Pokémon has been around as a game franchise for 23 years, since 1996. It’s one of the longest-running and most financially-successful game series around, and it has maintained its success over the decades because of two factors as I’ve seen it: a rigid adherence to a proven formula, and the insistence that one game studio, and pretty much only one studio, can work on the mainline series of games.
When it comes to the games themselves, every time a new release gets announced folks get hyped for two things: the mechanics and the Pokémon themselves. Specifically, people pay attention to what’s being added, what’s being brought over from previous generations, and what’s not making the cut. As a rule, Game Freak has tended to cut very little in terms of what’s called the “National Dex,” a list of Pokémon from across every generation and region. They’ve also made a point to leave certain things, like IV and EV values, more or less alone.
These games tend to have a pretty quick production schedule, year over year. Like Apple products, Game Freak typically puts out one brand new title every two years, with a special version of that title in the “off” year (see: Sun and Moon, followed by Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon). In theory, you’d think that would give them plenty of time to develop the next title, and up to now, theory would be borne out in practice. But times change, and Game Freak has had to change with them multiple times.
Pokémon debuted as a Game Boy game in Japan in 1996, followed by their Game Boy Color re-release in 1998. Since then there has been at least one, if not multiple, Pokémon game on every single handheld Nintendo console. Game Boy Advance. Nintendo DS, then the Nintendo 3DS. Now, finally, we’re getting one for the Nintendo Switch. (Nevermind that we got one in 2018 with Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee.) Are fans excited? Some certainly are. During E3, GameStop reported that Sword and Shield, the latest games in the series, took its number-two most-preordered game slot. The hype only seemed to grow as we learned more about the Galar region, the wild area and Gigantamaxed Pokémon.
But hype is not all the fandom wants to deal in, as some fans decided to focus their ire on the aforementioned “National Dex” inclusions. Well, more specifically, what Game Freak was excluding. Players would not be able to bring over every Pokémon they’d collected on the 3DS or prior games. Instead, the list was constrained, Game Freak said, because they didn’t have the resources to model 800+ Pokémon from scratch. This led to sustained outrage over the summer and into the fall as fans tried to argue with the studio over this stated reason.
In the last week, to make things worse, a build of the game was leaked online, and folks have been obsessively combing over footage from people playing this leaked version of the game to show how unfinished it is. Everything from low framerates to stiff, choppy and undercooked battle animations to textures, shadows and people popping in and out of view are all reasons, these “fans” say, to disregard anything that Game Freak said about why it couldn’t add hundreds of monsters to its game.
This has basically engulfed Twitter, with the hashtags “NationalDex” and “GameFreakLied” trending overnight on Tuesday. People with a lot of Pepe Silvia experience but no noticeable game development experience to speak of have been dissecting leaked footage to prove, definitively, that Game Freak is now a “Studio of Ill Repute” or something.
Gamers are saying they deserve a game with a certain quality to it, that they deserve to know why the game isn’t technically and visually perfect since, according to them, they sacrificed making 800+ Pokémon for making the game “better.” But maybe we misunderstood Game Freak. Maybe they didn’t mean “we don’t have the resources to do this one thing” and instead meant, “we don’t have the resources.” Full stop. That this is the end of Game Freak as the Pokémon developer and the beginning of their independence from The Pokémon Company. That the game we get is what they could give us, and that by asking for more we’d essentially be running them ragged.
Reviews are already starting to come in from outlets with access to review copies of the game. They’re not reflecting this at all. Even more independent game critics, like Laura Kate Dale, are saying that the game is more or less fine – with some issues, but nothing that exceeds previous games’ issues.
In other words, the game is probably fine. But honestly, I would cheer a version of this game that was just audaciously bad, made to suck out of spite for all these folks up in arms that they only got 35 presents instead of 37 like last time. I want a game where they decide to try some really misguided stuff in the spirit of “well, fuck, uh, let’s see what happens.” If we got that game, if we actually got the malformed work-in-progress every reactionary nerd online right now says we’re going to get, fuck, I might have made that game my GOTY.