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Digital Foundry: Pokémon Scarlet / Pokémon Violet - Incredibly Poor Visuals + Performance

ADiTAR

ידע זה כוח
Omg, those tiled textures. That's really bad.

I wonder how this happened when two games 10 months apart look so different.
 

Holammer

Member
The most *generous* excuse I can imagine is that it was originally made for new hardware that's failed to materialize, so they dumped it on the Switch and put it on the choppingblock to make it work. Not much of a theory, but it's best I got.

Aliens.jpg
 

nowhat

Member
Wow, this is terrible.

Shockingly bad.
...and yet, here's me with the popcorn, waiting for the Nintendefenders*) to tell us how "this is fine".

*) We've already established "green rats", and "blue squirrels" seem to be agreed upon after Ragnarök - what would be Nintendo's "spirit animal"? Red... what?
 

Saber

Gold Member
I think what hurts me the most its this extremelly close pop ins, very ugly textures(I guess even the PS2 era had better textures than this blurry, vomit looking walls and ground) and very frequent stuters. Its really hard to watch this and seeing people hyping this.
 

Robb

Gold Member
Man, everything is so bad. Doesn’t look finished in slightest. Can’t believe this actually got shipped in this state.

Was a fun watch though.
 

_Ex_

Member
Most popular best selling game franchise in the world, and these are the 2022 graphics you get:

81-TGFp-Bcv-LL-SL1500.jpg


71t-Uhuvl2-FL-SL1500.jpg


71-K4-L93j-KXL-SL1500.jpg


And even with such paltry pixels, reviewers are reporting performance issues with Pokémon Violet/Scarlet.

Game Freak is a fat and lazy joke of a developer. Violet/Scarlet will still sell millions regardless, because nostalgia addled millennials and their indoctrinated kids don't care about quality production.
 

Gaiff

Gold Member
Most popular best selling game franchise in the world, and these are the 2022 graphics you get:

81-TGFp-Bcv-LL-SL1500.jpg


71t-Uhuvl2-FL-SL1500.jpg


71-K4-L93j-KXL-SL1500.jpg


And even with such paltry pixels, reviewers are reporting performance issues with Pokémon Violet/Scarlet.

Game Freak is a fat and lazy joke of a developer. Violet/Scarlet will still sell millions regardless, because nostalgia addled millennials and their indoctrinated kids don't care about quality production.
I'm looking at it on an iPhone 13" screen and it looks pretty good to be honest. I can imagine it looking pretty decent on the Switch OLED, but on a monitor? Oof.
 

Shut0wen

Member
After xenoblade 3 which has afew performance issues but isnt game breaking, this game was rushed and performance issues lie on gamefreak or Nintendo for pushing them to release a game which wouldnt meet the standard, sad since the last game was going in the right direction and this no difference between violet and sword
 

Same ol G

Member
...and yet, here's me with the popcorn, waiting for the Nintendefenders*) to tell us how "this is fine".

*) We've already established "green rats", and "blue squirrels" seem to be agreed upon after Ragnarök - what would be Nintendo's "spirit animal"? Red... what?
Lobster
 

MrA

Banned
Most popular best selling game franchise in the world, and these are the 2022 graphics you get:

81-TGFp-Bcv-LL-SL1500.jpg


71t-Uhuvl2-FL-SL1500.jpg


71-K4-L93j-KXL-SL1500.jpg


And even with such paltry pixels, reviewers are reporting performance issues with Pokémon Violet/Scarlet.

Game Freak is a fat and lazy joke of a developer. Violet/Scarlet will still sell millions regardless, because nostalgia addled millennials and their indoctrinated kids don't care about quality production.
meanwhile on the same hardware 5 years earlier at both better frame rate and resolution,

portable_002_Rj5Fuc7.bmp


but ultimately pokemon sells millions if the average user doesn't care neither will nintendo
 

Comandr

Member
Christ that was brutal.

Donald Glover Reaction GIF


I really enjoyed the game. Putting the awful performance and presentation aside, the game itself is a lot of fun. But like John said, pokemon fans deserve better.

What I’m really afraid of is that the game gets a patch or two to resolve some of the more glaring gamebreaking issues and then they just release entirely new ultra violent and scarlet next year as switch 2 launch titles and everyone lauds them as such great games and wow the graphics are so good and blah blah blah.

I’m afraid that these versions might look like butt because they just had to crank something out as a placeholder for better versions.
 

spons

Gold Member
The thing crashed on me today, besides all the performance issues. I can't believe they fucked such a fun game up this bad from a technical perspective.
Lack of any statement and conflicting reports on refunds is annoying as well. Just announce that they're working on it. That's literally the least they can do at this point.
I don't mind the graphics as it is though. It looks good enough to me, just fix the bugs and performance.
 

Thief1987

Member
At first i was impressed with their audacity to be so negative about something, but it seems that they just didn't receive a free copy. Oh silly nintendo, so much years in the game and still didn't learn how to work with the shills.
 

93xfan

Banned
...and yet, here's me with the popcorn, waiting for the Nintendefenders*) to tell us how "this is fine".

*) We've already established "green rats", and "blue squirrels" seem to be agreed upon after Ragnarök - what would be Nintendo's "spirit animal"? Red... what?
What you fail to understand is that it adds to the atmosphere. I don’t want good visuals in my bad game.
 

Umbasaborne

Banned
Nintendo and tpc should be fucking ashamed of themselves. Too often they get a pass for this shit, but im glad people are speaking up. The state of this game is unacceptable
 

UnNamed

Banned
I have the feeling Gamefreak acted like a contractor to an external, inexperienced team who made the game with some code from the previous games + their (shitty) work. I can't explain otherwise those shitty tile textures and models from a bad 1995 PS1 game.
 

Fbh

Member
So basically the story of all Pokemon games released since GameBoy.

The 2D ones were pretty competently made, and compared favorably to other games on the system. They also got a bit more of a pass because they were lower budget games for super weak handheld hardware and priced accordingly (If I remember correctly they were like $35 during the NDS era).

But gamefreak has completely dropped the ball in regards to bringing the franchise up the standards of a proper $60 console release
 

Fredrik

Member
The most *generous* excuse I can imagine is that it was originally made for new hardware that's failed to materialize, so they dumped it on the Switch and put it on the choppingblock to make it work. Not much of a theory, but it's best I got.

Aliens.jpg
I think it’s spot on. We’re seeing a Cyberpunk last gen version here without a next gen version.
 
The most *generous* excuse I can imagine is that it was originally made for new hardware that's failed to materialize, so they dumped it on the Switch and put it on the choppingblock to make it work. Not much of a theory, but it's best I got.

Aliens.jpg
The obvious explanation is that despite being only 170 people strong, they decided to release two major games this year, with their previous major game being only three years ago. Not shocking that there is a lack of polish when they also have to hit the holiday period.

Why do they work like that? I don’t know, but clearly someone in charge is a cheap ass bastard, or they simply don’t give a fuck about anything.
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
Ah, stupid me. But since we're using simple animal names - red frogs?
Was basing it off of captain toad to be fair.

But we need another rodent to go with rats and squirrels.

Red hamsters?
Red lemmings?
Red voles?
 

nowhat

Member
Was basing it off of captain toad to be fair.

But we need another rodent to go with rats and squirrels.

Red hamsters?
Red lemmings?
Red voles?
Yeah that was my first reaction (that you were referencing Captain Toad, and by extension toadstool mushrooms) as well. In my defense, English is not my first language.

I'm quite liking "red lemmings", especially considering their behaviour in video games.

("fun" fact - lemmings in real life don't actually plunge to their death mindlessly, the thing was staged by Disney "documentarists")
 
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Mowcno

Member
Game freak should be ashamed for releasing it in this state and Nintendo should be ashamed for publishing it. They already released arceus this year, this should have been delayed.
 

Power Pro

Member
As someone who usually likes to call Digital Foundry "the nitpick channel", I can't disagree with what they're saying about this right now. It's mindboggling how it's worse than even their own game that released this year. The Pokémon Company really should have made Legends Arceus their holiday 2022, while Scarlet/Violet could have been holiday 2023. It needed more time in the oven, and maybe it would have at least ran better.

The DF doesn't even touch on how things really tank when you're moving across water. I was trying to grind one of my grass Pokémon, and the best way to do that would be to fight some water Pokémon, and while traveling over water, the performance was getting really unbearable. I'm usually very forgiving about such things, but it was hurting my enjoyment of the game.
 
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