random ability to shrink themselves. This would explain their near-invisibility in grass until you bump into them, but also doesn’t explain why some Pokemon are so resistant to getting in the Poke Ball. They’re so well-suited for it, like literally being equipped with the capability to live in a small sphere.

Reddit user Ataraxias24 posed a great question, “Why does the move Minimize exist if literally all of them can do it?” Not to play Game Freak’s advocate, but one theory could be that the combat move “Minimize” is different from the “ability to shrink themselves down.”

In any case, as more Pokemon games get released (and there’s already a lot), the lore probably will only get more complicated and take unexpected turns. This likely won’t be the only new info players will scratch their heads over, or in this case, develop a thousand-message-long comment thread debating and mulling over the new lore.

Steve Watts reviewed Pokemon Legends: Arceus for GameSpot and gave it an 8/10. He commented, “Some of the new ideas in Arceus have rough edges, and it’s slow to start before you get access to many environments and mounts. This is an awkward first step, and it was a big adjustment for me, a longtime fan of the series, to make. Once Pokemon Legends: Arceus finds its stride, though, it’s the most daring and inventive the series has been in years, breaking apart the staid core and creating something new and exciting from its pieces.”