Pokemon Legends: Z-A's Mega Malamar Will Hypnotise You If It Disagrees With An Order

Yesterday's reveal of Mega Malamar was one of the more eclectic things the Pokémon Company has done in a while, portraying the newest mega evolution as the hypnotic and sinister leader of a helpless cult of followers.

Mega Malamar is the fourth mega evolution revealed for Pokémon Legends: Z-A after Mega Dragonite, Mega Victreebel and Mega Hawlucha. The Dark/Psychic type is particularly interesting because a blurb on Pokémon's official website suggests Mega Malamar may disobey the player if they issue orders the Pokémon disagrees with (nice spot, GamesRadar+).

A Being of Terrible Power

"Its glowing, undulating tendrils are able to pick up on the feelings of those around it. It prefers battling with efficiency, using its powerful intellect to analyse the situation with levelheadedness as it fights," the blurb describing Mega Malamar reads. "Mega Malamar views others—even Pokémon trainers—as its pawns. If it disagrees with an order given to it by a trainer, it will sometimes respond by hypnotising them, making this an incredibly difficult Pokémon to interact with."

It seems unlikely that Mega Malamar will actually override the player's orders, because this would be a very frustrating mechanic. Still, we've seen Game Freak implement inconvenient mechanics for the sake of flavour in the past, but this may be a step too far as it would make Mega Malamar borderline non-viable.

Malamar has always been a strange Pokémon, you need to hold your system upside-down (either 3DS or Switch) to evolve Inkay into Malamar, and Game Freak appears to be leaning into the offbeat nature of Malamar in its marketing for Mega Malamar.

The other blurb on Pokémon's website suggests Mega Malamar is capable of rewriting people's brains, making them adopt completely different personalities or erase their memories entirely. It's kind of disturbing that we're letting this creature float around Lumiose City, and I worry about a potential Malamar-induced apocalypse.

Pokémon Legends: Z-A already has a release date, October 16, but we're almost certainly going to see more of the game at tomorrow's Nintendo Direct, which is set to be over an hour long.