Jump to content
NEurope
Cube

Pokémon Sword & Pokémon Shield (2019, Switch)

Recommended Posts

Announced during the direct, Game Freak are developing a "core Pokémon RPG title" for Nintendo Switch - likely more than a year away though.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Fall 2018 at the earliest,Gives @Serebii time to recover from the shock that way

 

Agreed, been saying this for a while.

 

Nintendo are being very smart. If they don't know a release date because they don't want to commit to a finalised development time for whatever reason, it's a better move to act in such a way than to give a release date and delay it time and time again, as many publishers - including themselves - have done before.

 

Extremely excited for whatever this is, whenever it may be.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hope it'll be like other 3D RPG's, and ditch the top-down camera.

Would love to look out into the distance like in Zelda.

 

This may actually be the first Pokémon since Blue for me, I kid you not!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Fall 2018 at the earliest,Gives @Serebii time to recover from the shock that way

 

Autumn 2019 is my bet.

 

And what shock? I've been expecting this since the Switch was revealed.

Edited by Serebii

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Autumn 2019.

 

And what shock? I've been expecting this since the Switch was revealed.

 

I think Autumn 2018 is, at the very least, on the cards for this game. Not enough to commit to "I am 100% certain"; feels like a 50-50 at this point, for a number of reasons.

 

We have no idea how long it's been in development, but considering that Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle has been in development for 3 years, and considering just how early they start working on new generations, with two teams working on Gen VI, for instance, and just how closely knit Nintendo is with Pokémon and other second parties such as MonolithSoft, it could have been in a development for a while by now. If this game is going to have massive scope - which we've seen now with a number of first party titles, such as Breath of the Wild, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Odyssey, on the Switch - I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that MonolithSoft will have helped to some extent in massive world design (as they did with BOTW).

 

Let's not forget too that HD assets of each Pokémon- and alternate forms - were found in Sun and Moon, and I highly doubt these will go to waste anytime soon; actually, I'd be fairly confident in saying that they'll be used as the basis of the models we see in Pokémon Switch, and that would cut down development time rather drastically.

Edited by Julius Caesar

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Autumn 2018 seems likely.

 

I think launching a new gen game is much smarter than a Stars type re-release job they could have maybe done this year.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Diamond/Pearl remakes ahoy!

 

Man, I really, really want this. Not my first games, but it was around the time Pokémon really clocked with me and my friends back in primary school, so I'd be pumped for that. I mean, just imagine what they'd do with the soundtrack... :D

 

Then again, if this game has an engine anything like Xenoblade 2, Odyssey or BOTW, I'd love to see how a new generation of Pokémon designs turn out in such a setting.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Man, I really, really want this. Not my first games, but it was around the time Pokémon really clocked with me and my friends back in primary school, so I'd be pumped for that. I mean, just imagine what they'd do with the soundtrack... :D

 

I'm the complete opposite. Pearl and Diamond was where I burnt out and fell out of love with the series. I'm hoping @Ike is wrong ( it's a fair shout) as I don't have fond memories of those games.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Autumn 2018 seems likely.

 

I think launching a new gen game is much smarter than a Stars type re-release job they could have maybe done this year.

I agree

 

However, generations haven't been shorter than three years and haven't left out a year off.

 

2019 is likely

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I'm the complete opposite. Pearl and Diamond was where I burnt out and fell out of love with the series. I'm hoping @Ike is wrong ( it's a fair shout) as I don't have fond memories of those games.

 

Any particular nitpicks with the games that you can remember? Came out at a key point in my childhood, hence my nostalgia for them, but to each their own! :)

 

As for remakes being the first Switch core series Pokémon games, though, history goes against it: every single core series Pokémon game to be the first on a new console has started off a new generation of Pokémon games, with a new region and set of Pokémon to boot.

 

I'd rather become familiar with a new engine in a new region before going back to an old one, anyway :D

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Any particular nitpicks with the games that you can remember? Came out at a key point in my childhood, hence my nostalgia for them, but to each their own! :)

 

I'd been playing the games since Red and Blue and I think I just outgrew the series. I never finished Diamond, played a tiny bit of Black, didn't bother with Black 2, enjoyed X even though it was stupidly easy and I'm currently clawing my way through Moon.

 

On the surface I don't think the games have changed that much. It's still about a kid getting badges/traveling the world catching Pokemon and then fighting the Elite 4. The stories fail to grab me and I find the writing to be cringe worthy and quite childish at times. I suppose it makes sense, given the audience of the franchise. I can get past these things but I find I can only play the games in short bursts as I just end up getting bored with the gameplay or annoyed with annoying characters.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Diamond/Pearl/Platinum are probably my favourite gen, I think they'll make a new game first the first Switch game though.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2019? Don't they release them every year? Definitely 2018!

 

No they don't

 

Every generation has a year off

 

Generation 1: 1997

Generation 2: 2001

Generation 3: 2003 & 2005

Generation 4: 2007

Generation 5: 2011

Generation 6: 2015

 

This would be the start of a new generation and we're back to 3 year gens and so 2018 will likely be a year off

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I'd been playing the games since Red and Blue and I think I just outgrew the series. I never finished Diamond, played a tiny bit of Black, didn't bother with Black 2, enjoyed X even though it was stupidly easy and I'm currently clawing my way through Moon.

 

On the surface I don't think the games have changed that much. It's still about a kid getting badges/traveling the world catching Pokemon and then fighting the Elite 4. The stories fail to grab me and I find the writing to be cringe worthy and quite childish at times. I suppose it makes sense, given the audience of the franchise. I can get past these things but I find I can only play the games in short bursts as I just end up getting bored with the gameplay or annoyed with annoying characters.

 

Totally understand falling out with the series due to outgrowing it at some point, it happened to me with White 2. I still haven't played that game, actually. Perhaps the driving force in me returning to the franchise after that is having a younger brother to share the franchise and experiences with, which was refreshing (as my "outgrowing" of the series came around the time everyone outgrew Pokémon at my age: moving up to high school).

 

I agree that the games haven't changed that much, in terms of gameplay at least, but considering Sun & Moon shakes up the franchise in a few ways, I really think we could see something major this time around, similar to how Breath Of The Wild, and seemingly Super Mario Odyssey, have shaken up the formula in their respective franchises, and I think the key to those games shaking it up is taking the core aspect of each franchise -- adventure and platforming, respectively -- and then putting a spin on it that makes perfect sense but feels fresh too, such as having a seamless open world in BOTW or throwing your cap and embodying what it lands on in SMO for more complex and new twists and the aforementioned core aspects.

 

Which is, I think, where you run into a problem with Pokémon. What is the core aspect of this franchise? It's an RPG, sure, so perhaps it should lean heavily into story and levelling up? We saw glimpses of this in SM, with a lot of cutscenes and great story moments. But then again, the franchise has always - technically speaking - been an open world experienced in a linear fashion, so perhaps you take that and put a twist on it by making it a seamless open world (hey, Nintendo have done great with it so far, so I don't see why MonolithSoft or their core team couldn't have gone over to help Pokémon out on this) experienced in any order you want. You want to take on the gym furthest away? Sure, go do it in whatever order you like! Heck, a combination of branching story and open world really opens up the possibilities, and we got to choose lines for the first time in SM for our characters to speak, so what about dialogue/action trees?

 

I don't know what they'll do. In fact, I have no idea; and that's exactly why this intrigues me the most. Unlike Zelda, Mario or Metroid, I find it difficult to pin down one core aspect of a franchise like Pokémon to put a spin on, so it will be interesting to see what they do. Whatever it is, I hope we have full camera control and not fixed camera angles. Oh, and continued customisation support would be great too.

Edited by Julius Caesar

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
No they don't

 

Every generation has a year off

 

Generation 1: 1997

Generation 2: 2001

Generation 3: 2003 & 2005

Generation 4: 2007

Generation 5: 2011

Generation 6: 2015

 

This would be the start of a new generation and we're back to 3 year gens and so 2018 will likely be a year off

 

There isn't a Pokemon game every year? Certainly feels like there is. So why do they feel the need to tell us now?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
There isn't a Pokemon game every year? Certainly feels like there is. So why do they feel the need to tell us now?

 

Probably due to the negative reaction that Ultra Moon/Sun got being only on the 3DS.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
There isn't a Pokemon game every year? Certainly feels like there is. So why do they feel the need to tell us now?

 

Yeah there appears to be a game most years due to the remakes of the older games. Serebii's list seems to list the generational jumps so to speak.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Yeah there appears to be a game most years due to the remakes of the older games. Serebii's list seems to list the generational jumps so to speak.

Nope. It's the year off. Not the generational jump

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh boy a home console Pokémon game. It's finally happening!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

3D Pokémon Ranger or Snap with the ability to level up shit.

 

Although it'll probably be a Mystery Dungeon.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
3D Pokémon Ranger or Snap with the ability to level up shit.

 

Although it'll probably be a Mystery Dungeon.

 

Pokemon Ranger already has a level up system.

Oh, excuse me, had a level up system.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

×