Gonna disagree with this. Pokemon has done graphics show-offs multiple times - in BW some of the first footage we got was the 'circular camera' in Castelia City (something none of the Gen 4 games ever pulled off), and in the XY Direct the first thing we see is seven different areas with six different camera angles before they ever get to the starters, and the voiceover practically says as much. The segment in the LGP/E trailer that quickly alternates between six different areas in Kanto without displaying any mechanics - what else is that supposed to be other than a graphics showcase?
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Those types of things are always in trailers and its meant as "check out these locales you can visit". I mean one of the segments was the underground path. There's nothing amazing about that. It's the most simplistic area in the game with no special lighting (missed opportunity to have fancy "underground" style lighting like the random tunnel they made an explorable area in USUM). Is that really meant to be a graphical showcase, rather than just showing off areas, following pokemon and multiplayer, because if so hi game freak
i have questions
Also SM had a significant style upgrade from XY but did not have the "graphical showcase" to its reveal. Its reveal was just logos! Then we had 2 months of n o t h i n g until I want to say April. Remember the corocoro that was just a 2 page spread of the box art but everything was covered in lens flare
But
My view of the graphics as "nice but not a marked improvement" might be coloring this because like, man, this sure is pokemon in HD but:
1. kanto is so flat and bland
2. the characters use cel shading but the pokemon now use the border-less style Go uses, which creates a visual disconnect that i think is kinda ugly
3. the pokemon models have been nice to look at but we know that because they're the same future proofed models we've seen for 5 years across 2 generations and 4 sets of 3ds-straining games
4.
god is kanto boring to look at
So to me, they weren't showing off a lot of footage for the sake of graphics, it was for the sake of showing off the game as a whole alongside its assorted features. I mean I guess graphics are part of that, but my point remains there were ways to cut a trailer that would focus on that and not show off other things.