Concerning the Galar Pokedex

[111]

Well, it happened. Near universal distaste for something about Pokemon. You know what I'm talking about, but in case you don't...

 

Spoiler

Pokemon not in the Galar regional dex can not be moved to Pokemon Sword and Shield, and there are also no Megas or Z-moves in said games.

 

I'll start by saying that I'm 100% against this, but technical reasons somewhat justify the decision. A little.

 

As a beginner developer, I've learned quite a few technical details from research and practice. My game, Pokemon Rehabilitation, took a long time to make because there were lots of different areas I needed to work on. Game Freak seems to have added a lot of new features to Sword and Shield, so that part I understand. 

 

But in the midst of these features, they neglected old ones. Beloved old ones. Mega Evolution and Z-moves added so much flavor to battles and the story, and you're telling me they're GONE? Even the watered-down LGPE had Megas. Dynamaxing is fine, but shouldn't we have the option to use other power-heightening techniques?

 

There's also the Pokedex debacle. And although It's been heavily criticized, there's some hope. And to see that hope, you'll need to look around multiple sources. 

 

Think: When there's a new regional Pokedex, are previous-gen starters/legendaries/mythicals in it? Usually, no. But the latest Pokemon direct showed Leon with a Charizard, and Pokemon has stated that Mew can be transferred from new Pokeball Pluses. Charizard and Mew both fall into the category I just said the regional dexes don't have. I feel like the restriction to the Galar dex is just to stop Pokemon that are TOO different for Sword and Shield, like Alolan forms or Pokemon that were essential to their specific games before SwSh.

 

And one more thing: The 3d Pokemon models were reused for Gen 7, GO, LGPE, and other post-Gen 6 spinoffs. So 800+ old Pokemon animations are only an issue for these two things:

1: New MOVE animations

2: Dynamaxing animations

 

So that about wraps up my rant. I hope that Game Freak changes their decision about this whole thing, or at least makes the Galar dex REALLY big. But until we know more, all we can do is imagine. 

#bringbackthenationaldex

[Vinnie]

Over on reddit there's been huge amounts of protest, but also lots of interesting details.

 

During the Gen 6 era the 3d models which were created for XY were meant to be somewhat permanent, as a means of future proofing for the games to come later. Someone also crunched the math and gave us estimates on whether their tech issues(excuses) were plausible, and well, you can read that for yourself here: https://old.reddit.com/r/pokemon/comments/c08rx2/why_it_is_not_impossible_to_have_a_national_dex/?st=jwvh1ow1&sh=f64eb774

 

The National Dex issue has really made people think a lot about what's to come, and even more issues have arisen. People have taken plenty of glances at the SwSh graphics that we've seen and realized how poor they are(Overworld pokemon are t-posing as they move), some people are pointing out the removal of the older battle gimmicks, and so forth. 

[Seal]

"It was a hard decision to make, but we've decided to make Pokémon that are not native to Galar unobtainable. We did this so we could focus on higher quality animations."

 

*re-uses models and animations made 6 years ago*

 

Pokémon is all about the massive size of available characters and once Gamefreak does something different in their life they feel like it's justifies to neglect other features. The series barely gets changed but the moment it does they cut some of the old stuff so it doesn't even add on. Gamefreak will be able to do this as long as they want because fans (including me) will buy the game anyway.

[Venonaut97]

The thing that bothers me the most about the loss of the National Dex is how unnecessary this controversy was. Firstly, as people such as Vinnie have noted, Nintendo/Gamefreak already had the HD models of the Pokemon, so clearly they don't need to make that many more models. Obviously the problem has to deal with the fact that the Dynamax forms of the pokemon are separate models, which moreorless doubled the number of models that would have needed to be in the game, which means that the National Dex couldn't be added. That said, the unnecessary part of this controversy isn't that Dynamaxing shouldn't have been added, but rather that it could have been handled in a much more efficient way.

 

The best solution that I can think of that could have been done to avoid this controversy would have been to scrap the "big" aspect of Dynamaxing, but keep all of the other elements. As such, Pokemon still gain power when in Dynamax form, they would still gain new moves (and maybe new animations?), and would still be limited by the 3 turn rule. In this situation you have still kept all of the interesting concepts of Dynamax Pokemon without having to add the poorly received aspect of giant Pokemon and the subsequent need for new models of every Pokemon.

 

This solution keeps all of strategy of Dynamaxing, so the mechanic will still remain the same as it was before. The trade-off of this being that Dynamaxing and raid battles will look less impressive, which is a small price to pay imho.