Ahead of a cover story in next month's Game Informer magazine for Pokémon Sword and Shield, new details have emerged about the major RPG release.

As part of the story, it was revealed that an autosave function will be present in Sword and Shield. A first for the series, the function can be turned off to allow for "soft-resetting" such as trying to get an ideal nature for a legendary Pokémon.

Other items announced:

• Gyms in Galar are separated into Minor and Major leagues, which means 18 gyms will be in the game between the two groupings. It isn't clear if this is across both versions, or if the count is for a single version as a Fighting gym is confirmed Sword-exclusive and a Ghost gym is Shield-exclusive. It does confirm that Sword and Shield will have the first Dark-typed gym in the history of the franchise. Gyms can also be promoted to the major league, and relegated to the minor league.
• The "personality parameters" of Pokémon, aka "natures", will be manipulable in Sword and Shield in some capacity. Natures were the only Pokémon stat that could not be manipulated previously: effort values could be lowered as of Emerald version, while Sun and Moon added the ability to fix the "individual values" of a Pokémon by way of the Bottle Cap items.
• By default, all party Pokémon will receive experience in Sword and Shield battles. This was a toggle-able item as of Pokémon X and Y, but the item will be removed.
• As with Sun and Moon, Hidden Machines (HMs) will not be in Sword and Shield.