Summary
- Fans may not have game design experience, but feedback could improve Pokemon games.
- Game delays can lead to better quality, as shown by the potential in Pokemon Scarlet & Violet.
- A fan's hands-on approach to creating an HD-2D Pokemon game shows unique insight and dedication.
I strongly believe that video g🅠ames should be developed by their developers. Unbelievable, I know. So many fans shout their rabid ideas at unsuspecting social media admins, and they’re mostly terrible. The vast majority of players have no experience designing or creating video games, and their ideas reflect that. “Just port it to Unreal Engine 5!” “Just fix the servers!” “Just make a good anti-cheat!” “Just make it good!” Surꦇe.
However, I’m going to go against all of my long-held beliefs for this article, because the Pokemon series is in a dire state. As the franchise trundles along based on sales of plushies, t-shirts, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pokemon Go currency, the scope of the main ser🍷ies games are iꦜncreasing while the developers don’t have the time to realise the grand ideas. For once, things could be helped by actually listening to fans.
My💙 main issue with fans spewing virulent ideas a𝐆t game devs is, as mentioned earlier, because they have no experience making games. I’ve only ever made Twine-based branching narratives myself, so I’m also not going to tell Game Freak how to make an RPG. However, at the moment, most Pokemon fans are just telling the developer to slow down.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pokemon Scarlet & Violet wasn’t a great game. It wasn’t even a good game. But had it had another year in the oven, it might have been a working game. The framerate might have been more stable, the overworld textures less egregious. I’m not sure it would have been any more fun – the em🅠pty open world sucked all the joy out of creature collecting for mཧe – but it would have been playable.
The quote commonly misattributed to Shigeru Miyamoto, “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad,” springs to mind. Pokemon can no longer afford to delay games. They have to tie into anime arcs, plushie manufacturing orders, t-shirt printing processes, and TCG sets. Everything has to be released at precisely the right time, otherwise the TCG might accidentally reveal a new Pokemon months before its first video game appearance. It’s all about ✨brand consolidation and scheduled marketing pushes, and it’s very nearly killed the Pokemon games.
This 🍰quote was actually from , project director at Origin from 1989 to 1992. Her phrasing was, “A game’s only late until it ships, but it sucks forever.”
I often think about the Pokemon game we’d get if Game Freak worked on it for as long as Nintendo did Breath of the Wild. I wouldn’t necessarily want Zelda-but-Pokemon, but I’d love a game in the series that dared to break new ground in some way, whether through an innovative environment like Zelda, fresh mechanics, or a graphical revolution like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Octopath Traveler.
It’s this last point that I’ve mosཧt attached myself to over the past feꦓw years. An HD-2D Pokemon game, whetꦍher a new entry in the series (unlikely, seeing the direction of the games) or a remake, would be the perfect revitalisation that Pokemon needs.
Many older players like myself want to return to the 2D Pokemon games of times gone by. 🥂But The Pokemon Company wants every game to appeal to a new audience, to be approachable no matter the age of the player. You know, like Octopath Traveler, which was so successful in both design philosophy and game mechanics that it spawned an even better sequel.
The latest iteration of this idea has come from 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:YouTuber Shenme, and he’s gone a lot further than most others. When I wrote about an♏ HD-2D Pokemon game, I commissioned our Photo Editor James Troughton to come up with a mock-up of what it might look like. Shenme goes a step further, and has developed a fully playable version of Black & White with his own HD-2D take on it.
His video shows him learning the basics of Unreal Engine, designing his own assets, sprites, and textures, and crafting the game from the ground up. It looks excellent, especially considering he’s one bloke learnin🌳g on the job, but his hands-on approach makes me respect his take so much more. This is a man who has actually tried to make it himself, not some keyboard warrior with a wild idea that any developer knows will never work.
Shenme’s commitment to making his own Black & White HD-2D remake gives him experience that few others in the world have, if anyone. And it lends credence to his opinion, as he’s tried to do it himself. He knows what works and what doesn’t. He knows how ef๊fective the lighting and camera angles will be when converted from Octopath to Pokemon. He gets it.
Game development is increasingly risk-averse in this day and age, so I can’t see Game Freak ever taking a step ﷺaway to listen to its fans, even those who go to all the effort of creating a slice of a potential remake themselves. Gen 5 is next in line on Pokemon’s remake conveyor belt. I hope it isn’t as rote and derivative as Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl.
Pokemon Regio🔜ns Are Only As Interesting As T🔴heir Monsters
Pokem💮on Scarlet & Violet’s open world didn’t work. I figu♐red out why.
