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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - The real reason for Game Freak's choice of visuals.

Now before I begin, let me make it clear that this is not me saying the game does not have its flaws or that this revalation makes everything ok.  This is specifically about the choice to keep the visuals at a small step forward rather than the giant leap some people were expecting.

Now most of my time with Sword, I have been playing docked over the weekend (having a blast).  Now that it is monday and I am on the go again due to my job, I noticed something this morning.  The battery life of my BASE model launch Switch burned less than 30% of the battery life after about an hour and fifteen minutes.  In fact, some very rough tracking puts it around 4 hours or more if you ran it dry.  This is a far cry from the 2 hours and 40 min I get from games like Witcher 3 on the go, before I break out my portable battery pack that is.  And that is when it hit me...and something everyone either overlooked or chose to ignore became so obvious...

Pokemon has always been a portable franchise.  Nothing has changed with this release, which is only supported by the timing of the Switch Lite.  With that in mind, battery usage must have been on their mind when making the game.  Instead of sacrifices to the battery life being made for better visuals on the go, they chose to optimize battery life instead and keep the franchise what it has always been...a portable experience.  4 hours on a launch model is the low end of this choice, as the new model and the Lite will have even more time available before draining completely.

And this is something I feel we need to keep in mind as more 3DS IPs come to Switch.  The Switch is a HYBRID.  We will have those console experiences on the go, but many fans still want those Link's Awakening and Pokemon style experiences on the go to remain as portable as possible.  Some people prefer the simple gameplay those games offer.  Since the Switch now harbors Nintendo's handheld AND console games, one should not automatically expect that devs will cut out the user base that orefered handheld games just for the sake of bringing EVERYTHING to console level.  It would ultimately be a very risky business move, and might push away the people that primarily played on handhelds.

So what do you all think, could this have been a massive oversight on console gamer's part?  Or should we just say screw that noise and phase everything into console caliber games, regardless of the roots of an IP and the fanbase that has supported it.

Again, this has nothing to do with other debatable topics regarding the game.  So please keep that out of it and stay focused on the choice to use this visual direction for the games, and what to expect as future handheld IPs come to Switch.



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There is too much information out for the problems with Sword and Sheild to anything but technical incompetence. The root of this technical incompetence is more than likely that GameFreak underestimated the work to reach the games full scope and continue to maintain a team that is too small for future Pokemon development (They were asked about the size of the development team twice and they gave a bunch of side answers). In order to believe your answer, we have to pretend that these obvious clues dont exist.

And that Yokai watch 4 and Digimon Cyber Slueth dont either.



Updating the title since at first read I thought it was something about your girlfriend's choice of visual.



Signature goes here!

I don't think it's a technical issue. The Let's Go games, as simple as they are, have a much higher level of polish in the graphics and presentation departments. If those two games can pull it off, I don't think Sw/Sh should be excused for it. This is probably a problem within the structure of Game Freak and/or The Pokemon Co. in general.



You know it deserves the GOTY.

Come join The 2018 Obscure Game Monthly Review Thread.

The game isn't perfect but no where as bad as some are making it out. It is a good game and I expect any follow ups will be even better. Clearly GF struggled a bit with the HD transition.



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Your logic (a.k.a. excuse making and blame shifting) might of made a bit of sense if they priced the game at $40. However it's $60, and thus fair game to be compared to the many other $60 experiences on the system who meet such basic standards.



400 Pokemon was still too much for GameFreak for the time frame they were given. It is annoying that it is the answer because they should have expanded to accommodate that number, but they didn't and that in combination with new feature and tech was more than they could chew.



Xxain said:

There is too much information out for the problems with Sword and Sheild to anything but technical incompetence. The root of this technical incompetence is more than likely that GameFreak underestimated the work to reach the games full scope and continue to maintain a team that is too small for future Pokemon development (They were asked about the size of the development team twice and they gave a bunch of side answers). In order to believe your answer, we have to pretend that these obvious clues dont exist.

And that Yokai watch 4 and Digimon Cyber Slueth dont either.

There's is 1400 Digimon in total and Cyber Sleuth has 240.

There's 700 Yokais from Yokai Watch, yet the latest at one launched with 100.

So if you are comparing it to those games, Pokemon did better in one of your chief complaints.

Lonely_Dolphin said:
Your logic (a.k.a. excuse making and blame shifting) might of made a bit of sense if they priced the game at $40. However it's $60, and thus fair game to be compared to the many other $60 experiences on the system who meet such basic standards.

There is no excuse making or blame shifting.  Just a realistic observation based on something I noticed earlier today while playing.

And as far as the price goes, it is up to the consumer to decide what is worth 60 bucks.  Some argue Splatoon 2 could have been an expansion, and was not worth 60 bucks for example.

As far as Pokemon goes I, and most people I know, are having as much fun as any other 60 dollar game.  To us, it is worth it.  To you, maybe not and that is ok.  Just don't look down on people who do enjoy what the game has to offer.



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mZuzek said:
Shiken said:

There's is 1400 Digimon in total and Cyber Sleuth has 240.

There's 700 Yokais from Yokai Watch, yet the latest at one launched with 100.

So if you are comparing it to those games, Pokemon did better in one of your chief complaints.

Cyber Sleuth has 341, well, the complete edition at least - which I'm pretty sure it's what we're comparing it to. The 341 are also quite detailed, the models themselves not much above Pokémon standards, but they all have several animations for a lot of different things and at least one detailed signature animation for every single one of them - some have multiple. Regardless, the difference here is obvious: Digimon has never, ever, been about "catching them all". It's never been the point in a Digimon game to feature all of them, in fact I don't think there's ever been a game in the franchise that has. Furthermore, Digimon is a small-scale, small-budget franchise, most of its games don't reach 1 million copies sold, if even half of that.

Pokémon is the largest multimedia franchise in the world, all of its mainline games always sell 15 million or more, they have the backing of the most reputable developer in the world, and has always been about catching them all. All of its games so far had every Pokémon available to catch, therefore this is a step back. It's as simple as that.

I wouldn't have minded the Pokémon cut if it meant serious improvements in other areas, graphics being one of them. But since your point here is defending the graphics, then what's unacceptable here is the Pokédex cut, which clearly did not happen because of technical limitations, but rather a business decision by the Pokémon Company - probably well beyond Game Freak's hands, to be fair.

Personally, I wouldn't have been interested in it either way. Beyond the technical issues I'm glad people are finally taking notice of, I have a serious distaste for the entire artistic direction Pokémon has been taking. I hate the music, I hate the new designs, I hate the gimmicks, so I'm fine playing anything else - like Cyber Sleuth, for example. Great game.

You made one reference to the topic at hand and spun into a huge explaination of exactly what this thread is not meant for.  I am a little guilty as well as I brought up the fact that there is more than twice as many Pokemon than what the BASE versions of those games offer for their universe (cause this is the BASE version of Sw/Sh), but please stay on topic.  I made it clear what this thread is about.

So I am curious, what is the battery life for Digimon?



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Shiken said:

Basically TL:DR its done on purpose to save battery life, instead of them being lazy?

Yeah I dont buy that.