Topic: Pokemon Sword & Shield

@Dezzy Indeed. And I'm afraid that kind of comment (unless responding to someone actually saying the games will bomb) comes off as "You all can complain all you want, but the game is still going to sell great so your opinion doesn't even matter!"

I really hope it isn't meant that way, but I've seen enough snide remarks toward people expressing dissenting opinions in my time that it's not hard to read through them.

@Snaplocket Does it have to go beyond that? I mean, I've always been very vocal about how Sun/Moon removing the National Dex was really bad, and at least in S/M/US/UM you could at least transfer the Pokemon that weren't available in the regional Pokedex over. I should have known this is what GF was leading toward, but silly me... It seems like me, Ms. Pessimist, somehow wasn't pessimistic enough and didn't actually see this coming. LOL

My other complaints are pretty minor, I'll admit.

It's Pokémon, as mentioned in other thread, Pokémon fans don't really want the series to stray too far away from the status quo.

We want to see it grow, but not change too much at once.

There should be more controversy over the champions design. He looks like a ten year trying to dress cool for a party. It’s a travesty

@-Green- Oh yes it's ugly, although I think it's a bit intentionally ugly.

The cape even has sponsorships and stuff.

@Snaplocket ba-dum-tsh

@Morpheel I think so too. I genuinely hate it. Can’t wait to beat him just so he can maybe dress like a human being

@Snaplocket Not that much backlash? I'm pondering if we are seeing the same internet lol.

(Not counting the Nessa's problem, which isn't really Game Freak's fault)

There's like, 3+ drama over the Nationaldex, including using SunMoon's coding for it, and that there's too many Lillie's model (when in fact it's to lower loading times)

Met tons of people that said Sw/Sh now sucks because no Nationaldex too. Like this game seems to gather even more negative attention than SuMo ever did from what I see.

There's the outcry of "Pokemon Model just need 5 minutes to be made" -> This one luckily is quick to become a meme instead

Then there's the apparently Japanese people are mad over the no natdex either.

Like overall I've seen it seen super negatively, including the ever favorite "the monster design sucks now"

@-Green- Maybe the the local evil team is using him as a flashy cover, and he's blissfully unaware that the entire local pokemon league is controlled by a mafia.

Or he's totally into it and he's their leader!

We can call the evil team... Team FIPA.

Just FYI, echo chambers form easily on the internet. Measuring the reception of a game with as wide a reach as Pokemon is going to require a broad perspective.

My main takeaway, as someone who doesn't care that much about modern Pokemon as a series, is that there's no good reason why a series as popular as Pokemon can't do better or look better, other than Gamefreak is scared of paying money to hire more people or making less money off of unnecessary, annual releases.

I'm not mad at it, even if I was interested in the newer games. But factually there are parts of this that are just "we want more money, so no". Which granted, is FAAAAAR from the worst example of this in gaming, but it's hard to ignore. And is made worse by how generous a lot of other modern Nintendo games are, and the general quality of their games and of most full priced games. Quite frankly, I can't imagine a main Pokemon release not being profitable, no matter what Gamefreak does. Though to give a little benefit of the doubt, Nintendo is the one company where you can actually reasonably expect games to look more polished than their initial trailers.

It's fine to go against the more obnoxious, miserable haters, and the "LOL DEVS ARE LAZY" people are bad people and should feel bad. But the reality is that any single Pokemon release will make the higher ups at these companies more money than any of you will see in your lifetime. So like, don't be stupidly sympathetic either.

@Snaplocket Really? The Pokedex issue is really the only issue I have seen people upset about. I've seen some people who seem pretty underwhelmed by Dynamax, and I happen to agree it isn't the most exciting gimmick, but that's really the only other thing I can think of. What is it you don't like about the titles, if not the Pokedex thing?

I don't care about the Pokedex, but all i want is improvement. Especially in in the animations department, that double kick animation is lazy and borderline pathetic. After seeing that animation in Let's Go Pikachu &Sword, i came to the realization that GF will never improve. Why bother improving anything when the blind masses buy their products regardless.

I do sometimes wonder if I've been watching different footage to some people, as I've thought this game looked beautiful from the start. Sure, it's not as ambitious as your typical AAA game, but it does the job and is a massive step up from previous games.

As for animations...i guess those are always limited by the number of Pokemon and moves that need to be coded. How many games have over 20 unique animations for hundreds totally unique characters?

Well....
To be honest i was impressed more by Monster Rancher 4 animation moves than Pokemon animation moves.

@Buizel ''but it does the job''

And that's the problem I think. If it were a niche franchise? Sure, I get it. But for a massive IP like Pokemon, a game that is guaranteed to sell 15 million, at the minimum, it feels as if they're cutting corners wherever they can.

In response to your point about animations. They're cutting a ton of Pokemon this game. I don't have a problem with that on its own, but it would be nice if they put more effort in the existing Pokemon instead. And yes, there are still hundreds of Pokemon, but I don't think they all need 20 unique animations. Depending on the Pokemon and the kind of moves they learn, differentiating between a punch, a kick and a tackle would cover 99% of physical moves. Horn Attack could use the tackle animation, Headbutt could use the tackle animation, and the move Tackle itself as well. You don't need unique animations for every move. On top of that, the 3D models are rigged. So one animation could apply to multiple Pokemon that have roughly the same physique. This saves a ton of time as well.

I mean, just look at T-pose Wingull ''flying'' around, they couldn't even bother giving him a flapping animation to make it seem a little more believable. This just looks silly IMO:

https://i.imgur.com/PxH0QA5.gifv

I’m gonna give Gamefreak the benefit of the doubt in this case, again...They are jumping to a new console and are demonstrating some ambition that I really haven’t seen from them since Gen 6

Cutting out Pokémon was an inevitability in the future, but I want to see the increase in quality that comes in exchange for that. The world looks better of course, but hopefully they show in the future, more of these improvements. It’s perfectly fine to criticize Gamefreak though, they’ve made many questionable remarks and decisions in recent times.

Especially for people like us, who have played many of their games, we’ll know more of their flaws. I said it before but I’m somewhat happy some people are at least more open to reasonable criticism of Pokémon now. Some people take it too far, as is always the case, but I’ve long since felt that many glorify or overly defend Pokémon.

@Buizel This happens anytime controversy is generated about a game. People start looking for things to complain about.

I almost guarantee we wouldn't be looking at endless GIFs of a "double kick" animation and/or the same small set of screenshots supposedly showing off problems with the game on Reddit and other sites if the Pokedex thing hadn't come out.

Granted, they did kinda walk into this with the 'we can't incorporate more Pokemon because of how high-quality our in-game animations and models are' bit.

@Octane Hahaha. Yeah, they probably shouldn't include flying Pokemon on the map if they're not going to include flying animations along with them. Hopefully that's something they address between now and release.

@Ralizah Nah, a similar thing happened last with LGPE. When the news came out that it would only feature the first 151 Pokemon, people wondered whether they would finally address the ''lazy'' battle animations that have been in the games since XY. But they didn't. So videos like these popped up all over the place as well:

This tends to be the case because most JRPGs don't sell that well. The reason you can "exclude Squenix" is that FF and DQ sell like mad so that they can afford a budget. When a JRPG does have decent sell through, you get Ni No Kunis and Xenoblade Chronicles.

Pokemon has been less ambitious than Tales, which has had a shoestring budget. I'll remind you that Pokemon is one of the largest media franchises of all time, and each main series game sells over 10M.

They can afford to be ambitious. They choose not to, because the fandom accepts mediocrity moreso than most other franchises. Even Mario has to evolve pretty frequently, and gets called out by the fanbase for cashgrabs like NSMB

@iKhan NSMB wasn't the problem. It became a problem when they launched 2 and U

@Octane Right. If some sort of controversial design choice is made these days, a collective narrative quickly develops about a product or piece of media, and social media echo chambers proceed to tear something apart that they otherwise would have left alone or even praised had it not attracted the community's ire with whatever the controversial design choice happened to be. The degree to which this happens corresponds roughly to the degree of offense a mob has collectively decided to feel about whatever the offending game design choice was.

There's no way the sort of deranged reception S/S is getting in a lot of online communities right now would have been in any way similar had the Pokedex controversy not cropped up. People wouldn't be spamming the same screenshot of a tree or the same animation of Scorbunny using doublekick every day. The most upvoted or liked comments wouldn't be people crying about how lazy GameFreak is. Some people, occasionally, might point out instances of lazy animation in the game, or deliver the occasional criticism, but most of the online fanbase wouldn't spend their time and energy incessantly trashing the games any time something even tangentially related to them is mentioned.

As @CanisWolfred said, it's really easy for social media sites to facilitate the development of echo chambers. And people immersed in echo chambers almost never see their perspectives evolve to become more fair and nuanced. They pretty much always rile each other up and, by constantly reinforcing each-other's community-approved opinions, see their own viewpoints become increasingly extreme and hyperbolic. This is hardly limited to video game-centric communities, of course.