not having Dynamax in the last year after having had it hyped for the first part is a level of response to fan feedback not even Game Freak is capable of getting right
FTFY
I'm joking obviously - I know it would be a terrible decision for optics and business sense and merchandising and all - but I for one wouldn't complain
On a more serious note:
I'm sorta seconding
Pikachu315111 that the mapping angle isn't one I understand as a reason not to have Dynamax - actually, I would really like for maps to get more noticeably altered designs than just tile-for-tile remakes anyway, so I kind of figured being able to leave a different amount of space for Gyms would be easy.
I'd be happy for the map flow and layout to stay similar, because Sinnoh actually has some really good map designs already in my opinion - but if one of the points of a remake is to be a graphical overhaul, I think they should be trying to make them look like the current Generation's style.
I don't think FRLG and LGPE did anything like this, but something that HGSS and ORAS both did well is making subtle tweaks to most maps to make them flow better with the new scale of the console rather than being tile-for-tile remakes. Some maps that wouldn't work as well or that just needed an upgrade, including some Gyms, were totally overhauled - but even more minor changes, with the map's flow, direction and layout totally intact, are apparent if you compare them. Look at HGSS's Goldenrod City compared to GSC's, or ORAS's Mossdeep City compared to RSE's - you'll find that the remakes make them neater and tighter, clean up excess empty space and uneven edges. and place little details like flowers in a way that looks nice for the new map, and they redesign most tiles as well. They're perfectly faithful to the
layouts of the maps - every path goes in the same direction, every
non-decorative, enterable building is in the same place, and the general distribution of terrain and details is pretty consistent for the most part - but you can tell that, on some level, they're kind of
new maps made from the ground up with the old ones as a
reference, not just the exact same map with updated tiles.
Admittedly, I'm actually not a huge fan of the way ORAS look visually anyway, but not for that reason.
One of the issues I have is just the color palette of some of their tiles,
particularly the most basic and common ones like grass, water and cliffs; I think they'd look a lot nicer and more natural if they reduced the saturation and contrast a little and went for something softer? The thing is that these tiles are on almost every map, and they're so vibrant and distracting and sort of clash with each other in a way that make all of the other new tiles (many of which are actually
really good - Sootopolis, a rare map that avoids using these basic tiles together, is
absolutely gorgeous).
But another thing is just that they go out of their way to
try to look blocky, seemingly as an homage to the originals - I really like the updated designs and layouts of their maps, but then things like cliffs go out of their way to look like grid-based tiles like on a GBA, and there are these awkward "steps" in between every layer of them that make the abundant right angles even more pronounced. That's something Game Freak had stopped doing in Generation V, and even the other Gen VI maps avoided it as well - on some level, at least in my eyes, I just think ORAS would have been better off doing
more to look like new Gen VI games instead of leaning into being remakes of Gen III ones. The trees are also kind of uncanny when the game zooms in on them in certain cutscenes; they look low-poly and distorted, and their foliage is really basic compared to the plants in Kalos.
HGSS have their own art style and very different tiles from Sinnoh as well, but it's still designed to fit in with Generation IV and takes advantage of how far the series has progressed since Gen II - I would rather see something like that for a Switch remake if I had my way.
I want to emphasize that this is a
design choice and
not strictly a matter of quality - while I personally don't love that ORAS chose to reference Generation III's tiles and look blockier than usual, it almost certainly didn't take any "less effort" than making more Gen VI-style tiles would have, and it wasn't an "easy way out" or anything! They still
did subtly revamp every map and make modernizations and visual improvements all around, and it's not like having tiles in a natural style like Kalos vs ones in an actively GBA-mimicking style like they do would change how much work that was. It's just a choice that I personally think they could've looked better without, and I'm hoping they don't lean into Generation IV-looking... polygonality (apparently that's not a word) and make fully modern-looking revamps to their maps when the remakes do eventually come.
That said, I fully agree that it makes very little sense for Sinnoh's Gyms to mirror Galar's on a cultural level - even as someone who
liked Galar's Gym Challenge
and the fact that I'm praising something about Sword and Shield should say a lot!, I think it would be pretty out of place in Sinnoh and would undermine a lot of what makes the region unique.
I also don't really like the pocket dimensions idea, though, haha. While "time and space" and "extremes" are a big part of Sinnoh's
lore, part of what makes them so important to the plot is that people
can't control these things as far as Sinnoh is concerned. Sinnoh is more about a
subdued reverence for nature and the universe, dripping with sentimentality and a connection to the past and full of etiological folktales explaining things that the people can't understand any other way.
Team Galactic is all space-themed and futuristic and wants to take control of these things, but everyone in the region talks about how weird and out of place they are, and I mean... they're the
bad guys. They regularly threaten to bomb places that are culturally important to Sinnoh to make room for their new ideas. I don't think making "casual control of time and space with portals and pocket dimensions" a normal part of Sinnoh's culture is really any more
accurate or
thematic than making Dynamax and Gym Leaders "the region's big thing," even if it might sound neat on paper; it would be pretty out of line with the region's tone in its own way.
