Leak Repository Thread (WARNING: Huge spoilers!)

[FaeKing17]

I do love a good scandal.

 

[Cainhxrst]

And yet kissass Joe Merrick started the whole ThankYouGameFreak hashtag and kiss the ass of masuda making the BringBackNationalDex campaign irrelevant... He really does not represent pokemon fandom for me...

I mean the #thankyougamefreak thing was fans expressing love towards dev's that were facing pretty intense harassment for the greater part of the year. Imo there was nothing inherently wrong with that. I imagine the actual staff working on the games wanted none of this to happen and aren't happy about it either. This seems like an upper management sort of thing

 

[Juizel]

Might be some sorta story spoiler for some, so I'd rather put it into a spoiler. It's about difficulty from what I've seen on streams.

Spoiler

So honestly I kinda love how in the streams I've seen, most people in the chat and in the one with commentary I saw even the streamer mocked the game for being "too easy" just to almost get their whole team wiped midgame. Not just endgame, really already midgame.
It gives me some hope that maybe despite the Exp Share, you don't just rush through every battle but actually can have a bit trouble. That is, if you don't catch everything you see, maybe?

And yet kissass Joe Merrick started the whole ThankYouGameFreak hashtag and kiss the ass of masuda making the BringBackNationalDex campaign irrelevant... He really does not represent pokemon fandom for me...

Neither for me. I'm not really extra thankful to Game Freak for making games, because that's what their business does and gets money for. I'll thank them once I get the games for free, or some extra service, or I'll thank them for being a great developer once they...well, actually are. Or next up I should also go #ThankYouAmazon because they always deliver my stuff pretty fast, and #ThankYouMcDonalds because I like to eat there. Not to forget #ThankYouGameStop because I like to buy my games there. But oh well..

 

[Alola]

Some move data is out; Aura Wheel has a BP of 110 and perfect accuracy.

No increases in strength to Icy Wind, Draining Kiss, or Strength...

 

[swiftgallade46]

This is a reddit post that's been going around since yesterday. The poster knew about Sw/Sh approx a year before the announcement (timestamped discord images) and apparently as a pretty high up contact within gamefreak. I'd take with a grain of salt anyways but if this is true it pretty much perfectly explains everything about this gen so far. The weird lack of polish, the dex cuts, the actual gameplay seeming to be a minor step up from gen 7, the anime format completely changing.

It also resembles what Serebii has been "theorizing" for months (I say theorizing because after reading this, I think it's likely he has inside information on this but doesn't want to/can't say anything on it formally lol)

TL;DR of the image: asset importer broke, rigs were messed up, gamefreak didn't have the dev knowledge or staff to fix it in time, so they decided to exclude old pokemon and spin it as something intentional because anything otherwise would be them basically admitting that this was a failed generation. They plan on bringing back the nat dex in the next game/gen when the asset importer is fixed and spinning it as a "we listened to you all" moment.

View attachment 128387

Big if true, but I’m a bit dubious. It sounds like a fan-theory playing out.

And yet kissass Joe Merrick started the whole ThankYouGameFreak hashtag and kiss the ass of masuda making the BringBackNationalDex campaign irrelevant... He really does not represent pokemon fandom for me...

Oh yuck this is the type of energy we do not need. Praising GameFreak does not equate to “kissing their asses”. They’ve done a lot of good things over the past two decades and people can and should thank them especially given all of the torment they’ve likely had to endure lately. So chill.

 

[Oriden]

This is a reddit post that's been going around since yesterday. The poster knew about Sw/Sh approx a year before the announcement (timestamped discord images) and apparently as a pretty high up contact within gamefreak. I'd take with a grain of salt anyways but if this is true it pretty much perfectly explains everything about this gen so far. The weird lack of polish, the dex cuts, the actual gameplay seeming to be a minor step up from gen 7, the anime format completely changing.

It also resembles what Serebii has been "theorizing" for months (I say theorizing because after reading this, I think it's likely he has inside information on this but doesn't want to/can't say anything on it formally lol)

TL;DR of the image: asset importer broke, rigs were messed up, gamefreak didn't have the dev knowledge or staff to fix it in time, so they decided to exclude old pokemon and spin it as something intentional because anything otherwise would be them basically admitting that this was a failed generation. They plan on bringing back the nat dex in the next game/gen when the asset importer is fixed and spinning it as a "we listened to you all" moment.

View attachment 128387

Doesn't line up with the small team that was reported for Town. Unless I'm mistaken.

 

[TechSkylander1518]

The poster knew about Sw/Sh approx a year before the announcement (timestamped discord images)

Timestamped images aren't necessarily gospel. It's pretty easy to source edit a page and take a screenshot of it, actually.

I'm very skeptical of this claim, honestly, much as I would like to believe the NatDex would be back.

• Why would someone important enough to both have the minutes for Pokemon meetings and information on other Nintendo games as this person claims ( "Real answer from their meeting minutes per a friend of mine who saw them, and has been accurate about every Nintendo related thing for years now ") ever leak something at all, let alone something as disastrous as this? If you're important enough to be this much in the know about several games, you've gotta have a lot of stake in their success. There's no way they're giving out company secrets to some rando, especially not a rando who will blab to his friend on reddit and discord, both of which have more personal information attached to them than 4Chan.
• "is they just fucked up the model and animation importer, and didn't have the manpower with the right knowledge to fix it in time to meet the set release date. So instead they had to put tons of people, including outside help (this is where the ~300 people worked on Sw&Sh number comes from) on recreating art assets and getting their busted ass engine to work, since Gamefreak fucking up the importer is actually indicative of their overall software engineering competency right now." This just sounds ludicrous. They expect me to believe that
  • Game Freak was unable to port over several Kanto Pokemon to the Switch, despite all 151 being included in LGPE, because of this new importer
  • That you could "break" a software and make it unrepairable, as if you can't undo actions, save old versions, etc.
  • I mean, c'mon-they're claiming that they had this special, unique importer-it's not a tool that you can just reinstall or anything, this is a one of kind, break it and it's gone thing-out of thin air? Because if you have someone with the skill to make that unique importer, they should have the skills to recreate it.
  • That they needed people recreating models when both Switch and 3DS models can be easily downloaded as the same format on a computer?
    View: https://twitter.com/_DJTHED/status/1149932815154159616
• "It "worked" but would map the animations/rig to the model incorrectly" So how did we get Hop using the exact same animation as Hau?
  View: https://youtu.be/ty5lUK-EM-A?t=42
• They say that the filenames had "Sword" and "Shield" as prefixes on their names.
  Spoiler

  
  This makes zero sense. For one, we already know Hero was used as a prefix for names of the logos and such, and we saw leaks from the Dynamax camera that didn't use prefixes at all. For two, they said that "Sword" and "Shield" are used as prefixes-not "SwordShield", but supposedly that they varied between the two. This does not at all make sense for how you want to save file prefixes. If you're putting a prefix on, it's so that it will be sorted near relevant files-files named SwordFireStarter and SwordWaterStarter will be closer than just FireStarter and WaterStarter, because they'll be sorted by the "Sw". Sorting with alternating prefixes doesn't make any sense-the Shields would all be grouped in one section, and the Swords in another.
  • I suspect we can also easily ask a dataminer to verify this is false, because they claim source code has this prefix as well.
• Why did Nintendo think Pokemon needed to lie and cause a fake problem instead of allowing for a delay, but they pushed back the release date for Animal Crossing just fine?
• "I answered your second question in my original comment, they think it would be better for them to announce the return of the full dex as a big surprise "we listened to you, aren't you happy" moment. " Oh, is that why they took a poll about starter reveals, and then hid them anyways? Because this is their marketing strategy?
• "Other than time stamped messages I have sent with some other details (the names, the existence of the switch lite and the hardware revision, etc) before anything was public, I can't reveal unfortunately. I'm not interested in getting my friend in trouble, sorry." HAHAHAHAHA. Yeah, that's why you posted about it, talked about how he knew about, and attached it to your reddit and discord names.

This has more holes than a slice of swiss cheese. This person is just lying for attention and reddit karma, I'm positive.

It's been somewhat amusing sitting on info like this for a while and watching the community explode, but hopefully it makes some people's day if they see it.

 

[Cainhxrst]

Doesn't line up with the small team that was reported for Town. Unless I'm mistaken.

Timestamped images aren't necessarily gospel. It's pretty easy to source edit a page and take a screenshot of it, actually.
View attachment 128388

I'm very skeptical of this claim, honestly, much as I would like to believe the NatDex would be back.

• Why would someone important enough to both have the minutes for Pokemon meetings and information on other Nintendo games as this person claims ( "Real answer from their meeting minutes per a friend of mine who saw them, and has been accurate about every Nintendo related thing for years now ") ever leak something at all, let alone something as disastrous as this? If you're important enough to be this much in the know about several games, you've gotta have a lot of stake in their success. There's no way they're giving out company secrets to some rando, especially not a rando who will blab to his friend on reddit and discord, both of which have more personal information attached to them than 4Chan.
• "is they just fucked up the model and animation importer, and didn't have the manpower with the right knowledge to fix it in time to meet the set release date. So instead they had to put tons of people, including outside help (this is where the ~300 people worked on Sw&Sh number comes from) on recreating art assets and getting their busted ass engine to work, since Gamefreak fucking up the importer is actually indicative of their overall software engineering competency right now." This just sounds ludicrous. They expect me to believe that
  • Game Freak was unable to port over several Kanto Pokemon to the Switch, despite all 151 being included in LGPE, because of this new importer
  • That you could "break" a software and make it unrepairable, as if you can't undo actions, save old versions, etc.
  • I mean, c'mon-they're claiming that they had this special, unique importer-it's not a tool that you can just reinstall or anything, this is a one of kind, break it and it's gone thing-out of thin air? Because if you have someone with the skill to make that unique importer, they should have the skills to recreate it.
  • That they needed people recreating models when both Switch and 3DS models can be easily downloaded as the same format on a computer?
    View: https://twitter.com/_DJTHED/status/1149932815154159616
• "It "worked" but would map the animations/rig to the model incorrectly" So how did we get Hop using the exact same animation as Hau?
  View: https://youtu.be/ty5lUK-EM-A?t=42
• They say that the filenames had "Sword" and "Shield" as prefixes on their names.
  Spoiler

  View attachment 128390
  This makes zero sense. For one, we already know Hero was used as a prefix for names of the logos and such, and we saw leaks from the Dynamax camera that didn't use prefixes at all. For two, they said that "Sword" and "Shield" are used as prefixes-not "SwordShield", but supposedly that they varied between the two. This does not at all make sense for how you want to save file prefixes. If you're putting a prefix on, it's so that it will be sorted near relevant files-files named SwordFireStarter and SwordWaterStarter will be closer than just FireStarter and WaterStarter, because they'll be sorted by the "Sw". Sorting with alternating prefixes doesn't make any sense-the Shields would all be grouped in one section, and the Swords in another.
  • I suspect we can also easily ask a dataminer to verify this is false, because they claim source code has this prefix as well.
• Why did Nintendo think Pokemon needed to lie and cause a fake problem instead of allowing for a delay, but they pushed back the release date for Animal Crossing just fine?
• "I answered your second question in my original comment, they think it would be better for them to announce the return of the full dex as a big surprise "we listened to you, aren't you happy" moment. " Oh, is that why they took a poll about starter reveals, and then hid them anyways? Because this is their marketing strategy?
• "Other than time stamped messages I have sent with some other details (the names, the existence of the switch lite and the hardware revision, etc) before anything was public, I can't reveal unfortunately. I'm not interested in getting my friend in trouble, sorry." HAHAHAHAHA. Yeah, that's why you posted about it, talked about how he knew about, and attached it to your reddit and discord names.

This has more holes than a slice of swiss cheese. This person is just lying for attention and reddit karma, I'm positive.

yeah you're right. It does play out a bit like a fan theory/someone saying exactly what people wanna hear lol.

Though personally I'm still pretty positive that the dev cycle deff didn't go as intended, mainly due to some of the underworked animations, the pop in issues, etc.

 

[TechSkylander1518]

yeah you're right. It does play out a bit like a fan theory/someone saying exactly what people wanna hear lol.

Though personally I'm still pretty positive that the dev cycle deff didn't go as intended, mainly due to some of the underworked animations, the pop in issues, etc.

Oh, I definitely agree with that, I personally think several issues go back to just "they weren't given enough time". I just don't think some dude on reddit has exclusive minutes about a plan to strategically sabotage lol.

 

[Oriden]

We also do know for a fact that they use codenames for all of the games and Sword and Shield definitely weren't it.

So yeah, calling BS on that one.

 

[Zweilous]

After seeing that Hydreigon got Nasty Plot the transition, I decided to take a look at the full changes all four pseudo-legendaries got between Gen 7 and 8. I may've missed a couple new additions, but I think I got them all.

Tyranitar: Rock Blast, Mega Punch, Mega Kick, Whirlpool, Revenge, Sand Tomb, Avalanche, Breaking Swipe, Body Slam, Hydro Pump, Endure, Muddy Water, Heavy Slam, High Horsepower, Body Press

Hydreigon: Nasty Plot, Fire Spin, Beat Up, Helping Hand, Breaking Swipe, Body Slam, Hydro Pump, Dragon Dance, Zen Headbutt

Goodra: Acid Spray, Tearful Look, Mega Punch, Mega Kick, Weather Ball, Mud Shot, Assurance, Breaking Swipe, Hydro Pump, Ice Punch, Endure, Body Press, Life Dew

Kommo-o: Boomburst, Mega Punch, Mega Kick, Safeguard, Scary Face, Sandstorm, Revenge, Payback, False Swipe, Breaking Swipe, Aura Sphere, Body Press

Of the four, Tyranitar got the most move additions from Gen 7 (albeit, some from previous entries that didn't get carried over), though of them aside from the new moves (since I don't have their information) I'm not sure any of them would replace its current sets. Hydreigon got much less by comparison, but the move choices I feel are more beneficial since Nasty Plot greatly ups its nuke potential, Hydro Pump gives it a great single target option if you don't want to run Surf, and Dragon Dance could be useful for mixed/physical sets (though I feel Dragapult will be better for the latter). Goodra also got some nice options in Hydro Pump and Ice Punch, nothing that really moves the meter much for it I'd say, but still something that it can play around with for its future sets. Kommo-o got some nice special options in Aura Sphere and Boomburst, so its special set has gotten even better.

Edit: Actually missed something notable, Kommo-o learns a new move called Clangorous Soul (readapted Z-Move?). Also, Goodra gets Life Dew, which finally gives it a decent (25% for both partners in Doubles is good, not so much in Singles) recovery move.

This is a reddit post that's been going around since yesterday. The poster knew about Sw/Sh approx a year before the announcement (timestamped discord images) and apparently as a pretty high up contact within gamefreak. I'd take with a grain of salt anyways but if this is true it pretty much perfectly explains everything about this gen so far. The weird lack of polish, the dex cuts, the actual gameplay seeming to be a minor step up from gen 7, the anime format completely changing.

It also resembles what Serebii has been "theorizing" for months (I say theorizing because after reading this, I think it's likely he has inside information on this but doesn't want to/can't say anything on it formally lol)

TL;DR of the image: asset importer broke, rigs were messed up, gamefreak didn't have the dev knowledge or staff to fix it in time, so they decided to exclude old pokemon and spin it as something intentional because anything otherwise would be them basically admitting that this was a failed generation. They plan on bringing back the nat dex in the next game/gen when the asset importer is fixed and spinning it as a "we listened to you all" moment.

View attachment 128387

I find that hard to believe. I think even in that scenario GF/TCPi and Nintendo would rather delay the game then leave it out to die, particularly since they likely knew that doing a substantial cut would've gotten massive backlash and lead to potential loss in sales and faith in the franchise. It's particularly the case since they did exactly that with DP, which was delayed a full year because they couldn't get the game to a reasonable state within the initial timeframe they had, so I can't see them not do the same with SwSh.

 

[Cute Charm]

The pokemon models were outsourced to Creatures Inc. According to the Game Informer coverage.

Game Freak had nothing to do with them.

 

[Alola]

Well this is disappointing-as far as I can see, no other move aside from Rapid Spin and Multi-Attack have been buffed damage-wise; not even Whirlpool or Fire Spin. Jury's still out on if any moves or Abilities gained any additional effects.

 

[prog rocker]

Though personally I'm still pretty positive that the dev cycle deff didn't go as intended, mainly due to some of the underworked animations, the pop in issues, etc.

This seems pretty likely, not sure if it's the kind of games I like, but there are always a lot of things that don't work as intended (like how the Human Torch model caused so much lag in Marvel vs Capcom 3 that they had to replace him with Super-Skrull).

 

[AngryBinacle]

Dexit will be a future thing as well, people should try to get over it.

 

[badwolf1234]

I mean the #thankyougamefreak thing was fans expressing love towards dev's that were facing pretty intense harassment for the greater part of the year. Imo there was nothing inherently wrong with that. I imagine the actual staff working on the games wanted none of this to happen and aren't happy about it either. This seems like an upper management sort of thing

Well for some fans sure but have you read the letter joe merrick wrote to game freak... It was like he was the sole representative of all fans and all the criticism that most fans have for this games are irrelevant even if they are valid points... This ThankYouGameFreak propaganda was his way of shutting down a movement he does not want because it show many negative sides of the game

 

[DarkraiKnight]

Well for some fans sure but have you read the letter joe merrick wrote to game freak... It was like he was the sole representative of all fans and all the criticism that most fans have for this games are irrelevant even if they are valid points... This ThankYouGameFreak propaganda was his way of shutting down a movement he does not want because it show many negative sides of the game

It wasn’t even started by him, you know...

 

[badwolf1234]

It wasn’t even started by him, you know...

Nah it was him actually he made a letter to masuda hve you been on twitter?

 

[Juizel]

Dexit will be a future thing as well, people should try to get over it.

Agreed. To be fair, there may be at some point a game that includes all Pokémon again, maybe a spin-off, maybe mainline. But for now Dexit is the policy and it doesn't really help to delude oneself with theories and speculations on why that can't reeeaaally be a general thing now, or how definitely National Dex will be back in...however theories currently call Sword & Shield 2 lol

 

[LuxrayOfTheWild]

Nah it was him actually he made a letter to masuda hve you been on twitter?

The whole ThankYouGameFreak wasn't started by him though. MysticUmbreon started the trend.