There appears to be no respite in sight for Pokémon Sword and Shield developer Game Freak.
The studio, which should be prepping celebrations for the release of its long-awaited RPGs, has instead found itself attracting severe backlash from fans due to a number of core changes. If you’ve been keeping up to speed on that front over the last few weeks, you’ll be acutely aware of the core issue – that Sword and Shield won’t feature a National Pokédex – but now there’s another potentially damning development causing a ruckus on social media.
When news of the National Pokédex’s removal first surfaced at this year’s E3, Game Freak stressed on numerous occasions that the cut was somewhat necessitated by the more detailed Pokémon models used in the Switch exclusives. Many, if not all, of these, were said to be created entirely from scratch rather than ported over from past installments. A justifiable if somewhat disappointing explanation, then, but now data miners believe they’ve uncovered evidence proving the contrary.
As per the findings of several 4chan users who managed to get their hands on early copies, comparisons of Pokémon polygon models between those found in Sword and Shield and last year’s Let’s Go! spinoffs imply that the majority were moved over wholesale, rather than created specifically for the former.
Unsurprisingly, the findings have prompted a surge of scathing criticism from fans, to the extent that the hashtag #GameFreakLied is currently a trending topic on Twitter. A post with more than 21,000 upvotes has since appeared on Reddit, too, which provides detailed comparisons between models new and old. The results are certainly not favourable for Game Freak, let’s just say.
It remains to be seen how – or even if – the studio will handle this most recent outrage, though for the sake of all involved, it would do well not to ignore the problem in the hopes it’ll fade away. Watch this space for more.