Pokémon Legends: Arceus (28th January 2022)

[Julius]

7 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Given how rough the game looked, i'd be very surprised if it hit that release date.

Same. I know early 2022 was always their announced plan, but especially with the Sinnoh remakes just two months prior, it feels like they're trying to get it out of the way for something, because leaving it for Christmas next year would surely be more lucrative (and give them more time to iron things out). Unless the Breath of the Wild sequel is being pushed back and they want this to push the potential Pro in its place?

Maybe it'll be made clear the next time we see gameplay, but I'm with you and everyone else. Give it time to cook. I think it'll be one of the more stupid moves Pokémon's made in the last decade if they stick with January. 

7 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Either that or they will just release it and then constantly patch and update it, as is the style with most publishers and developers these days.

I mean, thankfully this is Game Freak, so don't expect that to happen unless there's something actually game-breaking going on 

[Dcubed]

Stick that shit back in the oven Game Freak...

 

I honestly don't understand why it has to come out so soon! Why!? It's literally only 2 months after BDSP! What? Is the Switch gonna suddenly combust in March 2022 or something!? What's the rush?

Edited May 26, 2021 by Dcubed

[Julius]

1 minute ago, Dcubed said:

Is the Switch gonna suddenly combust in March 2022 or something!?

Ah yes, Nintendo's new annual tradition of sacrifice ahead of their end-of-year financials, now it makes sense 

[Dcubed]

Well this is interesting... looks like the Japanese version is using the English logo!

Don't think that's ever happened before?

[Ronnie]

Like @Julius says it might be to make room for Zelda in March/April. Releasing this after BOTW2... wouldn't go well I don't think 

[Julius]

8 minutes ago, Dcubed said:

Well this is interesting... looks like the Japanese version is using the English logo!

Don't think that's ever happened before?

Huh, that is interesting. Off the top of my head I don't think they have for any of the previous main series games, and even if we consider this a spin-off, I'm struggling to remember this being the case for any of the spin-off games too. I feel like there might be one or two, but nothing comes to mind. 

Wonder if they'll change this down the road or if it's a decision made because open worlds are generally seen as being more palatable to a western market? It looks like the D&P remakes are in Japanese as they were before too, strange.

EDIT: okay, they did the same for Breath of the Wild, which was the first game that came to mind to check. 

I know you've still got the Japanese there, but with the English included too, maybe it is more to do with the game (and open worlds) being marketed towards the West? 

Edited May 26, 2021 by Julius

[Glen-i]

3 hours ago, Goron_3 said:

"We recommend playing this game on the Switch Pro if you want any kind of positive experience playing it"

 

2 hours ago, Ashley said:

"We recommend being so drunk your vision is blurry while playing this"

"I recommend playing something else because open-world games are boring and Game Freak isn't gonna be able to fix that"

That box art is actually quite nice, though. Like, that is Pokémon spin-off quality box art!

Edited May 26, 2021 by Glen-i

[Ashley]

Yeah they really should have given it to a company that knew what they were doing.

It's a shame as the ancient Japan setting for Conquest was really good and I wanted to see a return to that but this does not appear to be it. 

[MindFreak]

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.

[Glen-i]

49 minutes ago, MindFreak said:

There is, however, an indication of a story with those red-eyed Pokémon.

Red-eyed Pokémon that are strangely more violent then expected?

Now where have I seen something like that before?

Oh right! The latest game I'm playing!

Monster Hunter Stories 2 is great, you should play it. Seeing as Legends: Arceus is actually cribbing quite a lot from it. Mounts, quest structure, you name it!

[MindFreak]

3 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

Monster Hunter Stories 2 is great, you should play it. Seeing as Legends: Arceus is actually cribbing quite a lot from it. Mounts, quest structure, you name it!

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.

[Julius]

Might as well chime in. 

Yeah, it looks rough still. Not quite as rough as last time - should we count that as a win? - but still rough enough that I think it's embarrassing to think this is coming from the biggest franchise in the world. Textures and resolution aren't just atrocious, I think they straight up spit in the face of games being put out at the same price (and lower) for the lack of effort put in. You can literally count the pixels on clothing, and there's the application of textures to completely flat surfaces (such as the grass) which make PS2 games grin with pride. 

And then there's the reuse not just of the protagonist designs from Diamond and Pearl, but also other character designs (such as Cyllene being a dead ringer for Cyrus) and worse yet the fact that they reused Team Galactic's 'G' in the logo for Galaxy...Team. Well, it's nice to know that Game Freak isn't the only company lacking in originality these days. 

On the upside, apparently there's a Survey Corps, so hopefully we see some of them get torn apart by Titans...

...oh sorry, wrong franchise? Well that's a shame 

There could be something cool going on with Galaxy Team - Cyllene could be a time-travelled amnesiac Cyrus's daughter who starts the Galaxy Team, with Cyrus ending up in ancient Sinnoh somehow through the Distortion World or something - but this is Game Freak that we're talking about. There's probably nothing interesting enough worth speculating about here. 

Which is a shame, because I like some of the concepts, such as a more action-based capturing system is cool, which makes it a bit weird that you still end up with turn-based battles for me; should've taken a leaf out of Xenoblade's book for a nice balance of the two sides of action and JRPG, the idea of journeying through an ancient land with nods to later times while focusing on helping people out. What we saw doesn't do much to hint about what connection exactly Arceus will have to the main story, so my expectations for that have plummeted seeing as we didn't see it once here, but hey...

...at least one of the adventures in Sinnoh (well, Hisui) actually has new Pokémon forms, and I'm a big fan of all of them, though probably Basculegion and Growlithe, out here looking like a Chinese guardian lion, love it. 

Favourite part, like with Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, is probably the map, which gives us much more to ponder. 

Love that the map is just a different perspective of Sinnoh that we haven't seen before, trying to keep it somewhat fresh but familiar. We can see two of three lakes from here, the smoking volcano off in the north east is probably Stark Mountain, we can see Snowpoint Temple, there's that guy on a boat going to the west (a hint of something to do with going to Iron Island and/or Newmoon/Fullmoon islands perhaps?), and I also love the inclusion of what seems to be marshland over by where Pastoria would be. Thought Canalave would've made more sense than Jubilife as the major settlement here just because of it being a port town of sorts, but oh well, still fits the billing I guess (or Canalave is just hidden behind those clouds). 

Pokédex looked like a massive letdown too - I wish they would've done it as I think I've seen them do it in Monster Hunter Rise (someone feel free to confirm!), which is have some specialised art for the monsters (like below) but then also an option to view them normally, would've added a more cohesive feel to the world I think. 

Anyways, that's all the effort I can muster up to talk about Legends, but long story short: feels like we're getting two halfhearted efforts in the next six months rather than a full fledged remake or first open world. We'll wait and see if I'm interested enough when they launch to pick one up! 

Edited August 19, 2021 by Julius

[bob]

I think the most annoying thing about this game is that it's going to suck, and then @Glen-i will have been right, and use it as proof that all open world games suck.

[Glen-i]

1 hour ago, bob said:

I think the most annoying thing about this game is that it's going to suck, and then @Glen-i will have been right, and use it as proof that all open world games suck.

I don't need any more proof for that.

[Ike]

I actually think it's looking kinda... decent? I wasn't too keen on it before, but gameplay wise it might be OK.

It's the Hisuian forms that might push me over though since these are likely the only games you can get them to get competitive versions. I wonder if they will still have IVs/EVs etc, my decision might hinge on this.

Hoping the Growlithe is good, although Fire/Rock has some serious weakness.

[Ronnie]

The gameplay looks kind of decent maybe, but it's hard to disagree with ...

On 19/08/2021 at 8:19 PM, Julius said:

Yeah, it looks rough still. Not quite as rough as last time - should we count that as a win? - but still rough enough that I think it's embarrassing to think this is coming from the biggest franchise in the world. Textures and resolution aren't just atrocious, I think they straight up spit in the face of games being put out at the same price (and lower) for the lack of effort put in. You can literally count the pixels on clothing, and there's the application of textures to completely flat surfaces (such as the grass) which make PS2 games grin with pride.

I genuinely don't understand how Game Freak can be in charge of one of the biggest franchises in the world, and still make games that look generations (plural) behind. Can they not, I dunno, spend some money and staff up in expertise? Really bizarre.

Edited August 22, 2021 by Ronnie

[bob]

The gameplay looks kind of decent maybe, but it's hard to disagree with ...
I genuinely don't understand how Game Freak can be in charge of one of the biggest franchises in the world, and still make games that look generations (plural) behind. Can they not, I dunno, spend some money and staff up in expertise? Really bizarre.

Please understand, they literally don't have to, because people will still buy it anyway.

[Glen-i]

4 hours ago, Ronnie said:

I genuinely don't understand how Game Freak can be in charge of one of the biggest franchises in the world, and still make games that look generations (plural) behind. Can they not, I dunno, spend some money and staff up in expertise? Really bizarre.

While it's impossible to tell exactly what goes on behind the scenes. I can tell you this.

Most of Pokemon's revenue comes from merchandise sales. The games don't make nearly as much money in relation to these sales.

Throwing money can only get you so far and it also cuts down on profits. At what point does that become unfeasible?

Now, take Game Freak's relatively small size company (Less then 200 staff members if I remember correctly), and combine that with having to make sure around 1,100 models with unique skeletons to animate work as intended.

On average, Pokémon in the 3DS games had around 5 animations to their name. That's around 5,500 animations!

Now in theory, a lot of this work was ready for when Sword and Shield was released, but something went horrendously wrong in the transfer, which eventually led to the infamous Pokédex cut. They had to start almost from scratch!  That's a ridiculous amount of work, even with only around 450 Pokémon models to work with. Sword and Shield never quite recovered from that, which led to a game missing quite a few things that previous entries had. (Poor Mega Evolutions...)

While I certainly don't like the direction Legends: Arceus is going, I do believe Game Freak are getting a real bum rap with the uninformed and exaggerated rhetoric that gets thrown around on the internet. (Conveniently ignoring the 400 new animations that Galar Pokémon have to have, because "Look! THE TREEES!")

We're seeing a similar narrative here. Legends: Arceus is getting lambasted because it's visuals, "Look like a PS2 game"

Ignoring the obvious response of "Where were all these drop-dead gorgeous PS2 games I've obviously never heard of?", people are once again conveniently ignoring stuff like returning Pokémon having new animations. (I noticed that immediately)

Personally, I think the real problem with the mainline game development isn't money, it's time. The Pokémon Company most likely dictate when these games are to be released, because they want it to coincide with their plans for the animé and merch and so on. I doubt Game Freak get much of a say in this regard, if they need a delay, tough! They have to cut back on some stuff to make that date.

EDIT: @bob's previous response is also a common sentiment I see thrown around often.

But that kinda falls apart because Game Freak are literally trying something new with this game. But people still imply that they're coasting. Do some of you really believe that Game Freak's developers don't put their all into these games? I doubt that's the case for any developer!

Edited August 22, 2021 by Glen-i

[Dcubed]

Ahh, this chestnut again.  I’m just gonna unceremoniously steal @Serebii’s post from Resetera on this very topic because it’s actually pretty good…

Quote

Here's all the non-human models for Breath of the Wild with variants for elements etc.

 

Here's the same for Mario Odyssey 

 

Now here's Pokémon

1374 models. If you lop off the ones like Alcremie, Sivally, Type: Null etc. and you're at around 1100 and that's being lenient. These each have over a dozen animations each with unique skeletons etc. so that's around 13000 animations

 

Every new feature with 5 animations would require 5500 animations just for the Pokémon. It's insanity

Also this excellent video from New Frame Plus about the ridiculous challenge of animating Pokémon games (fantastic YouTube channel BTW, strongly recommended if you’re interested in video game animation in general!)…

 

Edited August 22, 2021 by Dcubed

[MindFreak]

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. 

Edited August 23, 2021 by MindFreak

[Glen-i]

55 minutes ago, MindFreak said:

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 were 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. 

It certainly would help, but it's worth noting that the creation of the 3D models for Pokémon are already outsourced to Creatures. Inc.

I am simplifying this a tad, but generally, Game Freak's artists design a new Pokémon, Creatures then create the 3D model for it, and then Game Freak implement it into their game with whatever animations are necessary.

Of course, there's probably a bit more back-and-forth in reality, as designs get tweaked all the time. There's no denying the high quality of the Pokémon models Creatures have made in the jump to 3D, which is why they get reused all the time in spin-offs. It was surprisingly forward thinking scuppered by unforseen issues. Which is a real pity.

[Ronnie]

(Somewhat amusing that even with 5000+ animations, they still use the same battle sound effects and status effects. )

Like @MindFreak says, GF makes enough money, let them outsource the animations, and if they themselves are focusing on them then their priorities are all wrong. How can you in good conscious put this out, in 2021:

But as @bob says, they don't need to. That's the answer. Arceus will sell a 10-20 million easily. Not sure what the comparison to Odyssey and Zelda is supposed to show.

Well done Game Freak for finally broadening the franchise and upping the scope and ambition, but presentation wise, it's indefensible.

Edited August 22, 2021 by Ronnie

[Glen-i]

2 hours ago, Ronnie said:

Not sure what the comparison to Odyssey and Zelda is supposed to show.

Well done Game Freak for finally broadening the franchise and upping the scope and ambition, but presentation wise, it's indefensible.

Really? Just...

How do you not realise the point being made there?

You're exactly the kind of person that goes on about how unambitious Pokémon games are, only to utterly miss the forest for the trees.

What it shows is that even the biggest games in the gaming industry absolutely pale into comparison when you compare it to the amount of models that go into the average 3D Pokémon game!

One of the most important aspects of game development is the characters that feature in it.

Take Pikachu as a starting point. When putting Pikachu in a turn-based battle that it will find itself in, it needs a number of animations to function as expected.

These are (going off the top of my head):

- An animation for emerging from a Poké Ball

- An idle animation

- Another idle animation that plays periodically while the player selects their next move

- A "Physical Attack" animation

- A "Special Attack" animation

- An animation that plays when Pikachu receives damage

- An animation for when Pikachu faints

7 animations that Pikachu has to have to function properly in the game. Perfectly do-able for any game developer.

But now Charizard has to have 7 similar animations, and Inteleon, and Lucario, and every Pokémon that is going to feature in the game.

Do you know how many Pokémon were in Sword/Shield when it came out? 412. That's 2,884 animations! Mario Odyssey doesn't even come close to that.

But wait! That's not even the extent of it! Some Pokémon have multiple forms with different skeletal structures, so they also need to have those 7 animations! Gigantamax Charizard is a different model to regular Charizard, after all!

So that's another 50-ish models that need to be animated at least 7 times. Bumping that up to 3,234 animations!

BTW, notice how I said "at least" there. Because not every Pokémon has exactly 7 animations in battle, there's a few Pokémon that have their own animations for a specific move. Not gonna count how many there are there. I'm sad, yes, but come on.

But there we go, all done! Right?

Oh crap! There's an option that let's the player interact with their Pokémon outside of battles! Welp, gotta get some more animations going there!

Now each Pokémon needs:

- A walking animation

- A running animation

- A happy reaction animation

- An upset reaction animation

- A more neutral reaction animation

Silver lining with this is that some of those alternate forms I mentioned previously only appear in battle, so at least they don't need these extra animations.

So, let's say 422 more Pokémon need those 5 animations now. So 2,110 + 3,234 = 5,344 animations! An absolutely eye-watering amount that becomes even more horrifying when you realise that that's not even half of the Pokémon that exist!

But no, people like you harp on about how awful the game looks while posting cherry-picked screenshots to further your point. Conveniently ignoring the sheer amount of work that goes into these kind of games just to fuel your "lazy developer" rhetoric! "But the environments aren't as good looking as they could be!" I hear you cry! Yes, it'd be bloody lovely if Legends: Arceus looked as graphically impressive as the likes of Horizon: Zero Dawn. You know what else would be nice? A real-life Blastoise with every copy!

But you're expecting a small studio like Game Freak (Who don't make as much money as you think they do! Nintendo, Creatures, and The Pokémon Company themselves get a cut of that profit) to be able to punch up to massive triple A developers while simultaneously maintaining thousands of times more animation work is nothing but a fantasy!

For someone who likes to point out the whiny nature of ResetEra members, you sure do like to sing their tune when it comes to Pokémon.

Edited August 23, 2021 by Glen-i
Sum correction

[Ronnie]

I realise there are lots of animations. We've all agreed that.

At no point did I call the developers "lazy". 

Your company of less than 200 employees, in charge of one of, if not the biggest gaming franchise in the world, can outsource let's be honest, basic animations to get them done. 

The higher ups don't, because they don't need to. The games and merchandise sell in eye-watering numbers. 

I don't care if some nobody Pokemon that 1% of people will ever see flaps its wings slightly differently to Pidgeot flapping its wings. When 99% of the game presentation that EVERYONE sees looks as fucking awful as it does, then somewhere the company's priorities got mixed up.

I realise there are lots of animations needed. That doesn't mean it's acceptable to make a PS2 quality game everywhere else, in 2021.

Edited August 23, 2021 by Ronnie

[Glen-i]

4 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

I realise there are lots of animations. We've all agreed that.

At no point did I call the developers "lazy". 

Implication can be just as damning as statement.

7 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

Your company of less than 200 employees, in charge of one of, if not the biggest gaming franchise in the world, can outsource let's be honest, basic animations to get them done. 

They don't, because they don't need to. The games and merchandise sell in huge numbers.

Game Freak aren't in charge of Pokémon, they're commissioned to create Pokémon games for The Pokémon Company. This means that GF don't have the luxury of being able to spend money however they like, they have to get the OK from TPC and Nintendo. Do you realise how much money they'd have to hand over to another company for them to do over 5,000 animations? I don't, but I guarantee it's a lot. Game Freak have about as much sway as the likes of Namco (New Pokémon Snap) and Spike Chunsoft (Mystery Dungeon series). The only difference is that Game Freak get to actually create and debut new Pokémon designs.

As I mentioned before, they already get Creatures Inc. to create the 3D models for Pokémon. That costs money.

Anyway, you imply that Game Freak can coast because Pokémon will always sell millions. You know why they sell millions? Because no-one does Monster Collecting RPG's better. Whenever another big company does their own take on Pokémon, it's always a spin-off affair that heavily reuses assets from previously made games to shore up their numbers, and even then, they never quite reach the amount that you'd see from a new generation of Pokémon.

The games are super accessible to play, while also being amazingly deep. That's very difficult to do and maintain, but Pokémon keeps nailing it.

21 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

I don't care if some nobody Pokemon that 1% of people will ever see flaps its wings slightly differently to Pidgeot flapping its wings. When 99% of the game presentation that everyone DOES see looks as fucking awful as it does, then somewhere the company's priorities got mixed up.

Don't do that. Don't imply that just because some people don't care, the effort is misplaced.

Take one of the 116 shrines in BotW that aren't on the Great Plateau. I guarantee millions of players never saw it in their time with that game. Does that mean that shrine is a waste of space and shouldn't have had time wasted on developing it?

You're a Nintendo fan! You know for a fact that Nintendo are notorious for putting in tiny little details that 99% of people will never see. Why is it different when Game Freak does that?

And it's kind of funny that you claim the priority of a monster collecting RPG should be on something that isn't the actual monsters themselves! They're the selling point of the game! It sounds like you want a Pokémon game that completely misses the point of a Pokémon game. Do you want a mainline Mario game that plays more like F-Zero? How about Zelda, but it plays like Dragon Quest? No, that's dumb. If you want that, play Dragon Quest.

I fully realise some people will be tempted to say they want Mario F-Zero, but let's not get sidetracked.

38 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

I realise there are lots of animations needed. That doesn't mean it's acceptable to make a PS2 quality game everywhere else, in 2021.

You have to be trolling at this point. Please, tell me you're having a laugh.

I can't believe I have to say this in an absolutely genuine way after one of my previous posts, but you've left me no choice.

Where were all these drop-dead gorgeous PS2 games I've obviously never heard of?

Go on, show me some. I'd love to see them.