Pokémon Developer Game Freak To Reveal More About 'Beast Of Reincarnation' Later This Month

This just in, the game is canceled and gamefreak has been shut down by Microshaft.

Really very firmly not my thing, though hope it turns out well for folks who are interested.

As for Mega Dimension, I kind of put up with a lot of compounding annoyances until I hit the special scans and that was the point where I got completely fed up and deleted the game. Been about a month since I've touched it and not sure I'll do so again any time soon, it's a case where I think having the DLC actually lowers the quality of the overall product.

Odd that's it's not coming to Switch 2, but depending on the scale of the game, that's probably for good reason.

Nice to see game freak do something non pokémon related every once in a blue moon. This is probably not up my alley but I hope everyone else enjoys it.

I’m not even a fan and I find it funny they did the bare minimum with pokemon outings on Nintendo for so long and out of the blue they show this game like we are actually competent developers on a technical level.

People 0ften forget that Game Freak is a 2nd Party developer for TPC, not a subsidiary of Nintendo like MonolithSoft, and has the freedom to be a 3rd Party developer on games for other consoles.

It is objectively very funny that the Pokemon devs are making a high quality "look at our graphics" game for Xbox.

Honestly between this and the relatively meh sales for New Pokemon Snap, it feels like this series exists to punish us for understating graphics during the Wii era. Or maybe a test of our resolve. Whatever the opposite extreme of "Unreal Engine 5 game that takes 7 years to make because the graphics are too good but in ways most people will barely notice" is Pokemon RPGs.

now we just need sakurai to get hired by kojima productions and we will really be gaming

For a very brief less than a second moment, I thought the picture used for the article was Phantom Blade Zero and got very excited.

Game Freak's side projects are usually pretty cool, though I still find it odd that some of them haven't launched on Nintendo platforms. Of course, all of those have had more indie-sized ambitions, whereas this looks more like what you'd expect of a AAA game than anything from Pokemon has. Unless they've brought on some better programmers, I'm not confident in their ability to get it running well.

It has not really been the case that Game Freak is incapable of making something graphically nice. Rather, their true pitfall lies in the optimization of their games. They weren't too lazy to model windows in Z-A. In fact, they did, but couldn't get it to run at a stable 30 FPS on Switch so they had to cut the 3D windows. Surprise, surprise: optimization woes don't show up as much on Xbox Series X as the caveman tech that is the Switch. Pokemon on Switch 2 will probably continue to be underwhelming visually, just less so and hopefully not ugly to the same atrocious degree as SV.

@marandahir I wouldn’t say they’re ‘a 2nd party developer for TPC’, they’re just a 3rd party developer, full stop. They existed long before TPC did, TPC simply being a partnership between GF, Nintendo, and Creatures.

This could not look less original.
And on anything but a switch, isn’t technically proficient looking at all.

To me, the music was very Stellar Blade

Imagine if they put that effort, time and budget to a Pokemon game 🙄

Ghost of Yotei meets Bayonetta… but with cast off Pokémon designs like a wolf with a plant for a tail and a Robot with Stretch Armstrong arms.

And characters without facial expressions?

There's absolutely nothing legendary about Gamefreak lmao

The only "legendary" story about pokemon dev is when Iwata saved their a**es

@Yoshi3 this one's not gonna be good anyway, like almost any of their other efforts.

@Dom_31 That Iwata story's a myth, all he actually did was slightly improve decompression times. Useful, but not like, "Saved the game," levels or anything.

@PinderSchloss All the money they made from Pokemon has given them the opportunity to put some budget into this game.

@Dom_31 That was my thought too. Besides their Pokemon games all their games have been mediocre.
The trailer also looks very generic

Doesn’t NLife have a sister site that talks about non-Nintendo related topics? Because yeah, as of yet, this has nothing to do with Nintendo.

I wonder how they must have felt announcing this right after NS2 releases. "Yep. We f* that up."

If this looks better than Pokemon and the popups are not in kick range, then people should ask why Pokemon looks like sh?t with its "four window assets are enough to build a city" attitude.

Here is the litmus test. Can Game Freak actually create a good-looking 3D game? 3DS was "holding them back". Switch was "holding them back". Pokemon was "holding them back". Now? No excuses.

This is what happens when Gamefreak actually have time to develop a game. Pokémon games have a way smaller budget (AA level) and are rushed to meet demands such as keeping up with the TCG sets and the Anime.

Also Pokémon has always been cartoony, childish and not very demanding games, why are they expected to change now if what they have always done is so successful.

Somebody explain me how the hell Game freak is developing a game for Xbox only consoles? Specially a more mature one that switch 2 probably needs.

@Maxrunner It's not just for Xbox, it's also confirmed for PS5 and PC.

@UltimateOtaku91 Nintendo getting screwed by game freak in multiple ways it seems.

@Maxrunner If this game is a major hit I could see Nintendo buying Gamefreak in a rage fit 😂.

i'm glad their doing a non-pokemon game but i'm so confused why it's like an M rated looking souls-like game. idk like do something different, but not like what literally everyone else is also doing.

Guess this is why all the Pokemon games suck now. They're putting their hearts and souls into this instead.

@Questionable_Duck I know MicroShaft isn't the publisher, but I always will take any opportunity to take a swing at MicroShaft for how they treat smaller studios (some of which are likely to appear in the Xbox showcase later this month) for the sake of making their own numbers look good to the investors. It's called a joke, and I make them quite frequently.

Remember, the people at GF are not incompetent. They have Pokemon fatigue. I wish Nintendo and TPC would outsource Pokémon games and let GF breathe.

I imagine the horsepower behind the series x|s allows game freak to produce more graphically intense and content rich games, especially compared to the switch(1).

@CaleBoi25 with gamefreaks track record with how they handle the last few pokemon games wat can possibly go wrong with this new game.

@PinderSchloss Sure...

@KayFiOS No offense, but the joke just seemed like weak ragebait to me

I'm going to wait for reviews on this one. My biggest worry is that it's going to look pretty but have Game Freak's trademark coding issues underneath the hood.

@Questionable_Duck None taken. I'm not trying to make anyone mad; I'm pretty sure we're all fed up with how MicroShaft does business. The only person I can imagine being upset with that comment is Phil Spencer, and if that is the case, good, screw him.

We already know how gamefreak makes games. They button mash under the hood, then give it a terrible paint job.

Just give a Demo for Switch2 first....

@Dimjimmer They answer to nobody, not even Nintendo and that's always been the problem. Who's going to force them to do better?

Actually putting some effort in because a new IP doesn't have zillions of fans who will buy their lazy slop no matter what.

Gamefreak could really put in work if they wanted........ Shame none of it shows in pokemon...their games still look like early wiiu/ late Wii games in unreal engine.

Sp they can make great looking games? Who would have thought 😅

Seriously? If theyre capable of this much, they could at least stop copypasting mountains & windows

now make pokemon with graphics like this

@Dee123
But are they a small indie company that is being held back by weak hardware and/or the big, bad Pokemon Company, or are they really that bad of a developer? That's what this release will show.

If this turns out even remotely good, everyone has a right to be pissed at both Game Freak and Nintendo for allowing the bare minimum to be done on Pokémon over the past decade.

Looks very generic action slop. The other platforms can keep it.

Just goes to show you that the higher ups don't want to make pokemon look good.

This is what they can do with a decent budget and no time restraints.

Also to those who say make Pokémon look like this, I'd say if Pokémon had these type of visuals then it just wouldn't be Pokémon anymore for me. Why change the art style that captured billions of fans.

@Liam_Doolan it is a bit strange that this game would not get released on Switch2 considering Nintendo is a major shareholder of Gamefreak. Maybe they were told to keep quiet until a future Nintendo direct?

@MK73DS TPC do let Pokémon get outsourced.

All the spinoffs by Bandai Namco, Spike Chunsoft, Genius Sonority, Koei Tecmo....they just don't sell anywhere near as well. A couple million at best, if that.

And the one time they DID outsource a main RPF, everyone hated it apparently.

So yeah, can't win.

The vindictive nature in me wants this to flop so hard that the only way to salvage it will be to bring a definitive edition to Switch 2 and then Nintendo fans snub that too 😈 But...hope it does well 😂

Gotta love all the "ah so that's where the pokemon money goes" comments all over the internet.

@MK73DS GF are a third of TPC, they have a say. I bet if they wanted to they could put all of their focus on mainline games and fully outsource remakes and the Legends titles- even if Creatures said no I imagine Nintendo would say yes given their usual quality standards. Fact is GF make so much more money doing most of the RPGs in house so they won’t stop.

@Haruki_NLI BDSP had a 1.5 year development cycle apparently. ILCA are definitely capable of more but weren’t given the chance.

Maybe they have been removed from TPC for making too many poor quality games.
So instead they have started to make other games again.

If anything I'm hoping for Fable from yesterday's Xbox Showcase. Damn that blew me away. Probably not going to happen though, especially at launch.
Would love Forza too, and I thought this looked interesting, even if it's very Horizon like. Just not sure we can trust it yet being GameFreak.
Realistically, the game we will get will be Kiln....

@Haruki_NLI What a disingenuous post.

"And the one time they DID outsource a main RPF, everyone hated it apparently.

So yeah, can't win."

The outsourced game - BDSP - wasn't well received because it was a badly coded lazy product that relied on nostalgia value only to sell.

Do better next time.

GF better show they put in the work for whatever Pokémon game they announce next month. Anything less will just prove they took all the money they made from their biggest franchise and made this game, rather than making better Pokémon games. Too little dev time will now be an unacceptable excuse, since this game shows they are able and willing to accept dev help from other studios.

It was already known that Pokémon fans only got the worst and now this game just confirms it. Look at this compared to the disaster of Scarlet, Violet, and Z-A.

@LazyDaisy Rhia has been long in th emaking. It was maybe a decade ago(?) when we first saw concept art for something like this.

@PinderSchloss keep coping fanboy lol

@PinderSchloss because it isn't AI, you're just extremely upset and cashing out lol

This game has the visual fidelity and production values that Legends Z-A should've had, especially for the criminally high price Legends sold for.

@PinderSchloss AI fearmongering so out of control that comments like this are commonplace.

Can someone define for me what a souls-like game is now? I keep seeing this called a soulslike, but the combat I've seen is fast-paced with special attacks you choose through menus (kinda like FF VII Remake). I haven't even see one block or parry, staples of Souls games.

What about that combat system is comparable to a Souls game? Is 3rd person action RPG now just the "soulslike" genre?

The CLOSEST thing to Pokémon games actually running on Unreal Engine 5, well good luck with them squashing all the bugs and optimization that comes with that responsability!

But there you have it... a clarification on why this project looks so good, many external companies (such as Fictions) are helping Game Freak on many parts, and it wouldn't be a surprise if many of that support has been technical.

But still, the framework is there on Game Freak, they were in full charge of pre-production and they likely decided also how the game would look and its core mechanics, not to mention they are still working on all the core concepts, so even with technical support they themselves already know how it would all come together. Framework, Engine, physics and such, everything.
The biggest surprise? Everything here is done with a relatively smaller team and especially budget compared to a mainline Pokémon game, yet that did not stop the game from having production values beyond any previous Pokémon game they ever did before...

It's also ironic, since Pokémon games tend to get support from much more companies assisting Game Freak and Creatures. I hopefully expect Game Freak to be the one deciding how a game will look and how ambitious its mechanics will be, because they definitely wanted a lot from this release alone!

I wouldn't expect the next mainline Pokémon games to look exactly like this, since they've been clearly making it with current-gen consoles in mind. It's an UE5 title after all.
While for Gen X for example, taking into account GF developing it since 2022, there could certainly be Switch 1 origins in the framework. I could be wrong though, and maybe they decided for a Switch 2 release early with the first specs in mind...

Anyway, this game truly looks like a beast from the studio and very truthfully impressed me. If they can't say anything about a Switch 2 port, they're likely researching it or will focus on it after release. We still have to see how it will look and run on a Series S (and Steam Deck) anyway.

@PinderSchloss It looks like this, because Game Freak outsourced their new concept to "various partner studios," as quoted from VGC articles with interviews from the studio.

Granted, I won't completely dismiss your statement either. It's certainly suspicious, but I'd rather wait for the game to come out and see the internal files from data miners to confirm that suspicion before starting a negative narrative involving AI usage.

That said, this game doesn't look optimized well at all. The resolution is awful and fuzzy, almost like trying to run Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in handheld mode, and the frame rate is ALL over the place. Some of these concepts look cool though, but I'm afraid its going to unfortunately release in a rather poor state, as Game Freak typically does, since they have deadlines to meet with their always moving Pokémon franchise and they have proven that they will simply never delay a game to make them better.

...and the sad thing about all of this is... I love the Pokémon franchise and ultra positive about almost everything involving the gaming industry... but I'm just this cynical about this studio, lol.

@Lizuka I know it's way too late to comment, but speaking as someone who also got fed up with the Special Scans... unless it's just a matter of managing a limited storage space, deleting the game outright over this seems like a bit of an overreaction.

@BrazillianCara It pretty much goes hand-in-hand with that. I have way more digital games than I have space on my Switch 2 and so it was a, "Well, I'm done with this one, into the not installed pile it goes," move and by this point I don't think I even have space for it without clearing out something else first.

So many salty comments.

Despite this looking about 10x better than their Pokemon titles, they have continued their usual philosophy of not well optimising their game - it’s all over the place in the trailer and gameplay shown off (even though it is pretty).

Even during the interview with IGN, the director confirmed they aren’t focused on making a game that performs and runs well, it’s all about the gameplay experience.

So yeah, this is defo a Gamefreak title 🤣

@Qwertyninty this was exactly my thoughts seeing this game! It actually pissed me off a bit about the Pokémon games looking like they do haha. I understood it’s not the same devs, but then why don’t they get similar devs in to help out on the Pokémon games? I’m not even a big Pokémon fan but I got intrigued about some of the games but always got turned off a bit too much by the graphics - and I’m not even usually a graphics snob but my gosh they look simple Let’s see how this runs though

My ideal scenario would be the Nintendo Zelda team doing a collab for an open world Pokémon title to shape them up a bit, but I guess that’s far-fetched.

I don't want a pokemon game that looks like this per say, but I would like a game that I can call good looking without attaching "for a pokemon game" to it.

It’s interesting how Pokémon has stayed cartoony when it could’ve developed looking more like this.

I wonder why Pokémon has always looked a bit out of date lol

I like the setting and how it is clearly inspired by the creators vividly imaging the current state of human civilization outside the eternal abyss of their Pokemon mines where it is forever 2002 and the sun never reaches.

I'm really hoping this gets a Switch 2 port! The action RPG mechanics look like a perfect crossover between FF7R and Legends Arceus, with some Nier/Okami styled boss fights mixed in! People forget to compare games like this to Okami, which itself had a nice Zelda/Metroid mix of puzzle-styled boss fights.

@Cronodoug Was ZA a disaster?

I’m gonna be honest, I’ve never heard of this game, and I’m gonna be honest-er, when I saw the picture, I thought I had.
Gamefreak should go for more stylistic games, imagine a Pokemon game in the style of the anime- it would be great, and they wouldn’t have to worry as much about stuff like 3d windows, everything would be 2d textures, and it’d look great!

THAT is coming from Gamefreak? Not my thing, but i hope people will like it.