Current Events > Rumors talk of a ludicrously troubled production for Pkmn Sword/Shield

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemon/comments/duhpu7/game_freak_said_that_the_decision_of_removing_the/f77grdr/?context=3

The thing of importance is Port274's comment. Seems he has some proof and timestamp of knowing insider info and talked about what's actually been going on behind the scenes of Gamefreak.

In light of the leaked copies and streams causing a pretty massively butthurt response from the fans, it left a lot of people wondering where all the development time went into, as a lot of Gamefreak's claims about their approach of the game contradicted the end product.

Turns out there's a possible explanation, and that might be it. Obviously unconfirmed, and we may almost never know if what he says is real, but a careful analysis of Gamefreak's tumble across titles gives this rumor credence:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemon/comments/cgh8fy/long_post_warning_an_actual_technical_analysis_of/

Where this post was made a while ago and accurately called what might've happened contrary to Ohmori's statement that they had to remake models. It turns out, they kinda might've had to redo a whole lot of models to better fit whatever engine was being used in SwSh (which presumably uses a different engine from the Let's Go games).

The thing to keep in mind to see if this rumor is true, this statement sums it up:

"Their story will be that they listened to feedback and now realize how important the full dex is, while not admitting how incompetent the actual in house Gamefreak devs are to save face"

Basically they're doing some crazy PR bullshit where they're gonna cover up their software incompetence by distracting the playerbase with full national dex from this point on. If this happens, then we have a pretty decent reason to believe this leak is real. If so, SwSh may actually become The Room of Nintendo series, which Nintendo usually cans its troubled projects behind the curtain or does a public vid of a project restructuring like with Metroid Prime 4.

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Reminds me of the New coke and Classic Coke thing way way back in the day
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Hic

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it's still going to be one of the best selling games of all time
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Wasn't there a rumor that their b team worked on this, whilst the rest worked on some other game that bombed?
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Personally, if they would own up to their mistakes and delay the game to actually deliever a game worth the $60 price tag then maybe I'll buy it. But at this point, looks like I'm waiting to see if the 3rd version fixes these issues.

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LightHawKnight posted...

Wasn't there a rumor that their b team worked on this, whilst the rest worked on some other game that bombed?

No, that was addressed in the rumor. They actually hurt the production on Little Town Hero and pulled people into the SwSh production from it to try to salvage the issue.

Toby Fox's claim that Little Town Hero had an extremely small team corroborates this

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Tmaster148 posted...

Personally, if they would own up to their mistakes and delay the game to actually deliever a game worth the $60 price tag then maybe I'll buy it. But at this point, looks like I'm waiting to see if the 3rd version fixes these issues.

Most likely this generation is dead in the water. It's the engine itself that's causing issues beyond the capability of the current Gamefreak staff to solve, so the next game will again use another engine, theoretically, and SwSh won't get an enhanced version

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But didn't they render the original 151 Pokemon in the Let's Go games?

Why did they cut it down to 50 for Sword and Shield if the others were already complete?
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alphagamble posted...

But didn't they render the original 151 Pokemon in the Let's Go games?

Why did they cut it down to 50 for Sword and Shield if the others were already complete?

The 2nd post explains it. Let's Go used a completely different engine that was a mix of Nintendo's main SDK, Splatoon's engine, and Gamefreak's own implementations. They made a new engine for SwSh presumably to accommodate the open world they were going for as well as reduce the dependencies used from other engines, but it had a problem with the model converter, so it has nothing to do with models of Pokemon already being in Let's Go

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legendarylemur posted...

alphagamble posted...

But didn't they render the original 151 Pokemon in the Let's Go games?

Why did they cut it down to 50 for Sword and Shield if the others were already complete?

The 2nd post explains it. Let's Go used a completely different engine that was a mix of Nintendo's main SDK, Splatoon's engine, and Gamefreak's own implementations. They made a new engine for SwSh presumably to accommodate the open world they were going for as well as reduce the dependencies used from other engines, but it had a problem with the model converter, so it has nothing to do with models of Pokemon already being in Let's Go

This seems like some awful planning on their part but I can't say I'm surprised if this was the case.

What a shitshow.
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Masuda used Crystal tool!

It's not very effectives!

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lol daum

Kinda relieved that this is from incompetence instead of greed assuming this is true

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Game could be complete ass (looks like it is gonna turn out that way btw) and these man children will still line up to buy it. Pokemons gonna be fine.

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It's never been a big secret that the game was ludicrously rushed.

Questionmarktarius posted...

It's never been a big secret that the game was ludicrously rushed.

It's rushed, but it's hardly the main problem. There seems to be a serious problem with software knowledge gap in Gamefreak. Most likely a lot of senior legacy members coming from sprite based games to 3D games with increasing complexity in the variance in modeling that they never had to deal with in sprites.

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This whole Pokmon SwSh fiasco fascinates me

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A game having a troubled production doesn't mean the developers are incompetent. Just wanted to point that out.
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Darmik posted...

A game having a troubled production doesn't mean the developers are incompetent. Just wanted to point that out.

I would say the incompetence lies a lot more with the people managing the project than the devs. They should have hired more people instead of bleeding their Pokemon team to work on Little Town Hero.

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Tmaster148 posted...

Darmik posted...

A game having a troubled production doesn't mean the developers are incompetent. Just wanted to point that out.

I would say the incompetence lies a lot more with the people managing the project than the devs. They should have hired more people instead of bleeding their Pokemon team to work on Little Town Hero.

It sounds like they did put more people on it.

But sometimes that isn't enough. You can't get 9 women to make a baby in one month. Game development is often like that.

As far as I know Little Town Hero is done by a separate team within the studio. It sounds like Pokemon drama impacted that game more than vice versa.

I think the biggest issue is they didn't delay the game a year.
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Darmik posted...

It sounds like they did put more people on it.

But sometimes that isn't enough. You can't get 9 women to make a baby in one month. Game development is often like that.

As far as I know Little Town Hero is done by a separate team within the studio. It sounds like Pokemon drama impacted that game more than vice versa.

I think the biggest issue is they didn't delay the game a year.

I could have sworn I read they took people from the pokemon team to help with little town hero, but I could be misremembering. Still either way it's incompetence from the top forcing the devs into an awful situation of trying to make the best of the resources and time they have.

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Yeah I think saying it's due to dumb decisions from the top is more fair than calling the developers incompetent. There's only so much they can do with the tools and time they are given.

Stuff like changing engines and having issues due to that isn't a sign of incompetence. Often that's the norm.

Uncharted 4 and God of War had troubled productions. But they also had people who were willing to give them the time they needed to figure things out. I doubt Game Freak has that luxury.
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Except for the fact that the leaker specifically mentions software knowledge gap of the senior members being the core issue of why they couldn't figure the problem out. It's a large combination of unworkable legacy code or poor documentation or many other problems that arose from carelessness, otherwise you'd think a large company that's probably able to hire anybody in the world would eventually figure it out.

Gamefreak also just has a lot of senior members that's been there since their sprite game days. Their transition to 3D has always been infamously rocky

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Darmik posted...

A game having a troubled production doesn't mean the developers are incompetent. Just wanted to point that out.

The rumor says that they fucked up the model importer because the programmers were clueless and had to salvage as many Pokemon as they had for S/S.

If that isn't incompetence then what is it
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tag

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So the stuff about them reusing assets as the wireframes and textures are mostly the same part of this too?
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Damn, guess Ishihara and Masuda really weren't kidding when they told us a few months after BotW's release in 2017 to downgrade your expectations for a Switch Pokemon because they were out of their element.

The fact that they hired Wii U and Vita devs to help instead of X1 and PS4 devs is laughable cheapness and incompetence.
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LightHawKnight posted...

So the stuff about them reusing assets as the wireframes and textures are mostly the same part of this too?

We've known for a while they used the same models, now 100% confirmed.

But they had to re-rig most of the models to work on their new engine one at a time, and that's potentially why Gamefreak said this. It should've been incredibly easy to implement new models into even a new engine otherwise, had the programming been solid, but instead we got dexit

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AlephZero posted...

it's still going to be one of the best selling games of all time

tbqh, it seems every other week we hear that this or that game is the best selling of all time. The phrase has, at least to many of us, lost much of it's impact .
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