The Pokémon Direct today has announced information on some of the new characters that you can encounter. The Direct today covered many aspects of the new game, including new characters that you can meet in the world.

Brother of Leon, Hop will act as your main rival, similar to Blue, or Gary Oak does in the original game and TV series. Featuring blue hear and a blue coat, he looks to be the enthusiastic rival who will challenge you throughout varying times in the game. You can view him below:

The leading guide of the game is Professor Magnolia, who will likely be the one to give you your first Pokémon as is a tradition for the game and continuing the floral theme with names. Her assistant Sonia will also feature and is set to act as a guide and an excellent source of knowledge for the main character of the game, more so than in many previous games. Whether she will also have Pokémon that can battle with or against is yet to be seen. Professor Magnolia and Sonia can be seen below.

The Direct also confirmed one of the Galar region’s gym leader’s, Milo. He will be a master of Grass-type. It’s unclear which gym he will be the leader of, or in which town that you can find him yet, but his early announcement would imply that you will likely find him early in the game. We pictured him below.

Nintendo has also confirmed a second gym leader during their E3 coverage of the game. She is called Nessa, and she is will battle the player using water-type Pokémon. Like Milo, which number gym or which town she is in has not been confirmed by Nintendo, but we expect her to also be an earlier gym leader.

These are all the characters we have learned about so far. There will probably be more minor characters, including Gym Leaders still to come. There is also the evil gang that typically rivals the player as they try to thwart their operations. We are not sure whether there will be one in the game, but traditionally they have been used as an extended side-mission to help with XP for your characters while also usually providing light relief. Team Rocket is the most renowned version of the gang in the game.

GameFreak has promised they’re going to have more character reveals in the future.