Niantic had previously added a bunch of new features to its highly popular augmented reality mobile game, Pokémon Go , but its latest update suggests that it may be on the brink of adding actual story-based quests. The revolutionary app hit the mobile industry by storm when it was originally released in 2016. However, its player base had unfortunately dwindled in the months that followed. The developer had previously added a number of new gameplay elements, such as Pokémon Raid battles and Shiny Pokémon, to continue to entice gamers to continue playing the game. While the new features were certainly welcomed by die-hard Pokémon Go fans, the game itself still continued to struggle to return to its former glory.
The latest update for the game, which was released earlier this week, didn’t really contain a significant amount of content. Aside from the regular performance enhancements and bug fixes, the latest update only included slight improvements to the game’s News feature and the Shiny Pokémon finder on the Collection screen. However, eagle-eyed fans who dissected the new update quickly noticed some interesting lines within the update’s code. According to the published findings posted on the subreddit Silph Road, the latest update’s code apparently contained the basic foundations for what looks to be a new story-based quest system.
Previously, “quests” only referred to daily catches and daily Pokéstop bonuses. The lines of code discovered within the recent Pokémon Go update now suggests that this may be revamped to an entirely different gameplay system that will involve multiple objectives such as winning specific gym battles, participating in Raids, or simply hatching eggs. Achieving these different objectives and tasks could reward players with mystery rewards or rare bonus items.
Another interesting find is the mention of new non-playable characters (NPCs) that have different facial expressions. Future versions of the game could involve actually interacting with these NPCs who will likely be spread throughout different locations around the world, similar to Pokéstops and gyms. It has to be noted that all of the references found in the update’s code are not yet available within the game itself. Niantic’s developers may still be toying around with the idea and there is a chance that the features will never make it to the game. The new findings are, however, giving loyal Pokémon Go players some hope of finally trying something new aside from the usual grind of catching and collecting Pokémon.
