The first person I talked to in Sword and Shields Wild Area gave me a three-day-old loaf of bread be careful with it, they said. The next person was German and greeted me with a Guten tag! before passing along a tin of beans, a food item they said fell from the sky and hit them in the head.

Interactions like these are plentiful in Sword and Shield; youve probably heard similar stories, too.

Sword and Shield, released for Nintendo Switch on Nov. 15, introduced an open multiplayer space called the Wild Area, where high-level Pokmon roam free. When youre online, plenty of other players inhabit the world, all running around, or riding bikes, doing their own thing. Some players stand in front of trees, as if theyre about to shake berries from their branches. Others are stuck in a seemingly perpetual search for looking for others to help in their Max Raid Battles.

Theres a feeling of social presence in Sword and Shield despite a lack of transparency on how the multiplayer features work. Its not entirely clear if these interactions are happening in real time, or if theyre snapshots of player behavior in the world.

I suspect the latter is the case: I often find myself chasing other players around as they zig-zag through the Wild Area a hint that, perhaps, theyre chasing others that I cant see. Responses from these echoes of players are pre-programmed, a series of messages that are chosen randomly by the game itself. You cant tell, necessarily, if someones interacting with you. Theres never a pop-up window or conversational choice about what response to send. If Im not speaking directly to other people, neither are they.

And yet, despite this understanding of the Wild Area and the players within it particularly, the limitations to engagement the characters darting around the open space feel real to me. I got choked up when I first connected online and interacted with another player. I had spent the majority of the game playing by myself in an empty world before Nintendo switched on the games online servers. It caught me by surprise to suddenly see a Wild Area teeming with life or, at least, the idea of it. It felt like a huge improvement.

Theres a certain presence to the Wild Area, something so perfectly constructed to feel alive, even when its not.

Scholars who study games and other virtual worlds often talk about the concept of presence, Dr. Katharine Ognyanova, assistant professor of communication and information at Rutgers University, told me. This includes ideas such as self-presence, feeling as if your avatar was really you. There is also spatial presence, feeling as if you were really inside that virtual world.

But in Sword and Shield, social presence is the most apt, the feeling as if there are real people interacting with you in the game world. Social presence is felt through two ideas: a perception of agency, as if theres another human controlling the avatars around you, and realistic human behavior, Ognyanova said.

Realistic human behavior is where Sword and Shield both works and somewhat fails the erratic way characters move makes it clear theres a real person behind it. Theres no way a non-player character would be programmed like that. But actual engagement is limited; there are no dialogue options, no way to verbally communicate with another player.

Ognyanova said communication is critical in forming relationships, which means we arent necessarily developing bonds with other players in Sword and Shields Wild Area. Rather, were connecting with them through the in-game options we are given.

Maybe players use those options to adapt within the system, learning to create a language of its own, like in Hearthstone. Communication in Blizzards digital card game is limited in an attempt to restrict certain kinds of trash talk, but players have learned to get around it. Researchers at the University of Jyvskyl in Finland found that players intentionally misuse Hearthstone emotes to communicate with other players, like using Hello both as a greeting and as a sarcastic way to nudge a slow player through a long pause.

Sword and Shield doesnt have even these sorts of basic communications options, but there are a few moments wherein players have to click buttons to interact with others namely, the Pokmon camp and in Max Raid Battles.

Cooking curry at the camp feels like the most intimate interaction available with strangers in Sword and Shield. Once youve set up a camp in the Wild Area, others can visit your tent. Their Pokmon play with yours. You can invite them to cook with you.

Together, you both fan flames, stir a pot, and throw your heart into your curry. It does feel really intimate in a weird way, Pokmon player Cel10e who asked Polygon to use their handle told me. You get to see, at least a simulation of, their real, actual button inputs.

They continued: Its really impressive to me just seeing how other peoples motions, and what Pokmon they have, and what they cook like, is this tiny little snapshot of another person playing the game at the same time as you, even without a chat feature or emote animations or anything.

Its not much, but you can imagine a persons presence in these moments. Whats their cooking style? How are they stirring? What Pokmon are they using? Its a level of engagement that feels just right for a Pokmon game, letting people connect enough to feel that presence, but not enough to let the toxic elements of online gaming seep in.

Its enough to imagine your own little place in this big word in a way that Pokmon games havent let you experience yet. I said it in my review: Sword and Shield open up the world enough to spark wonder the Pokmon chasing me in the Wild Area are a part of that. The other part is existing in a dynamic, changing multiplayer area with both friends and strangers.

Players are using these systems to telegraph things to other players, to help curate these experiences, similar to how camps are constructed by NPCs in the Galar regions routes. Clips from Pokmon camps, some random encounters, others curated experiences like a gaggle of Ditto or Pichu and a Toxel daycare.

You can stumble into others camps randomly, but much of the social game here is going on social media, in clips posted to Twitter or Facebook. Communication and connection is pushed outside of the game, but in a way that still impacts the play experience; theres the idea that you could encounter those players have your own meme experiences to post in Sword and Shields multiplayer area.

Sword and Shields Wild Area has limitations, and players are adapting to work around them. Those limitations extend beyond how players interact; there are very real server problems in Sword and Shield. Digital Foundry noted that connecting to the internet in Sword and Shields Wild Area causes drastic performance drops.

The online interaction in Sword and Shield feels magical, but its still just the beginning. This isnt a massively-multiplayer online game, not even close. And yet, I finally feel like the Pokmon champion I always thought I was.

And Im still humble enough to wander around the world handing out sausages and beans to other players, too.

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In Pokemon Sword and Shield, you cant meet people, but youll feel them - Polygon