John Hanke, CEO of Pokémon Go developer Niantic, revealed the answer to a huge mystery at today’s Pokémon Go panel at San Diego Comic-Con. The reveal of the three team leaders players can choose to join in the game.
When a player reaches level five, they can choose a team to join. The options are Team Instinct, Valor, and Mystic led by Spark, Candela, and Blanche respectively. Each team corresponds with a legendary bird Pokémon and play-style. Zapdos for Instinct, Moltress for Valor, and Articuno for Mystic.
When you first met the leaders, they were still silhouetted in their team colors. Hanke jokes it was because the design for the leaders weren’t completed in time for the launch, though that might actually be true.
At the panel moderated by Chris Hardwick, Hanke surprised the audience with the official designs for Spark, Candela, and Blanche. The designs are great, evoking the sort of characteristics each team is known for. Whether it’s the stoicism of Team Mystic, or fiery passion of Team Valor (Instinct is kind of a hard adjective to pin down characteristically).
The panel also detailed other aspects of the game such as trading, which will roll out to the app in a future update.
No official word yet however on the actual legendary Pokémon associated with each of the teams. Whether or not they will be released into the wild is yet to be seen.
Team Leaders for Valor, Mystic, and Instinct
