Game Freak hasn't displayed a strong commitment to continuity, so I'd guess that in Gen VIII or IX or X we'll start to see regional variants show up in regions that aren't their home. I wouldn't be surprised to see Alolan Vulpix or Alolan Sandshrew in some Gen IX ice cave around the seventh badge. On the contrary, they might get added as a random trade here and there like you said, but probably not on the scale of LGPE I'd guess.
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
-
Congrats to the winners of the 2023 Smog Awards!
Sword & Shield **Official news only** DLC Crown Tundra 22nd October
- Thread starter DHR-107
- Start date
On the other hand, they have shown a commitment to continuity in... very odd, specific areas; such as evolution levels and stats. When they put, say, Rufflet in the earlygame in Alola; they did not bother to lower the evolution level for Braviary and/or adjust Rufflet's stats so it wouldn't be a terrible slog to get there in the meantime. By adjusting neither, Rufflet is effectively made a useless disappointing weight upon your team; something only a very dedicated trainer looking for a challenge should use -- but unlike something like Dragonite, it's not exactly like you're getting one of the best Pokémon in the game as a reward. Many other examples exist throughout the entire franchise; you could likely find at least a few examples in every main game since Gen 1 (and its remakes).
That went off on a tangent, but the point is that while you're partly correct, what continuity Game Freak decides to stick by and which it doesn't is a seemingly random 50/50 grab bag with little regard to what makes sense for game design. We could see them take similar strange stances on regional forms in the future.
Last edited:
One interesting facet of Gigantamax that I just realised is how, by its very nature, it trims off legacy moves. Most teams will want every member to be able to Gigantamax if it can, in a vacuum, because it seems to be more powerful than normal Dynamax and a lot of teams will choose what to Dynamax on the fly. And Pokemon transferred from older games probably won't be able to Gigantamax, so any legacy moves you want will have to be *really* worth it to justify the opportunity cost of Gigantamax.
I kinda like that, tbh. There are too many Pokemon whose competitive usefulness depends on moves that are event-exclusive, and this is especially egregious when that event was an obscure one that took place before a significant chunk of the player base was even born.
I kinda like that, tbh. There are too many Pokemon whose competitive usefulness depends on moves that are event-exclusive, and this is especially egregious when that event was an obscure one that took place before a significant chunk of the player base was even born.
My mind immediately jumps to either parental abuse (she has to win if she wants her parents' love and/or be spared from the belt) or depression and thoughts of suicide. I'd say that those are too dark to be in a Pokemon game, but we already have two examples of parental abuse in N and Guzma.
To be fair, once more you have to consider that GameFreak's official competitive mode doesn't allow Pokemon that aren't captured or bred in the current generation.
Previous generations exclusive moves have only ever been legal on Smogon and some special modes of the Battle Spot, but were never legal as far as VGC goes.
Let's wait a bit, Marnie may have an alternate "Hangry" form of her own which you would also certainly want to see added too.
If our thoughts on all the Pokemon in Let's Go are also in the game is right then it's a strong possibility.
They didn't confirm a Galarain Koffing so it's probably safe to assume Koffing remains unchanged. Since regional variants share the same Pokedex spot with their normal counterparts I'd say normal Weezing is could be used as bonus transfer: can't catch it in the game but it's technically in the Pokedex so if you have one in Home you can send it over.
Same case with the Zigzagoon family.
My guess is another Pokemon has that Ability as their main Ability so they want to save showing if off for that Pokemon, and then after they do they'll go "oh, BTW, Galarian Weezing also has this Ability".
While it may not be a body pillow, here's something to think about: Marnie doesn't like Team Yell's attention toward her. This probably means Marnie doesn't sell merch of herself. So that would mean Team Yell, likely without Marnie's permission, made merchandise featuring her: one being a towel (and you can take that wherever you want). Yeah... still pretty creepy.
Which means, unless its Signature Move is really powerful, it'll probably not see any use as I can't see a player choosing to have a move that they have no control what Type it is as it changes every turn instead of giving it an Electric-type and Dark-type move. Sure it's another move slot you got to use but at least the option is always there.
From what is said about its Signature move Obstruct, sounds like it's going to be a Dark-type version of Shell Trap. Maybe it'll also have a "Follow Me" effect where it draws in all opponent's attacks, which could have its use in Double Battles to keep opponent's attention away from an ally so you can set it up. You could say, in a way, it's "obstructing" the opponent's strategy (and if this is all true, then maybe in future games they should have Pachirisu able to get it, probably via breeding).
You know after you said that my mind jumped to them having a sort of hacking mechanic where, since everything looks to be Rotom compatible, there would be moments in the game you'd need to send out and guide the Rotom in your phone to open locked doors, turn off/on a security device (or any other kind of device), access a computer for information, possess something and use it to make a distraction, or many other things. That's not what they're going to do of course, but now I'm just seeing Rotom's potential for these kind of ideas (reason I didn't see it before is because I always assumed Rotom needed something with a motor in it to control, but apparently that's not the case or at least anymore).
Linoone has a BST of 420. Looking up other Pokemon with that BST which are also middle stage evos, I found them to be the Starters or Pseudo Legendaries. While I doubt Obstangoon will have a BST of 600, it may have a BST around a final Starter's evo, between 500 to 550.
I don't know, sounds like they're making Obstagoon a paragon of countering which, if true, may mean they decrease its Speed and maybe add it to HP or Attack.
Let's also not forget branched evolutions are a thing. ;) Also another idea I had is they take a 3-stage evolution but give it a Galarian form which is a 2-stage evolution, either skipping the middle stage (thus making the base stage stronger to compensate) or chopping off the final stage (thus making the middle stage now the final stage with an increase to its stats to match). Considering the problems they've been having with Kadabra over the years, maybe a Galarian Abra which evolves straight into Galarian Alakazam would be tempting to GF, lol.
Sharpedo seems a bit too big for that, maybe a branched evolution for Remoraid?
Along with Alolan Exeggutor and Alolan Dugtrio, I think there's another good thing connect with regional forms: it gives the artists a chance to play around and come up with outlandish designs since they always have the original forms to fall back on if something doesn't work. :D
I think the idea is that, since Weezing is the embodiment of air pollution, in order for it to become a Pokemon that creates clean air it would take a radical change within it. And since Fairy-types are nature spirits, making it part Fairy explains this drastic change.
"But the Grimer family was made into a pollution cleaner and it became part Dark-type"
Alolan Grimer family more changed its poisoning strategies. Alolan Grimer family may clean up pollution, but they also leave around these crystals which have a high concentration of poison in them. So instead of it polluting the environment to slowly try killing everything within and near it, it now throws around these crystals of instant death. Meanwhile, Alolan Weezing is eating the air pollution and exhausting clean air while it digests the poison elements.
Hmm, now this makes me wonder if its mysterious Ability may somehow involve that, taking in a Poison-type attack and changing it into something beneficial like healing (aka a Poison-type Water Absorb).
Hmm, with Obstragoon focusing more on countering, maybe a H-Linoone evo would just focus on the species speed factor but be better at it: Driftgoon, a more fine haired Linoone with larger claws so it can run faster and turn via drifting.
But on the flip side, maybe the reason we got a Galarian Zigzagoon family is BECAUSE the Zigzagoon family was maybe originally picked to come back. Badgers are a well known animal in the UK, and with the Zigzagoon family the closest thing Pokemon has to a badger they included it. But then it was brought up "hey, why not make a Galarian Zigzagoon which has the color scheme and behavior of a badger?". And thus it came to be. Now having a limited dex, it could encourage the monster creators to really look through what's available and maybe give Pokemon you wouldn't normally think would get a regional variant to actually have a chance. But in order for that to be done the Pokemon does need to be picked to be included in the Galar Dex initially so, even if it does get "replaced" by its Galarian form they could still allow the original form in via transferring it from Home. Heck, they could maybe even say that, since the Pokemon isn't native to Galar normally, it can't Dynamax thus saving them having to make a Dynamaxed model for it.
They have to be in, they totally fit into the aesthetic of the Galar region. They'll probably remain Mythical and so hopefully we'll have a giveaway for those who don't play GO. GO players will get to use it early obviously, though would be neat for it to be a "first day event" like they done with Victini and Keldeo in Gen V (I don't think the early Larvitar and and Jangmo-o Raid Battles count, do they? They're only available if you pre-order the Double Pack).
Actually it's something from folklore, cold iron/steel is said to be a magic nullifier/repeller. Silver also has magic nullifying properties. So it's more then just a mental thing, certain metals in folklore physically harm magical beings. Now this probably came about as a way to bring peace of mind to the simple folk back then, the world is a scary place but as long as you have this chunk of metal/stay in the cities made of metal/there's knights and guards wearing metal armor and wielding metal weapons you'll be safe and upkeep the order.
The Fairy-type resists?
Fairy > Bug: Because Fairy are nature spirits they're higher on the podium of other creatures in the natural world. In addition many modern day depiction of Faeries often show the smaller ones using Bugs as transports so there's also an angle of dominance there. Plus other factors Bug-types would have at their advantage like fear of them or irritating sounds probably don't bother Fairies as they're used to the sounds of nature.
Fairy > Dark: Fairies are supernatural tricksters. Dark-types are maybe good with sleight-of-hand and other confounding tricks, but they're still relatively mundane. However Fairies use magic with their tricks and could probably even use magic to see through them as well, so they know what a Dark-type has hiding in their sleeve. Now of course there are Dark-type who sometimes cross over in supernatural things such as controlling or gaining powers from shadows/darkness, the night time/moon, nightmares, etc., but those probably would all need individual explanations and even then a lot would fall into Fairies just being even more supernatural.
Fairy > Fight: As said above, Fairies are MAGICAL tricksters. While a Fighting-types valor may overcome the simple tricks of Dark-types, Fairies would literally change the world around a Fighting-type causing them to trip up. Fairies are also not completely part of our plain of existence, similar to Ghost-types, so maybe while you're hitting them you're only hitting the part of them that they manifested in our world but not the complete being.
Fire > Fairy: Wielding fire is seen as a thing man does. Also forest fires are a devastating natural disaster which burns and kills plants and animals which a Fairy would probably get their power source from. There could also be the idea Fairies rely on the flow of natural order, the natural cycle, something which fire destroys and fire only consumes and in return only giving a moment of intense heat and light... then nothing.
Poison > Fairy: While poison exists in the natural world, it's not that poison hurting the planet now is it? No, it's manmade produced pollution, chemicals, and radiation that harms nature and we go back to the above explanation. But instead of consuming it's not corrupting, what was once there is now sick, dying, and possibly being twisted. And while after a fire things will grow back, places poisoned may either be indefinitely uninhabitable/infertile or would take hundreds if maybe thousands of years to clean itself up.
Steel > Fairy: Explained above, certain metals are magic nullifiers/repellers.
Pokemon has moved on from just Japanese stuff. We have Pokemon based off mythical creatures and even beliefs/sayings which are from all over the world. In fact Japanese folklore don't have Fairies, Yokai is their closest thing (and they have made a few Yokai-based Pokemon part Fairy like Mawile). The concept of a Fairy is a European mythical creature.
Quoting myself from another page's response to why Alolan Grimer family become Dark-type even though it also cleans pollution: "Alolan Grimer family more changed its poisoning strategies. Alolan Grimer family may clean up pollution, but they also leave around these crystals which have a high concentration of poison in them. So instead of it polluting the environment to slowly try killing everything within and near it, it now throws around these crystals of instant death. Meanwhile, Alolan Weezing is eating the air pollution and exhausting clean air while it digests the poison elements."
Considering Rotom is part Ghost-type who like to cause havoc and mischief I'm surprised Galar hasn't had major troubles yet. Can't really punish them if they misbehave.
Yeah, I think he meant pure Fire as well. Though of course Incineroar is Fire/Dark but that doesn't stop giving it a batch of Fighting-type moves. As of right now Delphox is the only recent Fire Starter who doesn't have any fighting theme to it as its a mage.
And since we're up to Page 77 I won't put these in spoilers tags:
Another idea is that they can have instances of regional variant Pokemon having been brought in for one reason or another. Like maybe we can see another region using Alolan Grimer family to clean up a recent chemical accident or maybe have someone bring over a Galarian Zigzagoon as a pet but it was so mischievous they released it and it has now become an invasive species. While the Pokemon requires a specific condition for its species to become what it is, the change probably took decades if not centuries to happen so recent activities of transporting the Pokemon over can be used to justify their appearances elsewhere.
For normal Legendaries they can do a scaled down version of the scavenger hunts with only the additional Legendaries they decided to include. In this way they can now use certain Legendaries to "shake-up" the metagame each generation or even between versions simply by including or excluding a Legendary. The question would then also be how would they justify having certain Legendaries included since many Legendaries are made specifically for the region they're from. That's something they're going to have to work around which they have done before rather obtusely (using Hoopa's rings in ORAS and the Ultra Wormholes in USUM).
Mythicals on the other hand, well, they could just add a batch of them they plan on giving away for future Events. An in a meta way it would create hype as we would know what Mythicals they plan on giving away for that lifespan of the game. And, as an extra bonus, if you already have those Mythicals you can transfer them early to use in-game or private battle spots.
I also stand by my idea is that they can add a Pokemon to the Galar Dex but the only way to get that Pokemon is to transfer it from another game. Pretty much there would be a Regional Galar Dex which you would complete for the Oval and Shiny Charms and other rewards connected to completing the dex, but there would also be an Extended Galar Dex for not only post game Pokemon they didn't want part of the main game line-up but also for Pokemon they'd know players would like to have (be it from popularity or competitive use) but they have no place in the game so need to be transferred in. And these extended Pokemon would also include Legendaries and Mythicals.
I think that's going a bit too far, though at the same time wouldn't say it's the wrong direction of thinking. I was actually more thinking along the lines of Caitlin. In Platinum she was technically the Frontier Brain of the Battle Castle yet her butler Darach always battled for her instead. In BW we discovered why: when Caitlin was young, whenever she lost a battle, she would throw a temper tantrum. Problem is, Caitlin is strong psychic, so when she goes into a fit of rage her telekinesis throws everything around her. It wouldn't be until going to Unova to hone her powers when she was able to finally control them even when she lost.
Now Marnie may not have psychic powers, but that doesn't mean losing won't bring out a bad side of her. While they could go for a "she went through abuse/bullying" explanation, I wouldn't mind if they maybe explored a character with an actual personality psychosis. Normally Marnie is like any other person, but when she loses there's this little voice in the back of her mind that tells her to do bad things. And in the past she has (which could be why Team Yell sees her as an idol, she's seen as a rebel when in actuality she was acting out). Because of this she has underwent training to be the best like no one ever was. But not because she wants to win, but because she's afraid of losing; she's afraid of the voices in her head that tells her bad things whenever she loses. That's why she has to win and become the strongest trainer, the Champion; not to satisfy her or anyone's expectations, but to keep the voices quiet. To give herself peace.
Unfortunately for her we're the player character so, if this indeed is close to why Marnie is trying to become Champion and not lose, she's going to be in for a bad time. And maybe the same way around for the player when Marnie starts letting out her "Hangry" form...
True, but it's not like GF completely ignores singles either. If the upshot is that it's easier to build a competitive legitimate singles team on cartridge, then it doesn't matter too much whether that was the specific intention or a happy side effect.
A more elegant solution would have been to give the event moves as egg moves like they did with Linoone, but I'll take what I can get here.
To be fair, in those cases they had to come up with one justification that worked for every legendary in existence. With individually tailored ones, we might get a bit more thought put in, and perhaps get the detailed encounter environments that we originally thought USUM's wormhole areas would be.
The Pokemon that are innately tied to their region tend to be the box legendaries, and I can only think of three occasions where they've been catchable outside of their region in a non-"every Pokemon is available" context: the Navel Rock event, the Embedded Tower in HGSS, and Mewtwo's cave in XY. All of those places had a good amount of flavour to them, so it can definitely be done.
I am actually pretty curious of how they will handle the titles *after* Sword and Shield.
We talked a lot about how GF has decided to keep some things very consistent between generations.
One of those is the VGC format: year 1 regional pokedex > year 2 national pokedex > year 3 national pokedex with restricted
Sword and Shield's "dexit" doesn't technically break this pattern, but however whatever title comes after will inherently need to have the entire pokedex in it if they want to stay consistent with this.
It depends how consistent the annual releases are, I think.
At this point, we can be fairly sure that whatever games come after SwSh will expand the Pokedex, even if they're committed to not including the whole thing. I doubt they'd limit themselves for the rest of the generation unnecessarily, especially with legendaries etc. So year 2 might be that expanded Pokedex.
Alternatively, they could go with the restricted format in year 2 and the expanded dex in year 3 (with another restricted format in year 4, maybe). The restricted format was popular in 2010, and I think people only started to dislike it when they started introducing legendaries that were *clearly* a cut above everything else in gen 6.
I don't think we'll ever see a VGC format with every Pokemon in existence in it again (unless the current policy changes), and to be honest, I'm not wholly convinced that that's a bad thing. Those formats have tended to be much more homogeneous than the regional ones.
Yung Dramps
awesome gaming
Yeah that's what I was thinking for Legendaries too, as in the restriction on how many there are. However, instead of one unified gimmick to get them all, I'm thinking something like BW2 or HGSS where after you beat the game you can complete little quests to find them around the overworld, with the selection varying depending on what the map is like. For example, if we took this approach for Galar I could see the Swords of Justice being roaming legendaries for obvious reasons, the Regis being dispersed in the snowy mountain, rocky mountain and industrial regions of the map, Kalos legendaries being thrown in as a reference to Britain's historic connections with France, so on and so forth. It's not like this would be totally out of left field, for as I've explained this was basically how it went in the aforementioned games and nobody questioned it back then so I don't think it would be much different here (I'm pretty sure you could even just find the Gen 3 weather trio chilling on some obscure islands in Johto in HGSS, no interdimensional travel required).
As for Mythicals, I like the idea of them planning out what to distribute in advance and putting them in the code so we can hype ourselves up and transfer them in. I could also see them just doing DLC for Mythicals exclusively, but considering their aversion to that kinda stuff I wonder if they would even consider that.
Let's look over each Legendary to see if any have a requirement:
Legendary Birds: No requirement.
Mewtwo: No requirement, at most a secluded cave away from people.
Legendary Beasts: No requirement.
Lugia: A marine cave.
Ho-Oh: A bit tricky, it looks to prefer locations that are high up which have some sort of significance.
Legendary Titans & Regigigas: Hidden chambers, Regigigas would involve having gotten the other three first.
Eon Duo: No requirement.
Groudon: A deep underground cave, possibly with volcanic activity.
Kyogre: A deep marine cave, possibly one you can access from the surface.
Lake Guardians: A hidden chamber you need Surf to access.
Creation Trio: No requirement technically, you just need an excuse to have a timespace anomaly.
Cresselia: No requirement, just need some way to get a Lunar Wing.
Heatran: An underground cave, possibly near/in a volcano.
Swords of Justice: No requirement.
Forces of Nature: No requirement for Tornadus and Thundurus, but Landorus you have to call via a shrine dedicated to it in lush lands where the other two are causing trouble.
Tao Trio: No requirement(?), at least by the player's point of view as these are "you must be worthy of me" Legendaries and the player would likely be worthy to catch them so no problem there.
Aura Trio: Another which don't look to have any requirement, at most Zygarde needs some sort of natural disaster excuse to at the very least have you hunt for its Cores and Cells.
Type: Null family: Only three supposedly exist so if they want to have more they're going to need to have to explain how the scientist making it was able to get his hands on the blueprint copies... it's probably going to because of Faba, isn't it?
Guardian Deities: Up till now I realize that many if not all can easily be placed elsewhere, just because they're strongly associated with one location doesn't mean there's not another just laying in dormant or is hiding (we can also go with them not being canon angle). However the Guardian Deities are a tough group since they solely exist to be the protectors of Alolan's islands. Even if you built a shrine for them elsewhere, why would they appear to that shrine? The only thing I can think of is maybe finally giving the Strange Souvenir a purpose. It's from Alola, made in resemblance of the Guardian Deities, so could be used to summon them (or maybe create one if they want to both ignore the player being a jerk by stealing away the islands protectors and revealing Alola can generate another island protectors if one were to vanish).
Light Trio: Like with the Creation Trio you just need an excuse to have an Ultra Wormhole open up and spit out a Cosmog or Necrozma. Of course that might come with the expectation you can explore Ultra Space but if they have it open and close it could just be considered a one-off occurrence; maybe even have the player be the reason it happened.
Okay, so I guess aside from the Guardian Deities technically no Legendary is connected to their region of origin. So in that case, maybe if they do decide to add in a batch of Legendaries they can do so in a more significant way by having it be a side quest with maybe story tidbits.
Also, while probably not ideal, there's also always the possibility of them releasing another Stadium/Battle Revolution game where you can battle with all Pokemon. There would be no story mode (hence why I excluded the Colosseum titles), but in its place they'll give us a ton of alternate battling rules if they're not going to have another Battle Frontier ever again. Heck, maybe just call it that, Pokemon Battle Frontier! The name alone would probably have players be throwing money at it.
Yeah, DLC looks like a no-go (at least for right now, OBVIOUSLY policies can change). But, as Rarycaris pointed out, the third version/second paired games plus the remakes can expand on the Pokedex from the previous game in that generation which includes adding in more Legendaries and Mythicals. Heck, if they do indeed have 3 version releases as they usually do they could have the entire National Pokedex in the final and 3rd version of that generation.
another way they can handle it is with pokemon migration
flavor example would be how yungoos, like mongoos, were transported to alola and bred
potential example would be alolan vulpix/sandslash being transported to northen sinnoh and doing well but not as well as alola
don't they require the rainbow wing? i guess it would be similar to cress, then
there could also be a world crisis which happens to affect alola but not at alola
or alola as a region is being 'challenged' by another force
Personally I don't think they should enforce strict rules to regional variants, and should just phase out the regional restriction anyway.
A lot of the explanations behind the variants are pretty thin already, so a little hand waving is acceptable to allow, say, Vulpix to appear in an ice cave as the variant and a meadow as the original in the same game. or variant Rattata could be more active in urban areas while original Rattata is active in fields and forests. They can even mix and match variants and originals in future regional Pokedexes.
Only the few that share a common pre-evolution would never be allowed to exist in the wild in the same region I guess.
Last edited:
Guess they could use their Key Item to summon them also, though you didn't need their Key Item to encounter them on Navel Rock.
Eh, still feel like the Guardian Deities would still remain on Alola and try fighting what's happening from their islands. For them to leave Alola I think an outside force would have to specifically take them away.
I think it can be explained away as "the people of Alola came to revere these Pokémon as Guardian Deities and so the Pokémon decided to assume the role permanently". That leaves the possibility open for the guardian deities to just be one member of their respective species and not the sole member. I don't recall any lore about the Guardian Deities forming the islands or creating the Alola region -- if that's the case then I retract my theory -- so I think it's a pretty credible excuse to include them in future games, such as how the Entei outside of Johto are likely not the Entei revived by Ho-oh from the ashes of the Burning Tower and instead are Entei born from volcanic eruptions.
As far as regional variants go, they could just create themed hold items that cause the Pokemon holding it to lay eggs that hatch into its regional form. Kind of like how it works with Everstones now, just in reverse. It'd also work on the Pokemon holding it itself where relevant, of course.
I can see a way they could bring back regional variants. Just have an area in game called, say, Little Alola (there's plenty of places like that in real life). You could have the regional variants appear in the wild there and/or if you hatched an egg there it would hatch into that regional variant.
That's not much different from how in USUM to get the Kanto variants of stone evolutions and Marowak you just have to do the evolution while in the ultrarifts.
Pokémon also has precedent for it; making areas in games for Magneton/Nosepass, Glaceon and Leafeon to evolve. Of course their requirements are a lot less specific than "Alola", but it's enough precedent that I can imagine that's what they'd do. Good call.
Recently I've been thinking about the graphics of this game since that's one of the major complaints. And while I can still definitely see it in regards to the wild area and more than a few of the Pokémon animations, can I say that that aside the game is actually looking pretty nice? I really like how the towns look, and a lot of the trainers and their expressions appear to have had a major upgrade compared to the past too. I'm also glad that, unless they're at such a higher resolution I can't see them anymore; they've finally ditched the 'anime outlines' on the Pokémon. It goes a fair distance in making them look a lot better... maybe that was the intention behind the outlines all along
Recently I've been thinking about the graphics of this game since that's one of the major complaints. And while I can still definitely see it in regards to the wild area and more than a few of the Pokémon animations, can I say that that aside the game is actually looking pretty nice? I really like how the towns look, and a lot of the trainers and their expressions appear to have had a major upgrade compared to the past too. I'm also glad that, unless they're at such a higher resolution I can't see them anymore; they've finally ditched the 'anime outlines' on the Pokémon. It goes a fair distance in making them look a lot better... maybe that was the intention behind the outlines all along
Something that has boggled me recently is that Pokemon SwSh hasn't been the only Switch game that has received criticism for the graphic.Recently I've been thinking about the graphics of this game since that's one of the major complaints. And while I can still definitely see it in regards to the wild area and more than a few of the Pokémon animations, can I say that that aside the game is actually looking pretty nice? I really like how the towns look, and a lot of the trainers and their expressions appear to have had a major upgrade compared to the past too. I'm also glad that, unless they're at such a higher resolution I can't see them anymore; they've finally ditched the 'anime outlines' on the Pokémon. It goes a fair distance in making them look a lot better... maybe that was the intention behind the outlines all along
In fact, I've seen similar complaints for other titles lately, including the (pretty great) last Fire Emblem title... I'm starting to believe that it's games like BotW and Odyssey that actually went overboard and have impressive graphic and FPS for the console, and not the other way games that have bad ones.
To be completely honest, as someone who does still see problems with the graphics? I feel like most of the people going on about them wouldn't have started going on about them if it wasn't for Dexit. It was more or less just finding another reason to dislike the game -- and admittedly, it's not an unjustified; there are still some big problems and no matter what the reason, it's still frustrating to see some of the worse models like Hitmontop continue to get use; while other more bland ones like Lucario and Tyranitar also have seen no updates.
But still, as you've said; there are other games with this problem and equally they should be criticised as well. I can't stop thinking about FE3H's fruit textures... it's just that graphics were more fuel to the fire. And while I have issues with them, I also wanna praise them where it's deserved.
It's not even just the "fruit texture" meme, I've been keeping an eye on most of the new titles coming out on several platforms lately (as I own both PC, Playstation and Switch, so I get to choose which version to get) and the Switch versions of most titles do often get the low end of the stick when it comes to graphic and FPS, and honestly Sword and Shield seems to be one of the titles who succeeds the most so far in having good and clean graphics.
As far as I know, the playable demo had stable FPS, pretty clean graphic, and the only "artifacts" we have seen were from the treehouse showcase (which might be a incomplete version, as well).
The more games release, the more I feel that the two colossuses (BotW and Mario) that everyone takes as example are exceptions more than rule, and if anything show how impressive the work of the Nintendo designers was on them, rather than making everything else look bad.
Therefore I definitely agree with your sentiment that the "bad graphic" has just been thrown in there to add more "hatefuel" and wouldn't have happened at all if the Dexit issue never happened (or was handled better).
I wouldn't go as far as to say that Pokémon is one of the better looking examples on the switch. Many of my other games like Smash, Pokken and the like all manage to look very, very good.
I'll also argue that it's not how high quality the polygons are; there's also other aspects that weigh heavily like art style - and I would argue that FE definitely is a game that looks better or worse depending on your tastes.
And specifically to Pokémon, there are the aforementioned re-used models. No matter how good the rest of the game looks, it is still a problem unique to them that the returning Pokémon will just never be able to feel fresh as long as they continue to use models/animations that were on the 3DS 5 years ago - and that that problem intensifies when their default animations just don't look very good, like Lucario's just standing with its arms by its sides and Skarmory's hovering in the air. It's an even bigger indictment when other new default poses/animations have a lot more personality to them, like Linoone, Obstagoon or Impidimp. I understand why this is an issue of course, and this isn't a criticism of the graphics designers. It''s more just accepting that, yeah, this doesn't look great.
But again, that aside, I do want to say that other areas like the trainers and the urban areas from what I've seen look very, very good and that's one of the high points of the game so far.
Or GF could just place some regional Pokemon Breeder NPCs that gives one random egg to the player, much like the first baby eggs at Johto daycare. That easily solves part of the problem and encourages trades at the same time.
Still, we would still have problems with pokémon like pikachu, exeggcute, cubone (and maybe koffing?)
Last edited:
Do you guys forsee more people than usual opting for previous gens (especially 7) over Gen8 this go-around? I feel like this new gen will be more divisive than usual in its player base.