In a last-ditch effort to get you to open up Pokémon Go for the first time since July, Niantic is adding a new species to the lineup: Ditto.
As you may recall, Ditto is the pokémon that has the ability to mimic other creatures it sees. And that’s exactly what Ditto does in the game: hide under the guise of other pokémon. In order to catch Ditto, you may have to catch a bunch of other scrub pokémon to find the real deal — even the Pidgeys and Rattatas. How else was Niantic gonna make sure you kept walking around and playing?
Once you have Ditto, you can take it to battle at the gym, where it can transform itself to copy the first pokémon it sees and retain all the moves for the remainder of the fight. If it sees another Ditto, however, things stay the same and you’ll just have to aggressively tap your way to defeating the opponent.
If your family is anything like mine, they’ll be pretty convinced Pokémon Go is still very much a thing and won’t question much if you decide you’ve had enough Thanksgiving and need to go for a Ditto hunt. At least that’ll be my excuse to step out of the room.