5 Main Concerns with Pokemon Legends: Arceus

yo you guys what is up quite a while since my last vid i've been busy pursuing other passions and wanted to take a bit of a break but we're back here today to go over some of my main concerns with pokemon legends arceus ending off with a couple of things i'm potentially looking forward to number one lots of work with little time the first thing i want to go over is rather broad and encompasses in large part many of the things that we will touch later on in this video but it has to do with the overall performance shown to us in the worldwide reveal trailer in relation to the recently unveiled release date for legends arceus for those of you that don't know legends will be dropping late january of next year this is concerning because the product that they showed us in the reveal looks more like a proof of concept demo or an unappealing unreal engine showcase rather than an actual game assuming the game follows average development times of other game freak pokemon titles around 3 years worth that means the footage showcase is of a game that has been in development for at least two years yet looks like it's only been in development for a few months but distant kingdom they were just using older footage the game looks much better than what they showed i swear if that were true then why not just show the alleged newer far more polished footage the whole point of a reveal is to be as compelling as possible to convince consumers that they should invest in your work this typically means that footage is curated and flaws are masked or hidden for the sole purpose of leaving a persuasive first impression mass effect andromeda did exactly that with their own reveal trailer even though the game had a terrible launch you wouldn't have guessed it by seeing their reveal trailer which is exactly the point this is why i'm so shocked that gamefreak felt confident enough to showcase what they did showing off the arceus cinematic or even just the box art alone would have been more enticing seeing how those are more polished complete elements of the game now this is where i would say that it's not in the businesses best interest to show off their product in such a bad light especially not during a worldwide review good first impressions are key after all could you imagine a real estate agent showing off a house they wanted to sell but instead of cleaning it beforehand they just leave garbage spewed all over the place do you think that would make it more or less likely they would be able to make the sale the answer is obvious you would think that same logic would apply to the legends trailer but then i remembered that this is pokemon we're talking about pokemon is as per usual the exception to this rule because the vast majority of the consumer base is not concerned with quality in their games so long as they can get their pokemon fix all you need to do is slap the title of pokemon across the mess throw in a pikachu for good measure and suddenly your garbage heat becomes a commercial success despite being far below the industry standard i guess if anything i can appreciate the honesty of presumably showing what they've achieved thus far even if it's a bad look in the end it still leaves me scratching my head how the highest grossing franchise on the planet consistently puts out products that even indie devs with a fraction of the resources would be embarrassed to call their own number two lifeless overworld pokemon with that out of the way let's explore exactly what went wrong with the legends trailer and why first up will be the troubling and unfortunate return of the aimless overworld pokemon that were seen in game freak's two most recent titles pokemon let's go and pokemon sword and shield one of the main criticisms of the wild area in sword and shield is that the pokemon feel detached from the world due to their primitive implementation all they do is walk around and don't interact with the environment or each other in any meaningful ways with a few exceptions causing them to feel more like artificial drones that look like pokemon rather than actual pokemon allow me to demonstrate what i mean by life lists for you guys so that you will be able to clearly see where i am coming from first up i will show you some snippets of a trailer from an up and coming indie dev game called pow world that features creatures called pals join me as we witness what these creatures are capable of pals in pal world can be seen following their master flown through the air even while firing an assault weapon used to pull a sleigh ridden on building houses supplying power to houses watering your garden being sheared used for harvesting crops kicking dudes so hard to get lodged into the side of a cliff wall comforting you playing with you being intimate with one another jumping on your head and shooting an assault weapon alongside you used as a shield chucked at your enemies captured alive used as slave labor hunted treasure hunting illegal fishing surfing pretty cool right now let's juxtapose this to snippets from the legends arceus trailer pokemon can be seen standing around standing around in a group standing around in a pair standing around while getting hit standing around while being captured standing around standing around while watching you standing around while being hit running away standing around standing around while being hit standing around standing around standing around standing around waiting to be picked looking cool while standing around i don't know if you noticed but the pokemon do a lot of standing around they're basically lifeless corpses especially compared to the pals from pal world this is a huge concern for so many reasons now i'm not saying that the pokemon should be used as shields or put into labor camps that's not the point of my comparison what i am saying is that gamefreak does a terrible job of bringing the namesake of the franchise to life which is borderline criminals seeing what indie devs are capable of accomplishing nowadays not only does pal world do a fantastic job of bringing their monsters to life they do so in a way that seamlessly uncovers an astonishing number of game mechanics and features in such a short amount of time what was shown in legends arceus that you couldn't already do in other pokemon games dodge roll and i think that's it that's the only new thing that was shown off other than that i have no idea what the player can do in the game based on the trailer catching and battling receives slight tweaks which is awesome but far more is needed than the bare minimum finding pokemon in unique and interesting ways or engaging in actions other than standing around watching paint dry on rocks does so much to bring the pokemon to life it builds character and adds a great deal of personality that helps to immerse the player into the world effortlessly i will briefly show you two examples i brought up in a past video to help illustrate my point i don't want galvantula just randomly popping out of the ground i want to walk into a cave and look up and see a spider web and then see galvantula in that spiderweb you know something that a spider actually does i don't want machoke randomly popping out of the ground i want to see machoke bench pressing a tree in the distance because that's just something that machoke would do in his spare time this is the ambition and effort that people want from a pokemon switch title that is unfortunately sorely absent from sword and shield this issue was perfectly addressed in the recent release of new pokemon snap you see arya dose a spider pokemon chilling on spider webs you see machamp doing warm-up exercises eerily reminiscent of my machoke example they could have easily just had my champ stand in place doing nothing but they went above and beyond to deliver a sorely needed experience taking the player's best interest into mind it's so natural and obvious that in your mind you think well of course a spider pokemon can be found on spiderwebs or of course machamp would be seen working out it's only until you're subjected to the absolute bare minimum that you realize you took natural and obvious for granted instead of chimchar in a tree like how we see apam in a tree in snap something that monkeys are known for doing we just see chimchar standing around instead of seeing rhyhorn running into things which it's known to do we just see ryhorn standing around this is disheartening because so much charm is lost and the wasted potential over things that are relatively simple in nature and easy to accomplish is frustrating this is now gamefreak's third attempt at doing the exact same thing with no innovation in sight in fact it's ironically a downgrade seeing as how some overworld pokemon appear to have substantially lower frame rates than everything else when this wasn't an issue in the past titles which brings us nicely along to my next point number 3 low fps pokemon throughout the trailer there are several pokemons such as the infamous qingling chimchar and voodoo who for whatever reason are rendered to such a terrible degree that they appear choppy this greatly contributes to the game as a whole feeling rushed and unoptimized two staples found in many game freak pokemon games over the years this however is particularly egregious just because of how blatantly bad it is to the point where not even pokemon's most ardent warriors will defend it this is typically a technique used to help any given game perform better for example some aspects of the assist trophies and the pokemon in smash for 3ds were rendered at 30fps as opposed to the native 60fps to avoid taxing the console's capabilities and impacting the performance too heavily but what we see in the legends trailer isn't 30fps i don't even believe it's 10fps and that's without taking into consideration the fact that the nintendo switch is far more capable than the 3ds i can't put into words how laughably bad this is and it was brazenly shown in the premier trailer no less unimpressed is a severe understatement 30 fps by today's standards is the bare minimum asked of developers so it's very disappointing to see legends struggle to even come close to reaching the lowest bar this however is not by any means set in stone the instant transmission stelix seen during the sword shield treehouse demo featured in june of 2019 was eventually corrected by the time the game launched six months later in november hopefully this too can be addressed in kind by the time january rolls around number four sliding pokemon one of my favorite things about pokemon battle revolution is that for the first time ever pokemon could be seen making physical contact during pokemon battles 15 years later and gamefreak has finally caught up to that standard established by genius sonority all those years ago which is exciting but there's a catch it was implemented in the most lazy way possible instead of having the pokemon run up to one another as seen in the 15 year old wii game game freak instead grab the model mid attack animation and slide it towards the other pokemon keep in mind that gamefreak has had access to running animations for every single pokemon since sun and moon all the way back in 2016. this is literally the perfect time to utilize those assets in a fun and practical way to elevate battles and make them more impactful why has gamefreak instead opted to do less than the bare minimum yet again who knows i'll give credit where credit is due though some of these attack transitions actually look really nice lucario and ryolu incorporate an extreme speed style effect where the pokemon moves so fast that we can't see the model sliding across the ground these two pokemon in particular were executed more effectively largely in part because the model is invisible for most of the animation but it still looks far better than the alternative number five overall aesthetic the overall aesthetic of the game while a slight step up from the wild area in sword and shield is still very underwhelming especially for a game that is part of a franchise that generates tens of millions of sales per title release legends looks similar to what was seen in sword and shield's dlc both of which lacked that next-gen glow up seen in so many other switch titles legends also adopted the baron wastelands landscape of sword and shield as well in every single painting wide shot you don't see a single pokemon off in the distance which leads me to believe that this game may suffer from the same terrible draw distance of the pokemon models as seen in lesko and sword and shield legends would be the perfect opportunity for game freak to demonstrate to everyone that after their third attempt they have finally perfected their overworld system allowing the player to see pokemon far off in the distance and with the ability to situate pokemon in more believable and complementary ways but that's not what was shown not even close it looked like the exact same system from sword and shield except now the pokemon are somehow laggier so yeah those are my five main concerns with legends arceus based on what they have had to show us so far one of the main pros that i'm looking forward to is that we may very well receive some actual high quality animations this time around in a few frames a starlight can be seen walking on the ground when its only mobility animation seen up until now had it flying for both its walking and running animations cyndaquil while idol had its flames out as opposed to the flames being extinguished at all times other than when attacking in battle a far cry from its sprites of old this may also mean that typhlosion will follow suit and have his flames restored in a similar manner fun fact typhlosion is the number one requested pokemon in my animation fix videos by a significant margin despite typhlosion being impossible to obtain in sword and shield another thing i really like is the time period being explored every single other game freak pokemon title has taken place within the same relative time window no game has gone too far behind or ahead in the past or future respectively until now sinnoh is also one of the most lore dench regions so they have a huge amount of material to work with here that can be used to flush out the pokemon universe in never before seen ways what about you guys do you have any concerns or things that you're looking forward to with legends arceus make sure to leave your thoughts down below in the comment section as i read every single one and i always love hearing from you guys i'll be going on vacation for about a week and a half during the week of e3 coincidentally so when i return there should be some more juicy pokemon information to talk over with you all until then thanks so much for watching and i'll see you on the next one [Music] foreign

Channel: DistantKingdom

Views: 203,457

Keywords: pokemon, pokemon sword, pokemon shield, pokemon sword and shield, pokemon swsh, gen 4 remakes, pokemon shining pearl, pokemon brilliant diamond, pokemon diamond remake, pokemon pearl remake, brilliant diamond, shining pearl, pokemon legends arceus, open world pokemon, pokemon presents, pokemon reaction video, distantkingdom, gen 4 reimagined, reimagined trailer, generation 4 remakes, sinnoh remakes, BDSP, 5 main concerns, five main concerns, pokemon battle revolution

Id: zZcgb-FgLxk

Length: 14min 21sec (861 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 10 2021