Topic: Pokémon Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee!

I want to say that the Switch pokemon is going to be a remake of Sinnoh but... they released a remake last year, so it might be a new region (which is highly unlikely), or another remake of Kalos or Kanto

Also, I know this is a long shot, but I would be fine with a linear pokemon game with the encounters being like pokken tournament. I know that if they were to do that, they would need to make animations for every possible mover that a pokemon could learn and make even more animations for getting attacked by it. Its a long shot but I would literally pay $200 for it if it was that much.

@JackDG I believe they confirmed it's new generation, and doing a remake as the first game in a new generation would be kinda weird. Plus, it's their big HD "console" debut.

Open world seems a bit much for a Pokémon game - even on Switch - but getting a more open feeling into the games would be good. All that requires is a new camera that gets down to the level of the character and breaking away from the overworld design from past games that still keeps the hint of grid-based design. Anything else that gets done to make the world feel more open would just be a bonus.

@NEStalgia Please read my post before writing a reply, I never implied that OW kept Mass Effect from selling. The bottom line is open world games are even more unsustainably expensive and risky than other AAA games, so if they don't sell, it's the studio that buys the farm. Unfinished games like MGS and XV are another consequence of that precipitously high resource cost.

Granted, I doubt that will apply to Pokemon in the same way since the graphics will look like potato in comparison. Its cross to bear is about 1K unique models, each with several unique animations.

I wouldnt consider USUM a remake.

I dont quite why the concept of a third version is alien to people when Blue, Yellow, Crystal, Emerald and Platinum exist. It fills the exact same role, adds the exact same additional content...only two games instead of one.

@Haru17 Modders have found the geometry of the in battle Pokemon models upscales really well as high as 4k.

When making the models they thought ahead.

@Haru17 I'd disagree with that insofar as to say open world doesn't actually make a game any more unsustainably expensive or time consuming to produce than other AAA nonsense. The open map remains one of the least expensive, time consuming aspects of design compared to the absurdity of physics, photography, and art asset elements, as well as object and surface interactions which would be present regardless of the world size. Similarly, open world actually alleviates some resource consumption in that the "open world" is in fact not actually open at all but is simply a singularly gigantic map that still has borders, same as a conventional map, with large portions of it being procedurally (at design time) generated.

ME and MGSV were broken because EA/Bioware/Konami/Kojima and the bloat of project managers and runaway budgets with primadonna artists and target goal management lost focus of what to do with the product years before release.

Persistent shared world always online games, however, are massively risky, and that's where AAA has been funneling all its money for some inexplicable follow-the-leader reason. The 1k models/animations can at least safely be outsourced....but GameFreak is also a control freak, and probably won't allow the concept art to go outside.

@Tsurii Didn't most 3DS games released from Smash onwards run badly on the original 3DS? Like I remember Smash (full game) and the MH4U demo having really bad load times but I got a New 3DS XL at launch so I didn't really see how games worked on the original model after those for myself (I of course know about Hyrule Warriors Legends).

@NEStalgia Not quite. They were in fact outsource... to Creatures inc. That's why Creatures didn't create any spinoffs for basically the whole of the fifth gen, they were busy doing prep work for Gamefreak. It's quite likely they're still assisting with model generation, which is why their output has slowed so dramatically from back in generations three and four.

Okay... prove that tho. My evidence is the AAA industry's cost rising precipitously and unsustainably going into 8th gen when the open world bubble really took effect a couple years after everyone saw Skyrim make a billion. Open world in the AAA space takes larger dev team which takes money. Here's a reference: https://kotaku.com/why-video-games-cost-so-much-to-make-18185...

@link3710 Not sure I'd really call that outsourcing. It's technically a different company as far as Nikkei is concerned, but it's part of the incestuous love quadrangle that makes up the whole corporate structure of everything Pokemon. Ishihara is the president of Creatures and TPC. Creatures was once located IN the Nintendo building...... It's pseudo-in-house.

@Haru17 I'm not one of those folks that includes footnote references to news articles, but just looking at the industry, Skyrim wasn't the first big open world by far. Morrowind, Oblivion, Assassin's Creed 1 & 2, GTA of course, etc. all previously existed and didn't break the bank more than other AAA. Around that time open world wasn't the biggest costly phenomenon as much as graphics obsession and overly intricate physics, scripting, etc. etc. The open world was as much a cost as a creative solution to an existing problem: Map boundaries and loading. A single giant map with huge open flat areas and streamed assets didn't really change the workload much from a bunch of separate maps with overlapping regions to look consistent with invisible barriers and closed doors to keep you from seeing the end. Heck, within each world, Diablo II is arguably equally open world as BotW.

Open world is more marketing of an engine feature than game design. It's a solution for load screens between locations. that then opens up some other ways to play in the game including backtracking due to no load screens and persistent objects. But at the end of the day it's still just "a really big map with borders and enough memory to hold it" same as the dozen little maps used to be. The same terrain would be used if it were divided and loaded separately. The real difference is that gamers want really big games with tons of places to go, where games used to feature fixed series of indoor corridors more or less (and corridors decorated to look like outdoors.) But it's not really related to "open world." SotN was "open world" while in corridors, more or less.

Presently though the whole persistent world thing is going to really send a tsunami through the industry. The costs are surreal, the server costs are surreal, all to do what used to be done without it. If you end up with BFII you're ok. If you end up with For Honor or The Division........you're not very ok....that's a massive blow. And you can't predict it at all. For Honor is a well made game that nobody wants to play. BFII is a dismal game that everyone wants to play. The risk of a hollow player base taking down the whole game is extreme, and these companies are dumping hundreds of millions into it.

@NEStalgia Okay, then I say you're wrong and that larger worlds do take more resources and drive top-heavy AAAs. Because of course they do, that's how logic works. Anyway, Bethesda is pretty unique because they make open world games with a modest-sized team, not to mention all the features that make their games unique. I'm not saying Skyrim was the first open world game, you're putting words in my mouth again. I am saying it was the most influential one and that it inspired the trend we're seeing today — inspired BotW in particular judging by some obvious superficial parallels.

You're again wrong acting like open world games have the same design as loaded ones. Because OW games obviously have much more disperse, sparse, non-interactive environments and gameplay with double the walking between actually doing anything, depending on the particular game.

@Haru17 @NEStalgia You guys seem to be talking about different things when it comes to the term open world. For sure, just having an open, relatively seamless space to navigate doesn't have to break the bank in the slightest. We've had those since what, Star Cruiser? Even if the term open world should be used more like one of many characteristics and less like the defining trait of many games, that doesn't change the fact that people at large use it as a shorthand to describe most games with free roaming in the AAA scene nowadays. Games with ever-inflating budgets due to the necessity of having to feature an expansive, varied map on top of having system-driven gameplay and on top of doing all of that while looking the part of a big budget project.

So yes, I don't think it's unfair to say the term "open world" carries some expectations from the consumer's end in terms of amount of authored content and player's freedom of choice (among other things), and the games that fail to implement those things end up facing criticism, like MGSV, Fallout 4 or FFXV.

...but all those titles also ended up selling gangbusters anyway, so maybe not knowing what to do with your open world (if not your entire project) is not that big an issue after all. If anything, it takes a colossal marketing screwup on the levels of Andromeda's animation work for these massive projects to bomb.

Anyway, back to Pokémon: the first change Pokémon would have to face before becoming an actual open world series would be giving the player free camera movement, otherwise the designers would still be limited to framing 90% of the world from "South" to "North", just like they've been doing so far. It would kill the sense of freedom fast if you can't pick a direction manually. Being honest, I don't believe the Switch games will implement something even as simple as this for fear of alienating the younger players.

@MarcelRguez Younger players? I don't really understand. Options can be created to choose between fixed camera angles and free camera control.

I hate the fixed camera angles, and that's one of the first things that needs to go. In Sun/Moon they really did create a more 3D region than they ever have before, but then forced top down camera angles in places made it feel like it was still being held back.

Perhaps that's a minor complaint, but I really don't want forced camera angles anymore.

I mean, with Odyssey which is still targeted for everyone, even kids still, manual camera control should be a thing in Pokemon too.

@Harmonie The overall design of the world is affected by the camera angle chosen, so it's not as simple as just offering another option. Even without getting into the verisimilitude of the world at large, every individual asset would need to be made to be viewed from every angle. Perspective it's a finicky thing:

Skyrim and its sense of scale is another great example. Its mountains look fine when displaying the game on a screen, but they look very small on the VR version because they weren't build to be seen from a real "subjective" perspective.

I want the overhead view to go as well, don't get me wrong, but I don't believe GF is willing to rebuild something as fundamental as this. Hopefully they'll prove me wrong, but I can see them fighting tooth and nail against anything that would change the blueprint of the franchise.

Edit: By "young players" I'm not only referring to 10 year-olds, but to children aged 5-6 as well. And let's not forget that Pokémon is a franchise that attracts a lot of casual players, and not everyone knows how to operate a dual-stick setup for movement + camera control.

That's only problematic if something is lost from jumping to open world. What would be lost by Pokemon going open world?

Alienating younger players? Do you really think they don't know how to work a camera? They have no problem implementing camera control in Mario and Zelda and plenty of younger players play that.

Yes, I do believe there are lots of young players who play primarily mobile games and a couple of simple (input-wise) portable titles like Pokémon and Animal Crossing, which do not require camera controls. I'm not even saying this segment is the majority of that age bracket, just that it's probably a portion sizable enough for a company as risk-adverse as Game Freak to take into consideration.

Even if they don't know, camera control is self-explanatory enough that they shouldn't worry about it. Of all the things to be risk averse towards, camera control is pretty low on the list.