Topic: How should next gen Pokemon games look?

Not like that, that's for sure.

I think the current artstyle is fine, but they should continue to make the overworld models more detailed. Also, zoom in the camera some more and make it controllable so they can show off the overworld more.

Keep it looking like Pokemon 3DS but higher quality, and perhaps employing cel shading.

This has bugged me in SM so much. Why can't I control the camera? Pretty much any other game of its kind allows for that but TPC and Game Freak are just too stubborn to change anything in a meaningful way. I'd suggest they go the BotW route and make it more explorative and open world, with levels of wild Pokemon rise as the player receives more badges, but lord knows this will never happen with these two at the helms.

I expect it to look like HD SAM, as this will be there first game on the Switch. i do think that gen 9 will look amazing. Also as others have said they need to have a better camera badly. I hope that they open up the world where you can do Gyms/Challenges in any order you want, and have a scaling difficulty. By which I mean lets say you tackle the dark type gym first it would have low level mons, but if you tackled it last it would have the highest level mons out of all the gyms.

Stadium/Colo/XD/PBR style.

But with the kind of quality you'd expect from portable Unreal Engine 4.

@GoldenGamer88 How is a controllable camera in a Pokemon game meaningful in any way?

@Octane It isn't really meaningful in the grand scheme of things but compared to any other 3D game, a controllable camera is standard. Why GF after XY and especially SM still chose to have a fixed camera is a mystery to me. I mean, Yokai Watch has it, Monster Hunter Stories has it, Digimon Story has it, just not Pokémon.

By TPC and GF never changing the series in a meaningful way, I was referring to all Pokemon games being more or less the same. You train your mons on linear routes, fight some trainers, earn a badge or a stamp, defeat an evil organization, face Elite Four and Champ, catch Legendaries, done. But the topic's on the looks of the next installment, not on the underlying game design.

@GoldenGamer88 To me a controllable camera in a Pokemon game is one more unnecessary button prompt to keep in mind. 3D World showed that if a 3D platformer is playable without controllable camera, an RPG shouls be fine without it too.

I rather wish they focused on the game for once; the power creep needs to be fixed, ditch the awful handholding, increase the difficulty, etc.

As for how the game should look, like the GameCube or 3DS games, but in HD.

I've always found controllable cameras to be one of the more annoying aspects of videogames tbh, especially in shooters.

this is the biggest backhanded compliment you could give 3D World. Wow.

I bet even Bolt_Shulk is like "dude, what did 3D World do to you?"

Or better yet improve the resolution of the overworld and zoom out the camera. They have more pixels and a bigger screen to play with so why not show more on the screen at once? Simple and fairly topical example, Steam World Dig. The 3DS release showed a 10x6 tile grid on screen at once. Steam World Dig 2 on the Switch shows a 16x9 tile grid on screen.

To put that into a nostalgic, pokemon related context...
Steam World Dig on 3DS:

Steam World Dig 2 on Switch:

Look how much better XD's no-name developer was able to make flames look than XY's. Do that, I want to see weird realistic Pokemon that's not so very sanitized like the mainline 3D games have looked.

@Octane A 3D controllable camera means the developers can't skimp on environmental detail. I'm fine with anything as long as it's not the same old top down aerial view though.

@Haru17 Considering GameFreak aren't the most competent developers, it's maybe better they don't have to focus on environmental detail as much. I rather see them improving in other areas first.

@Octane Eh, I've always been a casual/singleplayer Pokemon player so I don't mind too much. I guess it would be nice if there was a way (NOT EV grinding) to make the trash Pokemon not trash in competitive. I mean it's pretty stupid that they've been spitting 'every Pokemon is valuable' schtick for years when egg farming is a thing and certain fully evolved Pokemon literally have strictly worse stats than others. The world/setting/ecology/creature designs are still infinitely more interesting to me though.

@Haru17 I don't mind the weak Pokemon too much, but they've made it a bigger issue by introducing mechanics like Mega Evolutions, rendering any low stat Pokemon useless. It's the power creep I was talking about. There's also the fact that Pokemon's movepools grow every generation, homogenisation would be the right term. The more moves they can potentially learn, the more similar their movepools become. I wouldn't mind if they nerfed the Pokemon in those areas. I mean, why can Raichu even learn Toxic? That doesn't make any sense. Make it exclusive to Poison types and a few Bug and Grass types.

GameFreak's answer to the metagame has always been ''more'', but I think we need ''less'' of a lot of things to make it balanced again.

I always thought Pokemon should work like I pretty much thought it did when I was a kid.

Any level 100 Mewtwo is equal in strength to any other level 100 Mewtwo, and they are stronger than any level 100 Charizard. Any level 100 Charizard is stronger than any level 70 Mewtwo, though.

Basically: Legendaries = more powerful, More, "monstrous," (like, say, Charizard as opposed to Caterpie,) = more powerful, higher level = more powerful...

And once a Pokemon hits level 100, it's the strongest any of that species can be. IVs/EVs be damned.

I'm sure I'm gonna get backlash for this.

I mean, gens 1 and 2 worked like this for evs i think, but not for ivs.

As in, I want a focus more on strategy rather than stats.

I'm the opposite, I'd be worried if they messed too much with the perspective. Having a more dynamic camera is one thing but not having a top down camera at all is kinda pushing it. As I said earlier if anything I'd like it if they zoomed out a bit more. Save the different camera perspectives for cutscenes and battles.

@Hitokage1 No, gen 1 and 2 didn't work like that, but you could max out every EV, even at level hundred, so if you won enough battles, all Pokemon of the same species would become equal in stats. But that brings back my point of homogenisation, what's the point if every Pokemon is the same? There's strategy in training a Pokemon the way you want it to be. Battles would become quite predictable if you knew the exact stats of your opponent.