Pokémon Legends Arceus (Sinnoh-pen World Pokémon)

This looked nice, didn't it?  A proper open-world vision of the Pokémon games, complete with fully visible Pokémon at all times, what appear to be stealthy capture mechanics that don't even require your monsters, and... er... some decidedly iffy frame rates.  Still, with a release date of early 2022, there's plenty of time for them to make those little fixes.

I'm more excited than I've been about a Pokémon game for years.

The contrast between this and the half-assed remakes in the same region . . . I was gonna create two threads, calling this one "the good" and that one "the bad and the ugly" . . .

I wonder if this is a side project with a full Gen 9 coming 6 months or a year later, or if Game Freak are investigating new ways to move forwards without being compelled to create 100 new Pokemon every time?

I genuinely felt I couldn't make a thread for BDSP (one letter off...) because I couldn't muster any enthusiasm, but I'm up for changing the title to fit your thread if you'd like to carry forward that idea! Let's face it, if you're down about the remakes I doubt any of the rest of us are going to be hyped. This one on the other hand looks belting.

I reckon this is going to be a side-project sadly. That three-minute or so video at the beginning of the showcase really drove home the unstoppable capitalist behemoth that Pokémon is!

Oh I dont think the juggernaut is stopping. But a historical setting, a set of stories and characters, a mix and match set of monsters could support a year of merch if done right. Disney, Star Wars and Marvel sell kids new waves of stuff without creating a new cast regularly.

Unfortunately New Pokemon Snap is looking great otherwise you could have properly committed to the Good, Bad and Ugly bit

To be fair, some of the monsters in this were moving at about -3FPS. I think it’ll be good, but it does look quite ugly at the moment!

Saw whilst eating my pizza at work and looks like Pokemon S&S should have looked like

Did seem to be lacking in the performance areas but if anything will flog a New Nintendo Switch it be Pokemon

It's funny that they're making this because in some other thread I talked about wanting weird pokemon offshoots, one of which was some sort of riff on Digimon World and Dark Cloud - a prehistoric pokemon game that's about humanity starting to work with pokemon to develop settlements.

This obviously isn't as off the walls as that, but it's nice to see them trying something different. It seems somewhere between a let's go game and a mainline game, which I can get behind.

Just a shame that what was shown was super rough at times.

I seem to be in the minority by thinking that the D&P remakes look quite nice, albeit not showstoppers. I thought the art style was fine and I'm into the idea of playing them again because I haven't played them since playing through Platinum maybe 10 years ago?

The Legends game... I am yet to be convinced. Are we sure it's not going to be Wild Area Plus, i.e. arguably a continuation of one of the biggest missed opportunities in SwSh...? I thought they dropped the ball when it came to atmosphere and world building with the Wild Areas and this doesn't look hugely different to me.

That said, I still enjoyed SwSh and didn't shit on it like the swathes of commenters with Pokemon avatars on Nintendo Life did incessantly, so I'll probably enjoy both of these. I'm just more convinced I'll have a nice time with the D&P remakes!

I'd imagine/hope that a whole game based around the Wild Area would be more able to give it the TLC it deserves. I'll save more DP remake comments for the DP remake thread!

So glad they've gone this route, not reading too much in to the choppy frames or anything yet but I do hope they can flesh out the gameplay more than they've shown do far. As Rum mentioned the Wild Area was a bit of a missed opportunity which they did make some progress towards improving in the DLC but it needs to be more than just, go here and catch these. They need to add all sorts of mechanics for catching different types and make moving around the environment more than just running around.

Argh, don't mention the DLC... I really didn't like the DLC, and although both are essentially open-world Pokémon I really hope this improves on it in a big way.

Balladeer wrote:

To be fair, some of the monsters in this were moving at about -3FPS.  I think it’ll be good, but it does look quite ugly at the moment!

Muss wrote:

Just a shame that what was shown was super rough at times.

In fairness though, if the choice is between developers showing us early versions which are a bit rough and then working on them in the run-up to release and developers showing utterly unattainable bullshit in preview then releasing a busted game, I know which I prefer . . .

Treesmurf wrote:

They need to add all sorts of mechanics for catching different types and make moving around the environment more than just running around.

The trailer did show some rolling, crouching and stuff, and the game is listed as an action RPG so I'm hopeful we'll get a bit of that at least.

Balladeer wrote:

Argh, don't mention the DLC...  I really didn't like the DLC, and although both are essentially open-world Pokémon I really hope this improves on it in a big way.

The DLC was grand as a proof that they can make a functional 3D world map that's entertaining to explore. Your problems were because you're not arsed with catching Legendary Pokémon or filling a dex as a game mechanic.

My problem with the DLC (i.e. why I didn't bother buying it) is because I'd already beaten the game so couldn't picture there being any amount of balance to the DLC areas. Everything is still level scaled to level 60 right?

Yeah they scaled it which did hurt it a little for me as well but I still had plenty of fun filling the dex and the areas generally felt much better than the main games wild area, definitely a good sign for me.

OrangeRakoon wrote:

My problem with the DLC (i.e. why I didn't bother buying it) is because I'd already beaten the game so couldn't picture there being any amount of balance to the DLC areas. Everything is still level scaled to level 60 right?

In the first, I used mostly new Pokémon, as there was a new bear and Cubone was back. I mean, the Isle of Armor's main point is training your little Kubfu.

After that, The Tundra was mostly about catching legendaries so I didn't feel there was a balance issue at all.

Buskalilly wrote:

Balladeer wrote:

Argh, don't mention the DLC...  I really didn't like the DLC, and although both are essentially open-world Pokémon I really hope this improves on it in a big way.

The DLC was grand as a proof that they can make a functional 3D world map that's entertaining to explore. Your problems were because you're not arsed with catching Legendary Pokémon or filling a dex as a game mechanic.

Not untrue. That clouded my perception of the open world as a whole, to the point where I can't tell whether it would actually have been entertaining to explore with better goals.

I had a sudden realisation that this game might actually be pretty fucked and a bit racist!

Sinnoh is based on Hokkaido, the northenmost island of Japan which has only really been part of Japan properly for 2 or 3 hundred years. Before it was colonised, there was an indigenous people, the Ainu, and Japan was pretty shitty to them. In a lot of early art and mythology, all other people groups beside the Yamato Japanese are depicted as Oni - see Okami, in fact. The term Shogun originally means "suppressor of Barbarians" and was a title given to the chief of basically pacifying all the other ethnic groups whom the Japanese wanted to displace.

Fast forward to this game, set in a pre-modern Sinnoh, and the trailer seemed to suggest you're the earliest human settlers in a land currently only occupied by animals and monsters! Setting up a future in which they are all enslaved!

Just a thing to think about . . .

...or a thing to desperately pretend you haven't thought about as you enslave your monsters...

I'm fairly excited for this, I'll buy it and play it with my family, but it looked so early in development and the world seems so empty that I didn't bother to show the trailer to my son.

As for those remakes...

The game definitely looked like it was still needing a lot more time in the oven, but the concept of this has me more interested in a Pokémon game than I've been in years and years. I hope this is a response to some of the criticisms towards Sw/Sh and not a continuation of some of the issues I shared with Balla in regards to the Wild Area not really tickling my fancy.

Out on my birthday Jan 28th

They said early 2022, and that is really early. I hope it's good, seems to have potential but the trailer was a bit empty.

Edit - I said exactly the same thing above, at least I'm consistent

Yeeeeeees... I'm now a bit worried that Game Freak, who are not used to this sort of thing, might have bitten off a bit more than they can chew. Hope not, but it had better run a lot smoother than the only trailer we've seen so far. Roll on just before E3 I guess... (Psst, Neil, your E3 thread's in News.)

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