I like the fact towns finally aren't all flat/tiered. They've finally moved away from the 2D game town design!
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
New Pokémon Sword and Shield footage exploring one of the game's towns
- Thread starter Bowser
- Start date
While I agree with your general point I don't think it's what happened with Steelix, after all Onix doesn't float. Seems like an intentional characteristic.It's kind of an interesting conundrum.
Many Pokémon are designed for, and often depicted in, specific habitats. But the nature of Pokémon mandates that they be mobile in all environments. This issue is exemplified in the accommodations made surrounding a lot of water Pokémon: fish Pokémon levitate above the surface or else it would be impossible to use them on land. Even in the walking animations created for Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon (which are currently unused), most fish Pokémon simply levitate above the player and wiggle a bit as if they are swimming in the air.
But canonically, nobody expects Lumineon or Seaking to be able to fly (and let's not even get in to the fact fish Pokémon apparently can breathe on land). Yet that is how they are always depicted. Pokémon being able to float is the answer to basically all environmental and mobility questions.
Steelix has pretty much always been depicted with the ability to hover. The movement we see here is actually a much more detailed aerial movement than Steelix has ever had. But I think it will always be a little jarring to accept that if a Pokémon doesn't have legs there's a 90% chance it can float through the air without complication.
Pokémon began as a series that relied on ambiguity and suggestion to communicate its creatures, battles, and environments. Pokémon following you around the overworld, for example, raised no eyebrows or concerns when they were simply little sprites with two-frame walk cycles. Pokémon battles that took place on a plain white space, or in loosely themed grass/water/cave backgrrounds, never brought in to question the nature of size or space. You were able to use your imagination to fill in the blanks because that's just how video games worked.
But how do you tackle that in a realistic and compelling way when creating a 3D environment with object permanence? All Pokémon must be able to go anywhere. But when you can see so much of them on screen and the environments are no longer ambiguous, is it possible to depict Pokémon with any sort of logical consistency?
The question we have to consider is whether the depictions we see in Pokémon games should ever be taken literally or if they are merely representative of what in some suggestive, abstract way.
When we see Wishiwashi floating in battle like this:
Is it really floating? Or is it just represented this way to maintain visual consistency? Are battles depicted in a literal, canonical way or are they simply a representation of what is happening in a figurative inexact way? Does it make any sense for water Pokémon, which we know for a fact live underwater, to be battling above sea-level whenever it is needed?
Steelix flying around seems like something that happens to me. Steelix is a Steel type and can learn Magnet Rise so whatever. Of course Steelix and levitate. But I do think that we just have to accept that Pokémon is not a series that will ever be able to perfectly accommodate expectations of reality. I think Pokémon will always rely on players not taking everything they see on screen literally and rely on imagination to make sense of what's going on. That's how it always worked in the beginning. It would be pretty drastic to suddenly hold Pokémon to real world conventions when it comes to terrain and space. I don't know if the game would be better that way. I'm thinking probably not, though.
Yeah, like I mentioned, Steelix has always been a floater. Steelix is just able to levitate, presumably due to magnets.
They just showed them turning towards the player and smiling at them, laughing, having conversations and stuff though? And even Sun and Moon had NPCs walking around towns, just there are stationary ones too like in every game ever...
Don't ever play Xenoblade
There's a company that works on the railroad in this game, so maybe
Looks better than Lets Go for sure and reminds me a bit of Yokai Watch 2. I wish the combat was as engaging as in that game though...
Did they say that they are reusing the Sun & Moon engine? Will they ever make a new one geared for the Switch?
Did they say that they are reusing the Sun & Moon engine? Will they ever make a new one geared for the Switch?
Macro Cosmos, the company that supposedly Rose is the CEO of, is the one that manages the railway system.
Man, I would love if they would take one of these chances to tell us about Home instead of the games. They've been showing the games every other week it feels like, but I still haven't heard a peep out of the service that determines whether I'm ever going to even buy the game down the line.
Even less than half. If we count regional variants we are now at 19 pokémon revealed for SwSh. While back in 2016, we already had a whopping 45 pokémon revealed by august 20.
You mean
Hue of Zamazenta
yes, I'm gonna kick myself out of the door now
That is the early morning or sunset colors, things become proper during midday.
Yeah but can I bunnyhop my bike indefinitely that's a defining feature that I need
Gen 5 actually. My point is that the PCs never went out of their way to make note of it, the merger just existed so it could be that signage for marts inside the PC could mean some PCs have one and others don't.
But this doesn't look like a 3ds game 🤔
who knows though
Personally I doubt past gen starters will be in the game
who knows though
That would stink. I really want him in it. Right now I'm pretty lukewarm on this game. Add him and my hype will go up.
Oh man, I remembered being scared that the map would be like Alola (which was an almost 1 to 1 scale with the game) Galar actually feels large.
Yeah the region feels like an actual country, with large swathes of undeveloped and untouched nature broken by small roads and settlements in between. Compared to previous games where an entire country could be those roads and settlements all bunched together in close proximity, its far better than anything before.
You're right but that looks like a barn. Probably just decorationThey're talking about this house in the top left, not the big purple one.
The moment they put out the map, we deduced that wasn't going to be the case
At first no. I mean Unova and Kalos had maps that weren't accurate, however the Alola map did share its artstyle with Hoenn's from ORAS which bared all of the region, so there were suspicions. And then ingame footage appeared, and the last pin dropped. It was conceptually sound but good lord was Alola small, almost Kanto Small.
Ahhh the cozy feel of a Pokemon game!
I'm gonna wait until Home releases before jumping in... it's gonna hurt :(
I'm gonna wait until Home releases before jumping in... it's gonna hurt :(
Town looked nice. Was pleasantly surprised at the smoothness, but kind of sad we didn't get interiors of any of those locations.
I think the most shocking thing was the black NPC shown.
To my knowledge nearly all of the black characters in the Pokemon series have usually been either gym leaders or other main story NPCs, so its pretty nice to see one.
I think the most shocking thing was the black NPC shown.
To my knowledge nearly all of the black characters in the Pokemon series have usually been either gym leaders or other main story NPCs, so its pretty nice to see one.
That's not too difficult of a mark to achieve. For the series has been carried by its art rather than its technical proficiency since the move to the 3ds
That's the Pokémon Lab, which you could say is the Professor's house. But there are also two other houses in the town, one right next to the Pokémon Lab and another further up the hill.
