[Sword & Shield] Too little had been revealed thus far...

The fact that it's only about slightly more than 1 month before release date but they'd been pretty stingy about releasing information, or do you like the amount of them being handled out?

For me I'd like a little more reveals, it seems so dry in the news section, and we only knew a small fraction of the new Pokemon we will be getting, with a weird 24 hours streaming only confirming some old existing Pokemon and all that hype for a mere Galarian Ponyta (Yes I do love them... still!).

Your thoughts on the quantity of information? For me they should start to reveal a little by a little more until the release, perhaps weekly, instead of repeating the same ol' ones.

remember when people complained that TPC(i) revealed too much what with their monthly trailers back in the SM/USUM days?

The run-up to these games has been a complete shitshow, frankly. After Masuda's terribly timed and poorly executed revelation that the games would be cutting out Pokemon, and then proceeding to repeatedly lie about the reasons for this, the games haven't really been able to get any momentum or excitement going. The demos have failed to withstand scrutiny, the reveals have had some cool ideas which have been terribly executed (the 24 hour stream could have been amazing if they had shown more than one bloody Pokemon!) and...well, I haven't seen marketing for a product this bad since the Wii U. Hell, since the original Xbox One reveal where they had planned to have it as an always-online DRM nightmare console. Anyone else remember how fun THAT was?

Game Freak got marketing right with XY, but pre-release leaks just before release destroyed what they had been building up, which was a damn shame. With SM and USUM it felt very much like they were trying to prempt the leaks by flooding us with information...and punishing the entire continent of Europe with a ridiculous delay for the actions of a small minority, some of which weren't even located in Europe.

With SnS they started off fine and then ultimately stumbled as they focused on entirely the wrong things, and failed to properly address the elephant in the room...or the elephant that they had taken out of the room and left to rampage around in the back garden. Don't mind that, it's just the cat. The silence gives me the distinct impression that they've given up and are falling back on the standard issue stony silence tactic that Nintendo adore whenever criticism is thrown their way: we don't care what you think, because we know these games will make us millions, so no, you don't get any pre-release information. Too bad. Sucks to be you. Go buy the games. Thanks.

But like... less reveals is good. There's less being spoiled to us. Sun/Moon were basically completely spoiled with the huge reveals. Isn't it better this way that there's less reveals?

colours said:

remember when people complained that TPC(i) revealed too much what with their monthly trailers back in the SM/USUM days?

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Myself included there. And I do prefer less than those days - they gave away too much, imo, because when playing the games there was just less to discover. I hope that remains the case in the last month.

I do agree that the marketing has been hit and miss. Sirfetch'd? Neat way to hype it up and get people speculating. Livestream? Too uneventful and long for one Pokemon. Town show-off video? Neat. Repeating that in the last day again? Questionable. Dexit? Terribad in several ways.

I think it honestly depends on how you look at it.

I remember a time in which before the pre-release hype due to the rise of social we got very little. So this isn't too uncommon to me. I honestly think X and Y, Sun and Moon, just spoiled us when it came to information. (that and leaks and YouTube videos don't help with that) There are so many things that we were given that we could've discovered ourselves. Releasing a quarter of the dex, characters that we could discover on our own, some key features and so forth left very little to be searched by the player. And while some key features were highlighted in the past. It wasn't completely spoiled by the trailer.

Here I see they've dialed back a bit, but honestly, I think we're fine until the release date. Most people going in casual understand it's a new Pokemon game, has a new key feature, new mons and etc and even Dexit. And honestly, with some exceptions that's all you really need. If you don't like the idea of Dexit, don't buy it and speak with your wallet. Want to play a traditional Pokemon game for the switch? Speaks for itself. Not sure? Just wait. Like what you see and don't care about Dexit? Just go in.

As for me, I like going in knowing the starter evos, moves, and having my team set, but honestly that info will be updated within the next couple of days and you aren't beating this game in a day unless you really want to speedrun it. I can understand wanting to at least know that. And many people go into Pokemon games looking for certain things too. That's why they highlight the competitive scene in trailers with new abilities, Dynamax for anyone interested in gimmicks, new pokemon, etc. I think they're trying to show a bit for everyone instead of just showing everything. While I do like having some information at my disposal I can't say that things shouldn't be let for us to discover on our own. Especially when many other games have even less than what we're getting in their trailers. I do understand that some people do like to go in blind completely and I can respect that.

That being said, I think they are trying experiment with the pre-release cycle. Which of course will be hit or miss.

The marketing has been a crapshow and they have sucked at revealing stuff. Yes SM revealed too much, but we have plenty to talk about. You can look at this site and tell a massive difference between how it was in BW, XY and SM. There has hardly been any speculation because we have nothing to talk about. XY did an amazing job with marketing and showing stuff.

BW would have probably been amazing as well, but then the entire Pokedex got leaked like a year before the games came out, which ruined build up.

SwSh has done a TERRIBLE job. There are somethings that need to be revealed, like starter evolutions. People want to see what they will be stuck with for the rest of the game.

The live stream was crap. You saw 10 different pokemon, maybe about 15 total. The day after, I went outside in my woods where I live to hunt and within an hour I saw 10 deer, a flock of turkey, a flock of geese, and a flock of buzzards. And a ton of birds and squirrels. We had 7 minutes of ANY pokemon in 24 hours. The other 1433 minutes was nothing, but the same annoying bell or whatever sound it was.

I have always hated information held back. I want to know what is in the game. I want to know what typing pokemon will be. I want to know what my starter is going to look like. We have ALWAYS known what the starters will look like from anime or tcg or toys before the game are released.

To me, because of the lack of information, if I was a new person too the game. I would never buy it. Yeah fine keeping story elements held, I do like finding that out myself. But everyone else, I want to know. We don't even have the names of any town.


Don't get me wrong, I love what they are doing, but there needs to be more of it. More pokemon should have been shown in that stream.

i kind of like it, it reminds me of the days when i would browse sites like mews hangout for ruby/sapphire news and the only news i got for them was through fansites or magazines - and usually those screencaps and the like were in japanese. i wouldnt know a thing until the game came out and i would be free to explore and find everything myself.

that being said, even with the minor bits of info we have, they put them out in awkward ways. maybe the next month will pick up and reveal more than like, four pokemon with two being reskins of gen one pokemon.

And although I am sure there are more pokemon, something that worries me is this, how many more are there? Everytime they slow down on reveals, there isn't anything left to show. I am sure there is plenty more, but I can't help but remember the past years, what's left?

After all this is said and done, was this all the information they showed because that is all there was? How will the community act if this was all we got because that is all there was?

XY didn't show everything, but there was still enough and they slowed down. SM stopped showing stuff in like September, because there wasn't much more to show. Let's Go literally stopped after a month or two because there was nothing else. But games like BW, they continued to push info at us at a decent pace event after the Pokedex got leaked because there was so much in the games. And then there was still a good amount to discover.

I can't really remember anything before that, but I know Johto Anime spent an entire weekend, slowly revealing new pokemon from Hoenn for us in a marathon and then there was still more undiscovered.

IcyIce said:

And although I am sure there are more pokemon, something that worries me is this, how many more are there? Everytime they slow down on reveals, there isn't anything left to show. I am sure there is plenty more, but I can't help but remember the past years, what's left?

After all this is said and done, was this all the information they showed because that is all there was? How will the community act if this was all we got because that is all there was?

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That is what I feel the most worrying right now, after seeing on Reddit contextualization of the full layout of the Wild Area revealed by Famitsu: that really seems to be nearly half of the region, almost the only way to connect most major cities... and from the perspective given in-world by the trailers we already know, that seems small. True, larger than anything in the Pokémon games so far, but still small in terms of an area that is supposed to feel open world (and that in the gameplay videos seems void). I fear that, as the Wild Area has been one of the most notable features of SwSh marketing so far (aside from the Gyms nearly everything we know is about it), and yet it is so small, the core content of the game isn't going to be anywhere near to what us fans have been hypothesizing, even after the reveal of the lack of the National Dex.

With so much marketing focus on Galarian forms and Dynamax, I'm not really expecting more new Pokémon than the last two generations had. There surely is going to be more but it is unreasonable to think GF suddenly decided to leave so many things unrevealed until release, especially given how the games are not being received very well due to the National Dex cut and the more attention given to the poor graphics, as well as poor choices like the 24-hour livestream. I'd say that if they had something really good to announce to counterbalance the bad reception, they would have already showed that - the fact they haven't kinda tells me that the Wild Area and Dynamax are probably the best things they have for these games... which, imho, both scream for a better execution (especially the Wild Area).

IcyIce said:

SwSh has done a TERRIBLE job. There are somethings that need to be revealed, like starter evolutions. People want to see what they will be stuck with for the rest of the game.

(snip)

I have always hated information held back. I want to know what is in the game. I want to know what typing pokemon will be. I want to know what my starter is going to look like. We have ALWAYS known what the starters will look like from anime or tcg or toys before the game are released.

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I agree with stuff like the stream not showing enough Pokemon (I'd say the other way around would be better though - a shorter stream rather than a full-blown 24 hours). But I don't think they officially announce Starter evolutions that often (leaks of the games due to stores breaking street date, scans of character design pages, or hacking of game demo content differ, or say someone noticing a picture on the side of a TCG box showing a new Pokemon differ from official announcements).

They did it last gen with the Alolan Starters, but I believe only gave us the mid-stages of Kalos ones, and gen 4 and 5 from what I recall had no official reveal prior to their release in Japan. (Correct me if I am wrong!)

I agree, only 1 month left and still no new eeveelution

Update

Reccently i had a dream about the new eeveelution, it was a dual dark/something type, and it hated some kind of pokemon, didn't renember which one

Yeah, I'm honestly wondering... There's usually way more reveals, but then again with SM they revealed so much that people felt like they played the whole game before it was even released.

So. Maybe this time they're gonna make us hold our breath for it.

All I've needed to know for these games is box legendaries and starter evolutions... I also like to know the version exclusives and see some of the characters but I don't need it. I'm fine with them not revealing too much this time but I will be pretty annoyed if I have to pick my starter without knowing it's evo since that's why I have decided on one yet.

It has been revealed that the games are 10.3GB which honestly isn't very big when Let's Go was like 4.1GB. Which is very... worrying. Especially since Kanto is the smallest region and only had 153 pokemon.


There is at least 368 pokemon, and then you double that since they all have Max forms and some of gigamax forms. Which puts at over 700. And then all the different forms. I don't know how much space each pokemon takes up, but 10gb just doesn't sound very big.

Palamon said:

But like... less reveals is good. There's less being spoiled to us. Sun/Moon were basically completely spoiled with the huge reveals. Isn't it better this way that there's less reveals?

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Oh okay. Let's be smart and hold back on lityle to no informarion. Just listen to yourself. Do you know anything about marketing? Their has to be more reveals to bring hype.

There's a balance. Reveal too much, and you ruin any ability for surprise during the game, which I feel is kinda important for Pokemon. Reveal too little, and as said there's a lack of hype leading to release. They may well ramp up in this last month, but we'll have to wait and see with that.

It is true, they still have one more Corocoro issue left, I think. We should have leaks before then. I know this month's issue has nothing new in it. Except for the wild area taking up half the region.

We might get one more trailer as well. We haven't had a Pokemon Direct in a while and Game Freak's 30th Ann is on the 16th, so we might get a new trailer then.

And like said above, too much is what SM did, but now too less is what SwSh is doing. There has to be a balance.

perhaps my memory isn't great, but im unsure if we've ever really had a "balance" of news leaks before. if it isn't trailers every single month spoiling a bunch of information, then it's corocoro (if you were around in like, the BW/B2W2 days) releasing new pokemon/features (?) every month or so. just judging from the SM/USUM pre-release reactions around this forum in particular, i'd say people were more satisfied than not with the pre-release cycle of SM as well as USUM because there was a lot more to talk about and speculate when you compare it to SwSh where there's not a whole lot to talk about. discussion and speculation gets people more and more excited. if there's nothing for them to talk about, that excitement fades. that's not good marketing.

quite frankly it's a lose/lose situation for TPC because too much hype is exactly why people got too sour on USUM. does anyone remember this trailer in particular? everyone got the impression that USUM was going to be like B2W2 because of that one line ("this isn't the Alola you thought you knew") and when people got their hands on the game, it created such a polarization of... you either love it and got what you expected or hated it and feel like you got duped by TPC for misleading you.

idk what a middle ground would look like, since everyone has their own idea of what information they really care about and what information they don't. for SwSh in particular, i gotta admit that while i am looking forward to getting the game, there's not so much for me to talk about with my friends which leads to a bit of disappointment for me.

My hype has only been rising since the Farfetch'd tease. That was great. I'm probably at full momentum!