Is Game Freak "Recycling" 3DS Animations In Pokémon Sword And Shield On Switch?

This game's coverage has been an absolute trainwreck. So much bad PR. But it's Pokemon so it'll still sell like crazy

Yes, obviously they are. I hate what they did to my Xatu.

I'm sorry, but is there even any room for discussion here? Game Freak's clearly using recycled animations and models, and they've been doing that since Gen 6.

I think this is all exaggerated by the vocal minority online. Most don't care about this, or are excited for the games.

Yes, they most definitely are, barring any unlikely last minute changes.

GF made all animations and future proof 3D models for XY as far as i know. So of course they are reusing all that work. It was planned that way.
But it seems Dynamax animations are new. So in essence the Pokemon that were cut were cut for Dynamax.

i feel like perhaps all the decisions people arent liking were possibly made because game freak is being basically forced to make it for a home console. they have always advocated that core pokemon would always be a handheld-only franchise but now nintendo has left them with no choice. I really doubt it because it would be petty as hell, but a small part of me wonders if they are trying to make it sub-par on purpose in protest.

Game freak is in full recycle mode. Honestly, the games are rushed and it sickens me. Another generation of removed features to make way for new ones that will only show up in these games. Game Freak is developing these games as well as Town. Why I don't know they would split development across two projects when Pokemon is always being churned out on schedule. The series is falling into the trap many companies walk themselves into. Pokemon is a multi billion dollar brand and The Pokemon Company will milk it every way it can now that it's not afraid to step into the mobile market. Look at Pokemon Masters. I saw more in that game that would have been promising to see in S&S but alas, all we get is what's been given and some corprate excuses as to why core features are being removed instead of being upfront. First time ever I'll be skipping a generation day one. Maybe one day when the game is on sale I shall try it

This is silly. A pokemon is going to react the same way even if they have to remake the animation. They're not going to change how a pokemon reacts, when that is how they are supposed to react.

Seriously, the game isn't due out until November. Plenty of time to polish these things up.

@companyoflosers
You don't make games subpar to "protest" the hardware you are working on - that's a pretty darn good to flat out lose your job.

they reused the sames animations from gen 6 to gen 7 and nobody complained then why are these people complaining now, its not a big deal graphics isn't everything the gameplay that matters the most

@mjharper And then instead of "don't judge until you play" it'll be "why'd you buy and play it if you dislike it"

@KBuckley27 They complain beause now the "higher quality animations" are cited as a reason for why not all Pokemon will be available in Gen 8.
I highly doubt there would be such a large outcry if all Pokemon would be in. Even the Zelda OoT trees would hardly get any notice at that point.

Please understand.

@KBuckley27 Because Game Freak used that as a reason to not include all the Pokemon. If they were all in, no one would care. However now they are being looked at very closely.

This is not a good look for them. Still going to get Shield though

@Sinister Masuda straight up said that they're cutting out Pokemon because animating 1000 Pokemon was too much work when all the footage we've seen so far points to them reusing the 3D models they made for Gen 6.

I'm fine with them cutting the dex, but I really hope they improve stuff like this instead.

This comment section is gonna be on fire in a couple of hours. I'd say it's okay to recycle animations from 3DS. The problem is now using non existent "high-quality" animations as part of the excuse for not having all of the pokemon. And before anyone mention balance issues, that's also a bad excuse. There are a lot of ways to deal with battle balance instead of deleting pokemon from the game

@mjharper
what are you not getting!? They are not going to "polish" anything up. What we have seen is what we are getting. Stop delluding yourself.

Eh, can't say this really bothers me. I know Pokemon games don't get as much development time as Zelda, and that they have to cut corners with pretty much every new entry. I'm still excited for Sword and Shield, but I do hope they stop milking the mainline franchise so much. Get all the spin offs out you want, but take a good 4-5 years to work on the generation after SnS. I still have love for the franchise and have been with it since the beginning, but ever since X and Y I've started getting the games because of nostalgia instead of genuinely being excited for a great new JRPG like I was for Black and White.

@Kalmaro You mean this doesn't look stupid?

@mjharper
I'm very doubtful the returning Pokemon will get any new animations. The only things that will change from now until launch are the pop-in glitches and maybe any T-posing flying Pokemon (i.e Wingull) & poorly-textured trees (from the E3 demo).

@Ashunera84 Twitter data shows that it's not a minority though. It's at least around half of the fanbase.

@TheBlue10 exactly. This same narrative runs its course for every game that has negative PR prior to launch and it only stops once the next game is on the horizon just to then be repeated if there is negative press for that one. Journalists are complaining, fans are complaining, the company is responding with a non-response response. This is more than just people complaining on message boards and a sign of a shift in the attitudes of a large swath of the target audience.

And before people respond that only children are the target audience: why then was most of the marketing for Let's Go about revisiting Kanto when most children now never experienced it in the first place? The idea that the company that lives off nostalgia isn't targeting teens and adults is beyond ridiculous

"Gotta rush 'em all!"

I don't mind that they're re-using the models and animations they've been using since Gen 6 - I think they work fine, and re-doing them would take an immense amount of work.

But if they are indeed re-using all/most of the existing Pokemon animations, then they shouldn't be using "high-quality animations" as an excuse for not including data for all Pokemon in the game.

I understand that the game still requires a whole lot of work, and that they're likely telling the truth when they say that they simply didn't have the time/resources to get in all the Pokemon. I don't think that the devs should be working overtime to make it happen. But Pokemon is one of the biggest game franchises there is, and it's a home console game now - the higher-ups need to understand that hiring more people and allowing more development time is going to be necessary to make the game that fans want.

Including data for all existing Pokemon in the game should've been a priority, and when they realized they didn't have the time/resources for it, more should've been arranged for. Game Freak makes one of the biggest games out there, but they still operate like an indie studio - and I don't think that's sustainable.

@Sinister I thought everyone already knew this, so I am surprised to see an article acting like it's even a question. Did these people skip on the Let's Go games too?

For those of us capable of long term memory, we've been hearing about futureproofing Pokemon models since the 3DS first arrived. That's how they tried to justify the outrageous cost for their 3DS Pokedex/movedex app when the system was still new. It's been stated repeatedly that they were intending to use these models/animations for the foreseeable future.

The fact this bs wasn't called out by the "gaming media" the second it left Masuda's lips is just further proof of the fact that most "game journalists" are nothing more than extensions of the PR teams for the game companies.

Oh, wait.

@KBuckley27 Because they aren't changing the gameplay either. I doubt the metagame will see an overhaul. And recycling animations isn't the only problem. If it was, no biggie. But they literally said they're cutting Pokemon to focus on better animations. Which animations exactly? Either way, it all just feels very low budget for what is going to be one of the best selling games of the year.

@RupeeClock I don't like those animations either. Tropius, Salamence, Swellow. They all look so stupid in battle.

Yes. They are. Literally no discussion to be had.

And the human animation being grid based outside of cutscenes is hilariously bad

I don't really mind, I'm more bothered about the awkward and robotic style of human character animations. I'm currently playing Spider-Man on PS4, and the attention to detail and the quality of the animation is stunning. I'm not asking for realism, but the animation that Pokémon uses, considering the scale and popularity of the brand, is just embarrassing. They have the money to pump in. And the N64 tree models and featureless landscape? No excuse - Is nothing to do with console power, Breath of the Wild did a fab job. I love Pokemon so much, I just wish it loved us back.

@NIN10DOXD Twitter data? Do you have any idea how closely that maps to the general population? I thought research showed that Twitter outrage was literally just that and didn't really reflect the general population at all. Surprisingly, most people aren't on Twitter...

@Galenmereth the only reason this has become an issue is because they used it as an excuse for why we cant transfer all Pokémon from previous games after announcing a paid-for transfer service (when all previous Pokémon models are already made and being used in this game)

@Galenmereth Because we've seen no new animations either. And if it's anything like the previous games, they only have one single attack animation. Every attack uses the same animation, or they don't use an animation at all. And all we've seen so far points to that being still a thing in Sword and Shield.

Simple. Gamefreak has lost all enthusiasm for the series, while literally everyone else who has a license to develop games for the franchise still has tons. Why else would an N64 game still have better attack animations than a modern day game?

Pokemon is Nintendo's COD.

@TuragaNuva Oh yes, they absolutely should be working overtime/weekends to get all the Pokemon in if that's what it takes. GameFreak has nobody to blame for their screwup except GameFreak, now they need to drop that crappy Town game and move everyone to Pokemon and do whatever it takes to fix it before release..... And since delaying it apparently isnt an option if they need to push crunch then so be it.

Getting really sick of the "crunch is evil" movement in video games when it is still accepted in pretty much every other field, most of which are far more essential than video games (I see "crunch" constantly in engineering, and if you screw up there people could die). Video game developers aren't special, sometimes overtime is required, especially when they've obviously been as lazy and unfocused as GF is.

As a side note I really hope Town fails. Badly.

@Octane Xatu, what have they done to you? 😭

They could at least have it... squint or something when it attacks.

@Peterjr1 Did they ever announce how much Home would cost? I can't find that info anywhere.

@Kalmaro Don't worry, take these:

@Galenmereth Expecting a billion dollar company in control of one of, if not the most profitable franchise in existence to do its job before I buy it's product is entitled?

How are people this thick even able to function enough to use the internet?

You are obviously very uneducated on this topic yet you chose to speak on it anyways. Why? The overworked animations shown this far are even worse than the battle animations shown in the clip, with people literally spinning around the x/y axis with no movement whatsoever, Pokemon/trainers pop-in worse than some N64 titles, and stuff like Wingull floating in midair before stopping and starting 90 degrees and moving again.

Please educate yourself some before posting on a topic again. Thanks.

@Galenmereth But overworld animations, i.e. walking animations, were already present in Sun and Moon. Unused that is, but it was there in the code. Those already existed.

And it's not like they're great either: https://i.imgur.com/PxH0QA5.gifv

@NIN10DOXD no, Twitter data shows it's around half of the VOCAL fanbase. Very different things. Most pokemon fans aren't on Twitter, and many who are on twitter aren't vocal about pokemon.

People are also far more likely to be vocal about something that upsets them than about something they are happy about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHotvJK-uuk

@Sabroni @Ashunera84 It's the closest thing we have. You can't just say it's a minority if you don't actually have evidence. You can also look at the dislikes on their YouTube videos to see it's a larger group than apologists will admit.

See, this is what really ticks me off about them cutting Pokemon. If they were re-designing all models from the ground up to make them more visually appealing along with brand new animations, I would be a lot more forgiving on them removing Pokemon but they are very clearly re-using models and the animations.
The only work that is needed is the textures would need improving as using the 3DS Textures on a HD Console would really hurt the games presentation.
Yeah I get it, there's a lot of Pokemon especially when counting all the forms as well, but surely a 90 Billion Dollar Franchise could afford to hire a team to fix them right up.

here's a bit of comparison;

I'm kind of at a lost for words on how clustered this situation is becoming....

@Octane Balance has been restored, thank you.

@companyoflosers
The Switch is both a home console and a portable console.

@Bluerangervegeta Why all the hate for Town?

At this point, they should pull a Metriod 4 and just scrap it, start over.

sword and shield is absolute garbage. cutting out content , reusing 3d animations, bad graphics... i mean have you seen how stiff and stoic the characters and pokemons look in those games ? pokemons popping out of anywhere on the open field, trees looking like they've been ported from ocarina of time 64. shame on gamefreak for this.
when all the nintendo ip are witnessing a revival ; zelda, mario, fire emblem, animal crossing e.t.c they decide to be lazy. don't they understand the transition from handheld to console is a very big deal ??

@NCChris They shouldn't even have to do that. Supposedly they made fully detailed HD models then downgraded them for X/Y. That's why they charged like _10 or $15 for that Pokedex app when the 3DS first came out.

@Galenmereth There's already a video of a lone college student in under 24 hours making a wingull from scratch, having it flap its wings and moving around in an 'over world' scenario.

That was one... guy. Game freak can do better.

@Anri02 Because GF has publically admitted it's their highest priority and they have assigned their "B team" to work on Pokemon.

I know they did it because of the push to make Pokemon a more mobile "experience" and the threat that poses to GFs relevance, bit it's still pretty insulting to Pokemon fans.

The very fact that this is even a discussion is baffling.
Of course they're reusing animations.

I believe they look like that cause those games were originally meant to be 3DS titles. Then again I don't get people's complaint, the ones who kept comparing the main series animations to stuff like Battle Revolution, Colosseum, and Stadium. I believe Game Freak's intend with the main Pokemon game was that it had a more artsy style to it (similar to the Dragon Quest series which stay artsy instead of becoming realistic like the Final Fantasy series) instead of being 3D realistic like the Colosseum / Battle Revolution spin-off games.

@Bluerangervegeta That sounds like a rather petty reason to hate on a game.

If there are new animations, it might be related to the new camping feature from the Sword/Shield rumored leaks that are looking to be more and more correct.

Of course, I don't think anyone believes that having a camping features is worth sacrificing the National Dex...

@ NIN10DOXD
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-06-19-call-of-duty-pokemon-dominate-gamestop-pre-orders-in-wake-of-e3
https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/st-pds-prod-bckt/spiketrap-updates/infographic_2019-06-20/infographic_e3recap.pdf

Well, if the old "vote with your wallet" mantra has ever been true, it's now. Masuda's response showed us clearly they really don't care, as long as people keep buying. Let's see if fans can keep their drug habit in check if they want to see any improvements to their franchise.

@Bluerangervegeta Honestly I have a different idea: let GF make new games, while future mainline Pokémon games are handled by a different company. I just don't think GF is up for this anymore, Pokémon has barely changed over the past 20+ years and GF's understanding of change is to add a gimmick they'll just ditch next gen. I want to see a new company work on mainline Pokémon games, it might honestly be for the better.

@Anri02 It sounds like you aren't thinking about it then. If Town bombs maybe Masuda or other staff at GF will learn to not prioritize their crappy new IP above what's been their bread and butter for over 20 years now. If they keep making lazy excuses for Pokemon games the fanbase will die.

Then again they know all this, it's pretty clear TPC is focused far more on the Pokemon mobile games than the Switch.

@TheBlue10 Absolutely, they seem dead set against that though. It's a shame, the Colloseum and XD Gale of Darkness were outsourced and both were great

@Bluerangervegeta So because I’m not hating on Town, I’m not thinking about it? I think I might be misunderstanding what you’re trying to say

I'll be giving Sword and Shield a chance at least. I don't really care about reused animations that much. But if S&S end up disappointing me like X&Y, and (U)S&(U)M did, then I'll stop buying mainline Pokémon games from then on, at least for full price. I love the series but they're ruining it for me.

At least I'll always have the excellent first 5 generations though. Each one of them a masterpiece, and then X&Y came around.

So their reasoning for cutting pokemon is to provide high quality animations and graphics and they are actually using 3ds animations. And there are people who are still defending them!!!

@Anri02 I am saying if you care about Pokemon then you shouldn't be hoping that Town is successful. It will just further prove that GF is right and they don't need to waste effort on any sort of innovation in Pokemon.

Wow people here getting upset about this would be shocked at what other studios recycle. This is normal, it doesn't mean other new animations aren't being made like they said, it's not rushing it, it's not being lazy. It's standard practice.

If you want them to do new animations for every Pokemon's attacks, reactions, idles, runs, walks etc, even with the dex cut down. You'd better be prepared to wait another couple of years for this game, or content with the idea that the devs are forced into serious crunch. And that's not even going into avatars, NPCs, environmental assets, UI, VFX. All areas where the "we are improving animations" statement can be just a true.

@Bluerangervegeta Yeah, no. Wishing for a game to fail just because you’re mad that Pokémon is not going the way you want it to, is completely absurd to me.

@Bluerangervegeta I'm so sick of seeing others call people "entitled" for critiquing a game and deciding if they want it or not. If they think that's entitlement then they're very shallow and have no idea what an entitled person even acts like. Seriously, we're talking about a video game here, not any major life things. If people think the game doesn't look worth $60, then what is wrong with that? We all make decisions like that every day when we buy stuff already.

To all those people commenting that they don't care about any of this and they are still excited.
Seriously:
1. What are you actually excited about S&S???
2. What would actually bother you? I am buying every pokemon game since blue-red. I am personally tired of playing the same game again and again. The fans deserve better.

@Anri02 Go re-read the recent GF interviews.

@Galenmereth classy...

@Ogbert People aren't mad that they're reusing animations. They're mad that GF said they'll be cutting Pokémon to improve animation quality, yet everything looks to be exactly to same 1:1. The only new animations in this game as far as I'm aware, not including the ones for new Pokémon, are the small victory dances your Pokémon does after beating a gym. Which, honestly, I don't think would be so time consuming.

@Yorumi I don't doubt it would still sell well relative to other games, a large franchise like this can't go down so suddenly, but if it underperforms (for a Pokémon game, anyway), I'm still hopeful it would have at least some effect.

@Galenmereth
Says "I just can't".
Calls others autistic.

I think someone is projecting......

I mean, at the end of the day I dont think they're taking out Pokemon just for the heck of it, but rather because its just unreasonable to add in nearly 1,000 Pokemon.

The graphics already look much nicer, Pokemon roaming wild areas, etc, so regardless of what they say, I understand if they can't get them all in.

If people want to get upset about that, hey... knock yourselves out. I, however, think the game looks excellent and am eagerly awaiting release.

@Bluerangervegeta No. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to join you on your “I hate how Pokémon Sword and Shield is turning out, so let’s all bag on Town for no good reason” crusade.

@TheBlue10 Because we have all seen 100% of the game's content by now? Also are you an animator? I would like to know on what basis you believe that adding those animations would not be time consuming.

@JaxonH excellent. What looks excellent exactly? Give me the reasons why you are excited about these games?

@Bluerangervegeta
Well, TPC doesn't really make much money at all from the sales of the mainline Pokemon games, while they made a ton of money from Go, so I can't blame them for going where the money is.

Nintendo is the one that is the most invested in Pokemon from a business perspective.

@Anri02 If you wont take the steps to educate yourself on the topic then at least have the decency to keep your mouth shut and not disrupt other, more knowledgeable people from conversing. Thank you.

Instead of complaining about everything with this game, why not set up a group where members promise to boycott this game?

@Ogbert No, but the point of trailers and gameplay demos is to show your game in the best way possible, right? And withholding the promised new animations from trailers until the game is out... sounds... well, just stupid.

I remember people telling me that we hadn't seen all of LGPE when I voiced some of my concerns/complaints. I should wait till the game is out, plenty of time to improve things. And in the end, none of what I was worried about was improved or changed. There's no reason to assume it's any different this time. The games are out in a few months from now. They're not working on major things anymore, they're mainly working out the bugs and play testing at this point.

@Galenmereth Oh yes. Use Autism as insult. Definitely classy.

@Ogbert What exactly leads you to believe that the rest 70% content from the game will include new animations?

@JaxonH Mind saying exactly how It's unreasonable? And why you're okay with Gamefreak lying to their customers?

@westman98 They made plenty of money on the handheld games, but it's not the insane levels that Go made them.

But they should also realize that the profits Go earned them will be extremely difficult to feasibly sustain, especially when they don't have excellent mainline entries to further the characters/lore/ect.

I think this whole Fee2Play Microtransaction crap is a bubble, and I don't think it can get much bigger before it bursts.

@Galenmereth You know from an "adult" such as yourself, I would expect you to at least not act like a child when confronted on your lack of knowledge on this topic instead of just calling basically everyone with a negative opinion on this take "autistic".

@Galenmereth Please mind your language.

I’m surprised they got lazy on the Animation when it is actually the easiest part. Rigging and skinning is a true nightmare for me. Doing the many different types of texture is a pain too. Creating the model is fun but man, you need a lot of time to make a good looking one. With animations, just set key frames and let 3DS max fill in the movements in between.

@Gzeus88
I like the better graphics. Game looks really pretty, especially with the color palette used. Also like the wild Pokemon roaming the wild areas, like in the sandstorm- that looked awesome, and the fact it still has random battles. Also the freedom to move the camera (even if it is still restricted in certain parts), and that bicycle you can instantly jump on to traverse the world. And, it transforms into a paddle bike when going across water! Reminds me of the skells in Xenoblade X.

Overall just looks like a major step up from the games I played on 3DS, and even Let's Go, which I also really liked. Throwing the ball at the Pokemon was awesome. Kinda wish they'd kept that in but, I understand why it wasn't. Battling is the better choice for the mainline game for most people, I'm sure.

But ya, those are some of the things I really like about the game.

This is one of the most stupid articles I read in this site. The autor think which the animation of the models can just be automatcly transfered to new models and use like argument more people which don't understand the same thing.

@TheBlue10 You think that's 30% of the game we've seen in that trailer? If I were you my biggest disappointment would be the content.

@Bluerangervegeta So now I’m not intelligent because I’m not mindlessly bashing a game? Not once in this entire argument of ours have you made an actual criticism of Town itself. All your replies have been “Pokémon” this or “GameFreak” that. You’ve never actually talked about the game itself. But if you’re going to devolve yourself to insults instead of making an actual argument, then I have nothing else to say to you.

If it makes @Galenmereth feel better, I actually am autistic and I don't like what Game Freak is doing. Always happy to have people use my disorder as a zinger on the internet. /s

@Yorumi This isn't a discussion about whether or not the game looks "bad". That's subjective anyway.

@Anri02 Please read the interviews I told you about before harassing me again. Thank you.

@EasyDaRon So, show me one which is able to do it between diferent game engines.

@Preposterous
I think it's too many, to the point a line in the sand has to be drawn, and the expectation they must perpetually add every single one created over the span of 20 years is unreasonable. Feel free to disagree, but that's my take.

Oh, and I said nothing about Gamefreak lying to customers. Didn't mention that at all, actually. Not sure where I said "it was ok" when I didn't even bring it up to begin with

@Bluerangervegeta Harassing? Where have I harassed you?

@Ogbert You're right, I was too generous on my assumption. But my question still stands. And just to be clear, my intention wasn't to be sarcastic in any way when asking, I'm genuinely curious why you think that.

@Anri02 Your last comment and this one too. It's getting tiring seeing your name pop up in my notification bar when you refuse to read any of the interviews related to the topic.

Seriously, please don't reply/bother me again until you read them. There's no point in having a debate with someone who refuses to educate themselves on the topic.

@JaxonH Pretty sure Yu-Gi-Oh/Digimon had games with over 1000 monsters in the PS1/PS2 era..... All made from scratch.

Yet the Switch/GF can't handle copy/pasting already completed movesets/animations?

@JaxonH I think most people would be fine with them cutting the dex, if it didn't feel so low budget in other areas. I personally don't mind it. But I don't understand why a multi-billion franchise like Pokemon doesn't get the proper budget and team it deserves.

@Yorumi And? If you copy a windows 98 file of a program to a windows xp, it will automatcly work? With animation of diferent models is even worst. A lot worst. you guys are acting like they was transfering the animation of the same models, which is the case which is easy.

Just read this please. It's important
https://askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/185566109937/what-do-you-think-was-the-most-likely-reason-that/amp?__twitter_impression=true

@Bluerangervegeta Ok fine. I just finished re-reading Masuda’s interview again. It didn’t say anything about Town, the entire thing was about Pokémon. I still fail to see where I’m supposed to just start hating Town from that interview.

@LN3000 Two words: Battle Revolution.

@Octane I wouldn't mind it so much if they were starting over from scratch and not allowing the transfer of any Pokemon. But at this point it's like they are punishing people for using the wrong ones, and its gonna give some people a huge advantage in the meta.

Aside from Mew, Raichu, and Roserade, I don't have a single Pokemon that over the 3/4 dozen or so I raised in the 3DS/Switch games that will transfer over..... And one of those is a mythical that probably can't be used anyways. So as the Galar dex stands right now according to Serebii I won't even have enough for a team, let alone a single tourney match (they are usually 3 vs 3).

I am pissed about the huge disadvantage this puts me at. Either allow everything from 3DS to come over, or nothing at all.

I can understand being upset with the pokedex thing but this is nitpicking and nothing new.

@JaxonH I would expect that issue to be at the very least adressed, if you really were against it. In situations like this silence is equal with indifference or even acceptance. So you acknowledge their lies, but still intend to support GF with your money?

@Anri02 There are multiple interviews from this year. He has stated quite clearly that GFs best/brightest are focused on Town and that their B-Team was handling Sword/Shield because Pokemon isn't their priority right now.

@Yorumi And the models are not the same. Now, consider it in what you just said.

My question is why Gamefreak thinks Pokemon should be a yearly series?

Like if the transition is big from handheld to console...... Why not take another year or 2 to work on it?
We got let's go last year, Ultra sun/moon the year before that, and sun/moon the previous year.

Pokemon should be one of the best games on the switch since it sells millions of dollars (from games to merch). Why half it and say "it's to hard"

I will see how things turn out when released, but from what was shown..... I ain't wasting my money.

All I want is a blastoise that shoots water through its cannons. Everything else is fine.

@Bluerangervegeta Ok, I finished reading the Interview they gave to VGC back in May. I believed you when you said they were putting a lot more focus on Town. If you’re angry about that decision, I can understand and respect that too. However, I do not believe it is fair to hope that the game fails just because you’re not happy that GameFreak is prioritizing Town over Pokémon.

@Yorumi Absolutely. Aside from Roserade I won't be able to bring anything I put effort into breeding/training that isn't coming from Let's Go.

It's like a giant punishment for using what I liked instead of what's popular or the original 151..... And even then it's still slim pickings for me.

Okay... This is just being lazy.
It's one of the most famous games out there so some better animations would be nice.

@Bluerangervegeta I like the competitive play, but I don't mind the lack of national dex as I stated before. Make due with what you have, or however the saying goes. I don't think I've ever transferred a Pokemon over to a new gen. I always started from scratch every new gen.

@Bluerangervegeta
TPC net revenue by fiscal year:

FY2012: $16.6 million
FY2013: $10.6 million
FY2014: $18.4 million
FY2015: $5.6 million
FY2016: $143.3 million
FY2017: $80.8 million
FY2018: $124 million

TPC may have a billion-dollar IP, but up until the release of Pokemon Go, they weren't exactly making a ton of profit - just a few million USD.

In fact, TPC's profits since 2016 mirror Pokemon Go's success i.e. massive phenomenon in 2016, large slowdown in 2017, and big rebound in 2018.

This isn't news. We've known they were recycling models since the games were revealed. We've known since Sun/Moon, PoGO, and Let's Go all reused the X/Y models. It's why the 3ds games run so terribly when more than 2 pokemon are on screen at once.

That's exactly why people got upset over the decision to cut pokemon. Because the excuse was that there were too many to keep up with and that this cut would mean higher quality animations. Except for most pokemon, the HD models used in the new games will have been around since X/Y came out. Running the 3ds games in emulators proves that better hardware is basically all the 3DS models need to look like they do in Sword/Shield.

So after two gens of poor performance due to 3d models that were too good for the 3DS, they're cutting a bunch of pokemon out of the game entirely because, now that they have better hardware, they can only be bothered to reuse some of the HD models they already have rather than all of them, because "reasons".

I'm still interested in the games, but so far every explanation they've tried to give for why they won't be including data for every pokemon just hasn't been able to hold water.

@Pichuka97 gamefreak have already said for them pokemon isn't their priority its their own new ip that are their priority because they don't want to only be known as the pokemon game making company.

@Octane Did you not understand what I said? How am I supposed to "make do" when, according to the current Galardex on Serebii, I don't even have a full team of 6 to transfer over..... Let alone a team with decent type coverage.

I have a feeling you don't use competitive play at all if you can say to just start from scratch like it's nothing. It takes dozens of hours to even halfway get a decent team formed, and that's without the grinding needed to level them up. It would be one thing if they were making everybody start from scratch, or even only allowing the Pokemon from Let's Go. But as it stands now it's a huge advantage to some and a collossial disadvantage to others. Nothing fair about it at all, and telling me to "make due" is asinine, like telling an Olympic athlete to "make due" when he is placed 5K behind everyone else.

And that's not even addressing the aesthetics issue. I have several shineys that probably won't be making the cut, and Shiny Raichu (my least favorite if you care at all) will be the only one that does pass.

Why should I play a game so clearly rigged against me? The obvious answer is to quit and not give GF anymore money.

I really hope SwSh do not sell as much as GF expects so that they understand how big of a mistake they made by removing megas, z-moves, national dex and, most importantly, lying to their userbase.

@Bluerangervegeta Everyone is in the same boat. It's a level playing field. Anyone in to competitive play (seriously) will appreciate this. Everyone is going to have to come up with new strats for what is available.

Honestly, I'm done complaining, as gamefreak doesn't give a piss about us.

I'm just going buy Pokken Tournament instead of pokemon SwSh. So that way I won't be supporting GF, and I can still get my Pokemon fix.

@GrailUK It's literally the exact opposite of what you just said.

Someone who exclusively trains Kanto Pokemon will be in FAR better shape for Sw/Sh meta than someone like me who, outside of Let's Go, barely touched them at all.

@Preposterous
How bout you worry about what you do with your money, and I'll worry about what I do with mine. Sound good?

Yes I'll buy any game that looks fun and I want to play. Its not about "supporting them" it's about supporting myself with entertainment that looks appealing. If that supports them also in the process, so be it.

And dont use those strongarm tactics of telling someone "you must ACTIVELY PROTEST or you're one or them". That's extremist mentality. I take no position one way or the other because I dont care. You do what you want. Nobodys trying to control your opinion. Stop trying to control the opinions of others

@Bluerangervegeta I think I said ''I''. That's how I do it. I don't mind it. Personal opinion and all.

@Octane
Fair enough. At the same time, the line has to be drawn somewhere, and honestly, there comes a point where "overwhelming" is the majority response from too many Pokemon to memorize info about. Even 1,000 is well past that threshold imo.

I mean, I dont care either way. But I do have friends who loved Let's Go who were reluctant about the prospect of dealing with so many Pokemon.

@Bluerangervegeta Yeah I see your point man. I am actually starting to think the fans are right in this case. (Never let it be said I am stubborn. Opinionated, sure, but not stubborn.)

@Yorumi Well despite what I said Pokemon has never been known for having a great meta,.... Not even after wishing for blessings from the Genies of Healthy Meta. But it's funny how GF says they are making cuts for meta yet still bring in overused Staples like Tyrannitar, Charizard, and Clefable. JFL.

Thank you genies!

@Yorumi Yeah I'm slowly getting my head around it lol.

@JaxonH Yeah, like I said, I don't mind it. It was inevitable. I was just hoping they'd increase the work in other areas. I don't think they're doing that, and with them saying they cut the Pokemon because of improved animations and whatnot, it's just not a good look. I wonder how different it would be if it was fully under the control of Nintendo.

@mjharper People don't have to play a game to be disappointed with its visuals. For which you can see the animations in video footage.

Man, I was already having a rough day dealing with people and THIS just adds to the list.

@Yorumi
I'm not saying I personally need a line to be drawn. I dont care either way.

But cards are a little different than Pokemon which will roam areas and attack and have new moves and all that jazz.

Saying it's just "copy pasting" isnt an informed statement at all. If the entire game could have every Pokemon in it from a simple copy paste, it would already be done.

@Octane You keep saying it was inevitable..... It wasn't. It was a much bigger task to put 151 Pokemon in the originals than it would be to put in 1000 on the Switch...... Like I said before, I am pretty certain there are some PS1/2 games in the Yu-Gi-Oh/Digimon franchises that had unique arrival/death/battle/ect animations for over 1000 monsters, and they were all made from scratch for those games. So whats GF excuse when they have over 800 models already made?

You can't seriously argue that the 3DS can handle 800+ Pokemon when the Switch can't..... Especially when it's much easier for Switch to load data off it's internal memory, making games easier to patch.

@JaxonH Pokémon LGPE has all Pokémon coded in it. The only things that are missing are the models for the ones not present in-game, and the code is usable, with Marowak being the placeholder model. This just tells me that its as simple as just copy/pasting, if not, advanced copy/pasting. If you want, I can link you proof.

@Octane Tbh, if it was inevitable, they should've stopped at Gen 2. GF's devs could barely even fit more Pokémon than the Gen 2 ones. It wasn't until Iwata that fixed their code that let them fit all Pokémon, as well as another region and a day/night cycle.

@Bluerangervegeta The Yu-Gi-Oh games (specially the PS1/PS2 ones) didn't have unique arrival/death/battle/ect animations for over 1000 monsters (I played pretty much all of them). That is simply not true.

@TheBlue10
Uh, either the Pokemon are in a game or they're not. And Let's Go only had about 150. Doesnt matter what code had what. That's not the same thing as rendering, syncing sound files, balancing memory, addressing bugs, glitches, roaming animations...

Come on now. People on some random internet fan site claiming 1000 Pokemon can be completely programmed and fully integrated into a game by clicking a button?

This is why I dont like discussions on the internet. Everything is a click of a button.

@mjharper "You have to pay $60 to say a game is bad"

After being amazed by Super Mario Odyssey years ago, I expected that the next gen pokemon game would be like an anime fighter even if I dont even play Pokemon or other similar games anymore. Is there really a chance that GameFreak can actually change the game so much? A few days ago, i saw the demo and it looked more like a game that belongs to a 3DS than a Switch. I understand that the "game footage is not final" but the time is running out lol.

@Yorumi Switch models will have a lot more of polygons than 3ds models. It's even more stupid deny it. The numbers of the points in the animation list will not be the same. If is that easy to you guys copy animation to new models, just hack the game, and input the models yourselfs. Or now, it becames hard?

@Yorumi
Yaaaa its not that easy. Just because an animation matches a previous game doesn't negate all the other stuff that comes along with higher quality assets, sound file placement, programming in a new architecture and software, roaming animations and placement planning, bug testing, play testing, etc.

Would it be easi-ER having something to build off of? Sure. Is it some magical copy paste button click and voila! 500 new Pokemon fully integrated into the game? Not even remotely.

You want to criticize the decision, that's fine. But let's not pretend it's some magical process like copying jpgs from one PC to PC

@Bluerangervegeta Not saying the Switch can't handle it, but I'm saying that at some point there would've been too many. Too many to balance (I'd argue they're not doing a great job with that in the first place, but that's a different point). Whether that's 800 Pokemon, or 1000, or 1500, I don't know. I don't know what's reasonable to balance for each game, but theoretically there would be a limit, assuming they do work and tweak all Pokemon every generation (I know they don't, but just saying).

@JaxonH I'm pretty sure the entire metagame part of the code is copied every generation. All the stats, leveling, moves, and the whole working behind the battle system and whatnot. So it's not a surprise the data for all the Pokemon was in LGPE.

This is what happens when you're stuck making the same game every two years for decades on end.

Just like Call of Duty...how scary.

Gamefreak is starting to show their incompetence. Even on Gamecube the Pokemon looked better and were better animated than on a console released 15 years later. I get a main line rpg is bigger than a battle simulator but come on... you already cut Pokemon out to focus on less Pokemon so are better animations really that much to ask?
And Dynamax seems pretty dull anyway.

@Yorumi
I'm not claiming to have some profound knowledge about the intricacies of game design, but making a claim that 1,000 Pokemon can be fully implemented in a new Pokemon game with a copy paste is ridiculous.

I'm not questioning whether alot of previous information can be re-used, as I'm sure it can, but nobody is going to believe a simple button click = all Pokemon in a game, especially on a new system with HD assets

@Yorumi I'm actually interested, what's the game you're working on?

@JaxonH It's more like a few thousand clocks, but yes it is basically that easy.

@Yorumi
And those 10,000 items had to be created first, no? Which HQ assets have not been created since those Pokemon only ever appeared in 240p.

And assets simply being imported in a game is only the first step. You should know that.

If it was a simply click, they'd have done it. Unless I am to believe they are intentionally not clicking a button in order to make the game less appealing? The logic doesnt hold up to scrutiny.

It's one thing to say you get more bang for buck not creating from scratch. It's an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT thing to pretend a simple click of a mouse is all that's keeping a full roster in the game, and they're just "too lazy" to click a mouse.

Again, it's one thing to criticize the decision. But it's far more than a mouse they just dont want to click. Which... is just a preposterous notion. Even if they created high resolution 3D models to import, that's just the first step. Assets simply existing is nothing more than bricks being delivered. You still have to build a house with them.

@Yorumi Each models extracted from inside the 3ds games are not hd. So, you need have some proof to sustain what you are saying and not just do supositions. Show it, if you have. But if you have, it's even more easy to hack and input they.

I didn't need a video to realized it, yet some people still defend their actions. At the end of the day is GF that will win

Well...we got a couple of developers here in the comment section. But really...If the game is good it's good. Also, I didn't read the article because this is a dumb topic to be talking about. It certainly got the clicks though.

@Yorumi Nah don't worry, I understand. I hope the game you're working on is successful!

Hundreds upon hundreds of characters with individual animations?

Of course they're recycling some of them!

And it's relatively straight forward with 3D animation too. EVEN if you have made new models. And EVEN if those models have new and more advanced rigs.

@Yorumi Show it! Say which they showed is not proof. Till now, you are just talk. And if they really have and you really work in a companie which can input 1000 itens just with one button click like you said, what you was doing right now, if you are smart is offering your services to nintendo. But I bet you are just a friend of the autor of this article. And after, this discussion end with you showing no proofs and just doing alegations type "they have", I will automactly avoid others articles of this guy.

@Ttimer5
Fully agree with this comment! I assumed this would be the entry to really make those big changes and reinforce why the switch is such an upgrade over the 3ds!

That being said, I won't pass too much judgement until I play the game XD

@JaxonH "I dont care" You do care, otherwise you wouldn't even have clicked on this article, let alone commented a dozen times.

@mjharper they aren't suddenly going to replace old character models with brand new ones before November are they??

@Yorumi "If gamefreak was actually programming every pokemon they would be the most incompetent programmers on the planet." I wouldn't put it past them, what with the 100 Lillies in Sun and Moon.

@FlashBoomerang Hey, let me just quote what a person a different thread said regarding models

"When you work on 3D Models, by todays standards, you use 3d sculpting.
This produces a crazy high poly 3D Model, like 100.000-1.000.000 Polygons, that could never be used in a normal game, it would lag like hell.
These models are used in films and other renderings.

To make a game model, you use tools like daz3d decimator, this reduces the amount of polygons to 1/20 or more, useable by games.

Example polygon counts for 1 model:
NDS: 150-200
N64: 300-500
3DS: 1.000-5.000
Switch: 3.000-50.000 (Link in BOTW has 14.000 without any equipment)

Pokemon for 3DS already had crazy high 3D Models, but very low textures.
A simple model like bulbasaur has 3.600, a complex model like Zeraora has 9.500 polygons.
But the textures on 3DS are only 256x512 (all models use half-textures), a switch game needs 2048x2048 or higher (Skyrim uses 2K textures, on PC it uses 4K)."

Taking into account everything in the quote, making new models for SwSh would be an absolute waste on CI's and TPC's part, bringing more weight on the fact that the models are the same.

Anyone defending Nintendo here should be ashamed on themselves. Stop giving lazy devs a free pass - Nintendo is charging you £60 for a game with slightly upresed character models that they developed for the ages old 3DS.

Game Freak is putting in minimum work and selling for maximum buck. Use your eyes - the character models are lifeless, expressionless abominations. This passed on 3DS. It should not pass on Switch.

There is only one explanation for all of this: someone found a Monkey's Paw, wished for a mainline Pokemon game on a home console, and then this happened.

Whoever did it, know that we are all very disappointed in you.

@FlashBoomerang "Show it!" Look at the video this article is about!

@TheBlue10 you don't need all that to tell they are the same. It was obvious from the first trailers.

Nothing new here really.

@Mogster Oh I know that. It's just that some people don't.

@TheBlue10
you can be fairly certain that most pokémon in Sword and Shield don't use 2K textures.

The art style simply doesn't require it.

@Octane The top sellers are EA sports games, and it's impossible to get lower budget or more recycled than that.....

@Liam_Doolan thank you for demonstrating once again that NL’s opinion articles have no meaning whatsoever, especially @TGK’s dispute about the cull (you know, the one where he argues that it’s actually good for everyone).
I’ll just remind you that his reasoning was that cutting Pokémon is due to TPC and GF making brand new animations for the games, which NL itself is now proving wrong.
Yay for coherence ✌🏻

I still am not that fussed over the cull, and I think it has been exaggerated a lot, but I sure as hell am fussed about your hollow, clickbait (in the broadest sense possible) articles.

Edit: also, I have no problem with them recycling the animations, as it’s simply the sensible and efficient thing to do. It just irks me that people lie to justify their theories.

@Pod Of course, the point I was trying to present wasn't that Pokémon have updated 2k textures, it was to prove that the models are no different and if they were new, then it'd just be a waste of time.

Whether you are excited for these games or not, there is simply no denying that graphically they are pretty damn sad.

Lol. Has anyone mentioned that the game is not finished yet? Especially the E3 demo and trailer, which had to be completed earlier for the show.

Everyone keep up the outrage, and they will release updated videos closer to release...

@Cathousemaster This game is only 3 months away. Do you seriously think this is going to look significantly better in 3 months?

@Superzone13 Let's also mention games usually go gold 7-10 weeks before they're released. 3 months is just not enough.

Pokémon has also never drastically changed between the E3 build and the final product.

Can someone remind me why we're severely and intensely critisizing animation frames in the newest biggest entry of the largest IP in gaming? Or why we're so upset it has a reduced fluffy animal quantity versus the theoretically possible after like 8 generations of fluffy animals? Or how this somehow affects playing the game?

Is it because of Sakurai? Is Smash to blame? Or is it just because it's a Wednesday on the Internet?

@Cathousemaster I've said it before, if a game trailer has "game footage not final" written on it, you can be 100% sure the game will look exactly like that when it's released (if not worse, in the infamous case of Watch Dogs).

@NEStalgia You know you've lost the argument when you have to compare the game you're arguing for with FIFA

@NEStalgia "Can someone remind me why we're severely and intensely critisizing animation frames in the newest biggest entry of the largest IP in gaming?"

Seems reasonable that "the newest biggest entry of the largest IP in gaming" deserves being placed under intense scrutiny.

I'm just going to speculate and assume that these new "Higher Quality Animations" are a mix of three things:

• Dynamaxing (because this is GF we're talking about)
• The new Camping/Nintendogs3.0
• New storyline cutscene animations (fist-bumping Scorbunny/etc)

1) Dynamaxing looks uninspired and only necessary for cashing in on Japan's Kaiju craze. Not worth cutting Pokemon. Expand on Mega's, expand on triple battle mechanics for the football theme or whatever, but yet another recycled, battle-only, temporary click-to-win mechanic is just lazy.

2) Investing significant dev time on a brand new PokePetting feature is a complete waste. We already have two versions of it in past games. More importantly, with the transition to a proper home console, it's high time Game Freak invests a generation of dev time into incorporating Pokemon interaction into the overworld, instead of making yet another flavor of an old gimmick completely removed from the main overworld experience.

3) Lastly we have storyline cutscenes. Pokemon's storylines have been mind-numbing since XY. That GF is probably spending 50% of their dev time and budget on even more hand-holding and one-and-done cutscenes is a complete waste of resources in my humble opinion.

I don't want to watch my character fist-bump Scorbunny, I want to be able to interact with him myself! It is a video game after all. The whole point is to be interactive, to have agency in your actions and experiences. I'm completely against the fact that with each passing generation since XY, GF has sunk more and more resources into cutscenes that we have no control over and that we only see once. Mind you, these cutscenes are bloated with one-dimensional characters, brainless exposition, cliche'd villains, and boring plot lines.

Mark my words, I have ALWAYS had problems with Game Freak and past games ever since 2013, but I am just now voicing these complaints because Game Freak is just now cutting a core feature and giving disingenuous reasons that just don't hold any water when held under scrutiny.

@JaxonH I just wanted a clear answer how you approach this whole thing, but I'm guessing from your tone that deep down you're not comfortable with it yourself. I, for one, would have a hard time giving money to someone who lied to me in cold blood.
By the way, most of the time people are allowed to do bad things not because someone actively supported them, but because the majority was indifferent to the wrongdoing.

@nintendoknife
I care about discussion concerning the game, and I care about providing my input on the topic at hand.

Dont mistake caring about that for caring about some other aspect of the game. If I cared, then I'd say I care. If I'm cold I'll say I'm cold. If I'm hungry I'll say I'm hungry. Who the hell are you to tell me I'm hungry when I say I'm not? You just have to force other's opinions into a box because you dont know what to do with the honesty of an opinion that clashes with your own

@Preposterous
So, your argument is, "deep down your opinion isn't really what you say it is, because I can't argue with an honest opinion differing from my own".

There is no "deep down". I wear my heart on my sleeve, I say what I mean and I mean what I say. The question is, can you handle that? Without defaulting to the "well you dont really think that" defense? Yes, yes I really do. Crazy to think not everyone feels the same way or shares the same opinion, I know. But there are better ways to cope with differing opinions than to attack the validity of someone else's for not aligning with your own.

@Ulysses Yeah, I think most people here think of it that way. We've all complained about Game Freak cutting corners and even going so far as to laugh in the face of their customers with the Battle Frontier signpost in ORAS, but this is just offensive. As @Yorumi wrote, this situation is the straw that broke the camel's back for lots and lots of long time fans.

@JaxonH Of course you do, that's how rationalization and denial work.

@JaxonH Hunger is not an opinion. Neither is the fact that Game Freak has openly lied to their customers / long time fans about their 'new animations', 'new models', 'new balance', etc. Just for the record, 'care' is not an opinion either.

This is the main thing that bugs me about the cull, I don’t mind them reducing the amount of available Pokémon in an effort to increase quality but it’s obvious that isn’t the case.

Battles still look very static, the Pokémon models are the same as Gen 6 (from like what, 2013?) and the attack animations are really stiff. The overworld looks nice but it doesn’t feel like a huge leap from Sun/Moon.

Compare that to how Yokai Watch on Switch looks. I know almost nothing about that franchise but the way it looks so dynamic has me sold.

There are things to be excited for with the new Pokemon but there are also plenty of bummers. There’s a semi open world, but a Pokémon cull! It’s set in England, but Megas have been dropped in favour of a bad gimmick.

@nintendoknife I don't think you understood what @JaxonH was trying to say. He was speaking abstractly.

@Yorumi thanks, but what I wanted was polygon counting. Even this way, I admit which this upscaling looks good. Let's finish the discussion here, because what I wanted like proof obviously nobody here have, nobody talking here is a developer.
@TheBlue10 You deserve some respect. Your answer is technical and you tried really answer and not just denny argument of other people like many here. Even this way, the in-game models are different from the original models and choose the limits of polygons the version will have and test it, debug, and other things which even for big developers being more easy which for indies, because tools we suppose they have, is not easy task. This, because the animation is made to the in-game version. No rational developer will spend time animating something not able to run in s hardware. People here are talking like conversions are automatic thing, but the reality I know of programming or converting is not that easy. Bloodstained, for example, have the same models from the other plataforms in the Switch but look to how the Switch version was released.

@Preposterous
rationalization ... denial

Things people do who actually care about something. Yet... what about the people who actually don't care? Those people you can't argue with, because their opinion is genuine.

So your only recourse is tell them they actually care when they dont, desperately clinging to a lie to portray an opinion you dont agree with as invalid, because you're too insecure to accept anyone who thinks differently than you

@nintendoknife
Uh, I never disputed they lied or didn't lie. I never made any comment on the matter whatsoever. You keep bringing up "they lied" as if I claimed otherwise. I never even brought the subject up. If you want to have a discussion about that, go talk to somebody else.

All I did was say I'm excited for the game and think its unreasonable to keep adding more Pokemon infinitely forever.

Agree, disagree, I dont really care. I didn't come here to argue with people over who's opinion is "correct". Because I'm mature enough to accept everyone has an asshole and a nasty opinion to go with it. I voice mine, you voice yours, but when you start attacking me for mine, we have a problem.

@FlashBoomerang Okay, what you can do is download the ROM for Pokémon Ultra Sun and the ROM for Pokémon Let's Go (or, dump those games yourself, so that you don't have to download them), next use a program that can extract the ROMs into their pieces, then look for where the actual models are stored, open them in a program for 3D modelling, and compare the amount of polygons.

Almost 250 replies good lord calm down guys

@Yorumi I think there's two kinds of Pokemon fans. The kind of Pokemon fan that enjoys playing Pokemon games, and the kind of Pokemon fan that has "decades invested in pokemon." I picture this person wearing a Pikachu backpack, a pokeball cap, and randomly stopping people to list stats of various pokemon when walking through a movie theater.

I'm the former fan. There's no "investment". I buy the game, I play the game, I move on, and start the next game new. There's nothing "invested" in it, each game is a self contained universe.

I think part of the disconnect between GF and the (internet) world is GF builds Pokemon for those players primarily, but the latter type of player expects the game to be this competitive thing meant for them.

Heck, I've never even bred a Pokemon. I just explore the world and play the game, and this one looks like a blast! I imagine that's the majority of the series' customers. When Team Rocket/Flare/Whoever is defeated the game ends to me, same as defeating the big bad in any RPG.

@JaxonH But why even comment on an article that is unrelated to anything you mentioned? This article is about Game Freak lying through their teeth about their 'new models' and 'new animations', not about whether or not it's feasible to keep including all Pokémon in every game as the total amount of Pokémon grows ever larger.

@Octane LOL, it's still the #1 seller though. Could be worse. Could be NHL.....

Death, taxes, FIFA, and Pokemon are the 4 things in life you can count on, though. One of these things is unlike the others.

@NEStalgia The first one, that's the only one that can be quick and painless.

@NEStalgia Wow, real classy move to divide "Pokémon fans" up into two categories - well-adjusted members of society, and basement-dwelling nerds - and also place yourself on the "well-adjusted members of society" side. Someone enjoys playing Pokémon games a bit longer than simply beating the Pokémon league? They must be mentally handicapped!

@JaxonH it's less that a line "has to be drawn" and more that the situation entitles the creators to draw a line anywhere they decide it's getting a bit too much to handle for them. They don't even have to explain and almost every recent article on SwoShie topic has seemed to suggest that they would have been much better off not explaining anything. Alas, even a comparatively successful company like TPC can't seem to afford to say "we just believed it was best; take it or leave it" instead of talking trying to appease the fan scourge. And we continue to deal with opinion anthologies from the customer culture that has all but lost the ability for civil wallet voting. Simply steering clear of something that doesn't sound like it will be in line with your hopes and expectations for the price is rarely an option when obsessions like fanship factor in.

@Aaronnnnn
Mostly due to petty arguments, insults and miscommunication.

These arguments have seriously deteriorated, made worse by contrarians jumping in to insult and de-legitimize (calling people you disagree with autists/kids/etc).

@NEStalgia
You have described the casual majority of Pokemon fans: people who jump in for the surface-level experience (not a bad surface!) as opposed to the hardcore minority of fans who invest heavily in the nitty-gritty mechanics like breeding, team building, battling, etc.

The disconnect you are referring to is the fact that Game Freak has been realizing since 2013 that skimping on hardcore features like Battle Frontier won't have any effect on sales numbers at the end of the day. This latest feature cut (Pokemon compatibility) stings particularly hard for us because the reasons given appear disingenuous from what we have seen so far.

C’mon NL. You could do better than posting an article like this. The article title and subheading are supporting an outrage that doesn’t seem worth it. All game developers recycle animations and assets.

@NotTelevision
This article is as low-effort and unprofessional as it gets. However, criticizing the animations have merit since Masuda is claiming higher quality animations was one of the reasons why Pokemon were cut. When taking a closer look at the battle animations, both the models and animations for old Pokemon are the same since 2013.

@Yorumi @Ulysses Coming at it from someone not among the "hardcore" who does not understand the "hardcore" and doubtfully ever well, I can't help but feel that the hardcore invented themselves from a game that was never really meant for that market, as the internet of gamers often tends to do. There's this OCD component to a lot of gaming that invents unintended challenges to games and thinks that's "the best part of the game!" My sense is that GF got caught up in placating that phenomenon for a while and eventually realized, that's not what Pokemon is, nor what it ever was supposed to be, and they were spending more and more time and resources focusing game elements on nuances that the majority of customers were never even going to see rather than big splashy fun things for everyone to play with.

I love Pokemon but let's be serious about it: It's a kid-friendly SMT clone. Except SMT is way, way better at doing the hardcore, stat grinding thing.

I get that some are annoyed that Masuda "lied" about animations causing all the work...but it seems silly to judge taht they aren't reanimating a lot of things based on that video clip as well. Inventory utilization and things - parts of the game for walking in the field and such...none of that was necessarily animated before. I know Masuda is known to take the path of least resistance, but it seems likely a lot of work does still have to be applied to each pokemon.

@nintendoknife Your defensive rant against a comment not made to you aside, I'm pretty sure grown adults complaining about animations in what is ostensibly children's game interfering with every one of 20+ years of creatures not being included beyond the hundreds already included probably is well categorized as "basement dwelling nerd"....in fact that's pretty much the archetypal definition.

@nhSnork
You can tell the state of the Pokemon fanship when you get attacked from multiple vectors for simply saying you're excited to play the game. That shows the mindset of the fanbase (note: toxic minority of the fanbase- plenty of fans are reasonable and respect differing opinions): anyone or anything which doesnt conform to their opinions concerning "what should" or "should not" will be attacked, harrassed, provoked, and persecuted to no end.

Toxic doesnt even begin to describe it. No wonder there's such outrage. Look at how Pokemon diehards react to someone who simply likes the game. Not "attacks their opinion." Not "defends against their complaints". Merely saying "I'm excited, and I'm not outraged. Others are free to be upset, I'm just saying I'm not". Even that is enough to spur a thousand minions after you.

I have completely given up on new Pokemon games. Sun and moon disappointed me, Ultra Sun Ultra Moon I never even thought about buying, and this is just raw garbage. I do hate the fact that so many fans are ignoring the fact game freak lied to us during Let's Go. When I complained, and others complained, about Visible Encounters in the Let's Go series, we were directly told that is for Let's Go and that the core game would return in 2019. They even made the first trailer for sword and shield appear to have Random Encounters before proving they lied to us about that during E3.

I honestly don't see why anybody should be happy with these games, but unfortunately that's not going to stop moms and aunts and grandmothers from buying them once Xmas comes. This thing is too big and has now reached Bethesda level of inadequacy providing a paycheck for the company.

I have completely turned my back on the series. If this is actually affecting anybody else I would recommend the same. Because continuing to come back just in the hopes that they return to what you would like, that sounds like an abusive relationship to me.

@JaxonH
Not the fanbase, just the bad apples who have let emotions get the better of themselves.

@NEStalgia More or less same situation here. Pokemon games are JRPGs to me, and while filling the Pokedex is an appealing goal to try grinding, I have no more interest in training and tuning the collected mons for PvP than many other people do, say, in Uncharted multiplayer. Although to be fair, I have limited interest in online multiplayer in general - by nature and definition, it's a gameplay experience that makes you reliant (to various extents) on someone else's time and will to play the video game in question, and as someone whose life and work schedule places great value in the ability to start and pause games on his own terms and whims, I can't help but find that a bit restrictive. 😅

And when it comes to "catching 'em all", my oft-admitted whimsical bias of playing franchises in release order can make this task look more tedious at times than it was likely meant to be. Maybe that's why the prospect of catching/transferring fewer hundreds of deja vus while still getting to hunt down a bunch of new species has yet to sound like a drawback to me.

PS. Can't agree with "SMT clone" point from another comment of yours, though. Pokemon was reportedly inspired by bug catching whereas most of the catchemalls in SMT have always revolved around interactions with the supernatural (and the numerous ramifications thereof). I think these are sufficiently different domains in terms of game design goals and philosophies, even if Game Freak may have looked at SMT's experience for some design lessons for all we know. Then again, the circle was complete several years later when Atlus themselves decided to try something a bit more "Pokemonesque" and produced Devil Children.

@JaxonH
You know it's bad when people start comparing Masuda "abusing the fans" to a husband being a domestic wife abuser because of the National Dex. That's not even the most extreme example I've seen, but I'll just leave it there.

@LordGeovanni
Random encounters are in Sword/Shield, but not in the Wild Area.

@westman98
Based on Treehouse footage, the Wild Area will also have random encounters in the grass. All of the routes will have both roaming Pokemon and random encounters. The unique aspect to the Wild Area is the open world-esque scale and rotating content like NPC's/Pokemon/items/max raid battles.

@Ulysses
Hmmmm okay, it seems like there are.

I guess the barrage of Wingull gifs had me (and a lot of other people apparently) convinced that the Wild Area was only filled with T-posing flying Pokemon lol

@nhSnork I mean, Pokemon, is very officially, a JRPG. I'm not sure what else anyone thinks of it as.... The game was slightly designed around PvP vis a vis the Game Boy Link Cable, but it was intended as two real world friends fighting my collection vs your collection. It was never intended to be this international tournament ladder of internet-driven community-driven organized, competitive cookoo fighting contest (had to edit it so the auto censor didn't strip the word ). GFs biggest error was probably to accidentally promote such things starting with B&W. I've never once seen Pokemon as an "online" "multiplayer" or "competitive" game. It's a JRPG - that happens to have some optional online/competitive stuff, just as you said, like Uncharted.

It really is two different mindsets on the game. On "the internet" the latter seems to be the "majority" but I'm pretty sure we're the majority of actual paying customers, and GameFreak seems very well aware of that.

@JaxonH Could be worse. It could be a Smash fan thread. Or whispers Playstation...........

@JaxonH You don't care so much you have produced a couple dozen posts under this article alone, probably close to a hundred overall.

Wait, that wasn't already obvious that, that's what they had done?

@NEStalgia Alright, next time you want to make any complaint about a new -insert series you like- game, realise that voicing complaints about something you've liked for a long time is the life of a basement-dwelling nerd. Virtually all video games are made for children, even those with 18+ age ratings.

@westman98
It has been confirmed that every area of the game has no Random Encounters at all. The closest we get is the ! in the grass, which is technically a Symbol Encounter because you have the ability to refuse to battle. Similar to how fishing works in the game, you can fish but you cannot guarantee a specific Pokemon.

Edit: I figured a link providing proof of my statement would help. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/e3-pokemon-sword-and-shield-dont-have-random-encou/1100-6467394/

@Yorumi Stadium isn't a Pokemon main series game, it's a spinoff series intended to be very different. If this were called Pokemon Stadium Shield there would be a point. that kind of solidifies my point - that Stadium existed as a SPINOFF to provide that experience that's not provided in the RPGs shows that's a different gameplay style.

Crystal had that sort of concept but it was just that endgame bonus challenge content (and the majority of players never touch engame bonus challenge content, it's a nice extra "thanks for playing" kind of thing added for people who love the game.)

Global Link is kind of what I was talking about though where they erred. They accidentally encouraged that kind of expectation in the game, and decided to try to accomodate that player base without really understanding the effort, cost, fact you can never please that group, and without really understanding that group. I feel like they've decided they weren't really interested in going in that direction after seeing how it really works and decided to back away from that and return to the original ideas.

The internet sees that as: "This is horrible they're taking away Pokemon! Who cares about the stupid easy RPG stuff we're only here for competition!"

GF sees it as: "Yeah, this competition thing is getting in the way of the real RPG we sell, and that market is way too difficult to please, and we're not making fighting games, we make RPGs, that's not really our thing, we're going to get out of that attempt now."

But I'm seeing now the toxicity of the fanbase in general. Somehow Pokemon was reinvented by the internet mob into something OTHER than a JRPG. GF doesn't want to make the game something other than a JRPG. And most players are trying to buy a JRPG. Thus, no discussion of Pokemon on the internet will ever end well.

@Ulysses
Unfortunately, those are not Random Encounters. Those are symbol encounters where you have to select to battle after you see an audio or video cue. They've already spoken about Random Encounters not being available in the game even in the non-wild area routes. That is the chief reason why I have decided to not buy this game.

Edit: I figured leaving a link showing some proof of my statement would help. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/e3-pokemon-sword-and-shield-dont-have-random-encou/1100-6467394/

@nintendoknife I wouldn't say most games are made for children, but it's very true that the average age demographic for games is teens and tweens (Pokemon is more aimed at younger children than average, and Nintendo at large skews older in demographic than average.)

But there's a difference between making comments about disliking aspects of a game and how it stacks up to previous entries versus the hand wringing in this thread that the sky is falling because "Everyone is not here!" of people ready to skewer the producer for being caught with some duplicated animations after saying animations were a limiting factor. There's a rational "I dislike how they implemented open world in this game, and it's not faithful to how the game traditionally has played with focused exploration" and then there's "OMG OMG OMG Zinkbunny is missing EFF MASUDA THAT LYING SACK!!"

@Preposterous
Wow you really are desperate to believe "I care". That's a silly, juvenile, skin deep argument to make.

All but my original post have been replies to people like you, attacking me out of insecurity. I could make 1,000 posts, doesnt have any correlation to "caring". I care about voicing my opinion and responding to toxic creeps on the internet to attack anyone with a different opinion.

Like saying you ate a hamburger at McDonalds, you must "care" what their insurance policy is. Ridiculous schoolyard logic.

Ya, you got me. I "care" because responded to other posts mentioning me /s

Way to go Inspector Gadget, you're one eureka away from Sherlock Holmes status

@NEStalgia
The point you bring up about the toxic obsession with a franchise or brand name is both true and extremely widespread in today's society. Internet and, more importantly, social media culture has built up an emotional, tribal, unhealthy dependance to many, many franchises and products, ranging from Apple devices to movie franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

I could go on for a few more paragraphs dissecting the problem, but ultimately, what is relevant to this discussion is whether enough hardcore fans can financially obligate Game Freak to deliver on certain features, regardless of Game Freak's original intention. And unfortunately, the hardcore fans are greatly outnumbered by casual ones. This only exacerbates the emotional responses since hardcore fans feel both slighted and powerless to stop it.

Where the minority does contain influence is in brand enthusiasm. Let's get serious here: everyone, down to the last human, are all affected by primal desires for consensus, and care about what others think. Furthermore, internet culture is centered around influencers and small but vocal groups to trickle down enthusiasm for products or brands. If the "consensus" of a franchise or product changes, then that sudden turnabout in the break-neck pace of internet culture can have serious financial consequences. This is the only course of action that hardcore fans can turn to: drumming up enough negative PR that the brand image changes, forcing the relevant companies to take their complaints seriously.

Granted, it's never okay to attack, harass or insult developers or other people in the midst of this desperate Hail Mary.

I am not sure if a few have missed that this is a Switch game, not a new 3ds game. The quality i got from the demo clips is underwhelmingly bad, like some cheap mobile game. Not only are the move animation and graphics bad with models popping out from existence in some battles, they havent even given Pokemons proper cries. I dont know what to say, if i cared about pokemon id be very disappointed.

@NEStalgia You seem to gloss over the 'Pokémon World Championships' events entirely. You could probably consider the people who go there as most likely to be actual hardcore nerds, but the events are organised by none other than The Pokémon Company themselves and have pretty impressive cash prizes (for a children's video game). To claim that the competitive metagame is something invented by the players is either dishonest or wrong.

@NEStalgia (other post) Have you read the article, or skipped to the comments? Whether all Pokémon are in the games or not is not that important in the end and is not really the point in the first place. However, if Game Freak claims that the reason they've dropped a staple feature of the series because they had to spend so much time on creating new models and animations, and they are then easily called out on this statement simply by comparing footage of the 3DS games to that of the Switch games, where no new models or animations are to be found, that is what gets people riled up, and why shouldn't it? If they had dropped the "all Pokémon are always technically available in all games" feature and claimed that it was because they spent a lot of time to make the games themselves better, by creating better looking animations, by making the games not lag all the time, by improving this or that mechanic, by balancing the competitive metagame to make more than just a dozen Pokémon usable, and then actually did those things, far fewer people would be complaining, because that would have been a good tradeoff. The problem is that there is no tradeoff here, they just took out a staple feature, gave nothing in return yet lied that they did. That is unacceptable regardless of franchise or intended audience.

@NEStalgia It's rare to see someone so openly admit to not only creating strawmen to easily beat in his mind, but also repeating "I'm rational" so many times it begins to look like a joke.
I honestly have no idea where all those "Why are you complaining about this thing I don't care about? Be rational and indifferent like me, you ridiculous person" folks come from. Do you personally attend protests in real life and harass people about caring about something? You're just adding fuel to the fire and then wonder why it's gotten so hot.

@JaxonH Then just admit to being a bad person who doesn't mind making things worse for everyone else and move on.

Honestly im just excited for the New Pokemons with their New Evolutions and will fill up my new team with all new generations of each element with 3 evolutions each haha! The old pokemon already bores me, so i dont really mind. I guess they might introduce old pokemons in the future via DLC or something. Im even up for it if they create a game with just the whole bunch of new pokemons only

@LordGeovanni
They aren't random encounter in the strictest of senses, but the Pokemon you see will still be random each time you run into the exclamation point.

Involuntary random encounters are far outdated just in my opinion, and always removed agency from the player.

@Yorumi Thanks for that Citra comparison link!

@Yorumi @NEStalgia easier to conclude that there is one component the franchise has evolved (no pun intended) and supported to some extent, but whether it's become the indispensable core of the franchise in the process or vocally mistaken for one by a portion of the audience (no matter how big) is another matter.

@JaxonH again, fanship is an obsession at the end of the day. A most proverbial mechanism of it is latching onto certain aspect(s) of a work and craving for recurrent doses of it while developing aggressive possessive jealousy towards both the creators who have the nerve to shift their focus to something else and whatever present/new audiences who may find themselves in the market for said something else at a given period. You're more or less finding yourself on the receiving side as the latter here - although while unpleasant, I'd say it's always less scary than waking up to find oneself on the delivering side instead. Take my word as an accursed fan of numerous things in Fiction, such moments of regained (and, what's worse, always potentially just TEMPORARY) sobriety are nasty moments to live through.

@Preposterous considering that "everyone else" in such tirades usually translates to "every fan out there", I'm sure the paragraph fits ME to a T. So if you're craving for such an admission, you can always have mine, unironically. 😏

@Ashunera84 Everyone knows that Sword and Shield will be wildly successful. What people are so aggravated about is that GameFreak can do the bare minimum and always sell millions

Can you all imagine the amount of work that goes into modeling pokemon for every game? also coming up with NEW models for each new pokemon to be introduced? I get it, we all want refreshed things, but I went into this assuming that a lot of models would be reused. The same goes for Pokemon Go and Let's Go.

Non issue.

@Gelo "Im even up for it if they create a game with just the whole bunch of new pokemons only" That would be great but unfortunately that is not what's happening, and it's most likely never going to happen anymore because despite Black and White objectively being the peak of the series, they didn't sell as well and so Game Freak is never bringing back the 'regional Pokémon only until you beat the game' type of games.

@phartsy As countless people have already written in this thread and many others before, the problem is not that they reuse the models (that was the point of future-proofing them after all), the problem is that they lied about supposedly creating entirely new models when they didn't.

@phartsy and noone would care if gf had not cited new gfx and animations as a reason why not all pokemon are in the game.
I even think they should reuse assets that were build for this reason like the 3d models that were created for xy.

@Ulysses
As I stated before, they're not Random Encounters at all. They are symbol encounters. What you refer to as "voluntary". This actually makes the games themselves weaker over time as well. I'm not going to get into the long Dramatics of the differencesoh, it would end up taking up possibly an hour of my time just the type it all out. Regardless, it can be summarized as: I feel symbol encounters and visible encounters damage the core values of an RPG in general and contribute towards those games being dumbed down and made easier for all participants.

Looking forward to the new games!

@nhSnork I think Yorumi accidentally found that part of the issue is that OTHER games by OTHER companies have helped set that expectation....not Game Freak's games. Just because it says "Pokemon" doesn't mean it's a Game Freak RPG. I wonder if that set some of this confusion up long ago?

As for fans...this isn't even a new audience wanting something new. This is people wanting the main component it's always been, while some insist it's always been something else

@nintendoknife Pokemon Wold Championships, yes, I'm aware of that, and of TPCs promotion of that. However that gets back to the weird corporate hierarchy of the Pokemon brand. TPC is not GameFreak. There is some mutual ownership between the two. Nintendo may love the idea. The third party investors not associated with GF may love the idea. Thus TPC supports the idea. But Game Freak is Game Freak, they are not The Pokemon Company. They are not Nintendo. They are their own company, and the main line pokemon games are made by Game Freak. What TPC does or doesn't continue to endorse (which includes the spinoffs under the brand GF is not involved with like Colosseum/Stadium) is not necessarily a factor in GFs decisions.

Yes I read the article and watched the videos. I see everyone ready to skewer Masuda for "lying", yet one video showing similar animations does not tell us for certain they did not have to re-animate here, either. This is an internet "haha this looks the same so we gotcha!" video. We were not in their studio. We do not know what work was required or why. We have an interent gotcha video showing similarity.

@Ulysses Well, I similarly will never understand "internet/social media" culture and it's adherence to influencers. Maybe because I'm old enough to remember the world before it. Then again, so is Yorumi...but here we are....

@Yorumi Again, those were not main series games. Coluseum may be "an RPG", but it's still a side series. If anything it's like Persona Q to SMT. It's an RPG, it's a Persona game. But it's not remotely similar nor is it intended to be part of the main series. Let alone part of the SMT proper series.

Maybe the fan lament is over not getting a new game in that series, rather than trying to shoehorn GameFreak's JRPGs into being other genres.

I mean... I guess in theory they could have painstakingly redone all of the animations on Switch to match the 3DS ones. I don't believe for a minute this was the case, but considering all of their models were just updated on the 3DS to be viewed at 4k only for them to redo them all for Switch (or so they say), it's possible they just did something stupid like that.

LOL @Ryu_Niiyama be like

@Preposterous
admit you're a bad person

Says the guy relentlessly harassing anyone interested in playing a game. But I'm bad for wanting to play it...

People who think like you are a scourge on humanity.

I feel sorry for people who create video games, they have a hard life with their work constantly being under scrutiny by gamers. If people didn't mention it I probably wouldn't have noticed one bit.

@LordGeovanni
I disagree. I [personally] believe random encounters were a necessity born out of hardware limitations at the time, and that at this point in modern gaming, it sacrifices immersion for the sake of legacy.

I would actually enjoy hearing a few of your arguments for it.

@JaxonH I really hope you're being obtuse just for the sake of trolling. If you seriously think my comments are "relentless harassing" or that you have written nothing that could reasonably upset others, then you're either sheltered or suffer from a victim complex (which would actually make a lot of sense).
Just let me tell you that your comments have collected a hefty amount of "5+"; you're a bad guy to someone, whether you like it, or not.

@NEStalgia JaxonH beat me to that one. Poor dude is always the punching bag for I don't know...liking games around here. Not on their watch here at NintendoLoathe! Still:

@amiiboacid I'm aware of what people are upset about.

I'm also aware of how INSANE it is to expect a developer to have over one thousand uniquely animated creature models updated for a new generation on a new console. Most games don't even have 10% of that, especially keeping in mind that the game has non-battle animations for all of them and possibly even more for whatever this game's version of Pokemon-amie is.

Basically any game dev anywhere will tell you it's a colossal, even unprecedented, undertaking.

The models and animations are the same ones being used since Gen 6. It's not really a question.

In addition, it's quite standard practice to have these things made high quality, then down scaled to run properly with the hardware.

Part of the backlash is many fans are well aware the explanation given for the dex cut isn't believable.

I've said so before though, the real problem is despite the cut, the game doesn't really seem significantly improved from past entries, it kind of looks the same, upscaled S/M with giant Pokemon (a by design disposable mechanic), and wild area.

@NEStalgia The video in this article just shows a couple of examples. You can easily compare for yourself by opening up one of the 3DS mainline Pokémon games (or the Pokédex 3D software, which lets you zoom in on the models and turn them in any direction), and Pokémon Let's Go and/or the trailer for Sword and Shield, then use the same Pokémon and/or the same moves. The same things will show up on both screens, one just has a higher resolution screen and higher quality textures on the Pokémon models. You can keep saying that "we don't know for sure because we weren't in the studio", but this is the laziest kind of cop-out, especially when it seems you've already forgotten that barely a couple of years ago, Game Freak were boasting about how they had future-proofed the graphics side of things. One of the main reasons the Pokémon 3DS games had so much lag was because the models were of such ridiculously high quality that the 3DS couldn't handle them. @TheBlue10 higher up in this thread even lists the exact numbers for some of the models and what average polygon counts are like for 3D models on various consoles.

If I found out several enemies or main characters in BotW 2 were reusing animations from the original, I'm not sure I would care in the slightest. Why is this anyone's concern?

@Yodalovesu Because Nintendo didn't claim that they deleted half of Breath of the Wild 2's world map because they had to spend so much time working on new animations.

@Preposterous
You literally just called someone a bad person for wanting to play Pokemon...

Let that sink in. Ponder on that. And you say you've done nothing to harass anyone for their opinion?

If you can't find the self awareness to see YOU are the troll here, YOU are the extremist, YOU are the terrible person... then there's no hope left for you.

The main series really needs to stop being annual and allow more development time for more than just "hey, its another region with some kinda new battle gimmick guys!". Lots of fresh takes on the Pokemon formula could be done, but as is the series gets more same-y and never really evolves as fast as it should.

Remember the days when a zillion interesting spin off games bridged the gap between the main series entries? Go back to that and give Game Freak more time to do something bigger and grander with the series, not that play it safe route we've been getting for years...

@Ulysses
I do agree that Random Encounters were a necessity of Legacy Hardwares. However RPGs were designed in that Legacy time. The major aspect to take from my point here is that RPGs have existed even prior to computers, which means that we have actually drastically changed a genre of gaming that has existed for well over 50 years minimum. There are three aspects of RPGs that have changed since video games took over, which in my opinion has caused RPGs to be made "easier". Those three concepts are visible encounters, the ability to save anywhere, and the ability to hold on to as many items as you wish.

For Random Encounters versus Visible Encounters, visible encounters encourage players to not have as much battle as they used to, and then psychologically encourages people to avoid battle as well. For those that just dislike the battling, they avoid them by default. Now instead of encountering and defeating approximately 30 zubats through Mt.Moon, these players may only encounter and defeat two or three. The psychological ramifications of visible encounters causes players to believe that if they encounter a battleoh, it is actually their fault instead of it being an inevitable occurrence. So called "they failed" to avoid the encounter. A perfect example of how this is a failure of game design is Dragon Quest 7. The original game on PlayStation had Random Encounters, the Remake on 3DS had visible encounters. Because the devs never adjusted the dungeon layouts, you could actually have 9 or 10 visible Encounters in an area that you would normally get one random encounter. This is an extreme in the opposite direction then my statements, however this just details how visible encounters are not currently balanced in video games. (DQ7's issue here was that the visible encounters would spot you and run into you faster than you are able to get through the corridor).

My second opinion is the ability to save anywhere. This has developed through necessity of "pickup put-down" gameplay. The necessity to be able to dip in and dip out of a video game at your convenience. RPGs however have very limited ways to prevent save scumming and therefore cause the greatest amount of difficulty breaking from the ability to save anywhere you want. An example I can give for Pokemon is that the moment you walk in front of a legendary and Save, that legendary is now guaranteed to be yours if you're willing to continue battling until you catch it. It sounds like a very benign thing, but it is an absolute 100% chance you will get the Pokemon you want, so long as you save scum. Part of the Nuzlocke challenge was developed to prevent save scumming through these very options.

The third option I feel is a failure RPGs is the infinite inventory system currently accepted. When I played Pokemon Blue, I overextended myself in the Elite Four. I was power training (aka Switch Training) 5 pokemon using my level 96 Charizard. Lorelei got a lucky freeze on my Charizard and I was completely helpless to stop her from winning the entire battle. The reason for this is that I did not prepare myself to have a frozen Pokemon. While that sounds like a very simple thing in today's inventory system, in the original generation of Pokemon there were very few items that healed freeze. In the more recent games alone, if I had gone through the exact same situation I would have easily had 30+ freeze heal items in my bag, which is directly opposed to generation one where I had to remove them to make more inventory space.

A combination of all three of these concepts allows for people to not plan their adventure in advance, dodge encounters that are too difficult for them, and then save scum their way through the game, or save scum back through the dungeon to heal, when they should be adequately punished for overextending themselves. I am not suggesting larger punishments than are already known, but the ability to save scum and the ability to never plan in advance has caused RPG gamers to become lazy on the Tactical front.

@graysoncharles
I disagree with your statement that game freak alone can make core games. If that is the case, we should no longer consider Zelda Oracle of Seasons, Zelda Oracle of Ages, or Zelda the Minish Cap as core Zelda games. I would say those are definitely more core then games like Link's crossbow training.

@graysoncharles Don't tell me you thought your insightful comments along the lines of "you guys are arguing about this again?", "stop being entitled" and "you just don't know how it all works" are actually useful in any manner? You're probably the last person to moderate this discussion, I'm afraid.

@JaxonH I've called you a bad person for admitting to know what's the issue and still insisting that people have no right to complain just because you're content (vide the McDonald's example). Now go on, continue to simplify things to put yourself in a good light.
I admit to feeling very strong about anti-consumer practices. Your labelling me as an extremist is no different from EA crying about fans unjustly fighting against the "surprise mechanics".

Some of y’all really need to hit that ignore button. Is it that serious?

@Preposterous
What??? I said the exact OPPOSITE. I said REPEATEDLY people DO have the right to complain and I said I TAKE NO ISSUE WITH THAT!

Its not ME taking issue with the opinions of OTHERS here, its YOU taking issue with MINE. I have done NOTHING except say I'm excited to play the game, and if others are upset, that's fine. You're like my crazy ex girlfriend who would hit me in the head with a coffee pot then call the cops and accuse me of throwing a coffee pot at her. Are you related to her somehow??

McDonalds example? What??? You have ZERO clue what you're talking about. That had NOTHING to do with saying others can't complain.

You have to be the stupidest person I've ever talked to or you just live in delusion land where in your fantasy mind people do imaginary things.

I'm gonna do what I should have done 12 posts ago and block your toxic ass. Goodbuy. Can't say it's been a pleasure.

@Preposterous
Let's not equate actual gambling with whatever Gamefreak is doing.

@JaxonH What a spectacular way to show the power of your arguments.

@westman98 It's about being an enabler. EA wasn't all that bad 20 years ago, but people content with mediocrity and bad business practices allowed them to become what they are now.

Doesn't surprise me one bit.

I like turtles.

This is honestly just mentally exhausting.

Both sides have been unnecessarily rude one way for another. Only a few people that contributed to this have actually put an effort to be nice(er). Honestly I don't know why I try to contribute to this, Smash is already mentally exausting for me with their constant toxic character hate.

@Angelic_Lapras_King They've been developing this game for quite some time, though. Remember when they announced it was in development at E3 two years ago? Yes, GF had an "annual" release with Pokemon LGP/E, but I don't think they had their main team on it.

On the other hand, they really should have had all of their team on Sword/Shield if it was going to turn out like this. lol

As much as I love Pokemon I'd be thrilled if they stopped making anything new today.

@Ryu_Niiyama hats off to your honesty and bravery 😂
Hope it won’t cost you the unbelievable harassment @JaxonH had to bear 😅😰
(@Jaxon: don’t listen to that troll, anyone in their right mind who reads the comments will know who is in the right and who’s in the wrong 😃)

@Ryu_Niiyama lol. I don't always agree with jaxs enthusiasm but dang .....

This has to seriously be the worst fandom ever. And i don't understand why. It's like everyone wants something other than an RPG. And somehow i never saw this before!

@nintendoknife yes the models were made, but we do not know about the animation frames. There's many reasons they may have had to do it from scratch for the new game, including losing the old data. We don't know.

@jaxonh i honestly haven't seen a gaming conversation this gross since my pc days......

@clvr Let's make this a fun hugbox for everyone from now on. No complaining allowed, just blind consumerism and love.

LOL
Already more than 300 posts ? 🤣

@Preposterous
Gamefreak isnt putting Pokemon in lootboxes, so no, they aren't EA.

@westman98 Gamefreak is Gamefreak and EA is EA - doesn't mean it cannot change in the future. People didn't imagine Pokemon being cut from mainline games a year ago, and yet here we are, staunchly defending a company's right to deliver less for more.

@Anti-Matter still have leftover popcorn?

@NEStalgia
There you go. 😉

@Preposterous You're right in what you say, but there's no reason to be rude or intentionally provocative. Psychologically it only makes people think that you're on the 'wrong side'.

@graysoncharles
I understand your point with that, but painting a broad stroke of Game Freak games vs non-GF games does a disservice over-all. We are talking about the same company insisting that lets go is a Main game. We thought it was them with their head in the sand, as the catch mechanics and wild battle mechanics are completely different, but apparently they changed the entire main game system to be let's go now.

It just frustrating full-circle but I don't want to have people assuming more things for Game freak to screw up.

@nintendoknife I don't think it's worth being nice to people who are going to flip-flop in their stance depending on who is nicer to them. You either take the bitter pill of truth or continue to drink the sweet nectar of lies that marketing teams masterfully brew.
Especially if we're talking about ignorami who don't care about subject at hand, but desperately need validation.

There's a lot more that goes into a game than just animations.

@Clamango yes, it is both, but i think the fact that you CAN have a home experience with pokemon makes gamefreak uncomfortable. if it were up to them, theyde probably disallow the ability to play it docked.

@NEStalgia @clvr
This has to seriously be the worst fandom ever

I got labeled a “terrible person” for being interested in playing a Pokémon video game lol. That’s how bad it is. Even the Metroid and Smash communities never went that far.

It’s mind-boggling, isn’t it? Say you’re excited to play a game and get relentlessly attacked for it... these toxic people don’t just want to voice their own dissatisfaction (which would be fine, if that’s all they came here to do), they want to make you as miserable as they are. You have to confirm to their opinion under threat of harassment. And they get sooooo mad if you aren’t foaming at the mouth like they are.

I ain’t buyin what those fanatics are selling. And I don’t really care what they do, either. Skip the game, boycott it, yell and scream about it on the internet all day for all I care... knock yerselves out.

I’m still gonna buy the game (which looks amazing btw), I’m still gonna have a blast playing it, and so are tens of millions of other people. I’m gonna have a grin from ear to ear with controller in hand, and toast to the fact we won’t have such people poisoning the well of customers after release (although I’m sure they’ll still troll every single article about the game and harass the people who buy it, you can definitely count on that)

So ya, screw em- who cares what they think. Not like they’re going to have an impact on anything anyways (probably why they’re so out of control upset- they’re mad their opinion holds little weight, and direct that anger towards anyone who doesn’t hold their opinion, blaming people for not siding with them to give them the numbers they need).

@KBuckley27 Because Gen 6 and Gen 7 used the same hardware: the 3DS. Gen 7 and Gen 8 do not use the same hardware; gen 7 uses the 3DS and gen 8 uses the Switch. The Switch is ridiculously more powerful and faster than the 3DS. People expect a similar graphical upgrade from Gen 7 to Gen 8, but Game Freak and Creatures Inc. did not deliver. They took an extra year to develop the game, to reassure fans that the game could be the best it could be. Then they release Pokemon Let's Go. The models are all the same, and the graphics look like an HD version of Gen 7. This was acceptable to most people, as this wasn't meant to be a mainline Pokemon game, and this was supposed to be a 'placeholder'. The developers had purportedly made this game to increase the quality of Pokemon Sword and Shield, so who cared what Pokemon Let's Go looked like? Then they revealed Sword/Shield a few months ago, and...to put it bluntly, it looks like Pokemon Let's Go with some extra shading and better particle effects. That was it. A whole extra year of waiting only for a bare minimum of an upgrade.

THE POKEMON DEVELOPERS REVEALING THAT THE ENTIRE NATIONALDEX WILL NOT BE IN THE GAME IS OK WITH ME (I DON'T WANT TO CREATE THE WRONG IMPRESSION), but the excuse they give to cover it up is complete bull. In order to save themselves time and effort, they've recycled the models and animations from years ago. I bet the real reason they don't have every pokemon in this game is to make it easier to balance the game. Pokemon is the most valuable media franchise in the world. Its games should be cutting edge, but its developers have been recycling a single game for decades now with some updates now and again to cover their tracks and only now fans are starting to realize that they have been getting cheated out of a better experience.

For those of you saying it 'looks amazing' or 'I love how it looks' that's partly subjective. If you compare this game to, say, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (which as previously covered on this website has shown that only 40 people worked on it), you can see that XC2 pushes the Switch to its limits graphically while maintaining a more 'anime' art style similar-ish to Pokemon. While I like some of the overworld changes, the battle animations are absolute garbage, both by the Pokemon models and the animation of the move itself. Did you see the Double Kick animation that's been circling around? Seriously? This is a console, AAA level game and it results with that?

@Harmonie Right, but like you mentioned all of their team should have been working on it, considering its the first game on a new system (Not counting Let's Play) which is why I suggested a spin off, since the spin offs are usually done by other developers. A new Mystery Dungeon, something new or heck, pulling the trigger on a Snap 2 would sell just fine and gamers would feel more refreshing going into the next entry, especially if they had extra time to do something bigger.

Keep doing the samey thing every year forward and eventually gamers will get bored and not even buy the newest game on day one, or even at all. Sure kids are their main demographic, but someday even their attention spans will grow bored and play something else.

Pokemon means a lot to me, I wish I could get excited for each new release but its in desperate need of a BOTW sized shake up beyond just "Oh your Pokemon can turn Mega sized now!"

@Preposterous The problem is that the psychologic effect of seeing someone act rude against 'the other side' bypasses and steers all thinking on whether the points being made are any good. It's not about flipflopping, but about the mental influence it has even on the most critical of thinkers. You will never win an argument if you're the ruder side, even if everything you say is truth and even if the other side has no idea what it's even talking about.

Nintendolife seriously just now noticed that the animations have been recycled? What the heck do they think people have been ranting and raving for? That's the whole crux of the issue; nothing Gamefreak has shown justifies the culling of Pokemon. I'm not really too bothered by it myself but I can see exactly why people are outraged. My own desire to get the game continues to drop but that's just me.

Also wow this is one toxic comment section. If someone like @JaxonH wants to buy the game, who cares? Let them buy it and enjoy it. Even Metroid Prime: Federation Force had people willing to defend it and buy the game so the idea that someone would be hyped for a POKEMON game is not that hard to believe. It's Pokemon, a massive franchise with a massive fanbase. Of course there's going to be people who buy the game even if there's some negative qualities. That's what fans often do. I mean, I hated the direction Fire Emblem: Fates took and even I eventually bought Conquest because I'm a huge fan of the franchise. I've done nothing but critical (pretty much) of the CTR remake and I'm sure at some point down the line I'm going to end up buying that too.

No need to try and dictate opinions or shame someone for what they like. I didn't like it when it was happening with Marvel vs Capcom Infinity and I don't like it now. I've had to put up with my share of crap for buying games like Bionic Commando and Splatterhouse, I just tune the haters out. I'm gonna do what I want at the end of the day and that's a right we all have.

@nintendoknife I'm fully aware of that, but it really doesn't matter, because there's no winning an argument on the Internet anyway (lack of non-verbal communication is half of the problem, because meek people will easily take offense to stern, but not impolite language). People don't "discuss" online to have someone change their mind, but to feel validated and it's best to call them on it. You could argue that bystanders who just read the comments could be influenced, but then you don't want to sugarcoat things either, since no one is going to see conviction in mister nice guy.

@NEStalgia honestly the fandom was why I have been a lukewarm Pokémon fan anyway. I respect the series but since if you are in a certain age group it’s almost a water cooler talk franchise its harder to ignore the fanatics as easily because it might be “bob in accounting or something”. So I just played other games. I will say that Let’s Go did its job in tugging me back though. However I just wanna play games. I don’t want to shout down or condemn someone doing a job and being creative. I just want to enjoy the end product because my own job is stressful enough (well not really but that is more due to experience rather than a light work load) I miss when video games were this thing you did to have fun. It’s not even November yet.

That being said I feel like interactive media is the platform for meltdowns. Which makes you wonder what parts of the brain it tweaks. Did people freak out like this over new coke or when the volcano taco got cancelled? Why don’t folks get this up in arms when taxes go up?

@clvr you know it’s funny as I had dismissed sword and shield because let’s go gave me my nostalgia feels and that was good enough for me. Then all the complaining and whining came in and all the coverage so I started looking into the game (ignoring the pitchfork brigade) and I am becoming interested in the game. So it went from a hard no to me setting aside a voucher for it. That is some good marketing right there.

I'm done with Game freak they have absolutely no excuse for taking the national dex out. Especially with how lackluster the game looks. I wouldn't complain if the game actually looked innovative and better than the 3ds but that's exactly what we are getting a 3ds game on the Switch.

@JaxonH yeah, it's incredible. I really thought you couldn't get worse than the smash and PlayStation fandoms, but this... This takes the Cake. I can't even get into the mindset of what sets them off. The first thing i thought when the revealed the game was "that looks amazing! Gf is really leaving their comfort zone and venturing out to more modern designs! This looks like the biggest Pokemon yet! Breath of the Pokemon!"

And here we get this. And they're not even complaining about the new designs. They're complaining about the fact that every Pokemon for 3 decades isn't included.... And then complaining that the reason that's bad is because the producer named animation as the reason, and because the animations look the same, he must be lying and therefore every Pokemon from 30 years has to be included. And you're a terrible person for wanting the game despite that.

I can't even double think my way to understanding this response...

Can you imagine what would have happened if pichu were omitted from smash after saying "everyone is here?". Sakurai would have needed witness protection.

@NEStalgia there was some of the “well not everyone is here outrage” in the beginning. I think it stemmed from the fighter’s pass.

Wow this is so amazing! So you guys all have finished copies of a game that doesn't come out for 4 almost 5 more months?! I mean clearly Sword and Shield are done and Game Freak is just sitting around twiddling their thumbs until November out of habit!

It's not like games have ever used placeholder animations while new content was being made! I mean, that would just be silly!

Where can I get a copy of this game right now, like all of you have?

Zacian, i choose you !

And i'm gonna have fun with Pokemon Sword.

I don't know how it works when it comes to programming, but I do know that what ever engine was used on the 3ds is not the same as the switch, while the animations might look the same it still takes work to either convert that animation on to their switch engine or remake it via their switch engine and then test it to make sure theres no bugs, which in the end is true what was said, too much work for 1k pokemon.

its times like these im glad i never had an attachment to the games

I can understand being annoyed with the Nat. Dex situation, but I feel like this is really nitpicky. Then again, this is coming from someone who doesn't get easily annoyed by stuff in games. But each to their own. I'm still gonna pick up Sword Day 1 and probably enjoy it.

What's more annoying than the Nat. Dex situation, or 'recycling animations' is people questioning how others spend their money. Maybe some of us aren't that turned off by some of the issues and are more excited by the new open world to explore, new pokes to catch etc.?

@mjharper

I hope that you realize that the whole point of a demo is so players can judge it before buying the game and get a taste of what it has to offer. A demo is the final phase of a beta, not the first stage of an alpha.

https://youtu.be/d79KArgmgcc

Besides, when it comes to Pokemon, all you have to do is observe how LGEP ended up looking exactly the same in final release compared to all previous footage with basically no change or polish at all. So if Sword and Shield on release end up looking exactly thevsame on final release just like the orevious main series Pokemon Switvh title, then what? What exactly will be the excuse? Cuz people certainly can't claim "the game isn't finished" as a counterargument. That point has a limited number of days before it gets gutted like a fish on release.

What's more is that I honestly find it kind of funny that ONLY with Pokemon, people are claiming you're not allowed to judge a game for anything based only on a demo. Where exactly was this mindset in regards to other games? You certainly didn't see that kind of thinking anywhere regarding the demo for Yo-Kai Watch 4 for instance and understandably so cuz the general consensus was that demo was top notch

@KryptoniteKrunch

And it certainly wouldn't hurt at all to have those nice things PLUS the nice things from past games plus the nice thing of being able to use any monster we please. Good thing I can spend my money and play time on all the other monster collector RPGs that spoil its fans to provide that tho.

This is NORMAL in game development

@Heavyarms55 I'm certain their cousins Uncle works at Nintendo and told them all of this....

The father we go the behinder we get...

@Ryu_Niiyama oh geeze i forgot that. I want a fan of "ultimate" needing dlc, but this is a whole other level.

I'd say it's because Pokemon was a bit after my time, so i don't have any childhood attachments to the series...... Except everyone complained about lgpe which was literally a remake of the first game, and games like Zelda and Mario that i do have childhood attachments to..... I've loved every installment to date. And i also loved lgpe, though i was somewhat annoyed by having no realistic way to grind.... And i cursed out the motion controls often. But i loved it and didn't want it to end.

@westman98
They might be with their new phone game.

@Zyph
It IS but there are plenty of examples where doing so is founded on far more quality. Look at the Dragon Quest games. A ton of them have been reusing models and animations ever since Dragon 8 on PS2 but those models have animation and personality comparable to the Pokemon Stadium models.

Plus even with reusing those models and animations, they could still fit their huge monster counts into a game. Dragon Quest Monsters remade its first game for 3DS in Terry's Wonderland. The original game had a 215 monster count with sprites on GBC but that game's remake has a 607 monster count on a 3DS with all the improved PS2 models and animations.

@NEStalgia Oh and here I thought it was their sister's boyfriend's father's uncle's life partner who told them. Well, close enough.

It's been like this since X/Y, it's very notorious of them, but now they justify scaling the models to HD as "better quality animation" in their vocabulary, but somehow doing so for all 800+ models is such an impossible task, it's just laughable.

@KBuckley27 People did not complain about reused things before because they didn't cut pokemon before with the reasoning that they had to make new animations.

The point isn't just that the textures, models, and animations are not new, that's fine, that's what we've expected since the HD models were made for X and Y and future games. The point is that there is cut content that was supposedly cut because of how difficult it would be to make new models, textures, and animations for 800+ pokemon, but they didn't make new models, textures, or animations, for ANY!

Imagine if every day you got a bag of fries from a restaurant, and every week the bag got bigger, and every month the fries tastier. Imagine then that one time, you get a SMALLER bag, and when you ask about it, the restaurant owner says it's because they are higher quality fries. When you bit into a stale week old fry and find out it's not actually higher quality, you really wonder why you actually got a smaller bag.

@Anti-Matter They’re not eating the popcorn, they are throwing it around the room. Good thing you didn’t bring you didn’t bring any hard candy, it could have been dangerous.

@Ashunera84 think what u want u clearly know nothing about it and have done no verifying if it's true it is btw. Also YOU are in the minority if u were a real fan you'd want more not less.

@NEStalgia I will admit I am still dragging on let’s go because it is such a great time warp. Like I want to bill and ted back to the adolescent girl that paid 12 dollars and traded a comic card of Jean Grey for the old reliable grey brick and hand her a Switch and watch her lose her mind with excitement. That’s why I game, that’s what I hold on to. That feeling that you have a passport to a new world thanks to some creative “old people” that didn’t listen when their parents said they’d never have a respectable job making “vidya games”. I just wanna play and life is good. The simple pleasures of a simple hobby. (Cough. Barring my fighting game competitiveness...and slight snobbery lol. )

I still get flutters watching the opening of OoT and I know I’ve beaten that at least 15 times in full. People have to keep fresh eyes and a light heart. Otherwise they will never be satisfied.

@Angelic_Lapras_King Certainly mainline Pokemon games have been declining in quality, sadly. And then they released LGP/E which I had absolutely no desire of ever buying.

Seems like Pokemon spinoffs get relegated to the mobile platform now (or are mobile games that also get released on the Switch). Not a good time to be a Pokemon fan, that's one thing for sure!

@Xaessya
Gamefreak doesn't make Pokemon Go, Masters, or the TCG, which are the only mobile Pokemon games of relevance.

What difference does it make?

well u nerds are still gonna buy each copy sw & sh tho. complaint much #lol

@MaxXanders No I'm really not going to. If anything, at most I'd get an already used copy at a much cheaper price, which isn't giving money to GF. But that's in case I get really bored and don't feel like playing anything else on my Switch.

But if they did all-new animations for each monster, all the fans would complain “that’s now how Machamp moves!”. No winning, just whining.

@Ashunera84,

Of course it's only the vocal internet minorities that are up in arms,just like all those videos on YouTube saying nobody would buy the Pokemon let's go games,that were only watched by 10k people or so,these new games will sell very well indeed and with the amazing sales ratio for top titles on the Switch,these titles could be among the top sellers of the franchise.

All this video shows to me is how clean the new Pokemon look compared to the 3DS version,they just look so awesome now can't wait until the game comes out,or of course I may change my mind if I watch some inevitable entitled YouTube rants which will be watched by everybody...er I mean 10K people or so,and of course are the usual click bate YouTube drivel.

So, did anyone think about the possibility that there might be completely new animations in the game that we have not seen yet?
Maybe related to completely new features and things like that?

My point is, no one has played enough of the game to actually confirm that there are no new animations somewhere and it is not even that unlikely that there are, since we probably have not seen absolutely everything about the game.
We just have to wait and see, at this point the whole argument is based on assumptions.

@Kirgo your naivety/optimism is impressive. Nothing is going to change between now and November. You refer to 'new features' but if these haven't already been announced then any new features are going to minor. Any new animations there will be minimal compared to the rest of the game.

Open your eyes. The Switch runs graphically intense, gorgeous looking game likes Botw, XC2 and Witcher 3. Are you seriously trying to tell me there is a legitimate reason why Pikachu stands there, completely still like a lifeless statue, aside from the one/two attack animations?

The Pokemon seemed more alive in the 2D games. At least there each Pokemon seemed to have a unique facial expression.

@Ryu_Niiyama +1 on the whole time warp passport comment!

@TheBlue10 much better that way!!! #genius

@johnvboy This is quite the meltdown! This site knew full well what was going to go down when they posted this article...

Offensive/defensive flip to quote Joey from Yu-Gi-Oh. Let's recycle the gameplay and defend it. This is awful.

@WiltonRoots,

Of course they do,and if you read the article it say similar animations which is not the same thing as exactly the same animations,there may be a lot more differences as we see more Pokemon within the game.

Click bate article at it's finest.

@TheBlue10
Well, mostly likely, a fair share of the models ARE new, or at least subtlely updated to a higher polygon count.
But the textures don't have to be super large for that reason, and it doesn't prevent them from reusing the animations either.

But I see what you're getting at.

@johnvboy Looks like they wanted to get their fireworks in before the 4th July and it worked. It's not good though when you see regulars who have been here for years getting harrassed while the mods ignore it.

@Heavyarms55
At this stage there is 4 and a half months till launch but there is atleast 1 month of that before it goes gold. So in perspective that is really around 3 months of work left on the game.

At this stage they would be in beta which would be bug fixing, performance tweaking and fixing any pop ins like the ones we saw in the trailer.

Once they go gold I am sure majority of the staff working on S&S will be put onto the Town game while the rest remain with S&S to fix any bugs that appear at launch. So the animations you see in the E3 trailer are very likely what we are going to get when the game is released.

@MaxXanders
No idea what on earth gives you that idea since I plan on saving my money on monster collector RPGs with effort and soul put into them made by companies that have always spoiled me with good games in Shin Megami Tensei 5, the future Dragon Quest Monsters Switch project, Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch and Yo-Kai Watch 4: We're Looking Up At The Same Sky. It's nice to have other options.

@Mycroft

"It's just a game, stop getting angry."

Yeah, you right. Good thing I can just buy other games. You're kinda turning that statement on yourself since you're choosing to be passionate about a shallow and jokably easy game designed for Japanese kids. Good thing other monster collectors like YKW and DQM reach higher levels of quality despite being for Japanese kids. In my experience, Pokemon fans have actually gotten pissed if you call it a kiddy game compared to other adult and more mature monster collectors like Shin Megami Tensei and claim it's supposed to be a game for EVERYONE yet they have no issue saying it's for kids when you bring up its flaws.

What's more is that it's funny Masuda basically says you're wrong cuz he said this game was supposed to ALSO be something good for the hardcore veteran fans, i.e. adults.

There's Digimon PSP games with great animations for each Digimon, with camera movements to make it more epic
There's Pokemon Stadium and Battle Revolution which got great animations for every Pokemon, also for idle Pokemons.
There's no excuses now. This looks ridiculous, Nintendo need to do something about the Pokemon games. The problem with Gamefreak is that they are A LOT, it's not just a single little team, there's a lot of people but they are working on too many projects
I feel like Nintendo just have to intervene and give the responsability to another studio, but it will not happen because hey, it's Pokemon, it will sell asf

@EmmatheBest Are you sure it isn't because, oh, I dunno, they didn't have 1000+ different models to make new stuff for?

The whole idea of making new animations for every single Pokemon on a single game release is entirely a problem of scale now.

Between GAME FREAK, and Creatures, Inc. There's only around 250 employees and not all of them are animators. Sure they could take the extra time to do it, but here's the thing. To make even one new kind of animation for the all Pokemon that were and were not already futureproofed during X and Y's development, that would mean at a minimum 1000 new animations to make.

The only way to manage this scale is to either extend development time, hire new animators to manage the scale, or cut out Pokemon to reduce the scale of the project, and as more and more Pokemon get made as the years go on, this problem is only going to get worse.

151 Pokémon is enough for anyone.

@Mycroft Clearly, anyone who gets upset at the way a game developer rushes games out the door is only concerned about their precious video games, and completely disregards any other problems in the world. Clearly, because fans of a franchise would like to see some more effort being put into it, they don't care in the slightest about genocides or other atrocities being committed. This is whataboutism at its finest: there are other, arguably more important issues in the world, so you are not allowed to complain about anything else. Your local shops raise prices by 400%? Not allowed to complain, because people are still being murdered all over the world. You find out your partner cheated on you? Not allowed to complain, because cancer is still a thing. Ad nauseam.

This really isn’t a good look for game freak.... Makes you wonder what their PR department is doing, because they are certainly not doing their job well.

@MegaVel91 And yet a tiny third party company called Genius Sonority, with just 22 employees, managed to do just that in Pokémon Colosseum, XD and Battle Revolution. The models, animations, etc of the last one still look mighty impressive today, and even the other two look pretty good. Again, the entire game was created by all of 22 people in two years' time, with all 493 Pokémon that existed at the time each having loads of unique, great-looking animations (although some animations certainly would have been better at 2x speed). Don't forget that the Wii isn't exactly known for its massive amounts of horsepower, either.

@nintendoknife

Notwithstanding companies like Level-5, Square Enix, Atlus and Bandai-Namco can accomplish the same feat of having far more animation with their own monster collecting RPGs with just as big if not bigger monster counts than your average Pokemon game thanks to having far bigger staff despite way less budget.

@SilentHunter382 Because you know how Game Freak handles their production processes and when the trailers were made right? Your uncle work for Nintendo?

So freaking sick of this nonsense. Don't buy the game. Please. All of you. Clearly you hate it or at the least aren't happy with it. Let us "stupid casuals" have fun. You go sulk in the corner and complain about how Wingull flaps its wings and the mega-kick animation.

@Crono1973 That is my plan. I usually preorder and am there to pick up the soonest they let me but if they don't add all the pokemon, I just won't get it.

@nintendoknife Yes. 493 + alt forms.

Not 800+ Pokemon plus Mega Evolutions and Alt Formes. You're ignoring the fact they had a lot less Pokemon to deal with back in Generations 3 and 4 and pretending it gives you a point. It doesn't. Not to mention with Pokemon Colosseum and XD some of the animations were recycled from Stadium (how they managed that, I dunno).

The fact of the matter is GAME FREAK and co haven't been making that many new animations for the Pokemon themselves since X and Y and now it's biting them in the backside now that they have over 1000+ different Pokemon (New ones and alts, and Mega Evos included) to deal with.

I thought that was obvious, since the first moment they showcased this game.

@Heavyarms55
Majority of companies would need atleast a month to make the cartridge (or discs) and then have them shipped across the world ready for the retail market. It not like they would this in the last week before release. This is why you hear games going gold atleast a month before release.

So if you are saying that I don't know how GF does it production processes then you must know if you are refuting this.

Regarding the trailer. Yes this could have been done on an older build of the game where the animations were not done on the moves and were using the old animations as placeholders. That is where the problem is that GF is saying that they cut the pokemon to allow for better animations and graphics. But GF knew this choice was going to upset fans who why not show proof of the better animations in the trailer to back up that claim. Right now it's just word of mouth instead of seeing it with our own eyes.

I'm not saying that there isn't any new animations (for the new pokemon for example).

Am I upset about having no national dex, yes I am but all I am doing is seeing what is being said by Game Freak and the community and just point out thing that I see that might impossible for them to do for the release day. I can see them adding the animations post release but not on release day. Now if this news was released in January then ya I could totally believe that they could add the animations into the game before release.

@Ryu_Niiyama @JaxonH the funny thing is I don’t even share your enthusiasm 😆
I mean, I’m probably gonna get the game, but as a long time fan also interested in the competitive side I cannot pretend I’m not worried.
There are a lot of things I don’t like at the moment, but you know what? The game is out in a few months, so I’ll have the chance to change my mind several times by then, and that is what a lot of people don’t seem to get.
All in all, though, it’s simply appalling to see such reactions, regardless of what your stance is.
I get that a lot of practices in the video game industry suck, and I get outraged at them just like anyone else, but there’s a line between complaining about the devs and harassing consumers like you who simply don’t share your opinion.
It seems like the more the world “evolves”, the more need there is to spell out all of those things that once sounded obvious 🤷🏼‍♂️

@clvr
To add to that, I’m not even that excited. I mean ya, I think this game looks awesome and I’m really looking forward to it. But as I didn’t grow up with the series, I’m not a diehard fan so I have no emotional investment in these things (and I think that is the problem- when emotion gets involved, emotional reactions tend to run rampant). I just look at it through an objective lens. I see a game that looks great and fun to play. Maybe they should have done more, maybe they shouldn’t. At the end of the day I don’t really care, all I know is it’s going to have way more Pokémon then I’ll ever care to find. If people want to express their dissatisfaction then I say more power to them. Maybe in response, they’ll add them in later, or... maybe they won’t. Either way I’ll be happy and enjoying the game.

At the end of the day, this game to me is like Zelda Link’s Awakening. Excited? Yes. But it’s not like I’m “omg this looks soooo increeeeedible!!!. That level of hype is reserved for Fire Emblem, Dragon Quest XI S, Astral Chain and Luigi’s Mansion 3.

I’m just impressed with how gorgeous the game looks. I thought Let’s Go was a huge step up from the 3DS games, and I really had fun with it. This one looks way better.

@Yorumi
Thank you. And... it’s fine. You weren’t attacking anyone for being excited to play a video game. The problem is, I think, instead of people directing their anger at companies (which even then has a tendency to balloon out of control), they misdirect it at the common fan/gamer, and then let that misdirected anger balloon out of control. Company does something they don’t like, and then they take it out on anyone who doesn’t likewise protest alongside them. And while I can at least understand those who don’t like to hear complaints, I struggle to grasp how someone could be so bothered from others not complaining.

I’m just here because I like playing video games. What other people do is none of my concern. If people are unhappy and complaining about games, I take no issue with that one way or the other. It’s their life and they’re free to be happy or unhappy as they see fit. Personally I don’t see the appeal of constantly being upset about the minutia of video games (at least, what I perceive to be minutia) but I can respect the fact that it’s not bothering me, and it does not impede my ability to enjoy video game in anyway shape or form.

There are things that have upset me about games in the past, or things that I did not approve of. But... it’s just a hobby. My response is typically measured. Like Bloodstained. I am dissatisfied with the level of quality put into the highest selling version, which deserves the highest quality rather than the lowest. But I’m not ranting about it on the Internet, attacking anyone who is playing the game. I just make a passing comment saying I’m glad to see them fixing it up because I disapprove of the status quo. It is what it is.

Discipline (or the lack thereof). That’s what this generation is missing. It’s why college students are caught on camera attacking/harassing old men in coffee shops over who they vote for, or kids punching their mothers in the face because she wouldn’t buy them something at the store. The idea that each person’s opinion is “correct”, and therefore anyone who holds a different opinion is not only wrong but immoral, and thus any response toward them is justified. It’s OK to harass me for liking the game because “my opinion is not correct” and therefore “I’m a terrible person”, and thus it’s “not actually harassment”.

@MegaVel91 We know that Game Freak hasn't worked on animations for years and won't be working on them anytime soon. However, you seem to be saying that they can't create those animations, which is simply ridiculous when you look at the statistics:

• Battle Revolution, developed over a period of 2 years by 22 people total had unique and great-looking animations for many moves on 493 different Pokémon (+ alternate formes, as you said)
• Sword and Shield, developed over a period of at least 3 years by 250 people has no unique nor great-looking animations for any move on ±2x493 Pokémon (this is assuming an enormous amount of new Pokémon), of which 809 Pokémon already had their animations done for previous games

In numbers:

• Genius Sonority: 22 people x 2 years = 44 people-years for 493 Pokémon with lots of great-looking animations each (let's take a highly conservative estimate of 5 unique animations per Pokémon)
• Game Freak: 250 people x 3 years = 750 people-years for ±177 Pokémon with only a physical and special attack animation each

Calculating a bit further, this comes down to the following:

• Genius Sonority: created 1 animation per 6,5 days (i.e., one animation per week)
• Game Freak: created 1 animation per 773 days (i.e., less than one animation per two years)

Not everyone at Game Freak is a 3D artist, but neither is everyone at Genius Sonority, so assuming they have the same relative amount of 3D artists, the comparison is as valid as it gets.

I think this is topic is best left dead. Everybody said what they had to say, at this point everybody'll be repeating themselves.

@JaxonH "Discipline (or the lack thereof). That’s what this generation is missing. "

Congratulations! You've finally now joined me, @rjejr , and @thanosrexxx as forum geezers.

Millennials, am i right?

Now get off our lawns.

@NEStalgia Wait, what? How the heck did I get dragged in here? I'm not even a die-hard Pokémon fan...

I do fully agree with @JaxonH, though. Who the heck are these idiots that get upset about people not agreeing with their complaints about the game? It sometimes seems like it's getting worse and worse. Now we can't even agree to disagree anymore without any virtual bloodshed...

@NEStalgia
Technically I’m a millenial, born in Jan ‘84. It’s not the millennials, who honestly get a bad rep sometimes. It’s the post-millennials. The iGeneration (aka Gen Z). The ones raised on the internet from the age of 3. Outrage culture and lack of discipline observed in the dark recesses of the internet have become the “norm” for them, and is now prevalent everywhere you go.

@nintendoknife No. You've missed the point and have twisted my meaning.

It's not a matter of that they can't make the animations. It's a matter of the fact that each new kind of animation that is intended for all the Pokemon to use, explodes the scale of the animation department of the game alone. It's not only a matter of how long, it's also a matter of how many, with just the Pokemon alone.

Lets say Game Freak and Creatures Inc wanted at least 4 new in-battle animations, and 2-3 new overworld animations for every single Pokemon, as a hypothetical.

That alone is almost 7000+ new unique animations to be made, on just the Pokemon, and that includes the newly created ones for Sword and Shield, before you get to anything else. I have experience with both 3D and 2D animation (both unprofessionally) and from personal experience, and I can tell you depending on what the animation is, it could take multiple days to refine. I dunno how many people at Game Freak and Creature's combined are Artists (including 3D artists), but lets take a stab and say it's a flat 50, and lets say that maybe 25-35 of them are dedicated to animating the Pokemon's new animations, since the other 25-15 would probably be working on other things, including animations for environments and stuff.

For the majority of that time, the other artists would be focusing on their own stuff. It would take that team of 25-35 people, at one animation per day, around 200-240 days to do 7000 animations.

The man-days or man-hours aren't the only consideration here. There's also the budget allocated for just the animation that would explode.

Unfortunately for all of us however, the fact of the matter is that Game Freak's focus isn't entirely on Sword and Shield like it was for X and Y. They also have Town in the works along side it, which by itself is a big project, none of this of which is helped by TPC's shift to focusing on mobile thanks to GO's runaway success.

This is the other reason that Sword and Shield likely had Pokemon cut: it's all to reduce the workload on the people working on it, cause with a smaller staff allocated to Pokemon Sword and Shield, that means the man-hours required to give everyone what they want also explodes.

So going back to that earlier hypothetical, lets say that number of people who are 3D artists was slashed in half, being divided between Town and S&S. That means around 12-13 People are working on just the Pokemon now, now lets look at giving all those Pokemon 7000 shiny new animations. At a rate of 1 animations per day, between all of them, it comes out to ~538 or so days. More than a year, just on the Pokemon.

Of course this hypothetical doesn't take into account the fact those artists can probably get multiple animations done in a single day given their experience for some, but it would still take a very long time, probably a lot longer than Nintendo would like.

TL;DR : They could delay, and they could do it, but then TPC and Nintendo would probably get pretty angry at them. Not at all helped by what's probably them seeing their relevance to the brand slipping.

The only reason that Metroid Prime 4 got restarted and delayed was because they literally had nothing to show us and weren't (as far as we know) so far into development that they had to work with what they had or outright can the project. That isn't the case for Sword and Shield.

Nintendo and TPC will want the game out this year lest they end up having to release it later at a less ideal time (for Nintendo and TPC) rather than keeping to their word and losing face.

@MegaVel91 I know they aren't going to delay it, the game's 99% finished (in their eyes) by now anyway. I just meant to say that they had all the time in the world to put a team of 3D artists at work for a whole year considering they've worked on SS for at least 3, and it would've all worked out, but they didn't because it would cost them a lot more and because they know they can get away with putting minimal effort into it, seeing as anything remotely Pokémon-branded almost literally prints money anyway.

LOL
Already more than 400 posts. 🤣

@JaxonH “But... it’s just a hobby.”

So much this.
I think stuff like this wouldn’t happen (at least not all the time), if people put things into perspective more frequently.
I mean...is it worse for a company to do “shady business”/angering the fanbase, or for a person to harass another person for their opinion?
These tribal interactions really don’t do anything valuable, just build up bile for all those involved.
Outrage at companies has worked in the past and got them to change things, but as you say, a lot of that bitterness gets misdirected onto other fans that happen to be seen as “on the other side of the barricade” by the most vocally annoying ones.
And that, obviously, achieves nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Having said that, I’d like to leave this clearly dead horse alone 😅
Have a nice day!

@JaxonH it's both. I'm a bit older than you, a bit younger than thanos. At the time before the word "millennials" existed, there was much debate if we were gen x or gen y..... In reality i think ours is a weird, second lost generation forever caught between the two, and unable to identify with either. Gen x had this blissful carefree selfishness and self importance that we couldn't understand. Yet the gen y below is just seemed radically different with a total different culture entirely. Ours was a group caught between.... Alien to both like were from a foreign culture.
Deferent writings flip flop between it being x or y (millennial). But the Ys were like a whole other species even then. The post millennials aren't even a generation. They're just children forever. Owed mostly to the disastous non parenting of x and y combined.

A world of savages - children raised by data corporations and other children. What could go wrong? Poor heavyarms55 didn't believe me ww3 is inevitable....

I have the feeling this started out as a 3DS game but was moved to the switch as Nintendo changes focus from the 3DS to the switch.

@NEStalgia I'm with @ThanosReXXX how the heck did I wind up in here, and on my vacation no less? @JaxonH and I had enough trouble with the troll in the other thread. I'd delete my account but the world needs more Kermit, not less. Ok, back on vacay, see you guys on Monday.

I want the game, and I'm not outraged or anything... Mostly disappointed and utterly bewildered.
GF is doing a really crappy PR job right now, and frankly, their excuse for not allowing Pokemon transfers just rings entirely too hollow to be true.
What is the point of Home?

@westman98 If we were talking about an individual person, sure, but this is gamefreak we are talking about. they arent going anywhere and if they do, they will take pokemon down with them.

@Bluerangervegeta I can't say for sure if that's the case but as someone that has the models for the Pokemon games on Nintendo 3DS, I can say they do look better in their organic form before the system downgrades them but would I say it's HD? Nah, compared to the likes of Pokken Tournament and even Smash Bros Ultimate, they're nothing special.
As for whether or not those "HD Textures" really exist, I can't really say but if they do, Gamefreak are even dumber than I thought but I don't see why they would make those textures at that point in time, especially since they already would have their hands full working on what was new for Pokemon X and Y.

@companyoflosers Unfortunately, that's far from the truth. Gamefreak at this point is expendable, Pokemon Go alone generated more money than the entire main series games combined and when combined with the money Nintendo gets from spin-offs, merchandising, and the anime, they could very easily replace Gamefreak with someone new.
This is why Gamefreak is working on "Town", they are aware how expendable they are becoming and want to create something new that they can fall back on should it happen. Ironically, Town could end up being their undoing because it's obvious them splitting their teams apart has caused Pokemon Sword and Shield to suffer and as a result, people will likely point fingers to "Town" and deliberately not buy it out of principle.

@NCChris
Pokemon Go has not even come close to making more money than all main series Pokemon games combined - that would be like $19+ billion. Pokemon Go has made below $3 billion. Gamefreak is not expendable for that very reason - the main series Pokemon titles are massive systems sellers for Nintendo hardware as they regularly sell 10 to 15 million copies apiece. Meanwhile, Nintendo makes very little money from the mobile titles and spin-offs (which only sell like 1-2 million copies apiece).

Gamefreak is working on Town because there are developers in the company who want to work on their own project that isn't tied to a massive IP with a ton of moving parts tied with other companies across other entertainment mediums. It's not like their side projects a huge or anything - Town is looking to be a small-scale eShop-only RPG given that we already know the game takes place within the confines of a single town (hence the name).

@companyoflosers
No company is going to make a subpar product to "protest" working on the hardware they are given.

It's Pokemon. Regardless of some complaints, they know it will sell very well. They would have to completely eff up the whole game before they took any serious hit to revenue

@Ashunera84 They haven't historically cared about balancing the game very much. Legendaries are crazy powerful, with M-Rayquaza in a tier of its own. It's up to the fans each generation to make their own tier lists of which Pokémon belong in which groups. Game Freak seems generally more concerned about making cool and flashy new cool Pokémon than anything else. It's not something that really bothers me, because actually attempting to balance all the Pokémon in one group would be a ridiculously ambition undertaking and would sort of detract from the progress through the story of the game in some ways.

it was obvious they were recycled from the very first trailer. it was an obvious downgrade from the beautiful colors and design choices made in pokemon lets go pikachu and eevee. some may say ppl dont care about it, i however am super disappointed that art style didnt carry over.

@westman98 I admit I made a mistake with the money combined comment, no idea why I thought that, but even with that, Gamefreak is still expendable and is no longer mandatory from Nintendo's perspective.
Yes, Gamefreak has worked on side projects in the past, but the difference between now and then is now they are deliberately trying to create an IP that they can fall back on. Beforehand it was just something they did on the side because they knew Pokemon would remain their strong safety net.
There's even evidence to support this; In the past 5 years, Gamefreak have worked on 5 projects that are nothing to do with Pokemon and as a rather nice co-incidence, this started around the time Pokemon X and Y came out which just happened to be a point where fans started criticizing Gamefreak for drop in quality in Pokemon games.
There was even an interview where a Gamefreak employee straight up admitted that their primary team is NOT working on Pokemon and instead is focusing on non-Pokemon projects.
With the increase of new projects as well as their primary team not being focused on Pokemon, it's obvious they've become aware how expendable they've become.
Gamefreak isn't needed for Pokemon, Nintendo could replace them in a heartbeat and considering the way things are headed, they may not be around for much longer.

@Octane This is exactly how it is. I'll still buy the game anyway, which makes me part of the problem, but it's only normal people expect great things from a franchise as big as Pokemon.

@NCChris
The sentiment that a development studio could be wiped and replaced in a snap due to hardcore fan discontent is ludicrous. For starters, Gamefreak owns 1/3rd of TPC, which means they aren't expendable by default. In addition, the producers and lead directors of the series are Gamefreak employees; Pokemon isn't an internal Nintendo IP that got shipped to another studio (ala Luigi's Mansion, Donkey Kong Country, Metroid).

Gamefreak makes non-Pokemon games because many of their developers A) have ideas that wont fit in Pokemon and B) want to work on something new and not tied to a gigantic multimedia machine. Also, a lot of Pokemon's development, including the creation of Pokemon models, is outsourced to Creatures Inc (nearly half of the 300 people who worked on Sun/Moon were Creatures employees). This gives Gamefreak employees the freedom to work on non-Pokemon games.

In fact, I'd say a lot of this "lazy Gamefreak" sentiment should probably be more "lazy Creatures" sentiment, though I personally subscribe to the idea that anyone working in video games probably aren't lazy given the crunch culture that has persisted in this industry since forever.

@westman98 Creatures Inc isn't to blame here because Masuda has straight up said that it was him that decided on "Quality" instead of "Quantity" so whatever Masuda has decided on creatures Inc have to follow with.
And yes, I know why Gamefreak makes side projects, but given the fact that you have 1 of the most anticipated titles of 2019, not to mention is a new console Pokemon game that we have not had in forever, you would think Gamefreak would be giving their all into this instead of focusing on stuff that's far less important.
Personally, I disagree on the lazy argument, Gamefreak aren't being lazy, they are just diverting their efforts in the wrong directions.

@NCChris
Fair enough.

@westman98 Although I have to admit; I was under the impression that TPC was Nintendo's property and that they just used it to employ Gamefreak as well as anything Pokemon related. I didn't know Gamefreak owned apart of it as well.

@NCChris
Nintendo, Gamefreak, and Creatures Inc each own 1/3rd of The Pokemon Company. Taking any 1 of those 3 out of the equation would be difficult and would likely have some bigger unforeseen consequences than just "Yay, the National Dex might come back."

@NCChris Gamefreak is absolutely NOT expendable. If Game Freak is still an equal part owner of the pokemon ip and own the likenesses of all pokemon, while nintendo owns all trademarks and names. If nintendo decided to kick game freak to the curb, that would be the end of the franchise as a whole because neither can function without what the other owns.

@Ashunera84 Hey, buddy. I found a pretty nifty article that you should read. Turns out, the animations aren't being updated for the new hardware. It's unfortunate that you evidently didn't read it prior and instead wasted bytes on NL's servers with your comment.
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/07/is_game_freak_recycling_3ds_animations_in_pokemon_sword_and_shield_on_switch

Perhaps by "higher quality animations" they simply meant the same animations in HD and possibly a better framerate? Isn't that all that matters, anyway? Even without the entire gang, it seems like a waste of time and resources to redo from scratch the animations for hundreds of different monsters when they already have perfectly viable ones that just need to be upgraded for the more powerful hardware. Even though the animations are recycled, just upgrading them to HD models (plus the Gigamax and Gigantimax models) could certainly take up too much memory to include all the previous Pokémon plus however many new ones there are.

@Arehexes Yeah, so what if the animations are recycled? That's just smart business. The reason some Pokémon have been cut is still due to the "higher quality animation" that resulted simply from upgrading all the models to console quality HD graphics. That in itself is a huge upgrade that takes up a ton of memory. You call easily tell in that video that the Pokémon look much better in Sword and Shield.

@spinzaku97 It is too much work and takes up too much memory when the models that are being animated have to be made so much bigger (even before Dynamaxing) and more detailed for an HD Switch title instead of a dinky little 3DS handheld screen.

@amiiboacid oh because, you know, NL has access to every animation and pokemon in the game, including all the new ones and features the rest of us don't know about. They couldn't possibly write an article like that for clicks.

Try using your brain instead of your entitled feelings yeah?

Legit it says not final game footage. They used the previous to make a game trailer. Why can't ppl read
Geez