Wednesday Ramble

this is such bullshit.

Note that he isn't saying "we wanted everyone but we didn't have the time" he's saying it was a CONSCIOUS DECISION. and the reasoning was mainly for... Balance? BALANCE? in a Pokemon Game???

look, in-game balance is one thing. That's important, and it's why we don't have 800 pokemon running around in the Tall Grass. But you can control all of that, while ALSO letting me import my babies that I've had for 15 years since the GBA. Same as how all previous Pokemon games have worked - select about 250-500 to appear in the wild, and then let you import all your old favorites after you beat the Elite 4 (or whatever milestone).

but if he's talking about the meta-game Balance... my guy, you dropped the reigns on that a long time ago. The pro community will police itself, with their own rules and banlists. Your official competitions can (and already do!) the same. Meanwhile random online is a no-mans land. like, this is a game where you made it possible for somebody to take their Sunkern with only Tackle online and face other kids who have 6 Giratinas. Unless the entire paradigm has shifted to "every pokemon is viable", don't even bother at this point.

oh, and about those models and animations - it's the same models as from X/Y, and Sun/Moon. Pokemon GO and LGPE use them, too. So 80% of that work was already done. They've had battle, walking, and running animations for all Pokemon since Sun/Moon, too. What's left to do? people have brought up "oh, that Pokemon Camp they mentioned will need a ton of animations" and maybe that's true, but unless it's a full-on Nintendogs sim I don't think it was a good decision to prioritize that over including every Pokemon.

Plus it's ridiculous to think that including 900-ish Pokemon is such a monumentally tall order, anyway. Especially with the corners they cut on the environment, which only looks impressive compared to previous Pokemon Games. But have you seen what other fully-open-world games look like on the Switch!? You can't blame it on the hardware holding them back, anymore!

ugh, it feels weird to be THIS negative about a Pokemon game before it releases. I've looked forward to all of them, even if I had complaints about the game itself after I played it, even if some of the Pokemon looked like discarded condoms.

and there ARE things I'm looking forward to in Sword & Shield, like the Wild Region! but... even that is more like a tease of what the game COULD be, you know? and I'm frustrated that Gamefreak is still 1 step forward, 1 step back with this stuff.

I don't want to turn into The Guy Who Hates Pokemon, and I'm not trying to be a pissy bastard for no reason, that's not it. I'm disappointed, because I see so many other franchises exceeding themselves. And honestly, maybe I'd be singing a different tune if I could point to some new Pokemon that looked amazing, but so far nobody has looked like much of a standout. (which is fine, they've only revealed a dozen or so, there's plenty of time for the true gems to emerge, I'm not worried on that account)

It... just drives me crazy with many people saying "Gamefreak tried their hardest I'm still going to support them and buy the game!" as if they were the little indie that could, not a wildly successful multinational corporation who should be held to a higher standard. Pokemon makes more money than the GDP of some Eastern-European nations. It's about time for the #1 JRPG franchise on the planet to start acting like it.