Never-before-seen connection between Pokémon Scarlet & Purple and Pokémon Legends ZA revealed

Pokémon fans have discovered a new connection between the Paldea region in Generation 9 and the upcoming Pokémon Legends ZA, which will take place in the Kalos region.

The Pokémon franchise usually has multiple games in development at the same time. This allowed developers to include references to upcoming games in current titles, such as the scarlet and purple flowers that appeared in Pokémon Sparkling Diamond & Sparkling Pearl.

Now that the fanbase is aware of these predictive references, some people are looking for them to glean information about the franchise’s upcoming mainline entries. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to tell what’s a hint and what’s not until the new games are actually revealed.

Preview of Illumis in Pokémon Legends: ZA — Game Freak

The next main entry in the Pokémon franchise will be Pokémon Legends ZA, which returns to the Kalos region of Generation 6. This led fans on an Easter egg hunt through games from the Nintendo Switch era, looking for clues related to Kalos.

Pokémon Legends ZA text appears in Paldea

A user on the Pokémon Reddit created a thread regarding a discovery they made in Levincia City. Text on a plaque outside one of the buildings features the same phrase seen in the Pokémon Legends ZA announcement trailer.

Pokemon ZA & Paldea connected! byu/KyleLaverre inpokemon

“I remember at the time Paldea was confirmed to be inspired by Spain, and people were speculating that a Kalos connection was likely,” one user wrote, “Not that surprising that a Kalos game would be the next thing in the pipeline.”

“Ohhh what a great find!” said another user, “So maybe this Paldea company will help with the Kalos dev thing. Also cool to note that Levincia is way east of Paldea, and if you look at the map, it’s just a tiny bit south of the blocked off part of the peninsula that we know goes to Kalos.”

It turns out that this text appears in other parts of the game, as another user revealed that the same phrase is on the Sure Cans store. This suggests that the text could also be a copy/paste used in place of actual text, to save on the need for localization.

Considering that the text appears near real estate buildings in Paldea, its appearance here may hint at the planned urban development for Pokémon Legends ZA. If so, then perhaps there will be references to Paldea in the revamped version of Kalos.