Pokemon Sword & Shield E3 Conference: #BringBackTheNationalDex

Wow, that escalated quickly, huh. E3 came and went, and I wasn't... I wasn't the most excited about most of the things that were announced in all of the E3's. We got some neat trailers, we got Keanu Reeves showing up, we've got the Final Fantasy VII remake and... I dunno, I'm still working my way through a huge, huge backlog of old games that I'm probably not really going to pick up any of these other than the Nintendo ones. Breath of the Wild 2 got a trailer but it's one of whose "we're working on it, stop pestering us" bit so I don't see it coming out for at least another year or so.

Most relevant to my usual blogging content, though, is the Pokemon Sword and Shield news. We got a demo and a pretty fun looking water gym, as well as the reveal of a couple of new Pokemon, which are... neat? Yamper is the obligatory corgi Pokemon and apparently he's an electric type and the goodest of the boyes, and I want sixty hundred of him. Impidimp has absolutely bizarre proportions -- I welcome a Dark/Fairy little goblin or sprite or whatever, but the design is probably the first out of Sword & Shield that I would call a complete miss for me. Maybe it's the screenshots that aren't doing the model justice, or something? I dunno. I don't like him.

We also got significant amount of showcase of the Wild Area gameplay, and... and it's cool and all, but man, I can't tell you how utterly indifferent I am about the prospect of foraging for random stuff like "pack of potatoes". I don't dislike the feature, since it's just another feature in the game that makes the adventure feel that much richer, but it's not something that I would say I'm clamouring for. It's like... they're trying so hard to make this have as many Breath of the Wild features as possible, and Pokemon and Legend of Zelda are completely different sorts of RPG genres, y'know?

Also, I cannot state just how much I love the seamless traveling from regular bike to surfing bike. That's amazing.

There's also some kind of rather primitive multiplayer where you can meet other players running around in the overworld, which, for me, is "neat, a lot of people seem to like it, but I don't care", and I just really, really wish that this isn't a sign that I have to be online to play through my Wild Mode. SO far, though, it just seems like you're only connected to this sort of multiplayer if you actually want to connect to other players willingly, which is nice. Am I just old and antisocial? Probably. It's just another thing that I acknowledge is pretty neat, but has never been something I really care to have in a Pokemon game.

But the biggest and most controversial news from the entire presentation was the little bit of bad news tacked onto the end of it -- the fact that, for the first time in the multiple-decade long history of this franchise, not all of the previous Pokemon will appear in this game.

That is FUCKING STUPID.

I've calmed down a lot, and if I wrote this a couple of hours ago I'd be in full-on childish rant mode, but come on.

One of the biggest appeal that Pokemon has as a franchise compared to its competitors like Digimon and Monster Hunter or whatever is just how... how streamlined everything was for a franchise that's all about catching some 800-900 creatures. Everything is neatly divided into generations, everything is accessible in the main games, you just have to jump through some hoops to get all your favourites. There is something for everyone, there are people out there who might rank unremarkable pokemon like Finneon or Maractus or Seaking among their favourites. And now a significant portion of the older Pokemon are apparently going to be cut out entirely, which is... which is honestly just bizarre.

Let's take the fact that a lot of the models in Sword and Shield just appear to be ever-so-slightly updated versions of the original 3DS models from XY. That was a game made in 2013. That was a game made in 2013 that fit into a god damned 3DS cartridge, which has like, what? 4 gigabytes or thereabouts? And the Switch cartridge has like... I've seen people say it has 30 gigabytes? And you're telling me that with the honestly pretty minimal-looking changes we've seen on the character models, that it's impossible to bring all of the Pokemon models into a Switch cartridge?

The argument that it's for the quality of the graphics doesn't hold up either. The battle graphics look only ever so slightly more complex than the 3DS games, and we're clearly having shortcuts like Double Kick being animated with the dumb Scorbunny jumping in place. if they actually added actual animation improvements like animating double kick style moves for everyone, maybe there's an argument, but no. The more I look at the trailers, the more it looks like the "but the graphics!" argument is completely bullshit. And, yeah, the overworld is neat, but if we're being honest, compred to other Switch games, it's decidedly barely reaching par. For new mechanics? If we're being honest, the Wild Area just looks like a slightly fancier version of the "sometimes the Pokemon chase you down" areas in the 3DS games. It's bullshit is what it is.

And it's not even something like the original release of Generation VI either, where all of the models are programmed in, but we have to wait for Bank or whatever to be finalized to bring previous generation Pokemon games back. Or the Generation III games, where all the 386 Pokemon were programmed in but dummied out until other games like FRLG and Colosseum allowed you to access the Pokemon not catchable in Hoenn.

Like, if they did something similar to the old Generation III and V games -- disable the national Pokedex until you've completed the main story -- I'd give them thumbs-up. It prevents things like getting a level 100 Garchomp or something and just breaking the game and not playing through the game the way the designers intended the game to be played. Honestly, I felt like that was one of the biggest problems of the Wonder Trade system as a whole, and I kinda wished that the games would disable these features until the post-game. Like, having a majority of the game centered on a regional pokedex has always been something that I really wished the modern games would enforce more, but to go the drastic way and cut out a significant amount of the available Pokemon from even entering the game in the first place? I dunno. It just feels like such a decision that honestly won't please anyone. Mega evolutions and Z-moves being out? Regrettable, but understandable. Actual Pokemon species being excluded from even being transferred into a new generation? The "just play the old games" excuse really doesn't hold up either, because that's comparing apples to oranges.

Also, a lot of people are talking about DLC, but honestly... I don't really see Nintendo really doing a proper DLC for Pokemon. That's bullshit.

Perhaps the most stupid reason, though, for me personally, is that this makes it easy to balance things competitively, which... yeah. Competitive versions of any game has always, always been kind of the bane of doing anything fun. Whatever the hell happened to ban-lists? Just ban all mega evolutions and legendaries, and maybe a couple of problematic Pokemon. Implement the Smogon tier list or some equivalent in your Wi-Fi battles. Or, hell, start nerfing whatever the hell is overpowered and causing all sorts of problems instead of cutting out a couple hundred Pokemon from the game at all. Cutting out huge chunks of the existing Pokemon for competitive reasons is just dumb, and trying to appeal to the competitive crowd by using this as an excuse is a stupid, stupid decision.

(And yet, somehow, through ALL of the Pokemon we've seen in the trailers now that we know that they're selecting a specific group of Pokemon to appear, motherfucking Sawk makes it in)

(On that vein, though, good old Trubbish and Garbodor also somehow made it in, something I find fun because I don't mind those two)

And... and I tried to give myself some time to digest this. I know Sword and Shield are way too late in production for Nintendo to really do anything about it. But honestly, I really wished that the negative reception towards this specific aspect of the game boils up a lot more. Let Nintendo know that the fandom loathes this particular change. Don't attack the other aspects of the game, don't attack the specific people that are making the game, because I'm sure they tried their best... but honestly, I'd rather have all 800 or however many Pokemon in the game, with the ones that are not involved in the main story perhaps looking a bit more potato in their graphics, rather than having all of these "let's ape Breath of the Wild" nonsense. I dunno.

I've always been lukewarm on Sword and Shield other than "hey, new Pokemon" and "the game looks pretty". I like the goddamn franchise enough to still going to go out and buy the game in November. But so far, other than the graphics, some aspects of the wild area and the new Pokemon, none of these new things are doing it for me. Dynamax looks gimmicky and not especially interesting, the multiplayer is going to be primitive at best and intrusive at worst, and the whole bit about not being able to transfer Pokemon is going to leave a sour, sour taste in my mouth. This won't ruin the game itself for me, but I really, really wish that Nintendo will re-consider this in subsequent projects. Because isn't that the whole point of a main series game?

The neat ray of sunshine is that at least everyone is outraged at everything that's going on, in both the US and Japan. There are apologists out there, which genuinely baffles me -- you might not mind it. And that's fair. But don't apologize for Nintendo making a completely shitty decision that benefits no one and bodes nothing well for the franchise as a whole.

So as not to clutter up the blog, here is a post that I did as a follow-up in 18/6/2019 under the break.




Man, fuck the decision to cut away a significant portion of previous Pokemon. I think if you try and look for the hashtag of #BringBackTheNationalDex on Twitter, you find just how absurd any of the stupid reasons for excluding any of the Pokemon at all is. None of the excuses really hold up to scrunity. Not enough space for models (the Switch cartridge has easily more than 12 times the capacity of a 3DS cartridge),  *hack* competitive balance (bans have always been a thing), making room for the pretty graphics (ain't that pretty, if we're being honest). Now while there are some apologists out there who I can only assume are being bribed by Nintendo in some way, the general consensus of everyone in the world, including Japan, have been overwhelmingly negative.

Thank god, because this is a stupid decision. One of the things I've been championing and outright praising about the Pokemon franchise... or, well, I probably have to put in a disclaimer of "pre-2019 Pokemon", is that they appreciate the fact that each Pokemon is someone's favourite. Someone out there really likes Qwilfish, I bet. Someone out there has a huge, strong attachment to Goodra and that it's their very first competitive Pokemon or something. Someone has a strong attachment to Darumaka because they beat Generation V with it. Someone probably identifies and really loves Trubbish. I personally like a lot of other weirder Pokemon that tend to not get as much love from the franchise.

And I really do hope that the backlash is so strong that even if they don't fix it for Sword and Shield... and I really do think that it's not going to impact Sword and Shield, since they're so late in development already, I really hope that any subsequent games in this generation of games or the next will fix this. Because frankly, it's pretty damn inexcusable.

And I just booted up one of the trailers and come on, the damn models are the same damn graphic assets you lazy fuckers have been using since 2013. It would have been acceptable if they had made brand new HD models and animations or something, but nope. This is the height of idiocy.

But I took a brief look at Serebii's listing of the Pokemon that people have been scouring the Pokemon Sword/Shield trailers to try and desperately figure out who made it into the new games, and another thing that people have essentially expected is also true -- Kanto pandering. It's not enough that they got the brunt of love in Generation VI's mega evolutions, or they got a second remake of the original games, at this point it's highly likely that a vast majority of the original 151 is making it into the new games, except maybe Jynx because she's a controversial lady.

So... who made the cut, and who didn't? And who is likely to not ever make the cut?

On one vein, I do think that Nintendo cutting out a lot of the more extraneous alternate forms for some of the Generation IV-VI Pokemon is understandable, if not something I'm a huge fan of. Even without considering the legendaries (most of which need two or more models) or mega evolutions (each of them need an extra model), to some extent I understand that Nintendo doesn't want to bog down the game with 27 Unown models, 4 Deerling and Sawsbuck models, 2 Cherrim models, 2 Darmanitan models, 5 Minior models, the Alolan forms, however many models they assigned to Vivillon and Furfrou and so on... but... I dunno. The whole "your excuse being that you need to make space is dumb and you should feel dumb" statement I made before still rings true, but if it was just cutting out forms, I probably won't be this salty.

But now knowing what we know and that this is going to be a "who's allowed into Galar" survival games nonsense, I'm going to take a look at the list of confirmed older Pokemon and talk about them and air my grievances a bit. Here we go. And no, I'm not pulling any punches here.

Generation I families:

• Charmander, Charmeleon and Charizard.  
• Caterpie, Metapod and Butterfree. 
• Pichu, Pikachu and Raichu. Duh. 
• Cleffa, Clefairy and Clefable. 
• Vulpix and Ninetales
• Diglett and Dugtrio
• Growlithe and Arcanine
• Machop, Machoke and Machamp
• Gastly, Haunter andgengar
• Onix and Steelix
• Rhyhorn, Rhydon and Rhyperior
• Goldeen and Seaking
• Magikarp and Gyarados
• The entire Eevee bunch.
• Munchlax and Snorlax
• Mewtwo and Mew

Again, a bunch of pretty expected favourites and marketable ones are here. Pikachu, Charizard, Eevee, Mewtwo, Mew, Snorlax... plus a bunch of the more 'classic' ones. Magikarp and Gyarados, Onix, the Butterfree line... there's no real confirmation either way, but I'm asuming that the Bulbasaur, Squirtle, Psyduck and Jigglypuff lines will be making it into the games as well considering how they're pretty much as iconic as some of the others here. I'm not sure how much they're considering the impact of the Detective Pikachu movie, because I'd think that they would include others that are prominent in that movie like Mr. Mime or Pidgeot.

Possible exclusions? Shit, I dunno. Nintendo has always openly favoured the Kanto Pokemon with good reason -- that reason being marketing. I'm assuming the Alolan forms are just out for good, but the only ones I can see them excluding from the Kanto pokedex are probably Jynx (she's controversial), Porygon (controversial for a different reason) and... I dunno, maybe the legendary birds? Who knows at this point how many legendaries we'll be having?

Generation II families:

• Hoothoot and Noctowl
• Chinchou and Lanturn
• Togepi, Togetic and Togekiss
• Wooper and Quagsire
• Wynaut and Wobbuffet
• Sneasel and Weavile
• Mantyke and Mantine
• Larvitar, Pupitar and Tyranitar

As always, poor second generation ended up being Nintendo's bastard stepchild, and we haven't seen any of the Johto starters show up anywhere, and it's worrying. I don't see them cutting out starters at all, but considering Nintendo has already skipped on the Johto bunch when they were handing out mega evolutions... who knows? Presumably, if they are just lazy and don't want to do the whole resources thing, the Unown are out. Maybe the legendaries, too? Shit, I dunno.

Generation III families:

• Lotad, Lombre and Ludicolo
• Wingull and Pelipper
• Ralts, Kirlia, Gardevoir and Gallade
• Electrike and Manectric
• Budew, Roselia and Roserade
• Wailmer and Wailord
• Trapinch, Vibrava and Flygon
• Feebas and Milotic
• Duskull, Dusclops and Dusknoir
• Snorunt, Glalie and Froslass

Of course the ever-marketable Gardevoir made it in. Not a whole ton from the third generation as well, and, again, no starters yet, which is worrying. I do think more easily than the first two generations, the third generation legendaries are out, since this is the generation where we first have legendaries with extra forms like Deoxys. Presumably ones with extra forms like Castform are out as well?

Generation IV families:

• Combee and Vespiquen
• Drifloon and Drifblim
• Bronzor and Bronzong
• Riolu and Lucario
• Hippopotas and Hippowdon
• Snorunt and Abomasnow

Again of course the ever-marketable Lucario made it in. Not a whole lot from the fourth generation as well, although that's because a lot of generation four pokemon are evolutions of previous generations of Pokemon. Remember when Nintendo cared for previous generations of Pokemon? We're presumably junking the fourth generation's massive amount of legendaries and alternate forms. Honestly, I'd think that the legendaries in this game are at the peak of having alternate forms and whatnot, but I'd rather they remove the ability of, say, Arceus and Giratina and Shaymin to access multiple forms rather than removing them entirely.

Generation V families:

• Roggenrola, Boldore and Gigalith
• Tympole, Palpitoad and Seismitoad
• Sawk
• Trubbish and Garbodor
• Minccino and Cinccino
• Vanillite, Vanillish and Vanilluxe
• Frillish and Jellicent
• Joltik and Galvantula
• Axew, Fraxure and Haxorus
• Golett and Golurk
• Rufflet and Braviary
• Deino, Zweilous and Hydreigon

A lot more of the Generation V Pokemon make it into Galar, although considering that the art director from the Unova games is apparently part of the Galar team, I'm not surprised that his babies, the Vanillite line, made it into Sword and Shield. I am kind of happy that Trubbish and Vanillite, the ones that people really derided, made it into Sword and Shield... that'd help a lot of the more angry, knee-jerk angry fans to make some noise, surely?

Hydreigon and Tyranitar's inclusion is interesting. Are all the pseudo legendaries making it into this game? Or are we cutting out a significant portion of them? Sawk and Braviary are making it into this game, but are their couterparts, Throh and Mandibuzz?

Generation VI families:

• Bunnelby and Diggersby
• Pancham and Pangoro
• Espurr and Meowstic
• Swirlix and Slurfpuff
• Inkay and Malamar
• Hawlucha
• Goomy, Sliggoo and Goodra
• Bergmite and Avalugg
• Noibat and Noivern

A lot of new fandom favourites like Pancham, Espurr, Noivern and Hawlucha make it into the game, but I have a feeling like the 3DS era Pokemon are going to make it into Sword and Shield just because their merchandise are still in stores or whatever? I can see them taking out Vivillon or Pumpkaboo or Furfrou, because of the whole "waaah too many models" excuse. It's a dumb excuse.

Generation VII families:

• Grubbin, Charjabug and Vikavolt
• Wishiwashi
• Mudbray and Mudsdale
• Stufful and Bewear
• Bounsweet, Stenee and Tsareena
• Wimpod and Golisopod
• Mimikyu

Of course Mimikyu made it in, my heavily marketable baby. Not a whole ton of Alolan Pokemon are seen. Presumably Ultra Beasts are just out, because they're just picking the most marketable Pokemon out there and the Ultra Beasts are decidedly not the most marketable. Which is a shame. I really, really like the Ultra Beasts. 

Man, the more I see and look at the ones they pick and choose for this game, the more confused I am. The more I see the amount of space available in the Switch cartridge (64 gigabytes!) the more I am confused that they didn't just straight-up include the models of the older Pokemon in this game. The entirety of a 3DS game like Sun/Moon will fit into 4 gigabytes, and clearly the sum amount of Pokemon models will fit into less than that, so... so what the hell? And that's the sort of thing that really pisses me off. A huge aspect of what made Pokemon so marketable, and its "soul", if we're being sappy, is that there is a specific Pokemon out there for everyone. Maybe someone has a sad, memorable story with a Shedinja. I've seen people sharing stories about how a now-dead sibling or whatever leaving them a Pokemon that they're still trading upwards to future generations. Shit, I'm even kind of sad about the Ultra Beasts!

And it's just pretty dumb. Make a good amout of the National Dex inaccessible? Sure. Not overload the game with trying to make 1000+ Pokemon available in the wild? Not a problem. Put in the damn game models, and have the 400-500 ones you want to use in this game be readily available, just like how the damn franchise has been since Generation III. Honestly, at this point I'm just soured and so turned off by Sword and Shield at all. Because no amount of fancy new NPC's or half-assed dynamaxing features or let's-be-honest-we'd-rather-have-more-Pokemon pretty graphics or half-baked multiplayer nonsense is going to make me care for a Pokemon game that doesn't even have the bare minimum of having all of the Pokemon from the previous games be programmed in some way. I would rather them delete this entire "Wild Area" half-assed open-world multiplayer crap (which I bet will be disappointing, honestly -- it seems way too bare bones from the trailers). It just leaves me with so much tired unexcitement towards the new games, because new trailers will just inevitably lead more to people hunting for, say, Houndoom or Blaziken or Absol or Chandelure or Volcarona or Cherrim or Oricorio or any of their favourites to see if Nintendo would deign to include them.

#BringBackTheNationalDex. Make noise at Nintendo, throw as much negative shade onto this. Once they realize just how huge of a mistake they've made, they can fix it in the next generation. 

This is why Digimon as a gaming franchise died, Nintendo. Don't make the same mistake.