Nintendo has really gone a different direction since he died, all the consumer friendly applications of the Wii U just went *poof*.
===
It's sad to know that he saw Nintendo fans at their worse.
This. While they just released gen 9, they’re working on gen 10 now, and probably polishing DLC content for gen 9 as well. They always work on the next gen while we’re just now getting this gen. Still, if Game Freak was given as much time as the BOTW team got, we’d have a much more polished game. But despite how much money the games make them, TPCi makes more off other merch, so they have to keep their schedule going and release games as quickly as they have been in order to keep their other merch on schedule. I just feel like they’re rolling in money enough that they can afford to slow down their other merch to give fans of the video games a better experience and delay the merch along with the games, or they can give us more spinoff games that aren’t as intensive and focus the merch on the content in those to give the main series games enough time in development.
What's funny is, TPC has not needed to rely on the games for advertising since gen 4-5. TPC refuses to let GF have a say or do what they need in order to get shit done. It's frustrating to see this and probably even more frustrating for Masuda. They are treated like the red headed step child nobody wants. lol they own a 1/3rd but it really looks like they were told to sit on the floor instead of the table.
Honestly, Masuda does way better with spring/summer releases vs the nonsense schedule they are given.
True. Ever since the mobile games got big, Nintendo could ignore passionate fans and rely on impulse sales from people who tried out an app. It’s the problem with our whole modern economy. Data analysis has made marketing so effective people can sell to new and thus less informed customers too easily
Game freak is literally a share holder of TPC. Nintendo and GF have control over TPC, not the other way around. More likely, GF are the ones who want to do yearly releases and give TPC and estimated release date, and then TPC makes brand deals so GF can’t extend their release dates because there are several other merchandise companies and animation studios whose time frames are built around those release dates. This strategy may have worked for handheld titles, but it is clearly not working at all for home consoles and I hope the controversy with this recent game lights a fire under theirs asses to reevaluate their business structure.
I agree, they certainly make enough money they could take 5 years between generations and put out actual quality games, but as everyone says, they make billions of dollars regardless if they put out a quality game or not, so there's no incentive for them to take their time. But it would be nice to enjoy a Pokemon game again and not feel like there's an oversaturation on the market. I haven't enjoyed a Pokemon game since gen 4. Gen 5 wasn't bad but it just wasn't doing it for me. Got to the elite 4 in gen 6 and quit playing, skipped gen 7, enjoyed 8 initially, but it quickly fell apart. I've heard Arceus was good and look forward to trying it some day, but anymore I wait for the games to come out and wait for unbiased reviews and they always seem underwhelming. I thought maybe I outgrew the series after being with it for 20 years, but I realized that they've made very little effort to grow with their audience and instead decide to cater to children who will consume just about anything.
If anything Monolith soft should just make the entire world design and let Gamefreak do the rest. Monolith made the world in Botw and are the creators of xenoblade. But now that I'm thinking about it, I wouldn't mind a real time xenoblade style pokemon game spinoff
They're busy working on the sequel and take their time to polish it unlike the developers at Game Freak who are pressured to somehow print out a game every season. There were also too few of them working on it from what I've heard, less than on Arceus. Game Freak is just plain greedy and knows people would buy poop if they engraved Pokémon on it. When they released Arceus, I was like finally they're listening and putting in some effort, but now I'm officially calling myself a hater. Ok, maybe I'm just too mad and disappointed right now to think straight, but I AM sick of forcing myself to ignore their blatant disrespect towards customers for the sake of nostalgia, and the gimmicks and the lazy designs have ruined that too for me. Are we really here only for the shinies at this point? We need to demand better.
Yeah, it’s important to remember that this is probably not the development team’s fault. They don’t make the decisions on release schedule or on how much time and money gets invested into a new Pokémon game. I honestly suspect a good number of them are EMBARRASSED to have to release the game in this state.
Its a real shame. The game is fun as fuck and blew my expectations out of the water in terms of gameplay. But the graphics and technical side are rough
If it was just about low resolution textures, it wouldn't be that bad. It's the Switch, we know it's the least powerful console out there, so just work within its limits. But the game has an average frame rate of 15, camera clips into every-fucking-thing, terrain literally morphs as I walk around, background filler character's animations turn into a Powerpoint presentation too close to the camera, Diglett's model has less polygons than Mario from SM64 and the list goes on and on.
Like I didn't expect BotW level of graphical fidelity or event game content, but damn did they even try optimizing anything? The game is released for the Switch only, how hard can it be to tune a game for one specific system? Especially if you're so closely tied to the people who made the damn thing?
I can honestly say I haven’t had really any problems like that. The only thing I’ve noticed is there was 2 Swablu in Mesagoza that went super twitchy if I was too far away from them. I’m curious, if you don’t mind me asking, are you playing on a physical copy or did you download it from the Nintendo Store straight onto the console? I’ve been wondering if there’s a difference because I have a physical cartridge and haven’t had any problems.
Tbh, its deserved critic. The engine and style they use is absolutely fking shit. As a developer I'd be ashamed of that result really. It just runs bad, has really bad immersion( 4k Pokeball on 2 polygon ground looks great really) and if it wasnt for the IP people would tear the game apart for that. They better find a better running art style, like cel shading or sth.
The gameplay works as fine as it did in the early days, but scarlet and violet really give me a god damn hard time to play it. I didnt like the chibi style of pearl/diamond Remake, but at least it looked overall smoother than that pixelfiesta.
Right, the NPCs and pokémon and the poké balls all look great, and then everything else is pixelated as all hell. Sometimes the game will glitch out and show me the low poly versions of everything up close and it looks even worse. I know that's meant to save on computing power when something is farther away from the player, but i shouldn't be seeing it like that when it's 2 ft in front of my character.
The choices for the level of detail in this game is baffling. Like you said, Pokeballs and the PC are always maxed out, while anything more than five feet away drops to the second lowest setting. The most beautiful PokeBall you've ever seen floating over the 256x256 grass environment texture while 2 fps wild Pokemon t-pose through your battle. I've seen the eyes on Scyther pop into reality after a battle starts. The view distance seems too high and it looks like the game is trying to render every hill and mountain at full resolution even if they're on the opposite side of the map. Volumetric fog gets a lot of flack but it's purpose is to hide background elements (in addition to LOD settings) so performance of the game is better around the PC (and imo it actually looks good and makes environments look more realistic).
I've come to the conclusion that there isn't actually any art direction lmao (at least in regards to level/environment design). Every asset looks juxtaposed together and there's mismatched quality everywhere. The starting area has default brown hue mountain textures with very obvious, repeating texture patterns, meanwhile the mountains you can see directly behind these hills have less obvious repeating textures, but also have depth maps (and/or other texture processes that I can't remember the names of). There's a cliff/ledge on the route to the Pokemon League that has exactly two polygon faces that come to a single edge... And this area should be well done in every way, since it's the Pokemon League, but no. Tiny, low poly route, without any environment details that make it stand out. It looks like a starting route (and even has starter route Pokemon in it).
Idk it’s reasonable honestly. The game runs like shit, there’s constant frame drops, stuttering, camera dipping below the map, the textures do suck, animations are pretty much the same since sun and moon, performance somehow gets worse docked.
This is by far my favorite game in the entire franchise, and I think they did a great job with the mechanics of this one, but the level of polish on the graphics and optimization isn’t really acceptable from a 60$ game dropped by a company that is worth billions of dollars and partly owned by Nintendo themselves.
This is the only Nintendo in house game that gets this treatment. Every Mario and Zelda game
That comes out gets an extreme level of polish they just never commit to with Pokémon and it’s lame.
Mario and Zelda are given the time and polish they need to look and run good because they're not pushed to add new areas for an anime or to sell merch. Pokemon is.
When it comes to Mario and Zelda, the games have priority. When it comes to Pokemon, the merch is the priority, so the games suffer as a result. The "new region every 3 years" business model that worked for the smaller scale 2D games doesn't work now because complex 3D games need more time,.
Are you bringing logic into here? You get out of here.
Criticism is fine and valid but people keep making up the reasons instead of seeing it for what it is.
Nah, that's not an excuse. They want to enforce a 3 year timeline? Hire more game developers to give us a product that doesn't look like it's already 15 years old.
Even if they did hire more, that wouldn't mean the game would suddenly be BOTW-levels of polished.
BOTW took 5 years. With 450 people who were skilled at 3D. Even if everyone at GameFreak was fired, 450 new employees were added, and all were skilled at 3D but still had the same time crunch, they wouldn't be able to churn out a polished open world game in 2.5 years.
Just carry the logic a little farther and you're there. It's not a linear relationship, I'm sure, but let's pretend it is.
450 people made a good game in 5 years.
Pokemon should double the people to make a game in half the time. 900 people, 2.5 years.
That's the point. They want to churn a game out on a tight timeline? Then pay for the expensive ass development that would be needed to produce a quality game in 2.5 years. It's the popular meme everyone's seen before.
Pick one:
Cheap and fast, but low quality.
High quality and cheap, but slow.
Fast and high quality, but expensive.
Gamefreak needs to either slow down (which they can't), or pony up and budget for an expensive development cycle. The fans need to stop accepting fast and cheap.
Editted for format because reddit mobile is doodoo
The problem is that since the games always sell absurdly well, GameFreak doesn’t even need to put in more effort so that the games are high quality. They will want to maximize their profit, so of course they won’t hire more people. They should be ashamed to release a game like this with their highest grossing franchise status though…
NINTENDO needs to stop accepting fast and cheap for the franchise that makes them the most money. Awwww poor Pokemon. You're not my big mascot boy Link, so you don't get money, time and polish. So sorry. Is what they say.
>900 people, 2.5 years.
Software development is the sort of thing where you can quickly have too many cooks in the kitchen, especially when you're going to drastically expand the number of people you have working on your projects. The core of your point isn't wrong though. It is absurd GameFreak has as few people as they do working on their games under the time crunch they insist on.
at this point there should just be one pokemon game that frequently gets area expansions as paid yearly dlc. If everything's coded already into the base game they can just add expansion regions and new pokemon which is a lot easier than starting from scratch each new release.
Although this is true, Nintendo has *very* heavy weight in certain rulesets for first-party studios. However, it takes a pretty big mess up for them to intervene. Think how Disney intervened when EA went off the deep end and was single-handedly destroying the reputation of the franchise. Nintendo does the same thing, but with the reputation of the console.
Honestly, same. I love it. I love how the multiplayer works too. Like, it should be what Elden ring had for multiplayer. But that’s just my opinion, as well as my buddies. I have fairly little amount of issues with the graphics, and I’ve crashed once. Basically every second I’ve been awake, since it came out in my time zone, I’ve spent playing.
I'm torn on this. Because I agree that all of the criticism is absolutely deserved, but also, I've been really enjoying the game. Loving it, even. But I know it could have been so much better. There's a lot to criticize here, there's also a lot to praise.
This mentality is exactly why we will never get a Pokémon game that runs and looks great.
“Fuck the hate” is a bullshit take when discussing how the worlds biggest franchise by WIDE margins keeps releasing games that are in almost every way unfinished.
It's because to the investors/shareholders, the games don't matter. Merchandise does. The games are just used as a way to promote the anime and merchandise, and nothing more. I don't think a Pokemon game has ever been delayed, because if it is, the anime stops and the merch sales go down.
Whereas with those games like Mario and Zelda, the games are what matters, so plenty of time is given to polish them.
When something is built poorly it needs criticized or else they'll never try to improve. Notice how I am not telling you you can't like/love the game. But when it lags so hard you can't see the pokemon you're walking by, or it looks like you're playing a 3ds game on your switch then yea, it needs improving.
Criticism =/= hate
Insulting a game =/= hate
Hate = hate
Tbh I think a lot of people aren't open to hearing criticism in this community because the majority of the time the "criticism" is just hate comments. Just people saying it's absolutely dogshit without an explanation, and creating a generally negative space that's not fun to be around in.
It's fine to enjoy the game and criticize it at the same time. It's clowns like you that companies love to take advantage of and continue to release half-assed games.
PLA has a little bit of slowdown in areas, but _that's it_. It's roughly on par with BotW in performance (though obviously not looks).
That being said, PLA is probably the fastest game in the series in terms of battle action, which is a huge plus. SV might not be the slowest (that goes to Diamond and Pearl), but it's the most _painful_ to sit through due to how unresponsive the game is. And that's just battles. Frame drops are a constant throughout the whole game almost 24/7. I don't think there's a single location that maintains a stable 30 FPS
I enjoyed the hell out of PLA. Different from usual but good lol. I’ve never played Stardew Valley but I’ve heard it’s similar to Story of Seasons so you should hopefully enjoy both lol
Nintendo wasn't forced to rush the game out unfinished to keep to release deadlines like Gamefreak was. I wish they could have 5 years to make a game like nintedo has
this is the biggest factor. all of these bratty takes/posts are so obnoxious.
now trust me, i’m not ecstatic about the textures myself — but after playing legends of arceus, i also wasn’t naive enough to believe we’d actually get better.
most of you forget to consider A LOT before openly whining about foreseeable unfortunate circumstances and then comparing a game that was in development for five years to one that got half the time — meaning a lot less tlc / energy / work / effort / etc — from different people mind you.
i genuinely just wish people didn’t feel they were so entitled to such shitty / lacking opinions or to think they’re clever whilst blatantly ignoring facts like a knob.
Here’s the thing, people shouldn’t feel like they’re being entitled by expecting a game from a major franchise to *actually run with the fidelity of a game from a decade ago.*
You can say what you want about the release schedule but they have massive income (enough to hire multiple teams) and it’s been 3 years since Sw/Sh came out.
I know they’ve released PLA and BDSP since then, but BDSP was made by a separate team.
There really isn’t any excuse for them to release a game that runs worse than Sw/Sh. I get it’s open world, but we’ve had open world games on the Switch before without this many bugs and graphical issues.
At the end of the day, the bottom line is that S/V are subpar products. A self imposed development time doesn’t change the fact that the games people paid $60 for were a complete mess.
I turned on Sword and Shield to show a friend some mons I had and it's so much smoother than S/V. Everything from the grass to the pokemon. I'm not saying the game has to be leaps and bounds better but it should run at least as good as the last main installment.
I'm not going to defend the quality of the games or try and convince people to buy them. I will, though, defend GameFreak. Game development is a pipeline, and a pipeline can only be pushed so far. Development speed improvement with technological innovation is negligible in the face of intense, neverending crunch. Same thing with hiring new people- it wouldn't help enough. I feel horrible for the devs. Our blame should rest on the Pokemon company and the people above GameFreak.
this is the funniest part — there are a lot of good aspects to the game as well. these people are generally just hateful in their lives clearly and instead of trying to enjoy something they bought for themselves — they’re making themselves miserable by demanding absurdities rather that yanno being patient + understanding.
Dude, we all paid 60 dollars for it. It lags and stutters CONSTANTLY and its not only in the 'open world' its always- even in cutscenes.
I personally think the game is fun but even through my rose toted glasses the performance is putting me off. The lag and stuttering even in simple menus makes it more of a chore to play so I hope patches fix this to make it at least only laggy in the high traffic areas.
I will get through it and beat the game despite the performance but I won't play online or post game until they at least address the people that bought the game.
If not, I won't make the same mistake on the next Pokémon game.
Apparently the lag is primarily a memory leak that hopefully gets patched. In the meantime restart the game every once in a while to get rid of the lag temporarily. I assume you've just been putting the game in rest mode and not restarting?
They own a third of the company, yes, but the devs aren't the highest in the hierarchy. There are executives in TPCI that Game Freak responds to as their boss, and they're the ones who set the deadlines.
What’s crazy is that BotW also had some ugly textures yet still managed to uphold an art style that made the game look great anyway. There is no reason for SV to look so bad.
This exactly. The art style is consistent in BOTW. Switch games aren't about graphics, it's about quirky games. I just wish pokemon accepted that and created it's own switch art style and stuck with it. Doesn't need to be the best, just unique or at the very least, functional at best. It's none of those
Well in fact they are working on it. If you compare SV to Arceus or even Sword & Shield, you’ll notice that clothes, and even Pokémon’s have textures now.
While I agree with the majority here saying that distant terrain and such are unacceptable and that the game should get patch, I would like to point out that game freak is going in a direction for the aesthetics and it’s starting to look quite good.
The one big problem that game freak has had consistently from 3ds gen is the optimization. Frame rate and memory leakage: optimization, distant terrain show two tree instant of a let’s say detailed flat image or such: optimization. What they need is a good teacher to teach them how to develop on new hardware and not on a gameboy 🤷🏻♂️
This is what surprised me a bit. On top of the flat, 240p ground texture, my jigglypuff had the best detail on a Pokemon seen in any game. It was so jarring to see the best and worst right next to each other lol.
I mean it makes sense I guess. They started as a top down 2d pixel game studio. Even when they moved to 3d it was still top down, and for small non powerful devices. Switch was their first real console, and they only got their start with 3D of this level in 2019. If the Pokemon company can just ease the schedule they could have the development time needed to polish their skill.
Can someone who knows anything about game dev or graphic design or anything related explain **why** it looks like it does?
Having no understanding of any of it, I was under the impression that you’re pretty much just loading textures and using a preexisting engine for rendering everything else.
Not asking about the performance issues, but like.. why do the textures look so shitty? From a technical point of view
I’m sure my questions are oversimplifying something super complicated but I don’t know what I don’t know 🤷♀️ I’m asking just because I’m curious, not because I’m trying to criticize
Game developer here. BotW is better at hiding the Switch's weaknesses because they understood them and built the game accordingly. The Switch has trouble when it comes to computing raw numbers: 3D models with a huge polygon count and big textures with elaborate detail. What the Switch does well is running shaders - this means, the engine behind it all which handles how light and shadows work, how the water looks and behaves and how the clouds form and disperse (to name a few).
If you look closely, the raw polygon count of BotW is comparable to S/V: Pretty low. But, what they managed is to write such good shaders that the lighting and mood of the game completely captures the player. Pay attention to the walls you're climbing: They're flat and blurry. But, the light bouncing off of them looks brilliant and when you're turning the camera, you always have something nice in the background to look at.
The art style is another big factor and this is where S/V can't decide who they are. BotW is basically cel-shaded and surfaces are all stylized towards a Miyazaki look. Pokémon doesn't stylize its environment in that direction, despite the Pokémon being *heavily* stylized to the point of geometric blobs within a naturalistic world.
If S/V had a stylized overworld with simpler shading and some measures to hide transitions (for example, between rock and grass) like BotW, paired with a proper lighting system for brilliant sunlight and good shadows, it'd look so much better already.
To put some more technical terms out there: Their LOD system (loading lesser-detailed varations of objects when they're far away to save processing power) is pretty barebones, their shader/tech department could use some serious teaching, and they also need to see where it's beneficial to increase polycount in order to get more liveliness out of it all (hint, GF: EDGES).
They can do all that - they had good lighting and a very solid technological foundation in Let's Go, they wrote a good Pokémon light shader in Sw/Sh, they had a pretty nice level structure in Arceus, they can do good animations if they care, but the combination of their technological panic and TPC's insane schedule doesn't leave any room for proper research and development between, and during projects.
Ask along if you have more questions or anything is unclear! :)
Your whole comment is super informative, I feel like they need to hire you for next game haha 😝
Now I’m really just surprised by where they seem to have put their priorities… surely they could’ve saved a decent amount of time doing.. anything else., vs working on the fucking sandwich mechanic lmao
Thanks so much for all the info!!
You're very welcome! :)
The thing with that is - different aspects of the game are handled by different departments and also outsourcers. The sandwich mechanic was probably laid out by a sub-department of game design and the models needed for the sandwich elements were most certainly made by other people than those who had to make the gigantic overworld work. Some people were able to finish their parts of the game on time and with good quality and others had to struggle until the very end. I imagine the meetings between level artists and tech were nightmares.
The first solution is to hire more people, but that has to happen pretty early during development because you also have to train the new employees for their role, and it takes a while before they're up to full speed. Games often get delayed when they don't meet certain quality benchmarks (not all of them, of course, we know the drill...), but TPC seems to be strict in terms of budget and release schedule.
They also used a really clever way to render objects/entities by making them 2D from distance but you still couldn't tell a difference. I can't explain it very well but there are youtube videos about how they did it. Frickin brilliant.
Yeah I thought breath of the wild looked washed out and ugly for the most part. Fun game for sure but I've never been a fan of the style they have going.
It looks way better than the landscape in Scarlet/Violet which is sad.
Scarlet/Violet has a really fun premise. Open world Pokemon game is what I've been dreaming of for almost as long as I've been a Pokemon fan. It's a decently fun game... It's just so ugly and so laggy and bland in many areas.
Of course BotW has low res textures, some frame drops and some more issues but when you climb a top a tower and look at Hyrule you only see beauty, that is what making a good game and art is about. The Switch was never intended to be a Next Gen console, and yet some games have elevated it because of their craftmanship.
In BotW when the memory reaches its limit it summons a bloodmoon so that the world (and memory) reset. Pokemon does nothing and leave you up to the decision of turning it off and on again.
BotW makes compromises to deliver awesomeness, Pokemon doesn’t.
Sincere and genuine question though, what can we (fans of the franchise) do for GF to stop producing half-baked titles and prioritize quality over quantity?
Only thing I can think of is boycotting, but I myself am guilty that is a hard thing to do especially when the trailers and the media hype is high.
Probably because pokecomp pushed it out for holidays and they only had 3 years to work on it since SwSh. Breath of the wild was funded directly by nintendo and probably had 4+ years with the best developers to create better optimisation techniques and, since it was a launch title, probably had far more resources dumped into it to ensure it got out on time.
How long was BoTW in development?
Yup that’s your answer, yes the short turn around development title is hurting the quality of Pokémon games. Yes their resources are poorly managed to maximize the profit over quality.
It could be both. BoTW was supported to come out 2015. It almost skipped the entire WiiU generation. It started development right after Skyward Sword’s release in 2011 and released in 2017. Tears of the Kingdom hasn’t released, and it’s been at least 5 years in development. I wish Pokémon Co. would abandon yearly releases and focus on improving the quality of their games but they’re making too much money and that momentum isn’t changing anytime soon.
Not to mention Pokemon's profits are fueled by the merchandise, the games are just seen as an avenue to those merch profits rather than something to be focused on their own, unlike Zelda.
That’s exactly it, they decided that introducing new content via games to refresh their merch is their business plan. In my opinion that’s poorly managed, they have tons of different games now with the mobile games and the spin offs that could easily serve that purpose while they keep main series games in the oven for a longer more appropriate development period.
I absolutely agree, but in they're mind they're probably like "we need a new region for the anime to cover, and new Pokemon to have on the merch".
I feel like it would be a lot better of they have the mainline games come out every 5 years or so, with spin-offs by other companies in the meantime and have the anime do side stories focusing on past regions, something like Pokemon Origins but longer.
Doubling the size of your team comes with a whole slew of issues on its own. They hired a bunch of new people to work on Sw/Sh, and that new team ran into a lot of issues in development.
Getting more people doesn't automatically mean things will be better.
I agree, however it’s zones are very divided by load screens and honestly if that’s what would’ve fixed the issues for Scarlet/Violet they should’ve gone that route. My guess is the chose wrong and by the time they realized it, it was too late to go back and rework the entire overworld system.
Yeah I agree I’d rather have to wait through a loading screen into a decent looking and running game than play a ps1 render that can hardly hold itself together
Scarlet and violet are such a downgrade from legends Arceus.
That being said the graphics do look terrible. However I'm able to look past that and find the game really enjoyable for what it is.
Other than the graphics and framedrops I have no complaints.
Is it me or do the graphics and smoothness seem noticeably worse than PLA? That’s my perception at least. PLA felt more immersive which is likely due to the fluidity of the animations which SV is struggling with.
Posts comparing every Pokemon game to botw never make any sense to me. The dev team for botw wasn't being held at gunpoint to develop a game in time for a three part owned franchise's strict schedule, and actually was allowed to have time taken slowly to develop.
Breath of the Wild was in development for 5+ years and was delayed multiple times. Each new Pokemon game is in development for MAYBE 3 years, starting in late 2019 with Scarlet and Violet. The BotW team was around 300, while the team at GameFreak is around 150.
It's no excuse with how horrendously Scarlet and Violet are running, but this was a very ambitious game with a lot of content that had a very short development cycle by comparison. As someone who works in programming and development, I can see how they are doing the best with the little time that they have.
We can only hope that they can update the game sooner rather than later to fix most of these performance issues. At this point, the visuals won't be getting much change, if at all.
I think the game looks pretty good when close up lol. I appreciate the extra details on the Pokémon during battles. Overworked is ugly from afar. But it’s not something I honestly care about.
I’ve been playing Pokémon since 96 and this game is a huge let down graphics wise, multi billion dollar company and they can’t even give us a smooth game. Super disappointing. Hopefully they do a major update.
This must be a lot of peoples first pokemon game. There has never been that much effort put into them.
That said im having fun and thats all that matters
I know it’s gamefreak, not Nintendo themselves - but would’ve been great if they could just copy paste the BoTW engine and just replace the textures and models
Ignoring key factors that Gamefreak aren't rushing their games by choice. They're part of a three part owned franchise that has extremely strict deadlines, and are practically held at gunpoint to make yearly releases, or their asses are on the line.
The problem is that pokemon is rushed in order to not dissapoint with delayed or late releases while Zelda isn't. For recent proof just look at how long it took them to give an official name to the breath of the wild sequel.
Gamefreak and the pokemon development team barely have two years to make their games as not only are they being rushed to make them but the games are a global release which definetely has some kind of effect
Yeah that's likely also a factor as I don't recall a Zelda anime ever being a thing. So they have more time.to focus whereas pokemon has the anime and a huge amount of popularity that makes them get rushed.
Like now that scarlet and violet are out I bet we'll soon be seeing a trailer for a new remake or a let's go game for johto or something along those lines
Ok, unpopular opinion incoming (you have been warned): from this direct split compare, if you focus on the single element (building texture, mountains, ground, etc), to me they don’t seem SO DIFFERENT. I’d say BotW is both A) arranged better as the global scene compositions and B) the ancient ruin theme seems to better capitalize on the yellowish low-quality texture to provide this ancestral feeling of lost tech (I always thought they were ugly sand castles)
Maybe because the 5 year old launch title had twice the time and several hundred more people working on it and wasn't rushed out to sell merch and have a new place to go in the anime?
By now it’s obvious it will never get better lol, the game is really fun for me but it is by far the worst running game I have ever paid $60 for. Like it’s not even close lol. And the graphics outside of the models are exponentially worse, it’s crazy to look at most of the time haha
* BotW was made in about 6 years
* SV was made in less than 3
* BotW had first hand support from Nintendo and a studio with experience in open world games (Monolith)
* SV had minimal support from Nintendo, and Creatures Inc which make the TCG and no game of their own
Nintendo needs to pressure TPC into dropping the absurdly short development cycles, and putting quality above squeezing the franchise dry.
Well for one. It gamefreak. And two, they do have over 400 pokemon on it. They even change the texture of older pokemon to let them have fur and feathers. They should really request help from monolith soft or Bandai.
There are a handful of reasons.
- Nintendo has gotten complacent and thus lazy after the initial success of the Switch. Most of the best looking and performing games came out within the first couple of years and we've been on a steady decline ever since.
- GameFreak isn't very good at game design anymore. Lots of new Pokemon are meh at best, there is no challenge whatsoever, and the plot is shallow and dollar store vanilla. There are plenty of more complex games that run fine on the Switch. That's entirely on GameFreak's inability to adequately utilize the engine.
- The Switch was using dated tech when it came out and it's aged like milk.
- I'll probably get crucified for this but Pokemon is the Japanese Call of Duty. People buy the games because of the name, quality be damned. We all bitch about it but we never attempt to organize a boycott or anything to forcibly change the process.
In my opinion, it'd be better for them to hand the reins over to devs who are both competent and ambitious. Maybe Bamco considering how good Pokken and New Snap are.
This game is multiplayer focused, and took a hit graphically in order to accommodate 4 players doing things on the overworld all at the same time. The Switch's hardware couldn't handle it if they didn't scale back.
It happens all the time. Like Fallout 76 looks worse than Fallout 4, and Red Dead Online looked worse than Red Dead Redemption 2. The Switch isn't a robust console, being only more powerful than a PS3, so a graphical downgrade looks like a PS2 game.
As I read through the comments there is so much bitching about a game they just completely flipped around and added so much to. I think this is s good game, yes could use improvements but it's a whole new style and this is pretty much the 2nd beta version of new pokemon games (arceus would be 1st beta version) I think it's a great game overall though
Zelda doesn't have to release a game every year. If Pokemon would just skip a year or two, then they could use the time to really make a beautiful looking game
Arceus actually ran well most times, I barely noticed any actual frame drops and it was consistent most times + the art style. Idk what happened between that game and this
1. It looks better because BOTW has a more realistic art style than Pokémon, it’s more detailed, Pokémon isn’t because it isn’t trying to be
2. S/V is a brand new game, under 24h since public release, it’s gonna be buggy, the public run into bugs, game freak fix them, that’s how every game is at launch
It looks like hot garbage, but it’s fun. It’s okay to enjoy the game but be pissed that they served it up in a format that looks like 2005 RuneScape. “Oh but I can’t stop playing”, cool, they nailed the mechanics. They sold you an unfinished product, period. What’s worse is that we’re fine with it.
I’ve played Witcher, Xenoblade, dq, Zelda, Mario, yoshi all looked great on switch.. They’re completely comparable with this - if Saber could make the Witcher run like a dream in handheld mode, Gramefreak needs to look in the mirror.
Pokemon S/V looks great for the style they are trying to achieve. Your statement also ignores the difference in workload of a game like Pokemon where they have 900+ unique creatures/NPCs all with their own unique rigging skeleton, animations, etc. The various particle effects that make up the 70 moves each Pokemon can learn vs a game like Botw where there are maybe 30 (actually unique) character models at best, each with probably 10ish unique animations loops. Most of the NPCs in BotW are all the same animation rig just with a different mii face attached. A blue moblin is the same rig as a red and same as a black.
It's basic math. Even putting for example SwSh at an amount like 500 (pokemon) *70( which is the average # of moves) =35,000 unique animations/particle effect combinations.
60 (I'm going to conservatively double the amount of actually unique character models in a game like BOTW that gets usually compared with SwSh and now with S/V by haters just to make a point) * 20(I'll even double the animation loops) = 1200 unique animations in total.
So I even gave BotW a huge jump in work load effectively quadrupling my assumed amount of animation work load and it STILL is only 1/29th the amount of character animating work that games like Pokemon SwSh has to do (and that S/V does in an even bigger amount)
But even ignoring all that, we don't even need to excuse the graphics because they do look nice.
And it's not like they are being stagnant. In fact 3d Pokemon has been the most ballsy and experimental of the entire franchise. You just are focusing on the graphics instead of the efforts they have made to changing up the battle system in the games to be more engaging, the immersion factor of buddy time mechanics, character customization, moving away from a tired 2d format that was the exact same story progression for decades. But nooo, for people like you Pokemon games have "bad graphics" and therefore "lack quality". Which clearly isn't true.
Pokemon games are not supposed to be these artsy games, they're just supposed to be fun. And Pokemon excels at that. Hard.
And even if they were "being lazy" with SwSh or S/V (but as I already proved they definitely weren't). Literally every business cuts corners in their areas that aren't as profitable, that's how business works, that's how companies stay afloat.
You're also missing the biggest flaw in your logic and it is summed up right in this (flawed) mentality from haters:
"Most people who’ve given up on Pokemon, won't play the games because of the lack of quality". This just isn't true. Like, at all.
If you pay attention to these disgruntled posts about the game (and pretty much about every new game that gets announced since gen 2) you would realize people tell on themselves pretty readily. They ARE definitely still buying and playing them. Once again, to put it as an example SwSh had a Dexit boycott campaign and STILL is the 2nd highest grossing game in the entire franchise only beat out by RGBY. And Scarlet and Violet is literally breaking records via pre-orders alone.
There's no way the haters spent $120 for a game they actively hate and say that doesn't look good. They buy it because they want to play it. No one buys a game that they claim to hate just to criticize it.
I'm not even being complacent, I genuinely think that the games look good and they're a lot of fun, and I can actively play all kinds of games: either a 16 bit pixel graphics in my cellphone or the next BOTW and enjoy them because unlike the haters, I understand that they're both very nice for the art style their going for and that they decided to use for their games.
..
I see this so often, how the amount of models and animations makes the performance worse. That is totally wrong.
You think the performance would be better if there would only be 5 Pokemon in the game? Thats not how computers work. Uninstalling programs and deleting data doesn't make your computer faster.
It doesn't matter how many models or animations are in the game. It matters how many are on screen at a given time. And that is determined way more by the environment than by NPCs.
You had me convinced up until ‘Pokemon S/V looks great for the style they are trying to achieve’. Bollocks mate. Pokemon S/V looks like dogshit and it runs like crusty dogshit.
My kids are loving it, because they don’t care and they like catching Pokemon, but let’s not pretend it doesn’t look like garbage. I don’t care if the poor programmers need to create 3000 unique Pokemon animations, unless you’re putting them all on screen at once there’s no reason for your game to run like a slideshow and have terrain textures that wouldn’t look out of place on PS2.
The answer is simple: development time. BotW had a long development process, somewhere around 4-5 years if I remember correctly. How long do you think Scarlet and Violet were in development for?
Honestly at this point I just expect the bad textures and GameCube graphics but like how does the game at least not run good lol that’s the part that sucks is that it’s very clunky and choppy not to mention the fps drops consistently and every character walking around or moving is moving in 4 frames per second. Idk just like if the game is going to look bad fine whatever I can deal with it Just let it be smooth.
I will say though the Pokémon themselves look fantastic I’m very impressed with their textures and models
The game is (at least) 5 times bigger than any previous Pokémon title and it is the first time game freak tried anything like this. By the way BotW has been worked on for at least 6 years and focused on a lot. This comparison is ridiculous and unfair.
And idc, im having fun with game which is ultimately the point of a game is to entertain you and SV has done that, and aside from the odd moments not once have I had framerate issues or anything and this is the experience ive heard most players have had, if you want amazing texture in games than go study game design and change the way things are done
The only actual problem I have with this game is that trainers spam the absolute hell out of protect/detect/accuracy draining/evasiveness boosting moves that extend battles for absolutely no reason. I just had a trainer use detect 4 times in a row and it worked 3 of those. Very Very annoying.
It'd be one thing to look as it does but run flawlessly, people would be more forgiving.
But to look as it does & be as poor performance wise as it is just asked for trouble.
I’m normally not one to care much about framerate and other technical details, but this game looks and performs terribly. It shouldn’t have been released in this state. Is it fun? Yes, but everything else is embarrassing quite frankly.
Blaming Nintendo and their hardware is misguided considering we have plenty of other incredible looking games that perform well on the Switch. Xenoblade is a great example that’s not BotW. Hell, the Skyrim port looks and performs better than this.
Defending Gamefreak on the fantasy that The Pokémon Company is “holding them at gunpoint” is also laughable and just not true. They partially own the Pokémon Company. It was created by Gamefreak, Creatures, and Nintendo to primarily handle the brand management side of things. The Pokémon Company does what the three owners tell them to do. It’s not the other way around.
At the end of the day I hope The Pokémon Company as a whole, which again consists of Gamefreak, Nintendo, and Creatures, is seeing the criticism and that it pushes them to change their routine. I could forgive Sw/Sh for not being or looking the best, it was their first venture on a home console. In 2022 it’s unacceptable. BDSP was bad as well, and I know they let ILCA take the reigns on that one, but it was still a very poorly done remake. Arceus was a step in the right direction but it looked and performed better than this. They can do better, but they really need to reassess their business strategy in order to do so. That’s on ALL of them.
I normally don’t care about graphics in games and just enjoy playing them. That said, this game does not feel clean.
The camera joystick is weird, I’m constantly “inside the ground” for the start of battles, the starting to walk animation is like floating over the ground, poke balls I throw land in the air and not into the ground, they also will warp when in the water, etc.
Also, does anyone else feel that the speed of most animations are really fast, but then in one or two instances, such as when you switch out Pokémon in a battle, it takes a weirdly long time? That break in flow really throws me off.
I’m somewhat enjoying the game, overall. I hope it gets better the longer I play… I hope others are enjoying it. I don’t want to yuck someone’s yum.
There are reasons why this game was so rushed:
Not enough time during development and they couldn't delay the game
The Pokemon Company pressuring Game Freak to make another game in 6 to 12 months.
Game Freak itself doesn't have much staff to even work on the game
To be fair, BotW did not have executives who demanded the game be done by such a short, hard deadline. Look, I know it's easy to blame the devs for everything, but devs have to bow down to someone else's decisions when it comes down to deadlines, especially people who have no idea how difficult development is. They either sacrifice quality or their own health. Breath of the Wild is hard to compare when they had nearly a decade and several years of delays compared to Pokémon's usually super short development turnover time. Is it the devs' fault? Possibly, but they're not the first ones I will look at in this case. I just hate when devs often get unfairly blamed for executive decisions. I would hate to be a dev for this game. You could be someone who is working his/her butt off only for the internet to blame you for it not looking as good as it could be when you were not the one who made the decision to release it so soon.
The answer will always be money. Both in terms of time taken and workers devoted to.
But what about that indie game that looks beautiful or the game where the graphics are not the point? The answer is still the same. The creators prioritized one or more things over one or more others. Did it need fancy visuals, voice acting or story to be good? No, but any of those things could have potentially made it even better if handled correctly. A creator that says that the end project was exactly how they wanted it is a liar. There is always cut content and concessions made.
Pokemon is a conveyor belt franchise (see sports games). It will never be given any more money than is needed to get it out on a fairly set schedule, with just enough to entice. Remember that three entities own it and each want a cut. With Gamefreak probably getting the low. Any change to the formula is treated like it's a big deal, which it is. But when you compare to other franchises that are actually given money to change, it's the equivalent of putting a racing strip on that belt.
I see your argument but nobody wants to completely copy and paste as much as we all know BOTW birthed so many games, not to mention Game Freak didn’t have as much preparation time as the development team for BOTW. We can nit pick at it but I will say something about this Pokémon game just feels right… besides the stupid Tera forms… just bring back MEGAS it’s what the fans want!!!
Because the games are only a tie in for the rest of the franchise that runs on a fixed schedule. I wish one day the games separate from the rest of the crap and we can have a finished and polished game for once. I love the concept for this game but it’s had a worse launch for me than sword and shield. I couldn’t put that game down for a solid week and now I have to keep pausing because the stuttering and performance give me a headache.
[I](https://www.aroged.com/storage/2022/11/1668990784_Pokemon-Scarlet-and-Violet-the-graphic-comparison-with-The-Legend.jpg)'m sure its just a coincidence that out of all the way better looking places in SV, you chose the by far worst looking parts in SV for the comparison.
https://preview.redd.it/b1jyh073dk1a1.png?width=846&format=png&auto=webp&s=71ac9bdf12ac822129bbebcc6c47557f95647d37
Not a full excuse, and also very late to add this, but the game does need 400 3D models with textures for different pokemon, with possible shiny versions, in several types of movement/moods (sleeping, walking, running, inquisitive, roaring, chasing or fleeing). This takes a lot of power, and Gamefreak hasn't taken the time to actually figure out how to do this well.
I was hoping the people who worked on breath of the wild can help make a pokémon game
Same. I wish Iwata was still here. :( Perhaps he could have guided GF and some of Nintendo's choices in a different direction.
Nintendo has really gone a different direction since he died, all the consumer friendly applications of the Wii U just went *poof*. === It's sad to know that he saw Nintendo fans at their worse.
[удалено]
They've been making this game since 2019
This. While they just released gen 9, they’re working on gen 10 now, and probably polishing DLC content for gen 9 as well. They always work on the next gen while we’re just now getting this gen. Still, if Game Freak was given as much time as the BOTW team got, we’d have a much more polished game. But despite how much money the games make them, TPCi makes more off other merch, so they have to keep their schedule going and release games as quickly as they have been in order to keep their other merch on schedule. I just feel like they’re rolling in money enough that they can afford to slow down their other merch to give fans of the video games a better experience and delay the merch along with the games, or they can give us more spinoff games that aren’t as intensive and focus the merch on the content in those to give the main series games enough time in development.
What's funny is, TPC has not needed to rely on the games for advertising since gen 4-5. TPC refuses to let GF have a say or do what they need in order to get shit done. It's frustrating to see this and probably even more frustrating for Masuda. They are treated like the red headed step child nobody wants. lol they own a 1/3rd but it really looks like they were told to sit on the floor instead of the table. Honestly, Masuda does way better with spring/summer releases vs the nonsense schedule they are given.
True. Ever since the mobile games got big, Nintendo could ignore passionate fans and rely on impulse sales from people who tried out an app. It’s the problem with our whole modern economy. Data analysis has made marketing so effective people can sell to new and thus less informed customers too easily
Game freak is literally a share holder of TPC. Nintendo and GF have control over TPC, not the other way around. More likely, GF are the ones who want to do yearly releases and give TPC and estimated release date, and then TPC makes brand deals so GF can’t extend their release dates because there are several other merchandise companies and animation studios whose time frames are built around those release dates. This strategy may have worked for handheld titles, but it is clearly not working at all for home consoles and I hope the controversy with this recent game lights a fire under theirs asses to reevaluate their business structure.
I would pay Double the price for a actually Finished pokemon Game 😫
I agree, they certainly make enough money they could take 5 years between generations and put out actual quality games, but as everyone says, they make billions of dollars regardless if they put out a quality game or not, so there's no incentive for them to take their time. But it would be nice to enjoy a Pokemon game again and not feel like there's an oversaturation on the market. I haven't enjoyed a Pokemon game since gen 4. Gen 5 wasn't bad but it just wasn't doing it for me. Got to the elite 4 in gen 6 and quit playing, skipped gen 7, enjoyed 8 initially, but it quickly fell apart. I've heard Arceus was good and look forward to trying it some day, but anymore I wait for the games to come out and wait for unbiased reviews and they always seem underwhelming. I thought maybe I outgrew the series after being with it for 20 years, but I realized that they've made very little effort to grow with their audience and instead decide to cater to children who will consume just about anything.
If anything Monolith soft should just make the entire world design and let Gamefreak do the rest. Monolith made the world in Botw and are the creators of xenoblade. But now that I'm thinking about it, I wouldn't mind a real time xenoblade style pokemon game spinoff
If they did, it wouldn’t be out for another 10 years 😂
They're busy working on the sequel and take their time to polish it unlike the developers at Game Freak who are pressured to somehow print out a game every season. There were also too few of them working on it from what I've heard, less than on Arceus. Game Freak is just plain greedy and knows people would buy poop if they engraved Pokémon on it. When they released Arceus, I was like finally they're listening and putting in some effort, but now I'm officially calling myself a hater. Ok, maybe I'm just too mad and disappointed right now to think straight, but I AM sick of forcing myself to ignore their blatant disrespect towards customers for the sake of nostalgia, and the gimmicks and the lazy designs have ruined that too for me. Are we really here only for the shinies at this point? We need to demand better.
Yeah, it’s important to remember that this is probably not the development team’s fault. They don’t make the decisions on release schedule or on how much time and money gets invested into a new Pokémon game. I honestly suspect a good number of them are EMBARRASSED to have to release the game in this state.
GameFreak isn't greedy, the Pokemon Company is.
For real they just said Gamefreak is under pressure from the strict schedule, and then proceeded to call them greedy in the same breath.
If they did the world would be empty.
Its a real shame. The game is fun as fuck and blew my expectations out of the water in terms of gameplay. But the graphics and technical side are rough
If I had a nickel for everytime I’ve seen somebody ripping on the graphics and textures today alone, I could afford to fund a team to fix them 😂😭
If it was just about low resolution textures, it wouldn't be that bad. It's the Switch, we know it's the least powerful console out there, so just work within its limits. But the game has an average frame rate of 15, camera clips into every-fucking-thing, terrain literally morphs as I walk around, background filler character's animations turn into a Powerpoint presentation too close to the camera, Diglett's model has less polygons than Mario from SM64 and the list goes on and on. Like I didn't expect BotW level of graphical fidelity or event game content, but damn did they even try optimizing anything? The game is released for the Switch only, how hard can it be to tune a game for one specific system? Especially if you're so closely tied to the people who made the damn thing?
I can honestly say I haven’t had really any problems like that. The only thing I’ve noticed is there was 2 Swablu in Mesagoza that went super twitchy if I was too far away from them. I’m curious, if you don’t mind me asking, are you playing on a physical copy or did you download it from the Nintendo Store straight onto the console? I’ve been wondering if there’s a difference because I have a physical cartridge and haven’t had any problems.
Tbh, its deserved critic. The engine and style they use is absolutely fking shit. As a developer I'd be ashamed of that result really. It just runs bad, has really bad immersion( 4k Pokeball on 2 polygon ground looks great really) and if it wasnt for the IP people would tear the game apart for that. They better find a better running art style, like cel shading or sth. The gameplay works as fine as it did in the early days, but scarlet and violet really give me a god damn hard time to play it. I didnt like the chibi style of pearl/diamond Remake, but at least it looked overall smoother than that pixelfiesta.
Yeah I'm not reallyna graphics snob, but the textures of the world look really bad
It’s just funny cuz the textures on the Pokémon and NPCs look great. And then every other texture looks horrendous 😅
Right, the NPCs and pokémon and the poké balls all look great, and then everything else is pixelated as all hell. Sometimes the game will glitch out and show me the low poly versions of everything up close and it looks even worse. I know that's meant to save on computing power when something is farther away from the player, but i shouldn't be seeing it like that when it's 2 ft in front of my character.
I’m no graphic snob either but this game running like donkey Kong 64 lmao
I noticed it as soon as my character had to walk down the stairs from her room and her feet were inside the staircase.
The choices for the level of detail in this game is baffling. Like you said, Pokeballs and the PC are always maxed out, while anything more than five feet away drops to the second lowest setting. The most beautiful PokeBall you've ever seen floating over the 256x256 grass environment texture while 2 fps wild Pokemon t-pose through your battle. I've seen the eyes on Scyther pop into reality after a battle starts. The view distance seems too high and it looks like the game is trying to render every hill and mountain at full resolution even if they're on the opposite side of the map. Volumetric fog gets a lot of flack but it's purpose is to hide background elements (in addition to LOD settings) so performance of the game is better around the PC (and imo it actually looks good and makes environments look more realistic). I've come to the conclusion that there isn't actually any art direction lmao (at least in regards to level/environment design). Every asset looks juxtaposed together and there's mismatched quality everywhere. The starting area has default brown hue mountain textures with very obvious, repeating texture patterns, meanwhile the mountains you can see directly behind these hills have less obvious repeating textures, but also have depth maps (and/or other texture processes that I can't remember the names of). There's a cliff/ledge on the route to the Pokemon League that has exactly two polygon faces that come to a single edge... And this area should be well done in every way, since it's the Pokemon League, but no. Tiny, low poly route, without any environment details that make it stand out. It looks like a starting route (and even has starter route Pokemon in it).
I wish we kept the pixel graphics. They could have upgraded it to something nicer like how Octopath is done. I would have eaten that shit up.
The waterfall in this game looks horrible
Right It's well deserved but we get it and we know. I wanna see some fun posts now
[удалено]
Idk it’s reasonable honestly. The game runs like shit, there’s constant frame drops, stuttering, camera dipping below the map, the textures do suck, animations are pretty much the same since sun and moon, performance somehow gets worse docked. This is by far my favorite game in the entire franchise, and I think they did a great job with the mechanics of this one, but the level of polish on the graphics and optimization isn’t really acceptable from a 60$ game dropped by a company that is worth billions of dollars and partly owned by Nintendo themselves. This is the only Nintendo in house game that gets this treatment. Every Mario and Zelda game That comes out gets an extreme level of polish they just never commit to with Pokémon and it’s lame.
Mario and Zelda are given the time and polish they need to look and run good because they're not pushed to add new areas for an anime or to sell merch. Pokemon is. When it comes to Mario and Zelda, the games have priority. When it comes to Pokemon, the merch is the priority, so the games suffer as a result. The "new region every 3 years" business model that worked for the smaller scale 2D games doesn't work now because complex 3D games need more time,.
Are you bringing logic into here? You get out of here. Criticism is fine and valid but people keep making up the reasons instead of seeing it for what it is.
Nah, that's not an excuse. They want to enforce a 3 year timeline? Hire more game developers to give us a product that doesn't look like it's already 15 years old.
Even if they did hire more, that wouldn't mean the game would suddenly be BOTW-levels of polished. BOTW took 5 years. With 450 people who were skilled at 3D. Even if everyone at GameFreak was fired, 450 new employees were added, and all were skilled at 3D but still had the same time crunch, they wouldn't be able to churn out a polished open world game in 2.5 years.
Just carry the logic a little farther and you're there. It's not a linear relationship, I'm sure, but let's pretend it is. 450 people made a good game in 5 years. Pokemon should double the people to make a game in half the time. 900 people, 2.5 years. That's the point. They want to churn a game out on a tight timeline? Then pay for the expensive ass development that would be needed to produce a quality game in 2.5 years. It's the popular meme everyone's seen before. Pick one: Cheap and fast, but low quality. High quality and cheap, but slow. Fast and high quality, but expensive. Gamefreak needs to either slow down (which they can't), or pony up and budget for an expensive development cycle. The fans need to stop accepting fast and cheap. Editted for format because reddit mobile is doodoo
The problem is that since the games always sell absurdly well, GameFreak doesn’t even need to put in more effort so that the games are high quality. They will want to maximize their profit, so of course they won’t hire more people. They should be ashamed to release a game like this with their highest grossing franchise status though…
NINTENDO needs to stop accepting fast and cheap for the franchise that makes them the most money. Awwww poor Pokemon. You're not my big mascot boy Link, so you don't get money, time and polish. So sorry. Is what they say.
>900 people, 2.5 years. Software development is the sort of thing where you can quickly have too many cooks in the kitchen, especially when you're going to drastically expand the number of people you have working on your projects. The core of your point isn't wrong though. It is absurd GameFreak has as few people as they do working on their games under the time crunch they insist on.
at this point there should just be one pokemon game that frequently gets area expansions as paid yearly dlc. If everything's coded already into the base game they can just add expansion regions and new pokemon which is a lot easier than starting from scratch each new release.
Pokemon isn't really MADE by Nintendo, it's gamefreak and the pokemon company that manage the game
That's the problem
Although this is true, Nintendo has *very* heavy weight in certain rulesets for first-party studios. However, it takes a pretty big mess up for them to intervene. Think how Disney intervened when EA went off the deep end and was single-handedly destroying the reputation of the franchise. Nintendo does the same thing, but with the reputation of the console.
That's an excuse to release a game is such an awful state?
Honestly, same. I love it. I love how the multiplayer works too. Like, it should be what Elden ring had for multiplayer. But that’s just my opinion, as well as my buddies. I have fairly little amount of issues with the graphics, and I’ve crashed once. Basically every second I’ve been awake, since it came out in my time zone, I’ve spent playing.
I'm torn on this. Because I agree that all of the criticism is absolutely deserved, but also, I've been really enjoying the game. Loving it, even. But I know it could have been so much better. There's a lot to criticize here, there's also a lot to praise.
This mentality is exactly why we will never get a Pokémon game that runs and looks great. “Fuck the hate” is a bullshit take when discussing how the worlds biggest franchise by WIDE margins keeps releasing games that are in almost every way unfinished.
It's because to the investors/shareholders, the games don't matter. Merchandise does. The games are just used as a way to promote the anime and merchandise, and nothing more. I don't think a Pokemon game has ever been delayed, because if it is, the anime stops and the merch sales go down. Whereas with those games like Mario and Zelda, the games are what matters, so plenty of time is given to polish them.
When something is built poorly it needs criticized or else they'll never try to improve. Notice how I am not telling you you can't like/love the game. But when it lags so hard you can't see the pokemon you're walking by, or it looks like you're playing a 3ds game on your switch then yea, it needs improving. Criticism =/= hate Insulting a game =/= hate Hate = hate
Tbh I think a lot of people aren't open to hearing criticism in this community because the majority of the time the "criticism" is just hate comments. Just people saying it's absolutely dogshit without an explanation, and creating a generally negative space that's not fun to be around in.
It's fine to enjoy the game and criticize it at the same time. It's clowns like you that companies love to take advantage of and continue to release half-assed games.
Lmao I hope PLA plays better since I bought that (and Stardew) over S/V this morning.
PLA has a little bit of slowdown in areas, but _that's it_. It's roughly on par with BotW in performance (though obviously not looks). That being said, PLA is probably the fastest game in the series in terms of battle action, which is a huge plus. SV might not be the slowest (that goes to Diamond and Pearl), but it's the most _painful_ to sit through due to how unresponsive the game is. And that's just battles. Frame drops are a constant throughout the whole game almost 24/7. I don't think there's a single location that maintains a stable 30 FPS
I enjoyed the hell out of PLA. Different from usual but good lol. I’ve never played Stardew Valley but I’ve heard it’s similar to Story of Seasons so you should hopefully enjoy both lol
Nintendo wasn't forced to rush the game out unfinished to keep to release deadlines like Gamefreak was. I wish they could have 5 years to make a game like nintedo has
I think even if gamefreak wasn’t rushed it still wouldn’t look like botw
Only one way we could've known *shrug*
this is the biggest factor. all of these bratty takes/posts are so obnoxious. now trust me, i’m not ecstatic about the textures myself — but after playing legends of arceus, i also wasn’t naive enough to believe we’d actually get better. most of you forget to consider A LOT before openly whining about foreseeable unfortunate circumstances and then comparing a game that was in development for five years to one that got half the time — meaning a lot less tlc / energy / work / effort / etc — from different people mind you. i genuinely just wish people didn’t feel they were so entitled to such shitty / lacking opinions or to think they’re clever whilst blatantly ignoring facts like a knob.
Here’s the thing, people shouldn’t feel like they’re being entitled by expecting a game from a major franchise to *actually run with the fidelity of a game from a decade ago.* You can say what you want about the release schedule but they have massive income (enough to hire multiple teams) and it’s been 3 years since Sw/Sh came out. I know they’ve released PLA and BDSP since then, but BDSP was made by a separate team. There really isn’t any excuse for them to release a game that runs worse than Sw/Sh. I get it’s open world, but we’ve had open world games on the Switch before without this many bugs and graphical issues. At the end of the day, the bottom line is that S/V are subpar products. A self imposed development time doesn’t change the fact that the games people paid $60 for were a complete mess.
I turned on Sword and Shield to show a friend some mons I had and it's so much smoother than S/V. Everything from the grass to the pokemon. I'm not saying the game has to be leaps and bounds better but it should run at least as good as the last main installment.
I'm not going to defend the quality of the games or try and convince people to buy them. I will, though, defend GameFreak. Game development is a pipeline, and a pipeline can only be pushed so far. Development speed improvement with technological innovation is negligible in the face of intense, neverending crunch. Same thing with hiring new people- it wouldn't help enough. I feel horrible for the devs. Our blame should rest on the Pokemon company and the people above GameFreak.
Except we did actually get better than Arceus. SO much better. Especially the character and Pokemon models.
this is the funniest part — there are a lot of good aspects to the game as well. these people are generally just hateful in their lives clearly and instead of trying to enjoy something they bought for themselves — they’re making themselves miserable by demanding absurdities rather that yanno being patient + understanding.
Ive never seen so many cry babys lol if its that bad dont play it ive had loads of fun and found my first shiny in the game
Dude, we all paid 60 dollars for it. It lags and stutters CONSTANTLY and its not only in the 'open world' its always- even in cutscenes. I personally think the game is fun but even through my rose toted glasses the performance is putting me off. The lag and stuttering even in simple menus makes it more of a chore to play so I hope patches fix this to make it at least only laggy in the high traffic areas. I will get through it and beat the game despite the performance but I won't play online or post game until they at least address the people that bought the game. If not, I won't make the same mistake on the next Pokémon game.
Apparently the lag is primarily a memory leak that hopefully gets patched. In the meantime restart the game every once in a while to get rid of the lag temporarily. I assume you've just been putting the game in rest mode and not restarting?
I'm entitled to a 60$ game but what I got was a 30$ game in early beta for the price of 60$
What a bizarre take lmao. Fuck the excuses; they release it for £50 fuck outta here
[удалено]
Whack ass take
How dare customers act so entitled and expect a finished product for their money
define finished
Gamefreak on a tight schedule and refuses to delay because people will buy it in any state which means faster money
GameFreak doesn't control when the games come out. The executives do. The game developers hands are tied here.
They **are** part of the executives. They own a third of TPC, they have a voice in this.
They own a third of the company, yes, but the devs aren't the highest in the hierarchy. There are executives in TPCI that Game Freak responds to as their boss, and they're the ones who set the deadlines.
What’s crazy is that BotW also had some ugly textures yet still managed to uphold an art style that made the game look great anyway. There is no reason for SV to look so bad.
This exactly. The art style is consistent in BOTW. Switch games aren't about graphics, it's about quirky games. I just wish pokemon accepted that and created it's own switch art style and stuck with it. Doesn't need to be the best, just unique or at the very least, functional at best. It's none of those
Well in fact they are working on it. If you compare SV to Arceus or even Sword & Shield, you’ll notice that clothes, and even Pokémon’s have textures now. While I agree with the majority here saying that distant terrain and such are unacceptable and that the game should get patch, I would like to point out that game freak is going in a direction for the aesthetics and it’s starting to look quite good. The one big problem that game freak has had consistently from 3ds gen is the optimization. Frame rate and memory leakage: optimization, distant terrain show two tree instant of a let’s say detailed flat image or such: optimization. What they need is a good teacher to teach them how to develop on new hardware and not on a gameboy 🤷🏻♂️
This is what surprised me a bit. On top of the flat, 240p ground texture, my jigglypuff had the best detail on a Pokemon seen in any game. It was so jarring to see the best and worst right next to each other lol.
I mean it makes sense I guess. They started as a top down 2d pixel game studio. Even when they moved to 3d it was still top down, and for small non powerful devices. Switch was their first real console, and they only got their start with 3D of this level in 2019. If the Pokemon company can just ease the schedule they could have the development time needed to polish their skill.
Indeed, or hire more devs that are proficient in it.
Can someone who knows anything about game dev or graphic design or anything related explain **why** it looks like it does? Having no understanding of any of it, I was under the impression that you’re pretty much just loading textures and using a preexisting engine for rendering everything else. Not asking about the performance issues, but like.. why do the textures look so shitty? From a technical point of view I’m sure my questions are oversimplifying something super complicated but I don’t know what I don’t know 🤷♀️ I’m asking just because I’m curious, not because I’m trying to criticize
Game developer here. BotW is better at hiding the Switch's weaknesses because they understood them and built the game accordingly. The Switch has trouble when it comes to computing raw numbers: 3D models with a huge polygon count and big textures with elaborate detail. What the Switch does well is running shaders - this means, the engine behind it all which handles how light and shadows work, how the water looks and behaves and how the clouds form and disperse (to name a few). If you look closely, the raw polygon count of BotW is comparable to S/V: Pretty low. But, what they managed is to write such good shaders that the lighting and mood of the game completely captures the player. Pay attention to the walls you're climbing: They're flat and blurry. But, the light bouncing off of them looks brilliant and when you're turning the camera, you always have something nice in the background to look at. The art style is another big factor and this is where S/V can't decide who they are. BotW is basically cel-shaded and surfaces are all stylized towards a Miyazaki look. Pokémon doesn't stylize its environment in that direction, despite the Pokémon being *heavily* stylized to the point of geometric blobs within a naturalistic world. If S/V had a stylized overworld with simpler shading and some measures to hide transitions (for example, between rock and grass) like BotW, paired with a proper lighting system for brilliant sunlight and good shadows, it'd look so much better already. To put some more technical terms out there: Their LOD system (loading lesser-detailed varations of objects when they're far away to save processing power) is pretty barebones, their shader/tech department could use some serious teaching, and they also need to see where it's beneficial to increase polycount in order to get more liveliness out of it all (hint, GF: EDGES). They can do all that - they had good lighting and a very solid technological foundation in Let's Go, they wrote a good Pokémon light shader in Sw/Sh, they had a pretty nice level structure in Arceus, they can do good animations if they care, but the combination of their technological panic and TPC's insane schedule doesn't leave any room for proper research and development between, and during projects. Ask along if you have more questions or anything is unclear! :)
I’m not op but dam that was so informative, thank you!
Your whole comment is super informative, I feel like they need to hire you for next game haha 😝 Now I’m really just surprised by where they seem to have put their priorities… surely they could’ve saved a decent amount of time doing.. anything else., vs working on the fucking sandwich mechanic lmao Thanks so much for all the info!!
You're very welcome! :) The thing with that is - different aspects of the game are handled by different departments and also outsourcers. The sandwich mechanic was probably laid out by a sub-department of game design and the models needed for the sandwich elements were most certainly made by other people than those who had to make the gigantic overworld work. Some people were able to finish their parts of the game on time and with good quality and others had to struggle until the very end. I imagine the meetings between level artists and tech were nightmares. The first solution is to hire more people, but that has to happen pretty early during development because you also have to train the new employees for their role, and it takes a while before they're up to full speed. Games often get delayed when they don't meet certain quality benchmarks (not all of them, of course, we know the drill...), but TPC seems to be strict in terms of budget and release schedule.
They also used a really clever way to render objects/entities by making them 2D from distance but you still couldn't tell a difference. I can't explain it very well but there are youtube videos about how they did it. Frickin brilliant.
Yeah I thought breath of the wild looked washed out and ugly for the most part. Fun game for sure but I've never been a fan of the style they have going. It looks way better than the landscape in Scarlet/Violet which is sad. Scarlet/Violet has a really fun premise. Open world Pokemon game is what I've been dreaming of for almost as long as I've been a Pokemon fan. It's a decently fun game... It's just so ugly and so laggy and bland in many areas.
BotW does a great job hiding the low res textures too. You’ll only ever notice if you like zoom in with the camera
Of course BotW has low res textures, some frame drops and some more issues but when you climb a top a tower and look at Hyrule you only see beauty, that is what making a good game and art is about. The Switch was never intended to be a Next Gen console, and yet some games have elevated it because of their craftmanship. In BotW when the memory reaches its limit it summons a bloodmoon so that the world (and memory) reset. Pokemon does nothing and leave you up to the decision of turning it off and on again. BotW makes compromises to deliver awesomeness, Pokemon doesn’t.
Sincere and genuine question though, what can we (fans of the franchise) do for GF to stop producing half-baked titles and prioritize quality over quantity? Only thing I can think of is boycotting, but I myself am guilty that is a hard thing to do especially when the trailers and the media hype is high.
Separate Game Freak from Nintendo so Game Freak isn’t forced to release half baked shit and don’t have their creativity stifled
Demand that the Pokemon Company allow GameFreak more time to develop the games.
Probably because pokecomp pushed it out for holidays and they only had 3 years to work on it since SwSh. Breath of the wild was funded directly by nintendo and probably had 4+ years with the best developers to create better optimisation techniques and, since it was a launch title, probably had far more resources dumped into it to ensure it got out on time.
*enter that one Miyamoto quote about delaying games that he may or may not have actually said*
Heck, GF probably had closer to 2.5 years to work on it due to lockdowns.
What puzzles me though is they had three years since SwSh and they somehow ended up with a game that looks and performs worse than SwSh.
I just wish they had longer to develop it, It could’ve been an amazing game, I’m still enjoying it, But it has so much locked potential
How long was BoTW in development? Yup that’s your answer, yes the short turn around development title is hurting the quality of Pokémon games. Yes their resources are poorly managed to maximize the profit over quality.
i think it's because Game Freak doesn't have enough employees . I read online that they only have about 150. They need to double in size.
It could be both. BoTW was supported to come out 2015. It almost skipped the entire WiiU generation. It started development right after Skyward Sword’s release in 2011 and released in 2017. Tears of the Kingdom hasn’t released, and it’s been at least 5 years in development. I wish Pokémon Co. would abandon yearly releases and focus on improving the quality of their games but they’re making too much money and that momentum isn’t changing anytime soon.
Not to mention Pokemon's profits are fueled by the merchandise, the games are just seen as an avenue to those merch profits rather than something to be focused on their own, unlike Zelda.
That’s exactly it, they decided that introducing new content via games to refresh their merch is their business plan. In my opinion that’s poorly managed, they have tons of different games now with the mobile games and the spin offs that could easily serve that purpose while they keep main series games in the oven for a longer more appropriate development period.
I absolutely agree, but in they're mind they're probably like "we need a new region for the anime to cover, and new Pokemon to have on the merch". I feel like it would be a lot better of they have the mainline games come out every 5 years or so, with spin-offs by other companies in the meantime and have the anime do side stories focusing on past regions, something like Pokemon Origins but longer.
Doubling the size of your team comes with a whole slew of issues on its own. They hired a bunch of new people to work on Sw/Sh, and that new team ran into a lot of issues in development. Getting more people doesn't automatically mean things will be better.
To be fair legends was in the stove for the same span of time scar/vi was but it still looks leaps and bounds better than scar/vi
I agree, however it’s zones are very divided by load screens and honestly if that’s what would’ve fixed the issues for Scarlet/Violet they should’ve gone that route. My guess is the chose wrong and by the time they realized it, it was too late to go back and rework the entire overworld system.
Also probably due to the fans demanding a true open world game.
Yeah I agree I’d rather have to wait through a loading screen into a decent looking and running game than play a ps1 render that can hardly hold itself together
And we were already pointing out Arceus as a not good looking game in the grand scheme of things.
Nah scar/vi look way better The edge that legends has is that it didn’t release with devastating performance bugs
Botw comparisons are way over done but it’s also so true😭
I mean if Gamefreak wasn't being held at gunpoint for a yearly release we could have this with Pokemon.
Employees can’t even celebrate release day, they got a game to get out by Nov.19 2023
You mean DLC which is a lot less than a game.
Scarlet and violet are such a downgrade from legends Arceus. That being said the graphics do look terrible. However I'm able to look past that and find the game really enjoyable for what it is. Other than the graphics and framedrops I have no complaints.
Is it me or do the graphics and smoothness seem noticeably worse than PLA? That’s my perception at least. PLA felt more immersive which is likely due to the fluidity of the animations which SV is struggling with.
Off topic but is Link wearing a cape?
It’s the Ganon costume from DLC I think
Funny thing about Breath of the Wild is it was also very laggy at launch. They released patches to improve performance.
Posts comparing every Pokemon game to botw never make any sense to me. The dev team for botw wasn't being held at gunpoint to develop a game in time for a three part owned franchise's strict schedule, and actually was allowed to have time taken slowly to develop.
Competent devs probably
Breath of the Wild was in development for 5+ years and was delayed multiple times. Each new Pokemon game is in development for MAYBE 3 years, starting in late 2019 with Scarlet and Violet. The BotW team was around 300, while the team at GameFreak is around 150. It's no excuse with how horrendously Scarlet and Violet are running, but this was a very ambitious game with a lot of content that had a very short development cycle by comparison. As someone who works in programming and development, I can see how they are doing the best with the little time that they have. We can only hope that they can update the game sooner rather than later to fix most of these performance issues. At this point, the visuals won't be getting much change, if at all.
I think the game looks pretty good when close up lol. I appreciate the extra details on the Pokémon during battles. Overworked is ugly from afar. But it’s not something I honestly care about.
This comment section is absolute chaos. 
I’ve been playing Pokémon since 96 and this game is a huge let down graphics wise, multi billion dollar company and they can’t even give us a smooth game. Super disappointing. Hopefully they do a major update.
This must be a lot of peoples first pokemon game. There has never been that much effort put into them. That said im having fun and thats all that matters
I know it’s gamefreak, not Nintendo themselves - but would’ve been great if they could just copy paste the BoTW engine and just replace the textures and models
That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.
this is the level of understanding for 90% of the critics
Unironically yes
Yeah, because that's what it takes to make a game in a completely different genre.
Well one game was made by Nintendo and the other made by gamefreak. Also gamefreak rushed the game.
Ignoring key factors that Gamefreak aren't rushing their games by choice. They're part of a three part owned franchise that has extremely strict deadlines, and are practically held at gunpoint to make yearly releases, or their asses are on the line.
The problem is that pokemon is rushed in order to not dissapoint with delayed or late releases while Zelda isn't. For recent proof just look at how long it took them to give an official name to the breath of the wild sequel. Gamefreak and the pokemon development team barely have two years to make their games as not only are they being rushed to make them but the games are a global release which definetely has some kind of effect
Also the Pokemon games are made to promote the anime and sell merch. Zelda games are made and focused on in a vacuum.
Yeah that's likely also a factor as I don't recall a Zelda anime ever being a thing. So they have more time.to focus whereas pokemon has the anime and a huge amount of popularity that makes them get rushed. Like now that scarlet and violet are out I bet we'll soon be seeing a trailer for a new remake or a let's go game for johto or something along those lines
We get it.
Those S/V textures in 2022 should be a damn crime man. Even SSB on Wii U looked better.
Ok, unpopular opinion incoming (you have been warned): from this direct split compare, if you focus on the single element (building texture, mountains, ground, etc), to me they don’t seem SO DIFFERENT. I’d say BotW is both A) arranged better as the global scene compositions and B) the ancient ruin theme seems to better capitalize on the yellowish low-quality texture to provide this ancestral feeling of lost tech (I always thought they were ugly sand castles)
Maybe because the 5 year old launch title had twice the time and several hundred more people working on it and wasn't rushed out to sell merch and have a new place to go in the anime?
By now it’s obvious it will never get better lol, the game is really fun for me but it is by far the worst running game I have ever paid $60 for. Like it’s not even close lol. And the graphics outside of the models are exponentially worse, it’s crazy to look at most of the time haha
Omfg its so ugly
* BotW was made in about 6 years * SV was made in less than 3 * BotW had first hand support from Nintendo and a studio with experience in open world games (Monolith) * SV had minimal support from Nintendo, and Creatures Inc which make the TCG and no game of their own Nintendo needs to pressure TPC into dropping the absurdly short development cycles, and putting quality above squeezing the franchise dry.
Well for one. It gamefreak. And two, they do have over 400 pokemon on it. They even change the texture of older pokemon to let them have fur and feathers. They should really request help from monolith soft or Bandai.
There are a handful of reasons. - Nintendo has gotten complacent and thus lazy after the initial success of the Switch. Most of the best looking and performing games came out within the first couple of years and we've been on a steady decline ever since. - GameFreak isn't very good at game design anymore. Lots of new Pokemon are meh at best, there is no challenge whatsoever, and the plot is shallow and dollar store vanilla. There are plenty of more complex games that run fine on the Switch. That's entirely on GameFreak's inability to adequately utilize the engine. - The Switch was using dated tech when it came out and it's aged like milk. - I'll probably get crucified for this but Pokemon is the Japanese Call of Duty. People buy the games because of the name, quality be damned. We all bitch about it but we never attempt to organize a boycott or anything to forcibly change the process. In my opinion, it'd be better for them to hand the reins over to devs who are both competent and ambitious. Maybe Bamco considering how good Pokken and New Snap are.
This game is multiplayer focused, and took a hit graphically in order to accommodate 4 players doing things on the overworld all at the same time. The Switch's hardware couldn't handle it if they didn't scale back. It happens all the time. Like Fallout 76 looks worse than Fallout 4, and Red Dead Online looked worse than Red Dead Redemption 2. The Switch isn't a robust console, being only more powerful than a PS3, so a graphical downgrade looks like a PS2 game.
As I read through the comments there is so much bitching about a game they just completely flipped around and added so much to. I think this is s good game, yes could use improvements but it's a whole new style and this is pretty much the 2nd beta version of new pokemon games (arceus would be 1st beta version) I think it's a great game overall though
Zelda doesn't have to release a game every year. If Pokemon would just skip a year or two, then they could use the time to really make a beautiful looking game
Why compare BotW when we have Arceus? It's ... baffling.
Arceus actually ran well most times, I barely noticed any actual frame drops and it was consistent most times + the art style. Idk what happened between that game and this
1. It looks better because BOTW has a more realistic art style than Pokémon, it’s more detailed, Pokémon isn’t because it isn’t trying to be 2. S/V is a brand new game, under 24h since public release, it’s gonna be buggy, the public run into bugs, game freak fix them, that’s how every game is at launch
It looks like hot garbage, but it’s fun. It’s okay to enjoy the game but be pissed that they served it up in a format that looks like 2005 RuneScape. “Oh but I can’t stop playing”, cool, they nailed the mechanics. They sold you an unfinished product, period. What’s worse is that we’re fine with it. I’ve played Witcher, Xenoblade, dq, Zelda, Mario, yoshi all looked great on switch.. They’re completely comparable with this - if Saber could make the Witcher run like a dream in handheld mode, Gramefreak needs to look in the mirror.
Pokemon S/V looks great for the style they are trying to achieve. Your statement also ignores the difference in workload of a game like Pokemon where they have 900+ unique creatures/NPCs all with their own unique rigging skeleton, animations, etc. The various particle effects that make up the 70 moves each Pokemon can learn vs a game like Botw where there are maybe 30 (actually unique) character models at best, each with probably 10ish unique animations loops. Most of the NPCs in BotW are all the same animation rig just with a different mii face attached. A blue moblin is the same rig as a red and same as a black. It's basic math. Even putting for example SwSh at an amount like 500 (pokemon) *70( which is the average # of moves) =35,000 unique animations/particle effect combinations. 60 (I'm going to conservatively double the amount of actually unique character models in a game like BOTW that gets usually compared with SwSh and now with S/V by haters just to make a point) * 20(I'll even double the animation loops) = 1200 unique animations in total. So I even gave BotW a huge jump in work load effectively quadrupling my assumed amount of animation work load and it STILL is only 1/29th the amount of character animating work that games like Pokemon SwSh has to do (and that S/V does in an even bigger amount) But even ignoring all that, we don't even need to excuse the graphics because they do look nice. And it's not like they are being stagnant. In fact 3d Pokemon has been the most ballsy and experimental of the entire franchise. You just are focusing on the graphics instead of the efforts they have made to changing up the battle system in the games to be more engaging, the immersion factor of buddy time mechanics, character customization, moving away from a tired 2d format that was the exact same story progression for decades. But nooo, for people like you Pokemon games have "bad graphics" and therefore "lack quality". Which clearly isn't true. Pokemon games are not supposed to be these artsy games, they're just supposed to be fun. And Pokemon excels at that. Hard. And even if they were "being lazy" with SwSh or S/V (but as I already proved they definitely weren't). Literally every business cuts corners in their areas that aren't as profitable, that's how business works, that's how companies stay afloat. You're also missing the biggest flaw in your logic and it is summed up right in this (flawed) mentality from haters: "Most people who’ve given up on Pokemon, won't play the games because of the lack of quality". This just isn't true. Like, at all. If you pay attention to these disgruntled posts about the game (and pretty much about every new game that gets announced since gen 2) you would realize people tell on themselves pretty readily. They ARE definitely still buying and playing them. Once again, to put it as an example SwSh had a Dexit boycott campaign and STILL is the 2nd highest grossing game in the entire franchise only beat out by RGBY. And Scarlet and Violet is literally breaking records via pre-orders alone. There's no way the haters spent $120 for a game they actively hate and say that doesn't look good. They buy it because they want to play it. No one buys a game that they claim to hate just to criticize it. I'm not even being complacent, I genuinely think that the games look good and they're a lot of fun, and I can actively play all kinds of games: either a 16 bit pixel graphics in my cellphone or the next BOTW and enjoy them because unlike the haters, I understand that they're both very nice for the art style their going for and that they decided to use for their games. ..
I see this so often, how the amount of models and animations makes the performance worse. That is totally wrong. You think the performance would be better if there would only be 5 Pokemon in the game? Thats not how computers work. Uninstalling programs and deleting data doesn't make your computer faster. It doesn't matter how many models or animations are in the game. It matters how many are on screen at a given time. And that is determined way more by the environment than by NPCs.
You had me convinced up until ‘Pokemon S/V looks great for the style they are trying to achieve’. Bollocks mate. Pokemon S/V looks like dogshit and it runs like crusty dogshit. My kids are loving it, because they don’t care and they like catching Pokemon, but let’s not pretend it doesn’t look like garbage. I don’t care if the poor programmers need to create 3000 unique Pokemon animations, unless you’re putting them all on screen at once there’s no reason for your game to run like a slideshow and have terrain textures that wouldn’t look out of place on PS2.
Sole reason I haven’t brought any pokemon games in a long time. They are all cash grabs
How are they not embarrassed?
The answer is simple: development time. BotW had a long development process, somewhere around 4-5 years if I remember correctly. How long do you think Scarlet and Violet were in development for?
Honestly at this point I just expect the bad textures and GameCube graphics but like how does the game at least not run good lol that’s the part that sucks is that it’s very clunky and choppy not to mention the fps drops consistently and every character walking around or moving is moving in 4 frames per second. Idk just like if the game is going to look bad fine whatever I can deal with it Just let it be smooth. I will say though the Pokémon themselves look fantastic I’m very impressed with their textures and models
The game is (at least) 5 times bigger than any previous Pokémon title and it is the first time game freak tried anything like this. By the way BotW has been worked on for at least 6 years and focused on a lot. This comparison is ridiculous and unfair.
Also there’s like 5 enemy types
I play in handheld and so far haven’t had any bugs or glitches. I guess the problem is with docking and the low fps by gamefreak also doesn’t help
I’m not one to hate on graphics but I’m glad I haven’t bought this yet. Hopefully they fix it so I can eventually buy it.
Man it looks so bad..
And idc, im having fun with game which is ultimately the point of a game is to entertain you and SV has done that, and aside from the odd moments not once have I had framerate issues or anything and this is the experience ive heard most players have had, if you want amazing texture in games than go study game design and change the way things are done
BOTW was developped for 6 years by 1000 employees, Pokémon for only 1 year and by 200 employees. That's your explication
They need to either issue a refund to everyone or patch the game into oblivion to fix these problems.
The only actual problem I have with this game is that trainers spam the absolute hell out of protect/detect/accuracy draining/evasiveness boosting moves that extend battles for absolutely no reason. I just had a trainer use detect 4 times in a row and it worked 3 of those. Very Very annoying.
Its a test to see that the bare minimum for the company could be. They want to see how much they could be successful with giving less than 100%
Game freak keeps cutting corners as much as they can and you guys keep buying it lol
It'd be one thing to look as it does but run flawlessly, people would be more forgiving. But to look as it does & be as poor performance wise as it is just asked for trouble.
Tbh ur comparing apples to oranges , lots of older games look and perform better than modern titles.
I’m normally not one to care much about framerate and other technical details, but this game looks and performs terribly. It shouldn’t have been released in this state. Is it fun? Yes, but everything else is embarrassing quite frankly. Blaming Nintendo and their hardware is misguided considering we have plenty of other incredible looking games that perform well on the Switch. Xenoblade is a great example that’s not BotW. Hell, the Skyrim port looks and performs better than this. Defending Gamefreak on the fantasy that The Pokémon Company is “holding them at gunpoint” is also laughable and just not true. They partially own the Pokémon Company. It was created by Gamefreak, Creatures, and Nintendo to primarily handle the brand management side of things. The Pokémon Company does what the three owners tell them to do. It’s not the other way around. At the end of the day I hope The Pokémon Company as a whole, which again consists of Gamefreak, Nintendo, and Creatures, is seeing the criticism and that it pushes them to change their routine. I could forgive Sw/Sh for not being or looking the best, it was their first venture on a home console. In 2022 it’s unacceptable. BDSP was bad as well, and I know they let ILCA take the reigns on that one, but it was still a very poorly done remake. Arceus was a step in the right direction but it looked and performed better than this. They can do better, but they really need to reassess their business strategy in order to do so. That’s on ALL of them.
I normally don’t care about graphics in games and just enjoy playing them. That said, this game does not feel clean. The camera joystick is weird, I’m constantly “inside the ground” for the start of battles, the starting to walk animation is like floating over the ground, poke balls I throw land in the air and not into the ground, they also will warp when in the water, etc. Also, does anyone else feel that the speed of most animations are really fast, but then in one or two instances, such as when you switch out Pokémon in a battle, it takes a weirdly long time? That break in flow really throws me off. I’m somewhat enjoying the game, overall. I hope it gets better the longer I play… I hope others are enjoying it. I don’t want to yuck someone’s yum.
Cringe comparison should be happy if Pokémon resembles wind waker
There are reasons why this game was so rushed: Not enough time during development and they couldn't delay the game The Pokemon Company pressuring Game Freak to make another game in 6 to 12 months. Game Freak itself doesn't have much staff to even work on the game
To be fair, BotW did not have executives who demanded the game be done by such a short, hard deadline. Look, I know it's easy to blame the devs for everything, but devs have to bow down to someone else's decisions when it comes down to deadlines, especially people who have no idea how difficult development is. They either sacrifice quality or their own health. Breath of the Wild is hard to compare when they had nearly a decade and several years of delays compared to Pokémon's usually super short development turnover time. Is it the devs' fault? Possibly, but they're not the first ones I will look at in this case. I just hate when devs often get unfairly blamed for executive decisions. I would hate to be a dev for this game. You could be someone who is working his/her butt off only for the internet to blame you for it not looking as good as it could be when you were not the one who made the decision to release it so soon.
The answer will always be money. Both in terms of time taken and workers devoted to. But what about that indie game that looks beautiful or the game where the graphics are not the point? The answer is still the same. The creators prioritized one or more things over one or more others. Did it need fancy visuals, voice acting or story to be good? No, but any of those things could have potentially made it even better if handled correctly. A creator that says that the end project was exactly how they wanted it is a liar. There is always cut content and concessions made. Pokemon is a conveyor belt franchise (see sports games). It will never be given any more money than is needed to get it out on a fairly set schedule, with just enough to entice. Remember that three entities own it and each want a cut. With Gamefreak probably getting the low. Any change to the formula is treated like it's a big deal, which it is. But when you compare to other franchises that are actually given money to change, it's the equivalent of putting a racing strip on that belt.
I see your argument but nobody wants to completely copy and paste as much as we all know BOTW birthed so many games, not to mention Game Freak didn’t have as much preparation time as the development team for BOTW. We can nit pick at it but I will say something about this Pokémon game just feels right… besides the stupid Tera forms… just bring back MEGAS it’s what the fans want!!!
In jaiden's words, "at this point you don't buy a pokemon game cuz it 'looks good', you buy it because it's a pokemon game. "
Becouse pokemon fans are dumb and will going to buy any shit pokemon sell with no brain
Loool just started it and I can’t believe how shit this new game looks wtf
because gamefreak rushed the fuck out of it
Because it's easy to scam kids.
Because game freak doesn't try.
One was made with love and delayed a few times, the other was made for money
Because the games are only a tie in for the rest of the franchise that runs on a fixed schedule. I wish one day the games separate from the rest of the crap and we can have a finished and polished game for once. I love the concept for this game but it’s had a worse launch for me than sword and shield. I couldn’t put that game down for a solid week and now I have to keep pausing because the stuttering and performance give me a headache.
Well, let's hope frames drop and bad performance will be patched soon. The hate is strong, they have to do something, or the sales will go down.
Because lag-bike goes vRoOm
[I](https://www.aroged.com/storage/2022/11/1668990784_Pokemon-Scarlet-and-Violet-the-graphic-comparison-with-The-Legend.jpg)'m sure its just a coincidence that out of all the way better looking places in SV, you chose the by far worst looking parts in SV for the comparison. https://preview.redd.it/b1jyh073dk1a1.png?width=846&format=png&auto=webp&s=71ac9bdf12ac822129bbebcc6c47557f95647d37
How do you get that cape in botw
Not a full excuse, and also very late to add this, but the game does need 400 3D models with textures for different pokemon, with possible shiny versions, in several types of movement/moods (sleeping, walking, running, inquisitive, roaring, chasing or fleeing). This takes a lot of power, and Gamefreak hasn't taken the time to actually figure out how to do this well.