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Julius

Pokémon Legends: Arceus (28th January 2022)

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Old Sinnoh. Feudal Japan vibes. Open world. Rolling?! Cyndaquil, Oshawott and Rowlet starters? Ahhhhhhhh!

Being developed by Game Freak, who are turning up and showing they care and still have some ambition left. Colour me surprised (and impressed), even if some of the wide environmental shots looked a little rough. 

Tonight we feast!

Edited by Julius
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Why is Rhyhorn blue?

Also, I can't quite put my finger on it but the graphics look weird, seemed to be loads of aliasing. Looks worse than Sword and Shield, although I may be misremembering :heh:

Either way very interested in this and definitely one I'll be keeping an eye on.

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14 minutes ago, Julius said:

even if some of the wide environmental shots looked a little rough. 

A little?

I'm mildly intrigued by the concept but the footage just looked like the Wild Area. It feels more like the setting was chosen to justify the barren landscapes rather than anything else.

Can't believe we've got to put up with that Paperchase Reindeer though. 

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Had some Age of Calamity vibes going at the start of the trailer, thought it was going to be another Musou game. :laughing:

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Excited for people excited but dear lord that's one ugly game. Feels like Wii era visuals, at best.

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It looks rough around the edges but it's still miles better than the wild areas of Sword and Shield - and from the brief footage we saw it doesn't seem as penned in either. Could it be an actual open world?!

It's nice to see an early 2022 release instead of late 21 and nice to know the remakes are being made by another developer, hopefully with GF's full attention and a decent amount of time they can make something that feels a bit more modern. Do you think they had any help with this? It kinda looks like a sparse BOTW to me, would they have access to that engine? I know it's different devs but it's not unheard of to share development.

More than anything I'm just glad they're giving us an open game with free camera movement and no chibi characters, the new remakes look horrible to me, a true step down from Let's Go, so I'm glad that this should at least float my boat. 

And Oshawott as a starter again is ballin', I love that little sad boi. 

 

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1 minute ago, Ronnie said:

Excited for people excited but dear lord that's one ugly game. Feels like Wii era visuals, at best.

C'mon, that's just mean. This is at least launch title Xbox 360 graphics, which for a Pokémon game is unbelievably advanced! 

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I’m happy that they are mixing things up a bit but GF have a lot of work on their hands over the next year in order to get this up to scratch. The visuals and frame rate looked VERY rough.

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It's great to see Gamefreak showing some ambition, they could really do with some help and expertise from another Nintendo studio who are more accustomed to making modern games though.

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10 minutes ago, Ashley said:

A little?

Yeah, I wanted to wait until we get the direct video before passing judgment on its performance in a stream. And now that's up...

...it looks just as bad, so now I can say it looks very rough :p frame rate is very rough, textures ain't great, but it is worth noting that this is the furthest out we've ever seen a "core series" Pokémon game from release (I imagine Legends is going to be like Let's Go and be it's own subseries? Though depending on how well it sells - and even it ships like this boy will it sell - I could see them taking a lot of this into Gen IX). Safe to say how we define the core series is once again being brought into question, though. Anyways, to have that be the case for their first open world attempt? That's down to poor decision making internally, but I'm happy they shared it with us nonetheless. Seeing as they announced who they were working with on the Diamond & Pearl remakes, I'm surprised we didn't find out they were leaning on Monolith Soft for this a little bit; it just makes sense. 

Anyways, this is easily the most ambitious Game Freak have ever been. We'll have to wait to see how it turns out, but more power to them for giving it a try. 

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Great concept/idea, one that could sway me to play a Pokémon game, which I haven't done in ages.

But man, this needs a lot of work.

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Out of all the recent Pokémon games for consoles (not including Go as I play that), this could actually get me back into the series again. Really liked what I saw initially and am willing to give this a go. 

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So they’ve finally done it... they’re actually making Pokemon of The Wild?

Hard pass.

Edited by Dcubed
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Definitely something to keep an eye on. Could be the first Pokémon game I like.

 

I'm hoping that the game will let you use Pokémon to navigate the world in different ways.

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Over the past decade, I've discovered what the level of open world-ness I can tolerate in a game before I get unbelievably bored.

If it's more open than, say, Xenoblade Chronicles (not X), then I'm skipping this.

Because if Zelda can't stop me falling asleep, there's no way in hell Pokémon can make Open-World games engaging.

EDIT: Boy, those snippets of gameplay do not fill me confidence. Looks so dull and empty.

Edited by Glen-i

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Yeah...

This is clearly way too ambitious for Game Freak, I can't see it turning out very well unfortunately. But you never know, they might finally figure out optimization at some point before this releases. :laughing:

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That's what you get for not voting Arceus on Glen-i's poll from a few weeks back!

As for the game itself, I'm surprised to see Game Freak themselves involved in a spinoff. Good for them. But don't expect anything too large or ambitious. I know I don't.

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It's funny, everyone keeps pleading for Game Freak to actually evolve mainline Pokemon games and be more ambitious which is fair enough... but now that they're finally trying it, everyone says they can't do it justice which is also fair enough :laughing:

Do they never staff up? You know, the studio in charge of one of the biggest franchises in the world.

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8 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

It's funny, everyone keeps pleading for Game Freak to actually evolve mainline Pokemon games and be more ambitious which is fair enough... but now that they're finally trying it, everyone says they can't do it justice which is also fair enough :laughing:

I don't want them to go this route though, because Pokémon fills a niche for Monster Collecting style RPG's, if they stopped doing that, what is there for those people who actually like that kind of game?

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It does look a step up from the wild area in Sword and Shield but the character movement can't be as stiff in those games, there needs to be much more mobility and more stuff to interact with. I enjoyed my time with Shield but it definitely felt pretty archaic, the world felt a bit lifeless. 

I'm sure Game Freak will be enlisting Monolith's help with creating the open world, hopefully with the larger budget they'll be able to optimise it to perform a bit better. 

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1 hour ago, Jonnas said:

As for the game itself, I'm surprised to see Game Freak themselves involved in a spinoff. Good for them. But don't expect anything too large or ambitious. I know I don't.

This isn't a spinoff.  It's the next mainline game; and the future of the mainline series as a whole.

Traditional Pokemon games are dead & buried now outside of remakes... just like what happened to Zelda (which is very fitting considering how much of a massive BOTW knockoff this game is!).

Edited by Dcubed

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7 minutes ago, Dcubed said:

This isn't a spinoff.  It's the next mainline game; and the future of the mainline series as a whole.

Traditional Pokemon games are dead & buried now outside of remakes... just like what happened to Zelda (which is very fitting considering how much of a massive BOTW knockoff this game is!).

Do we know that to be true? There was no indication new Pokémon was in this and that may come later but seems strange if this was now the only thing going forward. 

This kind of stuff is what I find interesting about this project and I know the above is currently just fan speculation but it would be nice for Pokémon to delve into its lore a bit more. I know they come up with stuff in the games but it always seems a bit...daffy. 

 

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