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As is common these days, the next big release on many a gamer's calendar, Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, has reportedly leaked ahead of time, with some people having already captured the game's legendary Pocket Monsters. For spoiler-sensitive players looking forward to these DS remakes, it's a dangerous time on the internet, but rest assured we'll be avoiding any gameplay spoilers around these parts.
One interesting tidbit that has emerged early, though, is the suggestion from various parties on social media that this pair of games has been built using Unity rather than building off the game engine used for Sword and Shield.
Switch's support of Unity — a commonly used engine that powers a great many games across all platforms — has been a factor in the huge library of titles the console has accrued since 2017, a great many of which may not have come to Nintendo's platform had the engine not been supported.
What does Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl's use of Unity mean for the games? Well, for the vast majority of players, very little — you may notice a logo in the credits, but otherwise you likely wouldn't know what engine the game was built in. For people who like to tinker with code behind-the-scenes, though, the use of this engine apparently makes ROM edits and tweaks to text and other elements much easier than they might otherwise have been.
While Unity has its critics (as any game engine does), it is a versatile and powerful tool with a proven track record on Switch — that developer ILCA chose Unity makes a lot of sense.
Let us know below if you're avoiding spoilers like Neo dodging bullets or if you're diving head-first into the pool of Brilliant and Shining spoilers doing the rounds on the web.
[source twitter.com]
Comments 65
huh, i never wouldve guessed
I don't really care what engine runs what tbh as long as it's properly optimized on the target machine. Game looks good so I'll still play the heck out of it.
The games seem great if you haven't played the originals, but it just seems worse than Platinum overall. Gyms have their inferior DPPT teams, there is only that battle tower (not frontier), and the underground seems like an awkward integration if the Platinum dex.
The QoL are minor, and route and story structure are identical, so I don't find much value in this remake. However, I was happy with paying full price for Links Awakening because I hadn't played it before, and I hope new players will be able to find value in this where I can't.
Can you really spoil a 15 year old game? Especially for one as sparse on surprises as a Pokemon game
The cutting edge graphics were an easy giveaway
LMAO a terrible looking remaster deserves a terrible running engine
@thiz Tbf that article also showed Dialga before the battle at Spear Pillar. While I personally don't mind that I can understand if someone wants to see how they recreated this moment while playing their own copy instead of seeing a picture of it on the internet.
Makes me wonder why the person who complained clicked on that article in the first place though since said screenshot was only in the news, not in the thumbnail
Hopefully it looks and runs fine. That’s all that matters to me. Yoshi’s Crafted World was made with Unreal Engine and while they achieved 60fps, it also ran at resolutions below 720p… didn’t look so hot on my 55” tv lol. Wish they had a graphics mode in that game to run it at 30fps.
Leaks are also suggesting that the game has a day one 3GB update or something.
The cartridge appears to hold 4.6GB of data whilst the advertised download size is 10GB.
https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/pokemon-brilliant-diamond-switch/
What next? A Zelda game is legitimately made with Unreal Engine?
So, you can port this game to something else? That's... strange... but if true, awesome.
Makes sense that ILCA would use Unity - an engine that everyone is kinda familiar with - rather than GameFreak's internal custom game engine.
It's the same reason why GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition is running on Unreal Engine 4 instead of RAGE (Rockstar's Advanced Game Engine).
@Munchlax But is it better or worse than Diamond and Pearl, not Platinum?
@quigtendo new stuff was also added
I've been following the leaks and while i won't reveal anything here i will say keep your expectations in check, i feel like this is going to be the most phoned in remake in the series and not a patch on past remakes like Fire Red or Soul Silver.
Seriously this game graphically looks like a free mobile game. It’s unlikely that I’d pay full AAA price for a game that looks this bad and is based of a DS game however I’ll wait for the reviews to be sure. I’m pinning my hopes on Arceus
@mr-duster Improved on Dp, but it makes no sense to use them as the base when a superior version already exists. Its like if the Links awakening remake was black and white because colour wasnt added until DX- they're deliberately flawed purely to be as faithful to the first release as possible even though this ends up hurting the game on several aspects.
@RupeeClock Thank you. I've had a pre-order for the double pack since September, but since the carts shamefully contain less than half the game data I have cancelled my order. The same will happen with Shin Megami Tensei 5 if I discover the same trick is being pulled. I don't mind reduced visual fidelity, I will not put up with these rubbish fake physical editions so, thanks again for the heads up.
@WhiteUmbrella
I suggest you do more research before rash decisions like that just in case what I've reported is not accurate, as I'm not certain myself.
But I agree that the physical release should be data complete, not shipped incomplete with major fixes or content completion in a mandatory download.
I want to know what the actual state of the unpatched game is, can it be played to completion? Is any music missing? What's up with it?
@Munchlax Well, I don't think it hurts the game. Besides, they were specifically meant to be retellings of Diamond/Pearl, not Platinum. They've been skipping the third version thing for a while now. But yes, I do agree that having a remake of Platinum would be really nice.
@HedgehogEngine Yes. And maybe there's a little bit of that in BD/SP, but the games haven't been released yet, so I can't be certain. I think they're going for the more third-version type of vibe for Pokemon: Legends Arceus.
I can't wait for these games. Arceus looks like janky garbage (a game that people are entirely imagining to be something that it isn't), this is the only decent Pokemon coming anytime soon.
@Munchlax Gyms have their inferior DPPT teams
What does DPPT mean?
I really hate the overuse of acronyms or to say this in a more annoying way: IRHTOOA!!
Edit: I looked it up, it means Diamond/Pearl/Platinum. Not really hard to type that out.
@RupeeClock I did try to search first, I found that yes, the music is missing, the opening of the game and more. I believe the figure was 4.65 gb on the cart with the rest to download. It's difficult to confirm absolutely, but I would rather take a refund since I paid in advance, and it's better than having to return it. I've imported the Asian version of numerous games, sometimes just to have it complete on the cart, but in some cases the game doesn't exist physically outside of Asia or Japan at all. Maybe the Asian of Japanese release will support English, but that would likely push the price up some way. These would have been my first ever mainline Pokemon games, too. I guess it wasn't to be.
@WhiteUmbrella
I've imported Asia region versions of games for that very reason.
Like the Final Fantasy X / X2 collection, that's the only way to get X2 on the game card itself, it's a download update or code (not sure which) in all other regions.
@Munchlax Improved on Dp, but it makes no sense to use them as the base when a superior version already exists.
They did this with the remakes of Gold and Silver and Ruby and Sapphire. They didn't remake Crystal and Emerald so why would you expect them to remake the third game now? Were you just not aware that they are being consistent here?
@Savage_Joe Legends: Arceus doesn't look like a PS2 game.
@HedgehogEngine We'll have to wait and see. There's always a chance we could be surprised.
@Crono1973
It should be pointed out that when they remade Red/Green, Gold/Silver, and Ruby/Sapphire, that they implemented improvements and features from their respective third versions where it was appropriate, or at least had some new content.
Heart Gold/Soul Silver retained Crystal's plot element of the researcher Eusine pursuing Suicune in particular.
Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire featured an extra episode that focused on Rayquaza, in lieu of the main games needing to focus on Groudon or Kyogre like they had before.
@RupeeClock ...and these are just straight ports of the DS games, with no improvements? Did they atleast speed the games up?
They don't look like PS2 graphics period, HD or not. And Game Freak has NOT been lazy with the visuals. If they were, things would've looked much more blocky and pixelated. It's not about "making mistakes".
@Crono1973
As @RupeeClock pointed out, the other remakes did include content from the 3rd version if appropriate. I know that these are DP remakes not Platinum, but they could have easily just chosen to remake the vastly improved version instead. Luckily, it appears that there may be more Platinum features than it first seemed, but they have implemented them awkwardly into side areas and post game events, when the groundwork for integrating them into the main story already exists- why not just use that?
@Savage_Joe I'm not "white-knighting" anyone.
@Munchlax When did you play it?
@Crono1973
Haven't personally, but its been leaking all over. I don't know how to spoiler tag and some people here seem extra spoiler sensitive, so I'd direct you to the forum thread for the game to see what I'm talking about, and r/pokeleaks for more in depth information.
@Munchlax I would say that you should atleast wait until release to get a full review from other players (not the corporate reviewers) before determining it's just a direct Diamond/Pearl port.
@Crono1973
Even if it hasn't been officially released, street date has been broken, and people have played it and presented video evidence. Many platinum features are either missing or watered down
@Munchlax but it still could be a good game.
ORAS did the same, it had some good stuff from Emerald but lacked the biggest one being the Battle Frontier, but ORAS did add it's own flavour of good things to the mix instead.
It could be the same here, time will tell but I do agree it is a littlebit of a shame they did not put in the really good stuff from Platinum.
This is great!
Unity is one of the best engines, the Game Freak engine is, without any exaggeration, probably one of the worst 3D engines in the world, judging by SWSH's terrible performance, I've never seen a game with an implementation of draw distance for characters anything near as bad as in those games. It's inexplicable.
And no, this has nothing to do with the bugs and the art-style, that's just ILCA under Masuda rushing it and making bad decisions.
If the next Pokémon games were made in Unity, with more people polishing the games, this could be great.
@Zyph You should care. The problem is that the engine GF uses is terrible, so a move to Unity is a spark of hope, and could solve problems like the terrible performance of SWSH in the next big games, if GF made the move as well for their next games.
The question would be then, why Arceus is not Unity, because it apparently isn't, giving how terrible texture resolution is there, it could be a just incredibly rushed project again, but I work with Unity myself, I never deved for Switch, but I don't see why this should have texture resolution problems as severe as it is in Arceus.
@KBuckley27 the bad art-style has nothing to do with the engine. That's just an art decision.
The actual graphical fidelity, like resolution, texel density, post processing effects, in all those fields, this is way better than all other mainline Switch games.
@RupeeClock this sucks, that's what happens when you rush your game. Now we end up with 10 gigs download on our Switches although it could all be on the cartridge.
Although, I was never going to buy BDSP anyway, this is one more reason to stay away from it.
@WallyWest never expected that, always looked like a totally lazy remake from the first frame of the first trailer.
ORAS was already a kinda lazy remake with cut content, LGPE also didn't feature FRLG content, so I already expected that trend to continue, reason why I was never planning on buying these and I'll be really happy if it sells less than Let's Go.
@Munchlax I'm a huge Platinum fan, but tbf, the biggest problem with DP was just performance to me, which obviously doesn't affect an remake, the other problems like fire types were nothing near a deal-breaker to me.
If this game was otherwise a great remake, I wouldn't mind no Platinum content.
Unity has historically been a jank engine with plenty of games not running well on it.
@HenHiro
There's been another particularly startling revelation discovered by dataminers.
The ROMs for BD/SP are virtually identical, the only difference is a flag in the header that decides which version you play.
@RupeeClock makes sense, saves time, and unless people hack their Switches, there's obviously no way the end comsumer would be able to play the other version.
@Arawn93 no. It's just an engine with easy access and therefore a lot of inexperienced devs use it and make bad games. Has nothing to do with the engine, Unity is amazing if you're not going for cutting edge ultra realism.
@HenHiro
The normal practice is to set flags in the compilation process to define the differences in your different builds, which isn't especially difficult to do.
It strikes me that ILCA were not prepared for this task, if they were to develop such a high profile game using a highly vulnerable engine and on an already compromised platform, and effectively hand people the same game twice.
@HenHiro No I don't. I keep an open mind about things like this. And It's not that their engine is terrible, It's down to their design choices and style. If they wanted to they could have spent the time to polish animations and stuff in SwSh. In the end they chose not to. Let us remember that Pokemon is an All Ages franchise. They opt to design games as simple as possible for little kids to understand and doing complex graphic work isn't really a priority for them. Personally, I still didn't care since I still enjoyed the games. To each their own. Would I preferred more realistic motions and animations? Definitely but still keeping an open mind about circumstances.
FWIW, ILCA is a fairly young studio. Even if they had the cash pool of Game Freak or TPC, it boils down to their technical experiences and tools used in their previous work. The mostly do porting work and mobile games so they're experienced in Unity. That's fair. Does it get the job done? Sure. Does ILCA have the capability to understand spec sheets from Game Freak even when using 3rd party engines? Sure. As a result they chose Unity for Pokemon. I don't see anything remotely wrong with that other than the usual optimization problems associated with the engine we see with other devs ang games. As I said if they prioritize that I don't have a problem with it. Could they have done it more "properly" if they just made their own proprietary engine? I doubt it since middleware development is very costly (based on experience) as much as game development itself. They wouldn't have the time as well for something so gigantic a task just for a remake.
This applies to Game Freak with Arceus as well. Does the studio have experience in very complex graphics-intensive games in the past? Obviously no. Did that show in SwSh? Sure. Does Arceus look rough? Sure. Do I still like the style? Yeah, sure why not. Should I expect them to up their game in the graphics department for their next title? Absolutely.
@thiz Damn it you Spoiled me! (JK)
@Arawn93 Ori 1+2/Hollow Knight are some of the best games on Switch, run nigh on flawlessly and they’re Unity games. 2D games sure, but Will of the Wisps has a crap ton going on under the hood with 3D elements all over the place- not an easy game to get running well.
I doubt anyone would even be able to tell that BD/SP are Unity games unless they were told.
@RupeeClock They are effectively the same game anyway, and let’s be realistic- 99% of people who buy one of these versions is not going to know or care
@larryisaman
The typical differences between two versions of a Pokémon game include:
They can make for varied gameplay experiences when you consider the intent is to play with other people, but I won't deny it's largely a ploy to sell more copies of a game than is necessary when they could realistically just be a single game.
@RupeeClock I just mean the vast majority of people aren’t going to know that the other version is basically included on whichever cartridge you buy and is locked behind a piece of code determined by the version you bought, nor will they be bothered either way
@larryisaman
Granted, but it's like the practice of on-disc DLC.
People still won't like it when they know.
@Zyph how much do you know about game engines? How much experience do you have?
@RupeeClock There’s just an expectation that there’ll be barely any difference between versions anyway; knowing that the other version exists within the cart you bought but you can’t access it isn’t a big deal when the game is virtually identical anyway. Honestly if I were told every Pokemon game thus far has included both base versions but only lets you play the one you got the box for I wouldn’t be surprised.
If there were Platinum content already developed and in the ROM ready to go but it remained locked to sell a third version or DLC as you say then that’d be unacceptable. In this case though you’re not really expected to buy both versions anyway. I know there are people who do buy both but even then I don’t see why they’d care, it’s not like they’re locking away an entirely different game.
@HenHiro lol I specifically said middleware, if you're familiar with it. Game Engines are middleware tools though career-wise I have not utilized them. But to answer your question, I have about 10 years of C++ middleware development ranging from corporate embedded systems to consumer electronics utilizing also graphics APIs. You can maybe see the connection there. With enough coding experience you can easily draw basic polygons using existing libraries. You can already start developing an "engine" from there if you want. Just for curiosity's sake I tried UE3 a few years back since UE uses C++ as well. I have also used Unity back in college by helping out a friend.
All that said, my words against yours so make of that what you will. I normally don't state my background to support an argument since doing so just makes you look silly. But since you explicitly asked then there you go. Silly me.
@Zyph you are dismissing the influence the engine can have on a game. Of course the engine is crucial part, if your engine is terrible, you're gonna need more time to polish the game, to the point that it could become an impossible task, which probably was the case for SWSH.
This has, obviously, nothing to do with bad game design choices. You probably will agree that SWSH is hurt because of the terrible draw distance which directly affects gampeplay, if you agree, it doesn't make sense to downplay the influence of the engine.
@larryisaman yes and even if they knew they could do nothing with that information.
It's not like millions of people will dump their cartridges, hack their Switches, modifiy the game's code, so that they can play Pearl for free.
While I understand not wanting to see spoilers, if you have never played these games on the DS, is there anything really shocking about the stories, plots, monsters, or anything that people would consider "spoilers"? I mean, your a child, you know a professor who studies pokemon, you have a rival/friend that you will battle at strategic places throughout the game, the professor wants you to collect data on pokemon which will turn into vying to be the greatest pokemon trainer to ever defeat the elite four+1, roll credits, continue playing game to collect more pokemon and do assorted other things... did I miss anything?? I mean really, what spoilers? "I don't wanna know which legendary pokemon you can catch!" Then definitely don't look at the GD cases for each game, because they certainly don't show you which one goes with which game. Seriously, if you don't want spoilers then definitely don't read any reviews of the original DS release for these games.
In other, less ranting, news... I hope everyone that plays these remakes enjoys them! I did when they originally came out and I hope I do again.
@RupeeClock but at the end it does not make a difference. The end-user won't be affected, and the devs also won't.
Making a switch between one version and another is probably easier, it's a simple variable. If version == blue { routeXX.spawnXX = bellsprout; else routeXX.spawnXX==nidoran;
Something like that I think.
@Unit_DTH for some people, myself included, everything is a spoiler.
Everything that would delight you to be surprised by.
I do not care about BDSP, but if I did, I would not like knowing about many of the stuff from the last weeks.
@HenHiro wow, I think you missed the point of my post. It isn't a spoiler if it is just a remaster of an old game, at least not for those that have played it in its original form. And nothing about traditional pokemon games is ever really that shocking... They all follow a set path and direction.
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