[Sword & Shield] is it me or did Game Freak redesign Pokemon attack animations?

[colours]

Spoiler:

if you go back to the trailer, you'll see Pokemon battles in action, but one thing that caught my eye in particular is the fact that the move animations seem different now. Lucario's Close Combat here (or what I assume to be Close Combat) is one of the few examples shown that looks really nice.

it does feel like, in each generation, Game Freak redesigns moves so that they look prettier and nicer. Maybe it's just me, but I think that more than anything has me excited, haha. Can't wait to see how different moves look in battle now!

 

[alisaie]

Oooooh I hope that they flow a lot smoother and faster! I tend to turn off battle animations after a while because they're repetitive and slow the battle down (even in the newer games). Even these days I'd do it after a while in my first playthrough so it'd be nice if I could keep them on and now feel dragged down!

 

[tokyodrift]

Wouldn't surprise me at all if they remade them to fit the art style. I'm hoping they did anyway. Also that was definitely Drain Punch that Lucario used.

 

[Hyzenthlay]

I also noticed the new battle animations, and I think they look really nice! Can't wait to see more of this!

 

[wakachamo]

The game looks really pretty, though I wonder at what point the animations are going to "make the jump" over to full-fledged interactions between two fighting Pokémon. Because all these years ever since the very first Stadium game, they've just always been 20 feet apart, making the same pose before attacking, and then the camera cuts to the defending Pokémon getting attacked, and repeating an animation of its own, with very little variation over the years. At what point are these going to start looking more like Pokkén…?

 

[bobandbill]

I was meaning to look at them in more detail, guess I should soon for a possible article

I was actually not impressed. There may be small changes but overall they look very same-y to the gen 6 animations. Furthermore you still see Pokemon mostly rooted to the spot. Colosseum and XD had them jumping about more, having unique and entertaining faint animations, and even just being hit was done nicer. PBR meanwhile even had contact made between Pokemon on ocassion. Game Freak imo, despite the higher quality models and more time, have made a worse effort with attack animations, and I am not excited about what I saw in that regard for SS.

 

[wakachamo]

I was meaning to look at them in more detail, guess I should soon for a possible article

I was actually not impressed. There may be small changes but overall they look very same-y to the gen 6 animations. Furthermore you still see Pokemon mostly rooted to the spot. Colosseum and XD had them jumping about more, having unique and entertaining faint animations, and even just being hit was done nicer. PBR meanwhile even had contact made between Pokemon on ocassion. Game Freak imo, despite the higher quality models and more time, have made a worse effort with attack animations, and I am not excited about what I saw in that regard for SS.

I just don't imagine it's that much of a priority for them, because the mechanism today is already extremely popular and not necessarily something that's "broke." Plus, that's all it is—an animation. I don't imagine that having them jump around more around each other would really change the mechanics themselves, which is really all you need for the game to be successful today.

I do agree that I wish they were doing more, though—especially since the bar seems so easy to raise. I think of other turn-based franchises and don't really see them pushing the envelope either…

 

[Inmortal]

Yep, I think they've redesigned them, will be great, to avoid the monotony of reuse the resources

 

[User Anon 1848]

From the trailers and footage that have come out since this thread was made we can now see that they've reused a lot of old animations rather than redesign them. To me this is just as disappointing as Game Freak excluding non-regional Pokemon.





These videos pretty much just echo the complaints that many others have made on reddit but it really drives the point home to see the comparisons of S&S to the much older 3D spinoff games side by side like this. I don't know if I'm going to get either of these games anymore. I'll wait to see what the general player feedback is like before I even think about it. Game Freak have been exhausting my goodwill for them since ORAS.

 

[Raicheot]

I think it's time to make the step up to full contact battling I was hoping with the step up to the switch would of brought that but it just seems they are happy to stick with the same striking from distance which is getting boring, the battling experience would be sooo much better if game freak up'd their game

 

[moon]

Yeah, it's quite lazy how they just stick to old visuals in a way more modern age around them :/

 

[Sydian]

i would hope they'd step up the attack animations? i mean we're on the switch now, so i mean. it's time to have switch animations. lol although i've not paid all that much attention to attack animations since i was a kid tbh so it's not super noticeable for me unless it's something that really sticks out (like........baddy bad in LGPE......) so idk.

 

[Fairy]

Definitely excited to see what the new battle animation look like on the Switch, but I'll always miss how the original pixel attacks looked, haha.

 

[#1TrubbishFan]

I think it's important to keep in mind that pokemon is a JRPG. JRPGs have always had poor animations. I don't think it's fair to compare SwSh and the spinoffs, even if they are older.
Sure, I was hoping for pokemon to actually touch each other when kicking or punching, but the animations we have now aren't the worst thing in the world. Just look at Parting Shot.

 

[Sydian]

i don't think they'd go the route of showing actual punches, kicks, and bites against pokemon. not graphically at least, just very cartoony. i don't think that would bode well to have animal like creatures attacking each other and the animations being too realistic lol.