[Sword & Shield] It's no smiling matter

It occured to me one of the complaints about gen 7 titles was the always-smiling protagonist (a touch less-than-always in USUM). Despite the situation or events, your character would just smile blankly, as if they were a Ditto, or controlled by their hat.

But lookit, no smile!



Here's to a greater variety of expressions for the player at least.

Hopefully we'll see a more diverse range of expressions in the cutscenes and this isn't just custom animation for raids or anything! I'd love to have a protagonist whose face isn't glued to have the same expression 24/7, lol.

Oh yay! I do hope this exists outside of raids and whatnot. Having the protagonist blankly smile during cut scenes was weird to say the very least.

During the shot of you and Hop on the train you can see the protag laughing. (I don't know how to post pictures)

I MEAN, to be fair in SOME cutscenes in Sun/Moon, your character is shown with SOME expression, lmfao.

But since this footage really isn't final, I do wonder if the main character in Sw/Sh will actually have expressions. So far, it looks promising.

what :) you mean :) you don't like to just :) smile as the world crumbles around you :) i think it's :) a very realistic thing for pokemon :) we do it irl :) why not in pokemon :)

It would be nice for a change to give the characters a wide range of emotion, also maybe giving them voice would bring them to life instead of speech bubbles all the time

I'm hopeful that protags will be more emotive too, but I'm not getting my hopes up until we see some legit gameplay lol.

I dunno, I kinda liked having a character that was so dead inside they never reacted to the destruction around them. I really felt like the character and I were one.

On a serious note though, with the cuts that GameFreak is making, there better be more changes to facial expressions on the protagonist.

definitely an improvement from how things were in gen 7. :o kinda excited to see what other expressions the player character shows!

i'll miss it

nah i'm glad they're finally adding facial reactions to pokemon, i want my character to look PISSED OFF when he's insulted

The lack of facial expressions for SuMo's protagonists was pretty awkward. Hopefully the new protagonists are much more emotive in cutscenes, if nowhere else.

Isn't it hilarious that we're freaking out about this when the rest of gaming has been doing it for decades?

Sheep said:

Hopefully we'll see a more diverse range of expressions in the cutscenes and this isn't just custom animation for raids or anything! I'd love to have a protagonist whose face isn't glued to have the same expression 24/7, lol.

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This could be an occupational hazard for being a silent protagonist, which is "no smiling matter".

#1TrubbishFan said:

Isn't it hilarious that we're freaking out about this when the rest of gaming has been doing it for decades?

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I don't see anybody "freaking out" about it - an exaggeration there. Besides, we've seen more varied expressions on other characters - just not the protagonist specifically.

It's nice to see but I wasn't overly bothered by it in SM. Maybe this will help with the immersion though

It does feel abit weird, they're always smiling