Official Pokémon Sword and Shield speculation thread (Updated June 5th, 2019)

[NealIRC]

Weird how no response from Satoshi Tajiri and what his role is these days. He must have the easy life.

 

[Oriden]

Weird how no response from Satoshi Tajiri and what his role is these days. He must have the easy life.

He's been an executive producer on every game since Gen 3.

 

[Plubio]

... on that note, I would be pretty impressed if HOME was phone accessible. Imagine being able to look at your pokemon and trade them from anywhere at any time.

It is.
HOME is both for Nintendo Switch and smartphones.

 

[Tsutsayosdi]

...on that note, I would be pretty impressed if HOME was phone accessible. Imagine being able to look at your pokemon and trade them from anywhere at any time.

We already know that it will be. This was revealed explicitly alongside trading between HOME accounts

 

[FlashFire926]

Ehh... for one thing, we don't really know how Game Freak work internally. People tend to assume that Masuda is some monarch and that everyone else there secretly hates his guts and wishes he would keel over already so that they could finally concentrate on making the True Game for the True Fans, but I strongly doubt that his decisions aren't thoroughly discussed among the rest of the producers, or that he's totally deaf to input.

Alternatively, maybe he really is the one calling every single shot - in which case, well... his decisions have been making them shitloads of money for the past few years. Think they'd wanna' keep that guy around...

At any rate, that quote... look, as someone who likes ORAS considerably more than HGSS, I'd rather have a remake that tries new things and makes an earnest attempt to update itself to modern standards than one that prioritizes the tacking on of extraneous stuff like the Pokéathlon over fixing any of the original games' problems.



Only the first three ORAS Gym Leaders are toned down. After that I think it's about the same as it was in RS until you get to Winona, at which point they actually start going up a few levels in comparison to the original games.

Tate and Liza's team in emerald:
Claydol
Xatu
Solrock
Lunatone
Tate and Liza's team in ORAS:
Solrock
Lunatone.

Maybe it's just me. But they actual gave me some trouble in Emerald, while I two-shotted them ORAS. Wanona, Norman, and more have less pokemon in their team in ORAS than they had in Emerald.
I don't even dislike ORAS, I actually like it. But there is obvious misteps (the game is easier than the originals, BF removed, Latias handed to you for free)


I don't think people in GF hate Masuda, no! I dont know how that was the conclusion you made from my post, lol. I'm just saying Masuda is on the GF board of directors, and still has influence over the games to some degree. I have no doubt others are involved too.


You say "deaf to input" sarcastically, but I dont know....

Pokemon Director Explains Why Series is Becoming Easier

""Rather than any actual feedback from players, it's more accepting the realities of modern life," Junichi Masuda says."

 

[Oriden]

It is.
HOME is both for Nintendo Switch and smartphones.

We already know that it will be. This was revealed explicitly alongside trading between HOME accounts

Oof I missed that detail. XD Dang that's pretty cool.

 

[Lanstar]

We know pokemon well enough by now to know that the games will sell no matter what.

It's Pokémon, it can't fail.

I keep hearing this often as a descending opinion to whatever poorly done thing Game Freak does. Consciously or not, It enforces a sort of crowd mentality as to why to buy the games, even though they may not be very good: It's like saying, "Give in - You lost to the crowd of ignorants anyways."

I dare say it: If the major fanbase can truly connect to the casual side, and get their point across to what Game Freak is doing is wrong, anything can happen. Just look at the CG Sonic Movie fiasco: Fans proved that "It is Sonic" is not a guarantee of viewership - and actually caused the makers to delay the movie. Of course, the problem in that case was much more obviously wrong and memeworthy than the Dex-it situation we have now. But still - It's a healthy example of the fans proving to the public that a franchise should never be taken for granted to print money from.

I don't think protesters should be so pessimistic as to give in to the mediocrity of the games just because 'They'll just sell millions anyways." They should just keep pleading their case with the casuals they know to increase their expectations of a "good" Pokemon game in a well thought manner - Like the recent examples on /r/gaming - So to keep them from wanting to buy the games. After all, I would think that not buying a game is several times easier than buying one...

 

[Esserise]

Tate and Liza's team in emerald:
Claydol
Xatu
Solrock
Lunatone
Tate and Liza's team in ORAS:
Solrock
Lunatone.

Maybe it's just me. But they actual gave me some trouble in Emerald, while I two-shotted them ORAS. Wanona, Norman, and more have less pokemon in their team in ORAS than they had in Emerald.

I was referring to the original RS teams. Everything's a downgrade if compared to Emerald, but we already know they weren't using that as their template.

For what it's worth, I do tend to agree that Liza and Tate's team should have been drawn from Emerald, and with @Zweilous's point about Wattson using a Manectric.

I don't think people in GF hate Masuda, no! I dont know how that was the conclusion you made from my post, lol. I'm just saying Masuda is on the GF board of directors, and still has influence over the games to some degree. I have no doubt others are involved too.

That part didn't come from your post in particular, it's just a notion that's come up a lot in these sorts of discussions. Bit of a tangent.

You say "deaf to input" sarcastically, but I dont know....

Pokemon Director Explains Why Series is Becoming Easier

""Rather than any actual feedback from players, it's more accepting the realities of modern life," Junichi Masuda says."

That's kinda taking that out of context, though. He's not saying that he tuned out feedback from players - we already know that's something he actually does pay attention to, to some degree. It's why every game since DP has been so much more railroaded - that is a response to the feedback that they got about Sinnoh's map being too byzantine for younger players and causing them to quit without finishing the game. You can argue that he overcorrects, but they do generally seem to listen (at least to the Japanese fanbase).

What he's saying there is that the decision to make the games easier wasn't inspired by any particular feedback such as "These games are too hard!", but rather from his own observations about how the ways in which people play their games and schedule their free time have changed.

 

[Knightwolf09]

View: https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemon/comments/2qm0w9/the_official_reason_why_game_freak_has_released/


Found an interesting interview.

 

[Minnale101]

So Masuda litteraly a game is better with more development time lol

Then take the development time and don’t do yearly releases

 

[Knightwolf09]

So Masuda litteraly a game is better with more development time lol

Then take the development time and don’t do yearly releases

They can't that's the problem. They're not independent titles like Mario or Zelda, they got an anime and TCG that has to move on schedule, delaying the game screw them over as well. Plus delaying a game in general is not as simple as it seems. It's like convincing someone to push a deadline back on a project.

 

[TechSkylander1518]

they got an anime and TCG that has to move on schedule, delaying the game screw them over as well.

We know that they can handle development time longer than a year, though. There was a 2-year gap between the releases of Emerald and DP, and, more recently, two years between ORAS and SuMo.

EDIT: Also, if I'm not mistaken, the anime didn't get any update with LGPE, and I know the TCG only got a pair of theme decks for LGPE. Neither seemed particularly reliant on its release.

 

[Minnale101]

They can't that's the problem. They're not independent titles like Mario or Zelda, they got an anime and TCG that has to move on schedule, delaying the game screw them over as well. Plus delaying a game in general is not as simple as it seems. It's like convincing someone to push a deadline back on a project.

Not saying to delay a game. I’m saying plan it out that it’s not yearly release

Utilize spin off games to main interest with tcg and anime.

Delaying a game would imply they movies a game from original release date

 

[Knightwolf09]

Not saying to delay a game. I’m saying plan it out that it’s not yearly release

Utilize spin off games to main interest with tcg and anime.

Delaying a game would imply they movies a game from original release date

I'm not really sure how the planning goes for yearly release games like 3rd versions and such. I don't know if they exist to fill in a quota or money reasons. And it strange they haven't made much spin offs lately so I don't know what's up with that.

 

[PkmnTrainerV]

If you have glasses (like me) just let them get really dirty and maybe you really won't see a difference? Life hack and all...

As someone who obsessively cleans his glasses and cannot tolerate even a speck of dirt on them... No.

Guess I gotta live with PSP-era-graphics then.

 

[Blockhead Pippi]

Masuda's answer basically boils down to the high demand for new games and the pressure to develop new generations every couple of years.

I think anyone could see that though.

 

[Joker901]

They can't that's the problem. They're not independent titles like Mario or Zelda, they got an anime and TCG that has to move on schedule, delaying the game screw them over as well. Plus delaying a game in general is not as simple as it seems. It's like convincing someone to push a deadline back on a project.

Indipendent titles like Zelda and Mario...wait, wait what?

 

[Knightwolf09]

Indipendent titles like Zelda and Mario...wait, wait what?

I mean they don't have specific deadlines or even personal quotas. They're some of the titles that don't demand an annual release

 

[PkmnTrainerV]

...there’s seriously a #DontBringBackTheNationalDex? Each day we stray further from Necrozma's light... This is why it was cut from Galar

P.S.: an amateur 3D modelling student created the wingull model from scratch and animated it better than SwSh in a day.
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemon/comments/c28top/i_fixed_the_wingull_animation_from_scratch_hope/


We did get an improvement from the reveal direct to E3, but it’s too late to see a substantial improvement again. I hope they actually show us the 'high quality improvement' they’re using as an excuse.
We also need to see more new revamped animations. As someone who wasn’t even focused on the graphic side of things, I was disappointed that the (physical) attacks were mostly the same when SwSh was revealed.

 

[BlueWaves]

On a related note, I wonder if Creatures Inc. is handling Computer Animation this time? They did it for XY. Wouldn't be surprised if they did- GF is a small company: Apparently the staff working on SwSh is less than half working on BOTW.