Why are Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 sequels instead of a third version?

The pattern was fifteen years old by 2012: a pair of games, then a single enhanced third version, Yellow, Crystal, Emerald, Platinum, retelling the same journey with additions. Everyone expected the fifth generation to answer Black and White with a Pokémon Grey. Instead, on February 26, 2012, Junichi Masuda revealed Black Version 2 and White Version 2 on Pokémon Smash!, the first direct sequels in the core series and still the only core games with a number in their titles.

The sequels justify themselves in their world. Two years have passed. You start not in Nuvema Town but in Aspertia City, in a southwest Unova that did not exist on the old map, with a new hero, a new rival, and a Team Plasma split into two factions still fighting over the old one's ideals. Characters have aged into new jobs, gyms have moved, and the Unova Pokédex now holds 301 species, with the old generations present from the first route, reversing the originals' famous experiment.

The mascots tell the same story of continuation rather than revision. Kyurem, the empty shell of the original dragon, has fused with the legendary of the first games to become Black Kyurem or White Kyurem depending on your version, a form that belongs to a plot moving forward, not a plot retold.

The gamble worked commercially and critically: 8.52 million copies, and the shortest localisation gap the series had ever managed, about three and a half months to North America. Generations since have returned to remakes and expansions, which leaves Black 2 and White 2 as the series' lone true sequels, a road taken exactly once.