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Am I the only Pokémon player that doesn’t like or care for regional forms?
Pokémon Legends: Arceus spoilers:
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I believe Pokémon first received regional forms in the games that occurred in Alola. As much as I loved Alola and the games from that generation, I wasn’t a big fan of the regional form at all. For example, they somehow took Exeggutor, a Pokémon that, at least in my opinion, looked really goofy already, and made it look even more goofy by stretching his neck like a Stretch Armstrong doll. They look Persian and made her face round like a basketball. They look Dugtrio and gave them a blonde weave. I believe the only regional forms like I liked from that game were probably the Vulpix and Sandshrew lines, and Raichu because he still looked like a cutie. Now, after looking at these regional forms from the new game that is about to be released, Pokémon Legends Arceus, I believe they look even worse. Decidueye, Typhlosion, Dialga, Palkia, and many others just look silly to me. I would have been happy if they just created new Pokémon entirely instead of giving classic Pokémon forms that I believe ruin their appearance. |
There are some I definitely don't care much for, Persian being one of them.. I will never not think that round head looks weird. Others are kinda eh too, like Galarian Meowth and Perrserker. :( So I can see what you mean to an extent. But there are some I just adore so much, some being the ones you listed (Vulpix especially), that I kinda just ignore all the forms I don't like because the good ones make up for it lol. Vulpix was already so cute but the Alolan one is omg aww!!
As far as Legends leaks.. (spoiler for discussion on Legends forms that have not been officially revealed yet) Spoiler:
I hope we'll get more regional forms that are as cute as Vulpix, Sandshrew, and Raichu are - they're just perfect. |
They're a mixed bag. Pretty sure everyone has ones they do and don't like.
For me there's the really good ones like the Alolan Vulpix/Sandshrew & Galarian Ponyta lines. And there's major goofballs like the Galarian Mr. Mime line & Alolan Exeggutor. And then there's a whole bunch of idc either way ones xD I haven't looked at the Hisuian forms too much yet other than the ones Nintendo officialy announced. I like Huisui Braviary and Zorua from the ones they announced, and don't care about the other ones lol |
I believe regional forms were a good concept, but they started overdoing and it's getting old already. The lack of interesting ideas is showing and some regional forms are basically the same Pokémon with a color swap, a happier or angrier face, and a couple of extra details. Some are only relevant because they bring an unique typing and maybe a new signature ability, but design-wise they don't add anything of value.
Just look at things like Slowbro, it's basically "let's move the Shellder from its tail onto its left arm, then add some purple painting here and there... and voila... Galarian Slowbro!!!" |
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On one hand, I do like that they're trying to give spotlight or a new ray of hope for otherwise forgotten mons like Farfetch'd, Rapidash, Ninetales, and Corsola. (Cursola, aside from the name being one letter different than Corsola, is actually a brilliant concept.) But most of them are just average, disappointing, or unnecessary in my opinion. I think at this point the idea's been played out. It was interesting when it first happened in Alola, but it's been 3 regions in a row now. If they had all been made with at least some amount of quality of effort since the get-go, this wouldn't be as much of an issue. Even if, in a new region, the regional variants were all amazing, people would complain that it's the fourth time in a row they've made them. Another thing that bothers me about regional forms is that there are some unique type combinations that only belong to regional variants. Electric-Psychic for Alolan Raichu, Psychic-Poison for Galarian Slowbro and Slowking, and Normal-Ghost for Hisuian Zorua and Zoroark. In my opinion, they should be making new Pokemon for new type combinations, not trying to slap it on a preexisting Pokemon. |
I personally don't care that much either about regional variants but in my view, TPC or less walking a tightrope here.
There's only so much you can go with the Pokemon design space (unlike something like say, Digimon that has zero artistic guidelines regarding how evolutions work), when you start revisiting some of that design space you get people saying stuff "That's just a copy of X" or "That's just an uninspired way to do Y" or things of the like. If they do too little new Pokémon, people will complain too, and considering the concept artists don't have a lot of time to spend designing different stuff (Pokemon has a 1 ~ 2 year release cycle which is insanely short for AAA games, and finishing the Pokemon designs gotta be pretty high up the list considering you need to do models, animations, sprites, think if you want to incorporate the Pokemon imagery in scenery, etc.) going with regional forms is a bit of safe spot for them because you more or less have the basic body shape already done. From a lore perspective I actually like regional forms, it makes complete sense from an in-universe perspective that they'd be a thing and personally, I'd rather have regional forms than have other Pokémon that are more or less the same. E.g.: Pidgey, Hoothoot, Taillow, Starly, Pidove and Pikipek all occupy the same niche of Flying/Normal regional bird. Meowth, Glameow and Skitty are all normal cat Pokémon with two evolutions. |
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Part of it is probably the capitalist notion that there's no need improve a system that is working well enough, Pokemon sells a lot (for example, Sword and Shield have a very negative reception by a bunch of the fans and was still the most selling Pokemon game since Gen II) and design quality is probably being seen more as a qualifying factor rather than an order winning factor. Quote:
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Pokémon isn't an indie game that relies on charm anymore, like it arguably was back in Gen I, and the last non-remake game TPC did was by all means an enormous financial success. Considering the departure from the basic formula we're seeing with PL:A and BDSP, maybe they'll relax the usual requirements and start to get more time and bigger teams which quite frankly, I heavily support. The game dev industry is known for overworking its workers since you can usually exploit new dev's passion (which is probably doubly true to Pokémon since it was huge for a lot of new devs entering the market) and Japan is known to not have the healthiest work culture around. I truly believe that having bigger teams and more time to develop would be beneficial to everyone ... except the bottom line. And that's probably why we won't see that happening anytime soon unless the Pokémon games start to underperform. |
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personally, I couldn't care less if they stayed or didn't, they're just there for me
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All kinds of shortcuts are taken when you don't have a lot of time to do things "the proper way". Or maybe it's a mandate from above to focus on creating less original designs and to create more regional forms because they're more recognizable and therefore marketable even without the anime influence. Or it could be a mandate from Masuda that's known for being quite strict in the art direction. Or it could be an art department that realized that their efforts will always be criticized anyways and might as well do the least work to collect their paycheck (which frankly, I get it). There are a million possible reasons, and it's fine if you disagree with my take on what the reason is, but unless you can make a better argument, I'm more inclined to believe in the very reasonable hypothesis that the small art department is likely overworked, has tight deadlines and is taking some shortcuts to get the results asked. Just saying "there's nothing stopping them" without some kind of justification or experience in the process isn't really convincing. Edit: After posting this I realized that you might have been talking about "Well, they did it fine before regional forms, why can't they continue doing so?" That doesn't work out very well, for a number of reasons: - The shift from 2D to 3D: 3D models generally take more work to get right and translate from the initial 2D design sketch than the usual sprites. If you're doing a regional form you can use the other form's model as more or less a baseline that you can't really do when making a new Pokemon altogether. - The dwindling design space: There are about 9 water type turtle Pokemon right now and there are about 40 Pokémon which are more or less just birds with some elemental sprinkles. There's only so much you can do make them visually distinct. - Feature creep / Higher resolutions: Before the 3D shift you could reuse a lot of assets in a very obvious way, and the assets itself were relatively simple. Nowadays this isn't the case, which means that you need to waste more time working on those models and designs. There's a reason the number of new Pokemon after Gen V has been hovering around 70 ~ 90 ish compared to previous generations 100+. It also wouldn't surprise me if that was the reason they introduced Megas in Gen VI. Designing for 720p 3D is harder than designing 96p 2D. Quote:
All I said was that there was a backlash by a bunch of fans and it was still the best selling game in a long time. Even if we ignore the fact that the pandemic helped the Switch (and every game in it, by extension) by a huge margin, my point was that if the games with the most vocal backlash the franchise received in recent memory to the point that the game developers received death threats, it's extremely unlikely that they'll listen to fan complaints. Because they essentially learned that fan complaints are just a vocal minority lashing out, and that whatever they're doing right now is working. Quote:
I'm not sure if you were part of Pokémon internet spaces when Black and White were released but, trust me, it was received extremely poorly for a variety of reasons, the designs being one of them. Was it every person in the fandom? No, it's never every person, no one group is a monolith. Much like the SwSh or BDSP or LGP/E debates that have been happening there are always two sides screaming at each other, but was enough that most people that were participating during that time will have encountered groups of people complaining about BW. And maybe worst of all, this was reflected on sales: BW are the worst selling non-remake / non-third version games of the franchise by about 600 000 copies. BW2 are the third worst selling games in the franchise, only doing better than Crystal and Platinum ... except in Crystal and Platinum's case, GS and DP did very well with sales. While it's reasonably common to appreciate BW nowadays for the reasons you mentioned, this turnaround came too little too late. Some ideas were incorporated in later entries and there has been some experimentation happening with later entries, but I sincerely doubt we'll ever get a game that diverged so much from Pokémon norms like BW and BW2, at least within the foreseeable future. |
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The same thing with the blond weave wearing Dugtrio. People aren’t picking up the games because of that. That extra space could have been used for some new original Pokémon. Many people are also responding negatively to the Pokémon Legends Arceus leaks that revealed the regional forms in that game as well. As for the backlash, I get that. I just personally don’t understand why the Unova games received so much backlash in the first place. Those games were so well-done and arguably the best in the entire series, and many fans agree with that statement as well. Regardless, backlash from a vocal minority doesn’t mean anything. Just because they received such backlash doesn’t mean that they should continue focusing on regional forms. The majority of Pokémon fans would always appreciate new, original Pokémon being created in every single generation. Not everybody can be pleased. There would always be a few fans that don’t like something about Pokémon. Not every Pokémon fan likes every design. However, Game Freak put a lot more effort into generation V for the simple fact that they actually took the time to design several new Pokémon and create a different Pokémon experience. The designs also weren’t lazy as well, nor they did create bad-looking versions of previously existing Pokémon. I don’t even see why people complained about them. I thought that generation V had great designs for the most part. They were definitely a step up from generation IV’s designs, which I felt could have been a lot better. For example, even though I love Magmortar, Electivire, and Magnezone, I feel that they could have created these Pokémon so much better. I also believe that Palkia’s design was horrible, whereas the legendaries in generation V looked a lot better for the most part. Gen V Pokémon also look better than most of today’s regional forms. Even without regional forms, Pokémon has always done well and will continue to do so. I believe that certain fans thinking that generation V went beyond the norm was the main reason it got so much backlash at the time. Some Pokémon fans just don’t respond well to big changes. Other than that, there was nothing really about the game to complain about. Generation V was nearly perfect in every way possible. |
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All I'll say is that I find it highly unlikely that the current workflow of Pokemon, a billion dollar franchise that creates a ridiculous amount of artistic assets in a yearly / biyearly basis can be solved with this one simple trick. Quote:
Current data says that newer generations, which have lower amounts of new Pokemon and have regional forms are selling well enough that there isn't enough business pressure to force the creation of new designs. Quote:
And there's where marketability comes in, if you do a new design there's a higher chance people won't like it, but if you do "Vulpix but white" you're almost guanteed to get a bunch of plushies and shirts and other merch because of nostalgia and recognizability. For every "joke" regional form, you have other well liked forms that work well enough. Quote:
It's fine if you don't like them, but the game decisions are made to a wide, heterogeneous group. No one decision will please everybody, for example, I have seen multiple people in this very forums saying "There are enough Pokémon, we shouldn't have any new designs", I've seen lot of people saying "The new designs are just kinda bad. Gen ${insert_number_they're_nostalgic_for_here} was the last good generation of designs." If whatever you're gonna do will get criticized anyways, the only reason to avoid the easier thing is if that will hurt the bottom line in some way, which isn't happening right now, either because they're doing other things right enough to compensate for that or because the wider target audience that isn't emotionally invested enough to care about it. As a completely subjective sidenote, a big part of "these forms look silly" come across to me as being fueled largely by nostalgia. Living in a tropical country myself, I have failed to see why making one Pokémon that's based on a tree, based on another tree is silly. Palm / coconut trees are giant and thin, that's just something they do. And if they used that idea to make a new Pokemon, a lot of those same people who are very invested in Gen I and saying it's silly right now, would come out and say "that's just a copy of Exeggutor, Pokemon designs nowadays are so uninspired". Quote:
That's been my point the entire time: decisions in big companies are decided by the capitalist reasoning of "what's good for the bottom line" instead of some sense of artistic integrity or whatever. Quote:
But the backlash depends on a lot of historical reasons and it's not exactly appropriate for this thread. There is a thread in Previous Generations where people discussed this backlash, and I even posted some reasons there if this wasn't a rhetorical question. Quote:
As an example, when Gen V was released, some people were saying that Alomomola should have been a Luvdisc evolution. After Gen VII was released, some people were saying that Alomomola should have been Unovan Luvdisc. I sincerely disagree with your statement that fans would always appreciate new designs. Quote:
Since this conversation isn't going anywhere, I'll stop responding and clogging up the thread. We'll have to agree to disagree. |
well, to take L:A as an example, I'm pretty much in love with
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some are original and perhaps even better than their base forms (ninetales, sandslash), but I also agree that some, like exeggutor or dugtrio, just look pretty lazy. |
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