[link]

UPDATE: The English names have been revealed, all names have been changed in the journal. [link]

After about 3 months of almost no information except Sylveon and a new Mewtwo forme, it's about time we saw some new things about the coming 6th Gen, I was getting rather tired of seeing only Sylveon and Mewtwo, and as interesting as they might be, I preferred to see things about the actual game such as the characters, the region itself, and of course, the new Pokemon, so I must say I'm rather satisfied with what we got this month.

The Kalos Region
So, we finally get the confirmation that the region, named "Kalos", is based on France, however, I'm now curious if the region is based off the entire country rather than a part of it (the scans show it's pretty much the entire northwestern half of France). I wonder it that will be addressed in the games? Most likely not, since we still have no confirmation if the regions are independent sovereign nations or states/provinces of a much larger country, but still. On that topic, given the size of the real life locations that the previous generations regions are, and compare their size to that of France, that would make Kalos the largest region since Sinnoh.

The new player characters
I'm actually surprised that we are getting trainer customization in this generation, though I'm a bit disappointed with the little customization we ended up with (or at least what is shown currently), I can easily presume that what we are seeing is simply the default choices, and as we progress through the game we will be able to obtain more outfits and accessories for the characters, and this can be utilized in possible multiplayer and online gaming aspects. It's a step forward nonetheless.

EDIT: It has been confirmed that you are able to get new outfits at certain points in the game.

For the player characters themselves, The male character looks cool and I love the boots, although  his excessive resemblance to Hilbert reduces the creativity, The girl character, on the other hand, looks very different than the previous ones, (my friend ~SVP-Cule says she looks like a "French Hipster", which she kind of does).

Four new Pokemon
And now for my opinion on the Pokemon themselves, of which we got 4 new ones. I'm probably the only one who isn't really into the electric lizard "Helioptile", it's a decent design in my opinion, but I was never really into lizard based Pokemon (except Snivy), though my favorite of the bunch is "Pancham", the Fighting type panda Pokemon, it's really cute, and it's nice to see a Pokemon based on a panda. My least favorite is "Fletchling", the bird Pokemon, probably because it's design is a bit too basic in my opinion.

The goat Pokemon, "Gogoat" looks interesting; its appearance gives the impression of a sturdy, powerful Pokemon (I'm presuming it's probably already evolved and we have yet to see it's pre-evo), although the rest of the Pokemon seem to be the early ones, so who knows...

Riding on Pokemon
We can now ride Pokemon in this game, so we can say goodbye to the generic black blobs we see when using HM's. Although, I don't think that means that HM's or the bike have been replaced. There's nothing that hints there will be no more HM moves because of this; all this shows is that now instead of a generic blob, we'll actually see our Pokemon doing the thing, which is not contradictory with HM's, but the actual opposite. For instance, when I have my Floatzel surf on the water, instead of riding on a black blob, I will actually see the character riding on top of the Floatzel, which makes it look nicer and more aesthetic.

Though I don't think riding on top of a Pokemon on land (like on the goat in the screens) will replace the bike, since that would force us to have one riding Pokemon in our party for fast traveling, which is exactly why people often dislike HM's (being forced to use certain Pokemon because their abilities are required to perform some things), so replacing the bike with riding Pokemon would be a step back. I rather they keep the bike, who knows really? Probably the riding Pokemon is a one-time thing, akin to walking Pokemon in Amity Square and HG/SS, or the Pokeathlon and PokeStar Studios.

Overall, this generation is looking very promising, and I am hoping to see more in the coming months.