SwSh Why are people saying the graphics are "bad"?

[Parissong]

Why are people saying the graphics are bad

One Word: Tree

 

[Sheep40]

One tree. Literally one single tree out of about 7.

 

[Almonds]

Weren't there also accusations about a floating wall and shadows not connecting to the character or something? Or were they also nitpicky things?

 

[godiego]

would you have noticed them if you weren't looking for them?

 

[Stratelier]

The one tree is an easy thing to point to but it's NOT just that. (also remember, the particular build used to generate trailer footage was probably separated by a few weeks latency.) Some of the legitimate gripes about Sword and Shield's graphics are that there simply aren't enough creature animations defined for their battle animations (which has been conceptually the same system since Gen 1, but it's clear that Creatures/GF hasn't given battle animations enough work in the jump to 3D) OR their field animations, like wild roaming Wingull. Sure, Wingull's idle gliding animation actually syncs up well in cases like the Rotom Camera where it actually is following a plausible "gliding" movement path, but DOES NOT work when Wingull is given a standardized random movement path to follow (though said movement path works much better for terrestrial creatures with distinct walking animations). The creature animations, viewed in isolation, actually ARE pretty expressive, but when you match them up with the contexts in which they are actually seen, the gaps are obvious as a Sunny Day.

Take the infamous example of Scorbunny and Double Kick: Double Kick doesn't trigger ANY specific creature animation at all (a flaw in and of itself), and Scorbunny's idle stance of energetically hopping in place (pretty expressive by itself) is a HORRIBLE match for it in any case.

Likewise, look at our new Pikaclone's signature move: An electric hamster wheel appears and spins in place while Morpeko performs a certain "running in place" animation, which isn't necessarily specific to this move but is cute nonetheless. However, this cute little animation doesn't loop, it just ... ends, while the hamster wheel is launched projectile-style towards the target. This isn't "bad" so much as it's just obvious the same move could be animated SO much better with relatively little work: Just establish a looping phase to Morpeko's little animation, and launch Morpeko at the target in sync with the hamster-wheel particle effects, and the move would look 3x better.

 

[Almonds]

would you have noticed them if you weren't looking for them?

Honetsly, I hadn't noticed the "bad graphics" until people started pointing them out.