BDSP The Chibi-style of the game. Like or Hate

[Juliko]

I personally don't mind them.

 

[Chidamari Sketch]

I don't really care. Granted, part of it is that Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening Switch remake had the same idea, which may've helped me accustom to that idea. Admittedly, I think the latter game executes the concept in a much cuter and more subtly thematic fashion, but I don't wanna be that guy, now.

 

[WyndonCalling]

My personal taste errs towards 'No', but I also respect the fact that this is a deliberate stylistic choice and the kind of thing that the franchise should perhaps be toying with more. If I could choose between Sword and Shield's ambitious but dead-eyed character models or LGPE's cartoonish, more stylised approach, I'm not sure I'd pick the former. In my book, it's a positive direction that simpler styles are being well-realised.

 

[Olivia232425]

I'm mixed. Sure, I would prefer a Diamond and Pearl remake in SwSh style, but I think these chibis work. At first, I was very off-put by them, but after watching the trailer a few times and seeing how they fit into the world, they actually fit really well to it. The world looks like this whole playset and the chibis look like little toys. When I thought of it in this concept, I actually liked it a lot more than I did when I initially saw them. It's stylized and fun.

 

[Nodqfan]

I hate the chibi art style and it looks even worse in 3D like someone took all the human characters, put them in a washing machine, and shrunk them. On top of that, the battle screen shows fully-sized human characters so it feels like consistency is thrown out the window.

 

[swiftgallade46]

On top of that, the battle screen shows fully-sized human characters so it feels like consistency is thrown out the window.

This is pretty much how it was for the first 5 generations, though. And, yes, we’ve come a long way since then, but I think the point is to remain consistent with an aspect of D/P/Pt’s graphic style rather than an oversight in consistency.

 

[FelipePR]

I never liked silly or cute graphics, neither chibi ones. I only hoped that this not becomes a trend in future Pokémon games.

 

[Silktree]

LGPE look vastly better in my eyes. There's no contest, and the lack of following/overworld Pokemon certainly doesn't help.

 

[FelipePR]

LGPE look vastly better in my eyes. There's no contest, and the lack of following/overworld Pokemon certainly doesn't help.

Man , I doubted before playing, but LGPE is a very pretty game, although I belive that visually it is a level below Sword and Shield games. Even so, I consider LGPE quite beautiful.

 

[Esserise]

LGPE look vastly better in my eyes. There's no contest, and the lack of following/overworld Pokemon certainly doesn't help.

In the interest of fairness, that LGPE screenshot never appears in the game whatsoever; it's from a beta where camera control is enabled. And even then, Viridian Forest is the nicest-looking place in the whole game, but it causes the game to suffer a pretty embarrassing drop in framerate as a result. I think LGPE looks better on the whole too, but it's got its own problems which I think are somewhat alarming for such a relatively simple game. (Like, you ever notice how janky the players movements are before they obtain Pikachu/Eevee? "So this is the power of the Nintendo Switch...")

 

[EmpoleonProd]

One thing I just can't wrap my head around is how they went out of the way to create full-sized, proportionate models for in-battle, but then decided to go chibi for the overworld, why not save the dev time, only make the full-sized models and use those everywhere, like games like SM/SwSh did? Ugh. I wanted SwSh or LGPE-style Sinnoh remakes so badly, I think the BDSP reveal was the only time I was disappointed at the announcement of a new game, LA saved the entire Pokemon Presents and BDSP is nothing more than something to hold us out until LA's release.

 

[swiftgallade46]

why not save the dev time, only make the full-sized models and use those everywhere, like games like SM/SwSh did?

Considering they would have to scale the entire overworld to work with those kinds of models rather than the apparent return to tiles, I don’t think this would have saved dev time.

 

[Almonds]

I don't mind the return to chibi-models itself. However, I would have preferred something similar to ORAS. I have a hard time imagining characters in BDSP models with various facial expressions or body language.

I just wanted to add that if the characters are going to stay with the same facial expression with little to no body language (like the main characters in SM and USUM), then it won't be as appealing even if they were designed as realistically proportioned models.

However, if the chibi-models are expressive (like in ORAS), then they have charm. Remember Wally? He went from timid/shy to confident, and it shows in his expressions/body language. It was very well-delivered through the chibi-models.

Barry shows a wide range of emotions including excitement, impatience, and competitiveness. I am going to be disappointed if chibi-Barry only has the default blank expression throughout the entire journey.

 

[EmpoleonProd]

Considering they would have to scale the entire overworld to work with those kinds of models rather than the apparent return to tiles, I don’t think this would have saved dev time.

Yeah but they could've literally reused SwSh or LGPE overworld assets, which LGPE would be the more fitting option being that LGPE already remade one of the grid-based regions, it's no different than HGSS being built on top of DPPl's engine. They could've literally cut so much dev time if they just built the game on top of LGPE's engine instead of making it from scratch and creating this abomination. Save time on the overworld and the character models.

 

[Esserise]

I don't think anyone here can accurately calculate what would and wouldn't save more development time, at least not to any meaningful degree.

 

[EmpoleonProd]

I don't think anyone here can accurately calculate what would and wouldn't save more development time, at least not to any meaningful degree.

Do you truly not understand the difference here? Every past remake (including GSC relative to RBY) used the game prior's engine as a base, essentially reusing the graphics from the previous game. Models, map tiles, sprites, etc. can all be ported over 1:1 which means they don't have to make new ones from scratch every game, until the Switch shook up the formula, this was true for every single generation, all Gen 1 and 2 games looked alike, Gen 3 games looked alike, and so on. LGPE was the first deviation from this, the character models did however closely resemble the XY/ORAS models, so maybe there's a case to be made that they're just scaled up from the Gen 6 games, and SwSh (quite literally) had models and animations upscaled off of SM, you'd like if Game Freak were this lazy they would've just built BDSP for the Switch with either of the past Switch titles as a base, either reusing assets from LGPE, or SwSh. This was the safe, logical, practical, cost-effective thing to do, they instead outsourced the project to another studio but didn't even give them a baseline to start with, these models and maps resemble nothing we've seen in the 3D Pokemon era, the studio took the idea of a remake "too literally", because this isn't what fans want, that much is clear from the outcry. Since the beginning of Pokemon we've more-or-less been shown time and time again and conditioned to the idea that remakes will be improvements and utilize the current generation's graphical style, BDSP is a clear step back in that regard, they're making it look like a game from 15 years ago... Either way, use some common sense, if they aren't reusing assets from any prior games, it's an incredibly safe bet that more dev time was taken vs. if they had used LGPE or SwSh's assets as a base for the remakes.

 

[Esserise]

Do you truly not understand the difference here? Every past remake (including GSC relative to RBY) used the game prior's engine as a base, essentially reusing the graphics from the previous game. Models, map tiles, sprites, etc. can all be ported over 1:1 which means they don't have to make new ones from scratch every game, until the Switch shook up the formula, this was true for every single generation, all Gen 1 and 2 games looked alike, Gen 3 games looked alike, and so on. LGPE was the first deviation from this, the character models did however closely resemble the XY/ORAS models, so maybe there's a case to be made that they're just scaled up from the Gen 6 games, and SwSh (quite literally) had models and animations upscaled off of SM, you'd like if Game Freak were this lazy they would've just built BDSP for the Switch with either of the past Switch titles as a base, either reusing assets from LGPE, or SwSh. This was the safe, logical, practical, cost-effective thing to do, they instead outsourced the project to another studio but didn't even give them a baseline to start with, these models and maps resemble nothing we've seen in the 3D Pokemon era, the studio took the idea of a remake "too literally", because this isn't what fans want, that much is clear from the outcry. Since the beginning of Pokemon we've more-or-less been shown time and time again and conditioned to the idea that remakes will be improvements and utilize the current generation's graphical style, BDSP is a clear step back in that regard, they're making it look like a game from 15 years ago... Either way, use some common sense, if they aren't reusing assets from any prior games, it's an incredibly safe bet that more dev time was taken vs. if they had used LGPE or SwSh's assets as a base for the remakes.

There's making the basic factual observation that "reusing assets saves time," and then there's making sweeping assumptions about what game would have been easier to make based simply on a far-removed surface analysis of asset value, without knowing anything about other major factors like budget, deadlines, project coordination, manpower, programming requirements, etc. Hence my saying "to any meaningful degree."

 

[GhostLucario]

Honestly I hate them.
When I said I wanted to see Sinnoh remade in 3D, I did not mean it so literally... I didn't sign up for this lol because it is lazy, uninspired and cheap... If they wanted a grid-based region at least they should've used the XY/ORAS or LGPE assets. Those games look OK while still maintaining a top-down perspective AND using chibis. But to think they created this abomination...

I mean, I understand WHY they did this (especially with LA existing) but they could've put a little more effort into making the game look nice, like ORAS and LGPE looked.

 

[Maniacal Engineer]

I will start by acknowledging that I do not like the overly cutesy art style in the Let’s Go games.

However, I am actually relatively ambivalent about the chibi art style for BDSP. I don’t think it looks that terrible in the overworld, and I think the in-battle models don’t look too bad, either.

Surprisingly, I am not being overly negative.

 

[vulpix]

Do you like the Chibi-style of the characters, or do you not like them? What is your opinion on them? I personally don't mind them. They look like 3D versions of the 2D sprites from the original games.

I too am mixed. I don't hate it, but I do wish it was re-envisioned to look like sword and shield's art style.
The only thing I absolutely am disappointed with is the lack of cell shading in battle character models.