Pokémon Winds & Pokémon Waves just debuted their first trailer, and a quick dip beneath the ocean surface may be teasing the return of Gen 3’s Dive mechanic.
Nintendo and The Pokémon Company revealed Winds and Waves during a Pokémon Presents showcase, positioning the pair as the next mainline entries with a region built around islands and open exploration. The trailer spends plenty of time above the water, but the final moments are what fans keep rewinding.
Is Dive Making a Comeback in Pokémon Winds and Waves?
Near the end of the debut trailer, the camera transitions below the ocean surface and lingers just long enough to show Pokémon moving through an underwater space. The framing makes it feel less like a cinematic flourish and more like a small peek at an explorable layer of the world, with a flat ocean floor and long stalks of kelp that look perfect for sneaking up on unsuspecting wild Pokémon.
If underwater regions are part of the open world, the most obvious implication is a modern take on Dive. That would mean diving beneath the surface to explore routes, caves, or ruins, with Pokémon encounters and items tied to areas you cannot reach from the surface. The trailer presents Winds and Waves as an open world similar to Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet, which would make a second exploration layer under the sea an easy way to add scale without turning every island into a sprawling landmass.
It would also be a callback with a real series history behind it. Underwater exploration first showed up in the mainline Pokémon back in Hoenn. Pokémon Ruby and Pokémon Sapphire introduced Dive as HM08 and built underwater routes and locations around it as a core part of traversal. Hoenn’s underwater routes mirrored sections of the ocean above, and key locations were designed around going below the surface. Diving would return in Gen 5’s Unova region, then again in the Gen 6 remakes of Ruby and Sapphire, but players were always restricted to specific areas when using HM08.
The big question now is how far Winds and Waves could take that idea with modern tech and a region built around water travel. A true underwater layer could mean distinct encounter pools, environmental hazards, and optional areas that reward players who invest in sea exploration instead of treating the ocean as a gap between objectives. And if players will have access to a world beneath the waves, will we also see an equal focus on traversal on the winds?
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