Nintendo Pokemon Sword and Shield - Information Thread (Launching 11/15/19)

[Bacon]

If I do end up getting this game, It will most likely be when the third version or ultra version comes out.

[Xbob42]

While I don't care terribly about graphical fidelity, the fact that they'd go for such a boring and generic artstyle is disappointing. It's not even a good generic Pokemon art style, I think Eevee/Pikachu did that better.

 

Especially compared to other Nintendo titles that always have a very distinctive, super clean look. I don't think we have to shrug and accept bland visuals just because we don't expect them "because Pokemon" or "because Switch." Wind Waker, Skyward Sword, Mario Galaxy and Odyssey, BotW and Epic Yarn and Wooly World. We can and should expect better, because we know they can deliver better, and everyone praises the shit out of them when they do, so don't pretend it doesn't matter.

[crispy4000]

I just don't see what's so bad about what they showed.  This game already gives me a sense of atmosphere and perspective that other Pokemon games don't.  Things like the house detail, the sunny wheat fields with bloom, fogged out forest... it looks great to me.  It's reminding me of DQXI in the best of ways.  Not to the same degree of detail, but close enough to where I feel pretty happy about its appearance as the first proper 'console' Pokemon.

What it goes for, it pulls off well.  You could say the same for the Let's Go games, but I wouldn't have wanted to see the strict chibi & tileset approach for something that isn't a remake.  The series has beaten a tileset constructed look to death.

I also don't get the sense that this game is far behind Nintendo's own efforts as a whole.  Not in the way the series used to be before Sun & Moon.  Compared to BoTW, I get it.  The better looking parts of Odyssey, sure.  But I don't feel a strong need for this game to push our idea of what a Switch game can look like forward, or come up with some overarching visual gimmick.

 

The only aspect of the trailer that really disappointed me was the random encounters.  I suppose it'd be a lot more work with more Pokemon.  But it still feels like a regression.

 

[Keyser_Soze]

1 minute ago, crispy4000 said:

I just don't see what's so bad about what they showed.

 

Game sux man. It's gonna sell like zero copies.

[Brian]

I think Game Freak believes Pokémon has a style and won’t change it. Obviously, I would welcome a change. I really like the short preview we saw of Game Freak’s other Switch game Town. 

 

 

[crispy4000]

[crispy4000]

Gameplay trailer: https://youtu.be/p_dgvgpC8Nw

[Remarkableriots]

Now i have to buy a Switch! I have been wanting a cool Pokemon game like that for what seems like forever!

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

[johnny]

 

[Brian]

 

[Pikachu]

 

 

[Biggie]

   

[Pikachu]

Eurogamer: Hands on with the enchanting first two hours of Pokémon Sword and Shield

[Pikachu]

 

 

 

 

 

[Pikachu]

 

 

[Biggie]

Why is this not available for pre-purchase on the eShop?

[Pikachu]

 

[Brick]

I've been wondering if I should get Sword, or just wait for the third version/sequel version. 

[Pikachu]

 

[EternallDarkness]

ended up preordering Sword form BB, though I have no clue when I'll get around to playing it, but I figured WTH, my GCU runs out tomorrow so I still got 12 dollars off the price plus I'll get a 10 certificate for preordering. 

[TwinIon]

So apparently people are upset that this game doesn't have every pokemon in existence? 

 

As someone who hasn't played a pokemon game in a very long time, I'm not really annoyed that there are only 400 instead of the full 800, but I suppose people get tied to their favorites.

[Xbob42]

26 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

So apparently people are upset that this game doesn't have every pokemon in existence? 

 

As someone who hasn't played a pokemon game in a very long time, I'm not really annoyed that there are only 400 instead of the full 800, but I suppose people get tied to their favorites.

It has less than half the roster. Previously, as in, for the previous two plus decades straight, every mainline Pokemon game would have every single Pokemon released up to that point, exclusives per version notwithstanding. This is unprecedented and sets a really bad precedent moving forward. Pokemon aren't just like weapon attachments or something, they're core content, they ARE the content. They affect literally every single aspect of play in extremely meaningful ways. Now that half the roster is gone, half the play variety is gone, that is to say half the Pokemon you can encounter for capturing, for trainer battles, etc. Half the breeding Pokemon are gone. Half the shinies are gone. Half the variety of online opponents and match-ups is gone. Half the Pokemon you might meet post-game or in gym battles are gone. Half of every single aspect of this game has essentially been erased.

 

Now, to be clear, in most games, you could only bring forward the entire roster by linking up with previous games, so for super casual fans there won't be a huge difference, which is exactly what they're relying on. There will still be a campaign and it'll be essentially indistinguishable from previous campaigns in terms of content (except you can't even attempt to capture Pokemon a certain level higher than you, another unprecedented and unwelcome change) so most of what I've just said will be met with a big fat "Really? It didn't seem like that." So... they'll very easily get away with it. Until people start trying to transfer Pokemon they've been bringing forward since the original Game Boy days and realizing even like 90% of the starters over the years won't be compatible. For anyone that actually gets into why people enjoy these games beyond the basic campaign, it's going to be a very rude and unwelcome awakening, because the roster that got cut makes NO fucking sense and seems really arbitrary and random.

 

The only way I can see them reasonably getting away with it and still not upsetting their core base is by releasing a patch or series of patches post-launch to add the missing Pokemon back into the game, which they should do anyway as they re-use the same engine for multiple games every generation anyway, so they're going to need those assets at some point. This, however, seems extremely unlikely, as they said that this change "doesn't mean those Pokemon won't be in future games" or something to that effect, which tells me they REALLY don't plan on updating this. Hell, they could probably get away with a paid expansion to revisit and older region packed with the missing half but that sets an even worse precedent long-term.

 

In my opinion they should've just delayed the game for a few months until they had all the Pokemon ready to go, or had the Pokemon Bank "offline" for those few months while they worked on it. If they don't receive any backlash, though, and I mean MEANINGFUL backlash, they have no reason not to do this again and again. To be fair, the backlash in every region including Japan was strong enough to warrant a direct response from Game Freak, which I don't think I've seen before, though how that translates into sales or whatever is beyond my ability to guess. All this so that Game Freak could make their shitty little side RPG no one liked or even heard about.

[Ghost_MH]

I don't think a couple of months delay would be enough to cover this. My guess here is that the next Pokemon game will have many of those missing Pokemon and then the next one will have more of the missing Pokemon until we get to the point where they've slowly reintroduced every Pokemon into their new game engine.

 

That said, I'm happy folks are trying to cheer up the Gamefreak devs online and trying to combat the absolute toxicicty coming up.

[TwinIon]

My guess is that there is no meaningful hit to sales and that they will simply add groups of missing pokemon in future games. This is arguably the largest shift that the main Pokemon franchise has ever gone through. I honestly think that it's amazing there are going to be 400 pokemon. I think they easily could have cut it in half again and still sold 20M+ copies.

[Biggie]

1 hour ago, Xbob42 said:

It has less than half the roster. Previously, as in, for the previous two plus decades straight, every mainline Pokemon game would have every single Pokemon released up to that point, exclusives per version notwithstanding. This is unprecedented and sets a really bad precedent moving forward. Pokemon aren't just like weapon attachments or something, they're core content, they ARE the content. They affect literally every single aspect of play in extremely meaningful ways. Now that half the roster is gone, half the play variety is gone, that is to say half the Pokemon you can encounter for capturing, for trainer battles, etc. Half the breeding Pokemon are gone. Half the shinies are gone. Half the variety of online opponents and match-ups is gone. Half the Pokemon you might meet post-game or in gym battles are gone. Half of every single aspect of this game has essentially been erased.

 

Now, to be clear, in most games, you could only bring forward the entire roster by linking up with previous games, so for super casual fans there won't be a huge difference, which is exactly what they're relying on. There will still be a campaign and it'll be essentially indistinguishable from previous campaigns in terms of content (except you can't even attempt to capture Pokemon a certain level higher than you, another unprecedented and unwelcome change) so most of what I've just said will be met with a big fat "Really? It didn't seem like that." So... they'll very easily get away with it. Until people start trying to transfer Pokemon they've been bringing forward since the original Game Boy days and realizing even like 90% of the starters over the years won't be compatible. For anyone that actually gets into why people enjoy these games beyond the basic campaign, it's going to be a very rude and unwelcome awakening, because the roster that got cut makes NO fucking sense and seems really arbitrary and random.

 

The only way I can see them reasonably getting away with it and still not upsetting their core base is by releasing a patch or series of patches post-launch to add the missing Pokemon back into the game, which they should do anyway as they re-use the same engine for multiple games every generation anyway, so they're going to need those assets at some point. This, however, seems extremely unlikely, as they said that this change "doesn't mean those Pokemon won't be in future games" or something to that effect, which tells me they REALLY don't plan on updating this. Hell, they could probably get away with a paid expansion to revisit and older region packed with the missing half but that sets an even worse precedent long-term.

 

In my opinion they should've just delayed the game for a few months until they had all the Pokemon ready to go, or had the Pokemon Bank "offline" for those few months while they worked on it. If they don't receive any backlash, though, and I mean MEANINGFUL backlash, they have no reason not to do this again and again. To be fair, the backlash in every region including Japan was strong enough to warrant a direct response from Game Freak, which I don't think I've seen before, though how that translates into sales or whatever is beyond my ability to guess. All this so that Game Freak could make their shitty little side RPG no one liked or even heard about.

Webster called, they are running out of words 

[EternallDarkness]

1 hour ago, TwinIon said:

 but I suppose people get tied to their favorites.

 

indeed...and it seems my favorite didn't make the cut  

 

[Xbob42]

48 minutes ago, Ghost_MH said:

I don't think a couple of months delay would be enough to cover this.

I do wonder about the time and monetary cost of making all these Pokemon. Clearly they got to 400, and the previous games had all of them, so it's not unreachable, but they dug their own hole. Fuckin' outsource it if you need to. It's not like the model or animation quality is blowing anyone's mind.

[Ghost_MH]

40 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

I do wonder about the time and monetary cost of making all these Pokemon. Clearly they got to 400, and the previous games had all of them, so it's not unreachable, but they dug their own hole. Fuckin' outsource it if you need to. It's not like the model or animation quality is blowing anyone's mind.

 

It's more than that though, right? They can outsource animations and modeling, but they still have to handle balancing for competitive play in house. There's one place where they obviously messed up is in not including every starter from previous generations. I get that they aren't going to introduce wild versions of any starter so it's a lot of work for a much smaller portion of the population, but those are the Pokemon people want to most bring from game to game.

 

I also think there's a difference between the shortcuts they took with previous 3DS titles and the new HD, has to look good on a TV world that find themselves in.

 

It's math, right? Let's say it takes a full extra year to fill out the Pokedex? Is a year less of sales worth it for them when they know how many people are actually paying for Pokebank and even able to transfer Pokemon over from previous games. I'm betting the answer is probably no, even if it's upsetting for someone like me that actually has hundreds of Pokemon in the bank on some random Pokemon Company server.

[Xbob42]

Ah yes, competitive balancing, something they've nailed every generation? Don't the Pokemon just get immediately lumped into groups ranging from "unusable garbage" to "banned everywhere" every time anyway?

 

I don't know if it would even be a year "less" of sales. The sales would come a year later, but I think it would generate even more hype and excitement and a better product, a good combo for a base hungry for something wild. As it stands it seems like they're taking a really big shortcut for short-term gains, which doesn't strike me as very Nintendo-like, at least not for their mainline titles. But I guess this is Game Freak and not just Nintendo.

[SaysWho?]

So... 

 

 

A lot of stuff like this is coming out. However:

 

 

"Players are modifying Pokémon Sword and Shield on purpose so that it looks worse in gameplays"

[EternallDarkness]

spotted reviews on twitter, IGN 9.3 and Gamespot 9

[Xbob42]

2 hours ago, SaysWho? said:

"Players are modifying Pokémon Sword and Shield on purpose so that it looks worse in gameplays"

By players do they perchance mean Game Freak?

[Pikachu]

https://opencritic.com/game/7899/pokemon-sword-and-shield

 

80 average based on 19 reviews so far.

[SaysWho?]

5 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

By players do they perchance mean Game Freak?

 

Hell if I know.  

 

I'm not seeing frame rate issues in reviews, but I haven't really had time to look at the faults. I've gathered there are fewer Pokemon and no dungeons and a 15-hour campaign but haven't verified any of that.

 

If even half of what I'm reading is true, then I'm disappointed because I kept thinking after Let's Go that it was more a Pokemon game to blend with Pokemon GO and the REAL core Pokemon game would be this one. And I had expectations with this being on Switch instead of a dedicated handheld that it would be bigger and better.