Gamefreak lies about not reusing models in pokemon sword and shield (spoilers)

[spartaman64]

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Pokémon Sword and Shield is due to launch this week, but ahead of launch, there’s already an angry hashtag trending within the walls of Twitter. The hashtag has sparked a large number of tweets calling developer Game Freak liars after leaks surfaced apparently confirming that the game reuses Pokémon models from previous games.

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Earlier this year, a hashtag #BringBackTheNationalDex trended on the social media website Twitter after irritated fans of the Pokémon games learned that not all Pokémon would be transferred to Sword and Shield. This sparked a response from Junichi Masuda who didn’t seem to be showing any plans to reverse the decision saying “this was a very difficult decision for me.”

A month after that statement, in a Famitsu interview with Junichi Masuda, it was explained why Game Freak had to cut the Pokémon roster. “I wanted to be able to bring every Pokémon if I could, but it was also a decision that I had to make eventually. In the end, I had no choice but to prioritize quality.”

In that same interview, Shigeru Ohmori stated “Even in Pokémon Sun and Moon it was quite the difficult situation to bring in every Pokémon , but then we switched to Nintendo Switch and the models had to be rebuilt from scratch”

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Fast forward to today, users on Reddit who appear to have early copies of Sword and Shield have released images (Spoiler) of some character wireframe models that seem to indicate the models are identical. The Reddit post compares the Sword and Shield models with 2016s Sun and Moon models from the 3DS. There are more examples here (Spoiler) where “most of them are identical in both number of tris and appearance”.

Fans are voicing their anger stating that reusing the assets contradicts Game Freak’s statement in Famitsu. Essentially the overall tone of the hashtag is, “Game Freak said they were going to make the models from scratch and now you’ve lied to us!” Others are annoyed at leaked footage (Spoiler) which shows “wonky” animations that they aren’t impressed with.

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An event planned to celebrate the launch of Pokémon Sword and Shield has been canceled, according to a press release from The Pokémon Company, as spotted by Eurogamer.
The launch event, which was originally set for November 15 in the Ikebukuro district of Tokyo, was canceled for "operational reasons" which were not detailed in the release.

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Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield are coming to the Nintendo Switch on November 15.

https://twitter.com/Nekologist101/status/1194639553811943426

(small note: someone i talked to about this and they said that the person in the tweet could have battle animations turned off)

 

Green = in game Dark Green = Galar Form White = Cut from the game

 

Source: https://www.dualshockers.com/pokemon-sword-and-shield-leaked-reused-assets/

https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/11/08/tokyo-launch-event-for-pokemon-sword-and-shield-canceled

 

I really hope that those are not the actual combat animations and that the animations was turned off. But even if thats the case a lot of the animations outside of combat looks horrible (I don't want wingulls to T pose on me to assert their dominance) and they also lied about not reusing models. When I first heard they are cutting pokemon i thought they are just going to cut out a few of the unpopular ones but they cut out more than half of them and they kept trash pokemon (literally) like trubbish while cutting out more beloved pokemon. But if they delivered on awesome animations then I wouldn't completely hate it but it looks like they fell short on that. This looks to me to be more of a cost cutting measure to boost profits rather something that is for creating a better game. I agree that they would have to cut pokemon eventually but I didn't expect them to cut so many and without delivering on their promise of all new models and better animations. Things are not looking good but I'll wait for the actual release in two days and reviews to make up my mind about the game. This looks like a game that you definitely shouldn't preorder. As a long time pokemon fan I really hope that I'm wrong about this and they are not trying to pull a bethesda.

[Dissitesuxba11s]

My biggest fear would be that they might release the missing Pokemon as DLC in the future. Or even as a loot box. I pray to Arceus that they don't go that route.

 

Also, the only previous starter that they kept is the Charmander line. I guess they went with the popularity vote.

[minibois]

Wasn't it already clear that 3DS models could be easily exported to the switch + that has been done already?

This was pointed out a couple months ago:

TL;DW: two models, one from 3DS one from Switch (Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee). These models look exactly the same, which you don't accidentally just do.. Textures are different, which makes sense.

So yes, models can be exported. That was one of the main argument back in the day for the high quality models; future proofing.

 

At the time Game Freak said rebuilding all the models from scratch (which seems to be still up to debate if they said that.. Depending on the translation) + all the animation was to blame for the lack of all Pokemon.

Of course we were able to see months ago they could easily export models and at the time the animations were lack-luster to say the least.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Food for thought: you can export a base model, but that doesn't mean the final output will be the same on two different systems. While I don't really have a reason to suspect why it'd be used, tessellation can dynamically add detail you won't see if you export a model. At least not without the displacement map.

 

In any case, we also have to remember that:

• Game Freak is a relatively small company that employs 143 people as of 2018.
• They already had two games released this year, one of them being multi-platform.

[PlayStation 2]

This is a big deal... why?

Gran Turismo 6 was using models dating back to 2001 when it came out. It’s a known fact that Valve reuses models from game to game. Dunno why it’s such a big deal here.

[Nowak]

Y'know it's really cool how people saw an opportunity to say "Hmm, maybe crunch, yearly releases and being rushed to hell by a greedy rightsholder company that wants to ensure new merchandise every year isn't good for both the developers' health and the quality of the resulting games" and instead just took it as an opportunity to say "lol game freak lazy hashtag gamefreaklied hashtag bringbacknationaldex"

 

Fuck the Pokémon community. Like what are people expecting Game Freak to say, that The Pokémon Company screwed them over? Because they can't, otherwise heads'll roll at Game Freak.

[CyanideInsanity]

7 minutes ago, handymanshandle said:

This is a big deal... why?

Gran Turismo 6 was using models dating back to 2001 when it came out. It’s a known fact that Valve reuses models from game to game. Dunno why it’s such a big deal here.

7 minutes ago, Nowak said:

Y'know it's really cool how people saw an opportunity to say "Hmm, maybe crunch, yearly releases and being rushed to hell by a greedy rightsholder company that wants to ensure new merchandise every year isn't good for both the developers' health and the quality of the resulting games" and instead just took it as an opportunity to say "lol game freak lazy hashtag gamefreaklied hashtag bringbacknationaldex"

 

Fuck the Pokémon community. Like what are people expecting Game Freak to say, that The Pokémon Company screwed them over? Because they can't, otherwise heads'll roll at Game Freak.

 

 

Because gamefreak alleged to making band new models and higher quality animations as the reason for why some pokemon were cut.

[samcool55]

10 minutes ago, comander said:

Let's do some basic math. 

You have 800 pokemon. 
There are then 64000 combinations you could have in battle. 
There are 100 levels...
There are then 640,000,000 combinations. 

Each pokemon can learn an average of 100 moves...

There are then 6,400,000,000,000 combinations. For 1v1 battles. This doesn't include 1v6; 3v3, etc. 
It also doesn't account for doubles battles, triples, reverse battles, gimmicks like dynamax, megaevolution or special moves... 


Honestly, it's a HUGE HUGE mess to QA, even with a lot of automation tools. 

Cutting to a smaller size can result in a MUCH MUCH more polished experience. 

This includes in-game and competitive. 

You forgot that not every pokemon has the same stats.

There is a level of randomness to it. Speed, attack, defense, all those things are different from pokemon to pokemon.

Even if the pokemons are the same, like pikachu vs pikachu.

And they can change a LOT, like, insane.

Bulbasaur for example at level 100 has attack points between 92 and 216, that's a massive gap.

https://pokemondb.net/pokedex/bulbasaur

[Drak3]

27 minutes ago, handymanshandle said:

This is a big deal... why?

Because some translations of a Gamefreak Tweet said all new models.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Here's the other thing. Who's actually the real root of this? Because if it was from a Twitch streamer who showed a leaked ROM that can't be verified where that ROM came from or when in the development it was made, then it's a pretty gross accusation. I'm looking at some of the footage of the game from whatever I can, the animations look fine. The attack animation effects themselves look like they got an overhaul as well. If the example used from the Twitter poster was actually in the game, this appears to be the outlier, not the norm.

 

In short, did people just go "Masuda said he wanted to focus on quality, so we should expect Final Fantasy "Sephiroth's Supernova" level of detail in every animation"?

 

EDIT: Should also point out that attack animations for Pokemon have to be generic as possible because they have to cover a range of different types of attacks. And considering you can likely insert any arbitrary attack or skill in a Pokemon's move set list, you'd have to make a system to cover all of them.

[PlayStation 2]

21 minutes ago, CyanideInsanity said:

 

 

Because gamefreak alleged to making band new models and higher quality animations as the reason for why some pokemon were cut.

I’d argue that so long as the model, texture and animation quality was good to begin with, why waste the effort to remodel something that looks good when the resources could be spent on something else? 

This was my gripe with Gran Turismo 6. For all of its reused... damn near everything, the game still ran like crap and it just wasn’t a polished experience. Gran Turismo Sport, in contrast, is a vastly more focused and, while limited, vastly more polished game than Gran Turismo 6 was. 

My point is that if you can polish a game, then reusing models isn’t a huge deal.

[CyanideInsanity]

6 minutes ago, handymanshandle said:

I’d argue that so long as the model, texture and animation quality was good to begin with, why waste the effort to remodel something that looks good when the resources could be spent on something else? 

This was my gripe with Gran Turismo 6. For all of its reused... damn near everything, the game still ran like crap and it just wasn’t a polished experience. Gran Turismo Sport, in contrast, is a vastly more focused and, while limited, vastly more polished game than Gran Turismo 6 was. 

My point is that if you can polish a game, then reusing models isn’t a huge deal.

You're missing the point. People are not upset with the reused assets. People are upset that gamefreak's reason for cutting pokemon was because they made higher quality assets, yet it appears they did not make new assets but instead reused previous assets.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

In another news: angry crowd yells at clouds...

 

I don't get why people are obsessed about whether a company had lower costs than they thought they would have. In the end, it's the end product that matters to you.

Wait for a game to be released. Do you like it? Go ahead and play it. Not like it? Don't buy it and move along.

Is it advertised as something and when you buy it you get something else or broken? Then I can understand anger and complaints.

But "company releases game I'm not interested in" (if that turns out to be the case)? People react as if they were forced to buy whatever Pokemon game comes out, and therefore stuck with a low quality product.

 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

4 minutes ago, CyanideInsanity said:

You're missing the point. People are not upset with the reused assets. People are upset that gamefreak's reason for cutting pokemon was because they made higher quality assets, yet it appears they did not make new assets but instead reused previous assets.

How does it matter? If you consider that there are too few pokemons, and you know how many the game has, and nobody lies to you about the number of pokemons in the game, then who cares about the reasons?

In the end, there will be a game with N pokemons, made with quality Q, regardless of how the company organized internally to reach those levels. If either Q or N is not enough for you, then just skip the game. There isn't really anything to be outraged about.

[Mira Yurizaki]

19 minutes ago, CyanideInsanity said:

You're missing the point. People are not upset with the reused assets. People are upset that gamefreak's reason for cutting pokemon was because they made higher quality assets, yet it appears they did not make new assets but instead reused previous assets.

They never said they would make higher quality assets, but that they wanted to focus on the quality (which is a vague term) of each Pokemon and to give a higher level of focus to each Pokemon would take longer.

 

Also we don't know the process of how GameFreak made Pokemon on Switch anyway. Plus are we taking "from the beginning" that Masuda or whoever said in the Famitsu interview literally? Like "here's a sketch, go make a model"? Because development processes don't necessarily have to start like that. All showing that two models have the same implementation means just that. It doesn't mean that they copied and pasted every single thing about the model, including textures, animations, etc. from the 3DS version to the Switch.

[CyanideInsanity]

10 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

How does it matter? If you consider that there are too few pokemons, and you know how many the game has, and nobody lies to you about the number of pokemons in the game, then who cares about the reasons?

In the end, there will be a game with N pokemons, made with quality Q, regardless of how the company organized internally to reach those levels. If either Q or N is not enough for you, then just skip the game. There isn't really anything to be outraged about.

It matters because we are the customers. If a product is not to satisfation everyone who wants to give their 2 cents should do so. I'm not buying them and have said I'm disappointed in a reply to a sw&sh promotional tweet. The product is not up to my satisfaction, and I'm giving feedback. Just because some people are going way to far, I think some asshole tried spreading false rumors about masuda doing sometihng illegal, doesn't mean the shared criticism is undeserved.

[melete]

1 hour ago, handymanshandle said:

This is a big deal... why?

Gran Turismo 6 was using models dating back to 2001 when it came out. It’s a known fact that Valve reuses models from game to game. Dunno why it’s such a big deal here.

People are very angry that GameFreak hasn't included all the Pokemon in this latest game release, and won't commit to including them all going forward. One of the stated reasons GameFreak gave was that they were rebuilding all the Pokemon models from scratch. There's now evidence that GameFreak's models in SwSH are identical to their 3DS models on a polygonal level.

 

I personally think that people go way overboard about stuff like this, but internet rage is always in style.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

1 minute ago, CyanideInsanity said:

It matters because we are the customers.

Only if you buy it. If all the information is available before making your purchase decision, then no, there is no reason to rage.

 

1 minute ago, CyanideInsanity said:

The product is not up to my satisfaction, and I'm giving feedback.

Negative reviews from reviewers or consumers are valid for any game, just like positive ones.

Outrage is seldom justified, and certainly not over which intermediate inputs were used in building the game.

 

[CyanideInsanity]

Just now, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Only if you buy it. If all the information is available before making your purchase decision, then no, there is no reason to rage.

 

Negative reviews from reviewers or consumers are valid for any game, just like positive ones.

Outrage is seldom justified, and certainly not over which intermediate inputs were used in building the game.

 

So because someone hasn't bought it, their opinion is completely invalid?

[Mira Yurizaki]

6 minutes ago, CyanideInsanity said:

So because someone hasn't bought it, their opinion is completely invalid?

If they haven't done their research on the product, then yes.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

10 minutes ago, CyanideInsanity said:

So because someone hasn't bought it, their opinion is completely invalid?

Where do you get that from? Your imagination?

I said that a customer, by definition, is someone who bought the product.

 

Although, I must say one may wonder what the opinion of someone who hasn't played the game is based on. Still, the opinion you form before you buy a game is very relevant: for example, to decide whether you buy it or not.

But if you know you don't like it, and you don't buy it for that reason, then what on Earth could be the reason to be outraged?

 

Can I understand customers of Fallout 76 or No Man Sky? Sure. Can I understand twitter warriors? Certainly not.

[spartaman64]

28 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Only if you buy it. If all the information is available before making your purchase decision, then no, there is no reason to rage.

 

Negative reviews from reviewers or consumers are valid for any game, just like positive ones.

Outrage is seldom justified, and certainly not over which intermediate inputs were used in building the game.

 

im upset not because i hate gamefreak or pokemon quite the opposite. i love pokemon and want it to succeed and seeing gamefreak make these questionable decisions that might make the new pokemon into a bad game makes me upset

 

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I'm not a fan of corporations the way that I'm a fan of the Denver Broncos. I don't yell at the TV when I see a stupid McDonald's commercial like I do when Case Keenum throws another interception. I'm not emotionally invested in Nike or Google. I don't want whoever runs those companies to be fired when things go poorly the same way I think Vance Joseph should be fired from the Broncos.

And why is that? Because I'm emotionally attached to the Broncos. I love that team. I cried when they won Superbowl 50. It's irrational, I know. The win-loss record of a sports team has no effect on my personal life. And yet... I cheer and jeer.

Thankfully, I don't invest myself into commodity corporations the same way.

Except, that I do.

For more than 20 years Blizzard, you have made games that I love to play. Even the games I was terrible at, I still played. I knew they'd be the best that that genre had to offer. I wasn't any good at the Starcraft games. But I played them anyway. I could only just scrape through the story campaigns in the Warcraft series. But I played it anyway. I loved Diablo, but never played in Hardcore mode or pushed high-level rifts. Why did I play those games? Because they were fun. I also made some good friends along the way - friends that I still play Blizzard games with. But I didn't truly love Blizzard until 2004, when I first stepped foot into Dun Morogh.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/a7rrmy/a_letter_to_blizzard_entertainment/

 

Sort of like what this guy feels for blizzard except its nintendo/gamefreak in my case PS and i dont like the broncos

[CyanideInsanity]

1 minute ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Where do you get that from? Your imagination?

I said that a customer, by definition, is someone who bought the product.

 

Although, I must say one may wonder what the opinion of someone who hasn't played the game is based on. Still, the opinion you form before you buy a game is very relevant: for example, to decide whether you buy it or not.

But if you know you don't like it, and you don't buy it for that reason, then what on Earth could be the reason to be outraged?

 

Can I understand customers of Fallout 76 or No Man Sky? Sure. Can I understand twitter warriors? Certainly not.

I never said that the outrage was valid. The people posting about this on everything nintendo related and in general being unpleasant are going overboard. People simply mentioning their disappointment and reason for not buying the game is a valid criticism not outrage.

[Mira Yurizaki]

7 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

im upset not because i hate gamefreak or pokemon quite the opposite. i love pokemon and want it to succeed and seeing gamefreak make these questionable decisions that might make the new pokemon into a bad game makes me upset

 

Does the quality of the assets or availability of Pokemon really change how the actual game will play?

 

Geez, how did we survive up until now without 3D models and 800+ Pokemon?

[CyanideInsanity]

11 minutes ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

 

Does the quality of the assets or availability of Pokemon really change how the actual game will play?

 

Geez, how did we survive up until now without 3D models and 800+ Pokemon?

We survived pretty well actually, considering I don't believe in the past gf said one thing and then seemingly did the opposite of what they said. Am I correct in assuming you believe I'm in outrage camp?

Spoiler

Meanwhile I'm not angry, just disappointed.