Why did Pokemon even jump to 3D?

[Darwinianevolution]

Jumpin said:

Darwinianevolution said:

So I've been thinking about the debacle that is the Sword & Shield lack of a National Dex. Looking at Game Freak's record in the past couple of years, it seems that from X/Y, GF has been pumping out Pokemon games almost yearly: X/Y in 2013, ORAS in 2014, SunMoon in 2016, USUM in 2017, Let's Go P/E in 2018, and Sw/Sh in 2019. And with their refusal to either reduce their output, focus on a product at a time (why are they doing Town alongside Pokemon, and not after??), increase their workforce or just delay the game, it seems that the series is going to go through a quick process of annualization that will affect its quality considerably. And while I do think that this mostly due to GF and The Pokemon Company's change of priorities towards the mobile market (Pokemon Go earned wayyyyy more money that any singular pokemon game, or even whole generation, ever did), I also would like to point out another possible problem that might have been hurting the series: its jump to 3D.

Now before saying anything, let me clarify that I mean the mainline title's jump. The series is in 3D since the N64, but after XY, the main series became a 3D game. And considering this jump was made decades after Super Mario 64 and Zelda Ocarina of Time, this should have been fine. And for the most part it was, but it also came alongside major corner cuts: many, many features of the previous games would either be replaced for inferior versions, or just outright taken out. XY were considered mediocre pokemon games after the huge acclaim of Black/White, Sun and Moon were even less well regarded (and USUM were practically carbon copies of those, making them the most pointless of the 3rd version out there), while Let's Go were another Kanto retread that was accepted by most people as just the apetizer before Sword/Shield. And then we heard the news. Sword Shield is going to represent the biggest example of this corner cutting, not only taking features from the previous gens, but also taking battle modes and even Pokemon themselves. I don't think this is a coincidence. The 2D style, while limiting in some ways, allowed a lot of flexibility to add more stuff. It was easier to design the world, characters, interactions, movements, enviromental effects... all while keeping a decent artstyle. Considering sprite-based games like Octopath Traveller look gorgeous, the artistic integrity and the presentation aren't necessarily affected for being 2D, while many elements of the current 3D pokemon games seem underdeveloped. Again, I don't think this is the main issue, but I do think this is an issue.

What do you think? Do you think jumping into 3D was a mistake, or do you think this would have happened regardless or 2D/3D? And, if going back to 2D guaranteed the integrity of the National Dex, would you accept reverting to sprites?

You’re making a couple of big assumptions here.

1. You’re making the assumption that 2D has more flexibility and is easier than 3D. On top of this, you’re making the assumption that 3D artists and modellers can do 2D art easier. That 2D animation is easier.

2. The assumption that a 2D world offers more possibilities than a 3D world.

2. The assumption that the resources being used to make the game Town would also have the skill sets required to build this “national dex” thing.

While I agree that I may have overestimate the power difference between 2D and 3D design, I'm also using it because, at least in my eyes, the problems with the series began in earnest with the jump to 3D. And while correlation is not causation, I wanted to explore this line of thinking. Most of the games GF have been 2D, so it would not be difficult to assume they would have more difficulties realizing their vision on 3D rather than the tried and tested 2D. And I also wanted to know whether people would accept a complete game on 2D rather than one with missing features on 3D.

Regardless of 2D or 3D, this lack of features cannot, and should not, be just merrily accepted. This is just going to get worse and worse if we don't make a clear stance against it.

Also, no shit the resources for Town would be better used on Pokemon. Even if they didn't fix the National Dex, there's also things like Triple/Rotational battles, Mega Evolutions, Z moves... And all of the fan requested features that probably won't come such as the Battle Frontier, Contests, multiple regions... If the people in charge of Town can't do none of this things, I wouldn't trust them with Town as a decent RPG either.