Why pokemon switch games have horrible graphics?

tetrahedronX900

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    • Seen Nov 23, 2023
    Sv swsh and legends Arceus have awful graphics? Like the switch is not incapable making good graphics?
     
    I don't really think the graphics is terrible but it's surely not one of the best ones.
    My main answer would be that GF wouldn't care about terrible graphics because the games sell well in any case.
    On the other hand, I also think it's probably something on which they compromise because of the fact that they release a new game almost every year.
    Maybe I am reading it in the wrong way, but those are the reasons I can find.
     
    As someone who doesn't care much about pretty graphics the games are fine in that regard to me.
    SV is in dire need of some bug fixing and general polish though, the box lag in particular.

    I don't consider any of the three to have awful graphics.
     
    The Switch is more than capable of good graphics - take a look at the Xenoblade ganes, Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom and Mario Odyssey for example. Iirc it's stronger than the PS3 which had some beautiful games (FFXIII comes to mind). It's more The Pokemon Company having Gamefreak churn out annual games while refusing to expand the studio with more staff. Or at the very least outsource some development to other Nintendo studios.
     
    Last edited:
    Pyrax said:
    The Switch is more than capable of good graphics - take a look at the Xenoblade ganes, Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom and Mario Odyssey for example. Iirc it's stronger than the PS3 which had some beautiful games (FFXIII comes to mind). It's more The Pokemon Company having Gamefreak churn out annual games while refusing to expand the studio with more staff. Or at the very least outsource some development to other Nintendo studios.
    Click to expand...

    They outsourced BDSP to a separate studio, ICLA. Its widely considered to be the worst remake, full of glitches and somehow having absurd compatibility issues with HOME…which was also developed by ICLA, which only makes the issues more inexcusable. At the same time GF worked on Legends: Arceus which got great reviews, but by virtue of deviating from the formula is, I believe, the lowest-selling of the Switch Pokémon games (not being a paired version won't have helped it there, but the game is better for it).

    The point about the annual release cycle is still relevant though.
     
    The games are very much victims of their development cycle. When you have a yearly release schedule then you can only focus on so much. Games like XB3, BotW and TotK had years of development. Monolithsoft also know what they're doing and offered a helping hand for both Zelda games. That's why those games handle pretty well despite all the strain on the console. Afaik TotK still has some issues. But given the sheer scale of that game it's kinda surprising that it's not worse.

    The problem is that optimization is one of the last things you do when developing a game. And a lot of the issues that Switch Pokemon games have are optimization problems.
     
    If I was going to be charitable about it, I would say its down to a lack of familiarity with the hardware, at least in part. The 3DS games improved noticeably between X/Y and Sun/Moon visually, and I would cite the lack of significant improvement between SnS and PLA/SV as being a change in format: Sword and Shield were not open world. When you combine that lack of familiarity with a smaller team than is standard for a title of this scope in the industry, as well as a shorter development cycle, you get...well, what we got with these. If we assume the next mainline series titles will be on Switch and follow a similar structure to SV, I would expect an improvement in the visuals to reflect a growing confidence with making games for the system.

    ...of course, if I was going to be cynical/realistic about it (delete as appropriate) I would say that visuals are an extremely low priority because Game Freak are very aware that these games will be major system sellers irrespective of their quality, and they'll pass Nintendo's quality checks because of this.
     
    KalloFox34 said:
    Personally, I think the graphics on SS and PLA look fine.

    SV is a bit iffy, but the actual character/Pokémon models look superb.
    Click to expand...

    SwSh and SV all have the same problem of being unable to load the Pokémon fast enough in the overworld when you sprint on your bike / sandwich machine, with the former also not loading berry trees fast enough weirdly.
    But in the non-open areas of SwSh I agree it looks fine. PLA is empty but I like its aesthetic more.

    SV's Pokémon models are definitely a lot better, you can even see the fur on Pikachu!

    A lot of BDSP actually is really nice to look at, there's just so much disappointment. Like the fact that its simultaneously somehow on a grid like the originals, and not, so you end up bumping into corners when it looks like you've gone past them (I find this a particular problem in the Grand Underground - a similar thing occurs in SV where you encounter a Pokémon that's a couple metres off to the side, and the game just jumps you to it). Or that they didn't give us walking Pokémon inside, in caves, or on snow - which is a LOT of the map! The in-battle models seem the same as SwSh which is fine, and the backgrounds are significantly nicer to look at than SwSh.
     
    I actually think SwSh looks pretty good, except for the Wild Area. A lot of other things look nice. It's Scarlet/Violet where the graphics seemed to have taken a decline but I guess that makes sense since they wanted to do a large, seamless open world. More to load and lag issues so they had to compromise. Legends is gloomy but that's the intended style and generally I think the models/graphics are ok!
     
    I don't think they have bad graphics? Then again, I am someone who doesn't even care about that sort of thing and found all the complaints about them annoying and overblown. Like, why care so much about it? Never really understood why people whined about a tree in SW/SH, for example.
     
    I don't know. You'd think that with Pokemon being one of the most successful media franchises worldwide ever, the games would look better than any other Nintendo series, but here we are. GF seems to lack in expertise on the matter and apparently no one from GF to TPC to Nintendo think that it is worthwhile enough to fix. I suppose it's just business being greedy, not spending anymore money than needed for financial success. Sad.

    The Pokemons' models themselves are actually great, and the texturing on them is fantastic in S/V. It seems like GF puts a lot of effort into character and Pokemon models and just kinda half-butt the rest of it.
     
    I guess good 3D graphics is just too much to ask from a small indie company like Gamefreak.

    My personal feel is, between the jump to 3D and the jump to new hardware it was one of the worst decisions to have been done and it functions as a severe detriment on the games. If Pokémon had stayed as a 2D game but with modern improvements, such as Octopath Traveler's "2DHD" artstyle and map, IMO it would have worked well and have sustained itself much better, in particular for churning out the Mandatory (Kanto) Remake of the Gen.

    And there's a factor of severe inexperience in programming as well. Saw a Tumblr post that details how apparently SV has a programmed skybox about 1400 times the size of Paldea, that might make for some sort of "Pokéarth skybox", that is rendered all the time despite only 1/1400th of it being visible at any given time... and even worse, there's a "space skybox" surrounding it that's also pre-rendered for light effects. If the programmers had made the skybox smaller or just removed the outer spacebox altogether, I'm p sure the games would regain between 4 and 10 FPS, and would function much better in the overworld.
     
    Pokemon was never really a game that had the greatest graphics of any generation but that still doesn't mean that Pokemon wasn't playable
     
    I think it's because the switch is too powerful for pokemon. pokemon graphics look awesome simplistic and with lots of character and life, like in stadium or battle revolution. and of course during the sprite-era
     
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