MindFreak

I agree. But I watched a minute or two of pop-ins before I got that far.

To be fair, most examples in that video is just programming gone wrong. The animations are fine.

Spider-man: No Way Home (Don't know if this is still phase 4...)

We also keep saying that Game Freak is developing one of the most popular gaming franchises in the history of gaming and should therefore also have more money, manpower and time to work on their games. But alas, they are governed by outside forces. I agree. I don't think Legends: Arceus looks that bad, and I'm sure the game will look just fine once it releases. I just want more content and a good story with varied side-quests and an interesting gameplay outside battles. True. The battles are an important aspect of the games. And therefore the animations are also important, but developing the animations shouldn't take focus away from developing the rest of the game. Which is what it feels like happened to Sword/Shield, which is a shame.

Yeah, you import animations for Pokémon A, B, C the same way. So once import work is set up for Pokémon A, then B and C follow the same "API", so to speak. I would then expect that there is an internal event that triggers an animation, and that event is the same for each Pokémon. Then there may be variations - a lot of ifs to trigger special animations and some heights and special attributes that need to be somehow programmed (but if a Pokémon is an object, you can set some special attributes). But yeah, I know that it isn't trivial in that sense and that it requires a lot of work. But this work is almost solely for battles so I expect that the team working on the core game - everything outside the battles - is larger and more capable of creating a diverse, immersive and interesting game. However, over the last generations, I haven't really seen that. I do also understand that this is probably not Game Freak's fault. TPC may give them too tight a leash and that is really too bad. I want them to spend more time on each game to get them out - when they keep releasing "new" games every year, fatigue is also starting to show with the player base. I'm always in doubt whether I actually want to play the next game in the series because I don't care for whatever gimmick they try to throw at me, I just want to wander around in a world with Pokémon and experience a great story within that world - and not a story where the sole purpose is to become the best. I hope that Arceus may deliver that to me!

Okay. My point is still valid, though. If they are working as most software companies do, though, they have a team allocated for animations and such. They should invest more in that team if there is so much work. And then the other teams, working with core gameplay, overworld, side-quests and actual content in the game should work on making the games actually good. If the majority of the company works on animations, they are prioritising in a weird way internally. I know that this stuff is important, and I remember the feeling I got when I played Pokémon Stadium and everything was brought to 3D - it was awesome! And the battles should look like that. But it shouldn't be what makes up 90 % of the work on a new game, if they do that, they are doing it wrong. I look forward to seeing more of Legends: Arceus, because I believe that is has the potential to be a really great take on the Pokémon franchise going forward, going away from grid-based routes and restricted areas and intro a more open world (which is not the genre open world - I can agree with @Glen-i on that many open-world games are just too empty with little to do (though I do enjoy Witcher 3 and BotW)).

Alright. I may have misunderstood but I thought @Glen-i said that Creatures were only doing the 3D models, not the animations. So if what you're saying is true, then awesome. I don't know much about importing 3D models into software but I would expect them to behave in more or less the same way. I'm not saying there is almost no work involved but I would expect it to be like "import one - the rest is trivial" kind of work. Then each attack should have an attribute that would trigger the right animation on each Pokémon (physical, special). Yeah, of course, QA is quite some work but that shouldn't occupy more than a few testers. And if this indeed takes up so much of their time, they should hire more people to do this stuff, or hire more people to focus on the core gameplay stuff, like adding content. Just to be clear, I am a software engineer myself so I have at least some insights into software development, even though it's in a totally different kind of business than games development. I think Legends: Arceus is the ambition we were all hoping Game Freak would have and I acknowledge that something went amiss with the development of SwSh, which were barren and boring. But we then get sad because what we've seen makes Legends: Arceus look a bit empty and shallow.

Well, physical space is not that much of a problem. Sure, it takes some space but the images can be compressed, and they can always go for a bigger cart if they need to. Loading the animations is not much of a problem either, as we've seen. My point is that spending development time on animations shouldn't take focus away from developing the core game and adding stuff to the core game. If that is the case, they should hire someone to do it for them (or hire more 3D artists).

Animation of Pokémon should and could (I hope) be outsourced. Software companies outsource more important stuff to places like India all the time. Game Freak could hire an external company to animate all existing Pokémon and then just focus on the new ones, meaning less work in the future. (Sure, shit happens like we saw with Sword and Shield where their previous work was wasted but that shouldn't happen again!) If Game Freak is occupied with all of those animations, they are focusing on the wrong part of game development, in my opinion. Furthermore, most people complain about lack of content and new things in the games.

A remaster of Quake has just been released on Switch. Gyro aiming, online, DLC and mods. £10.

We're nearing the date for the takeover of our new house - September 1st officially but the seller believes he can be out next week sometime. I just got home from a meeting with him, he has like 10 chairs and a dining table left along with a few small things. I'm just thinking, I can swing by during the weekend and help him out if that means I can get the keys on Monday! How can he spend a week moving so little? XD

Yeah, I believe I should play it! It looks good. It's on my wishlist and will be bought when a good offer comes around.

We got a new trailer yesterday from the Presents. I guess discussions should be in this thread instead of the Presents-thread: It's a much better trailer with much more substanse. It looks like there at least is something to do in the game but I want to know more about that. If you just roam the world and catch Pokémon, that may become a bit boring after a while. There is, however, an indication of a story with those red-eyed Pokémon. This trailer at least got my attention and has more details.

It's also very important for a game like Pokkén to be balanced to stay interesting. In Legends: Arceus, it's not that important and could be programmed much faster. But yeah, having an anime-like combat system would perhaps be asking too much of the game.

I've now spent about 16 hours on Cris Tales and have passed what I believe is the halfway point in the story. Overall, it's not a bad game but it has some frustrations. There is no room for exploration. The game wants you to follow a set path and you almost can't leave that. This is frustrating because that's not how games work these days, I believe. If you somehow stumble upon a riddle (of which there is very few!), the solution is almost given to you immediately by the game / frog. It renders them pointless. Yesterday I walked on a bridge which then collapsed without warning. I therefore had to walk back up to it and restore it (a power you gain) to be able to proceed across it. What is the point of that? It then happened a few times again on another section of the bridge. Why?? The only unique aspect of this game is to send opponents back and forth in time but I quickly realised that it doesn't really affect my opponents. Sure, sometimes it's beneficial to send someone back as they deal less damage in the past but if they are on the right side of the screen, I can't - past is left, future is right and that's just how it is. I even came across a boss fight where they blocked the possibility to use the time mechanics. So I question why this is even necessary? At some point in the story, you are forced to switch between the party members but as inactive party members don't gain XP, they are now underleveled. Grinding is not fun as the game is so slow and thus, it becomes a bit frustrating. However, on the plus side, party members are vastly different in combat so it's good to be forced to create a new tactic, even though it caused me to be almost overrun by some common enemies. It was a nice shake-up to be forced to rethink combat and use the new characters. In combat, there are some Real Time Events that can double your damage output and mitigate damage taken but the window for button pressing is really, really narrow. Like 0.1 seconds. Too early makes you deflect some damage but being late is full-damage, of course. Some bosses can almost kill you with a single blow so if you miss the RTE, you are as good as dead. That's a bit rough. To further add to the insult, there is a small box in the corner telling you which attack is coming but that box is only visible for a few moments and then you have to know when the RTE comes. So this is very much about quick reactions in a turn-based combat environment which is kind of strange. I just wish they could widen the RTE window a bit to make it a tad easier to hit the right time. Overall, it's an enjoyable game, though. It has some frustrations which I listed above but they are not game breaking. I would rate it at 7/10 at this time.

I watched the first episode yesterday. I wasn't impressed overall but will continue to watch it. I didn't like Carter as a character that much through the episode but that aside I felt like this wasnt much of a What if but rather just the same story with a different gender. It just didn't feel any different and thus not very interesting. I had expected more from it, or at least I had expected to see how the future of Avengers would have been changed. Furthermore, the end didn't make much sense. The tesseract is The Space Stone... I hope the next few episodes are more interesting.

That's true. They do. But I'm not just talking about graphics for Legends Arceus but rather what we have sen of the game. The gameplay looked really rough and the world barren. I'm hoping they delay it to smooth out the edges. I have unfortunately absolutely no interest in the remakes. It doesn't look like they'll bring much new to the table this time around so I think I'll pass on them. I hope to be proven wrong, though.

Hopefully they will show off a far better demo of Legends that doesn't look as rough. Looking forward to it but I don't have any expectations.

I saw it a few weeks ago. It's alright but pretty forgettable. I enjoyed it because it was very colourful and light but it gets much weaker towards the ending.

I guess they can't find it.

Heracross is now in 3* Raids globally and by that, I have now got all Johto Pokémon as well! Wuu! I'm missing a few in Hoenn, though. Torrkoal and Relicanth in particular (and of course Kecleon who isn't released yet).

We are it all raw, yeah. It was great. The last season was a bit weaker, though. Old sensei dude was a bit too much, though.

Haha. Reading and skipping as always. I play games on low audio anyways when I play them in handheld because I can then talk to my wife while playing. Yeah, broken play time clock bothers me more than it should....

That makes sense, though the beginning is a bit slow. Although, the entire game is just a bit slow overall. Movement is slow, loading is slow, though combat is quite fast. It's not bad just 10 % too slow for me. However, I do enjoy it. The voice acting is good, the battles are fine (could do with a bit more variety with enemies, usually a dungeon holds three unique enemies or so, but each with three different time versions (past, present, future). I'm about 10 hours in (I think, the ingame playtime clock doesn't work - it continues while in sleep mode).