Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are BROKEN. What happened? - Tama Hero
Вставка
- Опубліковано 2 гру 2022
- Pokémon Scarlet and Violet for the Nintendo Switch are out, and they have horrible performance issues. It might seem like the game developers of these Pokemon games are obvious, they're made by Game Freak, the same people who make all of the Pokemon titles. But you might be surprised who else helped develop these games, and what other names are in the credits. Time for Tama to take a deep dive!
You are definitely gonna wanna see my full reviews of Pokemon games:
Pokemon Diamond and Pearl - • Pokémon Diamond and Pe...
Pokemon Gold and Silver - • Pokémon Gold Silver an...
Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire - • Pokémon Ruby and Sapph...
Pokemon Fire Red and Leaf Green - • Pokémon FireRed & Leaf...
Pokemon Red and Blue - • Pokémon Red and Blue: ...
Pokemon Colosseum - • Pokemon Colosseum is b...
Click here to subscribe! ua-cam.com/users/tamashiihirok...
SOCIAL LINKS:
See more videos: / tamashiihiroka
Support the show! / tamashiihiroka
I stream on Twitch as TamashiiHiroka
Follow me on Twitter! / tamashiihiroka
#Pokemon #Scarlet #Violet #PokemonScarlet #PokemonGlitches #GameFreak #Nintendo #Nintendo Switch - Ігри
If this Byte left you hungry for more, please, enjoy the entrée and feast yourself on this playlist of all my in-depth Pokemon reviews! ua-cam.com/play/PLz5XeL444xPATlw8IQd082Xy2ow7bzGiD.html
Thanks to Lewtwo for the credits footage!
@FinalxNinja Done and done! ua-cam.com/play/PLz5XeL444xPC-DNbAdpoQ2ngbMPFbtClp.html
@@Tama-Hero so in your thumb nail the lanky character model yeah a lot of people are associating that glitch with other common glitches in the game that is not true that’s the result of somebody actively doing that the models I have personally tested cannot do that unless you make it do that yourself so the game is not broken. It’s just the glitches are funny and fun to do anything that seems like it doesn’t belong doesn’t stuff like the lanky animations / characters or anything that seems like it would be in a game, so just call of duty or other games of that standard are purposely done so people can see the game is broken I assure you yes while the game is very buggy, it is not broken and in fact, very fun
people still bought millions of copies...
@@Tama-Hero Madden series is an good comparison to the pokemon more recently game development,I also think megaman battle network series is good comparison especially battle network 4 in term of polished
how about a bits about how non of the gym challenges in either gen. 8 or 9 have anything to do with raising a Pokemon, what dose going on a wild goose chase to find and then ordering a secret menu item at a restaurant before battling a office worker who two times as a gym leader and an elite 4 member who really just needs a nap have to do with Pokemon??? someone please explains why they cant come up with something related to Pokemon, like, why not a maze where your Pokemon is blind folded and can only move based on signals you give it to test how much you've gained your Pokemon's trust or something along those lines, yeah, I'm spitballing but that still has more to do with raising a Pokemon that pushing a giant olive into a soccer goal.
The random pokeballs embedded in the ground are actually the pokeball of your lead Pokemon. If your lead Pokemon is in a different ball, the balls on the ground will change to that ball. You tend to see them in doorways in the academy, and during the herba mystica scenes.
Makes sense. It's loaded in for whenever the player's pokemon might be used in a cutscene. This is pretty common, except normally, stuff like that gets stored way under the map where it's out of the way and unseen
That makes sense, I wondered about that when I saw ultra balls instead of pokeballs at times. Never considered that until you said that
I even see them in tera raids, they're really small, in front of the raid boss
I was wondering what those PokeBalls on the floor where, it was an odd little glitch.
it's mainly because they're placeholder dev cubes.
Something that this game made me realize is that I have a way higher tolerance for graphical and technical issues than I thought. Unless it hurts my eyes, or straight up makes me lose hours of progress, then I usually just can ignore all the issues, or just find them funny. Maybe because I'm used to play games on an underpowered PC.
"Let's look at the credits to get an idea what happened."
I'm blaming everything on Ed Sheeran, then.
I'm a developer but not a game developer (backend engineer), and I don't know much about how development works within Game Freak, but one thing that stuck out to me is that there are some areas of the game that are incredibly well polished and some that are outright falling apart. The Pokémon look better than ever, all the new texturing on them is gorgeous and the way that lighting interacts with them is also such a step up from previous titles. It's obvious that this is something that must've been part of the plan since development started. But to me the one part of the game that is most broken has to be the real-time Tera Raid Battles.
The disparity in quality leads me to suspect that in response to focus group testing, some manager or executive made a late-in-development demand that raids be made real-time, and shuffled the team around to allocate resources to that effort. Now most software devs know that adding resources to a late project doesn't work (read "The Mythical Man Month" if you want to learn more about that), but hypothetically if you consider the idea of a team of programmers trying to jam that feature into the game as fast as possible, a lot of the other problems we see start to make sense. The UI is unfinished, and raids would've probably required a UI programmer to make it work. The game launched with a bug that prevented sleep animations from properly showing up in battle - again, if you consider the hypothetical battle programmer shuffling code around to retrofit real-time into this ancient battle system, that's the kind of regression you can expect to emerge. Pokémon's battle system just isn't designed for real-time and it's so easy for me to imagine the burnt out and sleep deprived programmers who toiled to make it happen within a ridiculous deadline, making expected mistakes along the way.
Add on top of that the obvious memory leaks leading to random crashes, it's clear that the haste was a longstanding problem with these games and these games specifically. The classes of bugs are totally unlike the ones we've seen before in Pokémon. I can feel the mismanagement all over these games.
The Pokemon models are the work of Creatures INC. which is why they have been consistent accross titles. I'm fairly certain even spinoff have been using models from Creatures INC.
@@costby1105 Creatures was dropped in gen.8. While some of the models/animations they made during their tenure are still used, all new models are developed by various outsourcing companies.
Typical response of a software engineer to instantly blame management without any evidence. Managers dont write bugs engineers do.
@@hellsregect Ignorant response of the century
@@Sonicfan640 Why? Because I don't blame others for my mistakes?
Excellent video! Two things, Tama:
1: This is exactly what I've been saying. The problem is not that with a failure to outsource or complete ineptitude with programming (though Pokémon games have never been spectacular technical feats, they usually are stable and fine). The problem is the fact that Pokémon is not just a game series, but a multimedia franchise. They, as you said, have built this system for themselves of coinciding new games with new anime seasons, new movies, and new TCG releases. They don't have the luxury of delaying their games because of the treadmill they have shackled themselves to.
2: I do want to make a note regarding QA. You pointed out that you could not find QA for gameplay anywhere in the credits. Maybe there was QA and maybe there wasn't. I don't know if it matters. I am reminded of the Game Grumps' story of speaking with a QA developer for another glirchy mess of a game: Sonic Boom.
After finishing their pkaythrough of Sonic Boom, they made a joke asserting the game could not have had QA, even though QA Testers were listed in the credits. This led to them being contacted by a QA Tester who saw that video. The Tester explained to them that yes, the glitches and problems of the game WERE well reported by QA, but it made no difference. The higher ups pushed the game out the door and refused to delay the game any further. Due to the aforementioned release cycle treadmill that Pokémon is shackled to, even if there was QA, I think the same thing would have happened. QA can only help insomuch as the devs are willing and able to take time and resources to fix the problems QA finds. I find myself wondering if they knew there wasn't a point to QA and just didn't bother.
I was really hoping that with the current season of the anime not being focused on any specific region or game, that it would allow the game developers more time to create the next generation of Pokemon and make it as perfect as they possibly can. They could extend the Journeys series for as long as they needed to since there's infinite possibilities to pull from with revisiting previous regions, characters, etc. But I guess that wasn't the case. I don't have much else to add that hasn't been said by everyone else, already. I feel bad for the game devs who aren't given enough time to work on these games. And I have little hope in that ever changing since Pokemon sales have never once slowed down, and I'm sure that Scarlet and Violet having the best selling launch Nintendo has ever had will just put even more pressure on getting future titles out even quicker, no matter the consequences.
They could’ve followed up the end of Journeys with Arceus then selecting Ash in an adaptation of Legends: Arceus. That would’ve given Game Freak another 6-12 months of QC time to smooth everything out.
@@yorecf9641 thing is they already did their legends arceus hype up set of episodes like a year ago, so that wasn't an option for extending the show when gen9 rolled around.
@@MagillanicaLouM I disagree. They did their Hoenn seasons and followed it up with a Battle Frontier arc which also originated in Hoenn. They could’ve delayed Gen 9 with more LA content. If anything, they started production on SV immediately after Gen 8 started and the need for a delay could’ve been passed around a year ago, letting the anime staff know that they need to shuffle their LA content around and possibly expand upon it.
Yeah, but the they wouldn't have new pokemon to make plushies and cards of for the holidays.
It seems like it's emotionally hard work, to put your all (hopefully with life:work balance) into a project, for it to be shipped unpolished. I guess you have to develop a healthy amount of detachment from your work, otherwise it'd drive you to despair.
One little thing that should be pointed out, apparently the glitch on the left side of the thumbnail with the player's arms and legs stretching does not happen in the actual games, it's an emulator exclusive glitch we can fault game freak for lots of things but not for that one 😅
I really enjoy when people list actual possible reasons for the games having problems instead of “Gamefreak is so lazy”, “Give it to another company”, “Fans do it better”, etc. Nice video 👀
All those things are true though tbh
They did that with ILCA and look what happened…
get into gba fangames youll see
@@nirgunawish but fans don't do it better, they make games on outdated hardware that they are familiar with coding for, and most of the time the skeleton has been made for them. I'd love if a group of fan devs got together to develop their own engine, make systems and mechanics, debug, etc. Get them to do everything that GF has to do to make a game and see if it is made faster and higher quality than S/V. the issue there is then it won't be a fan game since they essentially made an entirely new game, fan games are just piggybacking on an already made game
@@904funny I would give ilca a second but this time give full control instead faithful remake bs
I work on IT, I'm a senior QA analist (Quality assurance). Literally my job is to work with software in development, look up for bugs, then report those to the developers in order for them to fix em. When things like this happen on this big money things it always amazes me how this could have passed the QA stage. It makes me suspèct that they didnt even test it.
They probably did have someone come up with a list of bugs and then went through that list like "yup don't have time to fix that, don't have time to fix that..."
I can't take my eyes off of the Snorlax in the background. He looks like me after my 3rd plate on Thanksgiving 😂
I love SV, they're probably one of my favorites on the series, but I also won't pretend the problems don't exist or are easy to overlook.
I've been blessed that most of the major issues haven't reared their head for me, though I have noticed the slowdown is exponentially worse in co-op.
With the latest patch announcement from Nintendo's official Twitter, the last sentence in the Tweet was "we are listening", a surprisingly humble statement from Nintendo (at least their English-language branch), and I'm hoping the near-universal outcry will allow something to change behind the scenes.
I feel and always have felt that Game Freak is one of the best creative teams in the industry, I truly hope that soon they'll get a dev environment that lets them take their ideas to full fruition
My entire family and I feel the same way you do about this game: It's really fun, but imagine how much better it would be if the development team had more time before release.
Really loved this video, probably my favourite you've posted this year. Was simple with minimal footage, yet deep in terms of the background research.
I like that literally everyone I've see talk about this game (who's played it) has, like, the exact same opinion of it:
"This game is super buggy, but it's fun."
(Also, I really like your top. It's very cute.)
Finding out people who worked on Persona also worked on Pokemon Scarlet/Violet makes a lot of sense now, seeing as there's a random "Relationship" system with the teachers in the game
Awesome vid as usual. I think your comparison of BDSP to SV in so far as bugs is on point. So many people will talk about BDSP or gen 1 or 2 or even emerald bugs, but those bugs never impact the player on accident. You go out of your way to trigger them for benefits like cloning and stuff. This games framerate constantly tanks and there's a bunch of other problems, that is frankly unusual for a Pokemon game.
The people talking about the Gen 1 bugs in particular irritate me. Those are games were made over 25 years ago on hardware with a fraction of the power of the phone you’re typing on; why should the issues with those games be used as a straw man for the latest entries?
@@yorecf9641 Well i can understand gen 1 being brought up, those games are far more stable and runs at an unhindering 30fps, games from 25 years ago running on CBC with nowhere near it's budget or prestige of today are beating it in basic game stability. The standard they made was decades old and didn't make its mark so i can see why it gets brought up. Its valid. Both where made by gamefreak. It should be better or at least the same when compared with gen 1 with performance and bugs at the least.
@@Cogglesz I should explain better. I’ve seen people making the argument that, since Gen 1 had so many bugs, we shouldn’t be super surprised/shouldn’t complain with the bugs in SV. Example: just today, I read a statement on a different site where someone said that, if you like Gen 1, you shouldn’t be complaining about SV bugs since the possibility of them being patched exists now as opposed to back then.
@@yorecf9641 "gen 1 had so many bugs"
But then 99% of players never got them unless the went out of their way to trigger them
@@ozioni2553 which was the first rebuttal to the person who said this on that other site. It’s not like these games where you can clip through the map on accident because you fell off a ledge or have the game completely crash on you because it wasn’t optimized to handle everything. Hell, the Badge Boost Glitch even benefitted you in battle instead of doing something that forced a restart your game.
I honestly really feel for the staff, it is clear that plenty of love/creativity went into the game especially models/design and story but it falls short because the technical problems that hold it back, REALLY hold it back.
and the rushing from the higher ups, because they want pokemon to come out every year
People are acting like this game being broken doesn't hinder the experience in any meaningful capacity, but I think that's absurd. The atmospheric experience of Pokémon Scarlett and Violet is greatly hindered by its technical, graphical and performance hindrances; I have a Switch, yet I'm playing a 2022 AAA game on this console that genuinely looks like a Wii game or a higher-end 3DS game (but even then, many, many 3DS games are beautiful and visually stunning, looking far better than this eyesore) and even then, it can't perform properly. I don't know if GameFreak are funded or rushed poorly, or they just have bad developers. But it's really crazy how Nintendo haven't stepped in to sort this situation out - The Pokémon Company is a corporate mess. Things really need to get polished before they get better. Thank you so much for this great video, Tama.
Thats giving the 3ds very little credit. There are some amazing looking 3ds games on the system, like SMT4 for example
To each their own.
Like, it cannot be understated just how much stuff like the frame jumping between 20-30 and the PowerPoint presentation anything 5 feet away takes me out of the experience. It just looks so _bad_.
Personally I feel it’s because the developers are rushed because they have to do the 1 game a year thing. They’ve made good looking and very functional games on the switch like Let’s Go. But they need time to incorporate more and new mechanics for newer games compared to Let’s Go which is a remake with other games to reference
The developers are rushed to pump out a corporate product every year right before Black Friday. Same deal with 2K and EA, and you see how shitty their yearly games are. It's all about rushing to make that holiday season-money.
Listening to your voice legit gave me the ultimate nostalgia back to when I used to watch your videos back in elementary school. I'm in college now!
I find it really interesting that somebody who's worked on shin megami tensei helped program the battle system in the game, those games and Pokemon are largely some of the best turn based RPGs that are still around, and have perfected that style of combat. Thank you for doing this video
I found it fascinating as well. I’ve been really enjoying the SMT Games lately.
Honestly, I wish more people would be as vocal about gameplay features and exploration incentives as they are about graphics.
While watching this, I couldn't get out from my head how much I'd love to see Tama's review of a Megaten game, even if it's not as in-depth as her other videos.
That series have a lot of design choices that Pokemon could learn from.
I think Ash having Abs is not on purpose but rather the manufacturer reusing molds for a different action figure. His torso form looks weird in general
no he's just jacked sorry
@@nico-wj1mh damn straight. He’s a 10 year old who casually held up a Cosmoem, which weighs over 2,200 lbs (1,000 kilograms).
@@yorecf9641 Which shouldn't even be possible, not unless he's someone like Superman, that's a suspension of disbelief right there. Not even an actual body builder in real life like good old Arnold can lift that much. So unless he's either a Kryptonian or a Saiyan, him lifting that much, even *if* he was an adult, shouldn't be possible.
@@whitewolf3051 everyone in the show survives being lit up by Charizards that can melt boulders and electrocuted by rodents who can knock out elephants. They don’t care about logic.
glad you're back, last gens weren't the same without you :c are Ash's 10th anniversary abs canon tho? 🤔
He performed such super human feats in the anime, so I wouldn’t be surprised.
I love this channel. Feels like hearing from my passionate Pokémon friend and having an intelligent, funny conversation about the games were interested in. I also appreciate the comparison to annual sports games.
Having just made it to the credits about an hour ago I think it's a real shame this game wasn't given enough time to be polished because I really think this is the best pokemon game they've made in a long time even in spite of the genuine issues it has. It's clear that there are people on the dev team who care and it's a bit of a shame that the genuine good stuff in the game is being overshadowed so heavily by the negative reception instead of seeing more of both angles being talked about.
I always applauded game freak for their ability to continually release games that coincide with the anime and other product marketing on time without major technical issues until now. Most other franchises that release games under tight deadlines and schedules to promote other media suffer greatly because they are rushed and I used to defend game freak for purposely not pushing the graphical envelope in mainline games specifically to release games on time without any technical issues. After over 25 years of doing this somehow they let their quality control slip away.
I feel like it's less of a "somehow" and more of an "inevitably they would have to". It's just not a good practice to have such strict deadlines because eventually you're worked thin and can't put out a quality experience. I'm somewhat impressed that Gamefreak has gone multiple gens without the game almost imploding before this but I really don't think this kind of crunch to no matter what get a new gen out in 3 years should be applauded.
Because Pokemon has no competition. They got to a point where they got so big, they knew they could get away with cutting costs while still making profit, and they wouldn't be challenged. On top of the fact that the original creative directors that actually had passion are no longer with the company.
Now if someone takes Pokemon's audience to the point where people no longer give pokemon attention, THEN Gamefreak would finally be forced to step their game up & rebrand..IF they were smart.
big part of that issue imo is how they really never pushed the envelope. Now they are forced to push it to keep up with the tech of today. But because they have been pumping out the same limited game for so long, they don't know how to sched a bigger game like this. To the boardroom it is all the same, to the workers, the amount required to make a game now is more then it was, esp if you want that open world.
personally i think they just need to outsource more content. like all models for pokemon and terrain, just outsource it. It's The Pokemon Company ffs, if gamefreak is too small. try to get them more employees, if you cant then outsource it. Voice acting should be outsourced too.
Playing devils advocate, you can say, too many cooks spoil the broth. But i really think you could segment the development of S/V enough to where you dont need to say that.
@@monkaeyes3417 I don’t think outsourcing is necessarily the solution. They outsourced one of the remakes for the first time and I think that led to an inferior product compared to previous remakes Game freak put out themselves. Legends Arceus was fairly ambitious and had a few issues but if they had just delayed scarlet and violet I think things would’ve turned out a lot better. If Nintendo and Pokémon company ever decide to do more unique Pokémon projects from other studios like Pokken Tournament, I think that could lead to letting Game Freak focus more time on fewer main titles rather than putting too many out in a short amount of time.
They need to not release more than one title a year to give the development team enough time to complete the game. I also think each gen should come out every 4 years instead of 3.
Its sad that over a year later and the game performance is still not fixed. :(
Incredibly informative video. I'm really glad there's someone taking a good look at a credits since there is a ton of information you can get just by checking who worked on what. Really can't wait for your next video on this subject.
"But...But...Gen 1 had glitches!"
Yeah....Like Missingno,the invisible PC in Celadon, fishing in the statues. All of these could be triggered by the player.
Great video! Very few people do this sort of work to research who does what in the games industry and I think it's very important.
I'd add the technical perspective that digital foundry speculated about:
It's likely this game was developed in the same proprietary engine the other game freak games on switch use (lgpe, swsh, pla) because making new engines optmized for every game is very hard and would take a lot of time they clearly didn't have. So it's a pretty sure guess that this old engine did not have the systems and tools set in place to make an open world game, the closest we had to that were the wild area and regions from PLA, which were much smaller than Paldea and even still didn't run that great.
One thing people noticed is that SV does not use culling for instance. That is a development technique that's basically obligatory for any open world game to run well, it's a glaring omission from the dev perspective and the only explanation is that either the developers were extremely incompetent or their engine didn't allow for it which is a much more likely explanation I think
The current issues with S&V are for me the most notorious symptoms of something I've been complaining for a while, Pokemon games prioritizing money over the player's experience, Tama already talked about this on the Pokedex controversy video, but now is just sad to witness how the games have descended even further, and now they're not even trying to hide it anymore.
It's cool seeing you talk about a post gen 4 game (the most recent one at that), and highlights that you still have so much Pokémon material you can work with. The sky is the limit.
This video really gave me the cold shoulder.
This why i felt alarmed that they released 2 Pokemon games in the same year. I was praying and hoping SV wouldn't be till next year and let this year be the year of Arceus and maybe support through next year with little updates or something of the sort. This game was clearly not ready to be released this year and yet it was rushed out. While i fucking HOPE this will change something for future releases, but i feel like nothing is gonna change. At least any time soon unless the higher up take notice and actually try to prevent something like this happening again or something drastic like lower sales than usually (not gonna happe), but i sorta doubt it. Especially with the fact that the game literally sold 10 million despite it being a mess of a game.
Don't get me wrong at all. Its a very good game, but its sad that such a good game is released in this state. From the biggest franchises in the world even more.
Even worse people try to say "but the Switch is underpowered! Obvs it cant handle it" when its not even true. XC3 alone has a huge fucking overworld and it runs flawlessly, yet Pokemon struggles to do that half the time if we're talking about FPS and Xenoblade is lesser known than Pokemon. Devs deserve better. This game deserved better for what it is.
Its sad that i can even post a huge thread on Twitter about the glitches in this game when 98% of games i play i can barely even make a tweet about it bc i don't run into bugs/glitches that often.
PLA would have released Nov 2021 if BDSP didn’t exist. Dont think of it as a 2022 game.
Why would they do anything about it if the sales keep going up? These are the most broken Pokemon games since Gen 1 (not an exaggeration) and they're also the fastest-selling Pokemon games ever. The business school idiots running things only care about money. Things will only change when sales decline. And I'm as guilty as anyone, I bought the game. After people crying and whining about Arceus and it being the most fun I'd ever had in a Pokemon game, I thought the reports of bugginess would be similarly exaggerated here, but it wasn't the case. These games actually ARE as broken as people say
I count it as 3 games releases: remakes, legends and SV. 1 day or 2 don't make much different in my book. They should have been given more time even if one game is developted by other developers.
These are all really good points. There are two more factors I wonder about, though:
1) The engine itself - it’s no secret at this point that the engine used here is the same one used in Legends, which is the same one that was used in sword and shield, which is the same one that was used for the 3DS games. I have to wonder at this point if it’s not being pushed beyond its limit.
2) compression issues - one thing that no one is talking about is the fact that both legends and scarlet/violet are about half of the file size of sword and shield. It seems unlikely that the actual assets and content of the games is smaller, and I wonder if some of the performance issues don’t stem from so much of the CPU in the switch needing to decompress the game. That would be a real shame - the likely reason for decreasing the file sizes in this way is to decreased production costs for cartridges, since they could use 8 GB switch cartridges instead of 16.
Ive BEEN waiting for your first SV video. Nice
The Madden comparison is so good. It just goes to show that making a polished game takes time (contrary to the "GF is just lazy" complaints you hear). And it also shows that these games are part of a larger picture. I never even thought about how rooted Pokemon would be in TV seasons. But when you mentioned Madden, it seemed obvious -- of course Madden needs to be on a fixed schedule. Super insightful, as always. Thank you!
The tight release schedule doesn’t justify bad games, it just explains it. It’s unacceptable for them to sell full price games, and maybe sometime in the future patch them to be worth that value
Great video! I also realized that since I remember your video on Pokémon Master Trainer dropping I have been watching this channel for ten years....Keep up the great work :)
As a long time viewer of 10 years... seeing you uplaid so much is healing. Im so here for it
This was very insightful and thoughtful. Thanks for the great video! 😁
Great in depth discussion. I hate the time constraints developers are put under for these games but I think we are fortunate to have these fixes take place in patches, dlc, etc.
I hope to hear you cover strategic gameplay sometime. I am curious to hear your take on how the gameplay has evolved over the years.
“Look at those abs!” 😂
Being able to patch performance and add missing content after their release is one of the main reasons why so many games get released in this terrible state these days though. Cyberpunk, Halo Infinite, Pokémon-when will it end?
On one hand, sure. On the other hand, I can't help but feel like this encourages the attitude of "Eh, fix it later. Maybe."
If Game Freak are the ones who get to set when they'll release the game, they should probably take a good look at their current track record and maybe give themselves an extra year to get the gen 10 games done and as polished as possible. If they don't, the 2025 games may be particularly ugly.
And if it's out of Game Freak's hands when the new generation Pokemon games are to be released by, then maybe the great marketing wheel needs to slow down a bit before the whole thing goes off a cliff.
Your videos are always so good!
Omg!! You are back! Thank you!
I swear your videos always brings a smile to my face. I grew up watching your videos and they always bring me back to the classic UA-cam era.
What you haven't mentioned is that what they released is probably the least amount of effort required to extract the most amount of money out of people. If they have perfected that balance, they wont ever "try" again, no point in talking about time frames.
That sweater is so cool
EDIT: I really like the outro music too!
Great video!
Great video! Interesting insight into the developers and what other titles they've worked on. I remember sitting down to watch the direct earlier this year and really hoping there wouldn't be an announcement for a new gen coming out this year after we'd just had Arceus, itself a pretty ambitious game by Pokemon standards. And of course it was and I felt uneasy and, frankly, unenthused. I slowly began feeling more excited for it but the problems plaguing the games do kind of confirm my initial unease. The tragedy is that they're good games that should have had more time and care put towards polish so that they could really shine as a new step forward for the series. I haven't seen a ton of issues in my own playthrough, but Tera raids have been an area where I've encountered some issues, which does impact how well the raid is going to go. I think that the time frame they have is untenable for the scope they clearly want to work with, now. Sadly, so many of these problems are larger issues across the game industry, so there's arguably bigger problems at the root here than just Pokemon.
Makes me wonder if GF would have had a better time just going back to 2d. They could make some really polished sprites, animations, and worlds and might even be able to include all the new fun aspects like open world and multiplayer without so many performance issues.
3D is a mistake for Game Freak in so many ways. Especially the models.
Loved this video and the recent TamaBites, they've been super interesting to look at in regards to aspects of the franchise we just kinda take for granted.
I think it'd be interesting to look at Shinies and their place in the series in a more in-depth way. We kinda take them for granted now and talk abou the best/worst ones, how to get them, we discuss our shiny stories, but it's interesting that this is a mechanic at all and one so treasured despite being so far removed from the game play.
Great video,and well said!
Something tells me that management needs to be reevaluated when it comes to the next Pokémon mainline game. I think everyone, even investors would like some of these Pokémon games on a delay or two to perfect itself.
4:00 there's a ghost orb behind Tama! Look! It flies across the screen!
Love the video and keep up the great work tama
Awesome video! I think you're spot on with the idea that people might think the (not-so) long-distance animations are slowdown. If your eyes are focussed at one thing that's clearly moving at 2FPS, it can make the whole game feel really chunky, sometimes even if there are other things moving at the full 30 at the same time (there probably is some real slowdown, too, but maybe not as much as people are saying)
i can verify that i definitely had real slowdown. mainly while riding on koraiden things would get unplayably slow sometimes unless i restarted the game. even with the camera angled to only be looking at my dino dog and me
I don’t work in video games but i do have experience with projects of similar size and scope in financial services. Your comment about there not having a overarching QA group really stood out, and I think that could explain a lot of the performance issues. If the teams building the systems rarely worked on one’s outside their core group there probably was a lot of integration problems that turned relatively okay code into the issues we see today. More time, a dedicated QA team, and better governance would probably significantly improved the game to the extent allowed by the release schedule.
As always I love your videos. I’d love to see you take a deeper look into this topic. It’s my favorite ever pokemon game on so many levels but some light needs to be shined behind the scenes. Keep it up!
Just want to say thank you for adding captions, auto generated captions aren't great and I really appreciate when someone goes the extra miles for the small part of their viewerbase that needs them like me :)
8:24 crunch culture does exist and it is not healthy.
Nintendo really DID hire that man.
In all seriousness, coming from someone who enjoyed the recent Pokemon games as much as the older ones but is willing to acknowledge the technical issues they can come with, it is always appreciated to see people break down the game's flaws in a way that actually dissects the treatment of workers rather than talking about the developers of the games as a single entity that's lazy and/or incompetent. The way people talked about GameFreak and more specifically Masuda during SWSH's release cycle was kind of deranged honestly, you'd think with how a lot of them were talking that Junichi Masuda himself personally took their favorite Volbeat out back and took it out like Old Yeller. So glad the discourse has changed from that to people pointing out the actual problems on-hand.
I'm really on board with the "I love Pokémon, but I don't like Pokémon games" crew rn. Was waiting for this video!
The minute they announced Scarlet and Violet right after Legends Arceus made me realize they didn't have the time to iron out all the bugs. I feel bad for the developers that had to work on Legends and Scarlet/Violet simultaneously.
I'm actually pretty impressed with what they managed to pull together all things considered. I was worried it was going to be far worse. Yes the polish is missing but they put I think more than usual time into themeing, character and pokemon designing and really trying to integrate the open world into the feel of the game. I hope GameFreaks is able to learn how to push for longer lead times from this experience.
I bought Scarlet on launch day, but I find it literally unplayable for one reason: it makes me motion sick. I don’t know if it’s the swerving camera, the flickering shadows, the inconsistent frame rate, or something else. I didn’t have this problem with any of the other Pokemon games on the Switch.
Super happy to see Tama posting regular vids again!
*Insert AZ meme* “it’s been 3000 years”
The game itself is alright so far. I'm about halfway through. For me and a few of my friends, the game just seems empty. Like it has no heart. Yeah, I'm enjoying playing the game, but I haven't felt emotionally attached to a game since Gen 5.
I love this video. Thanks for making this discussion, Tama!!
ok love the video but i was distracted by the Rainbow High doll in the corner bc my collector mind kept zeroing in on her lmao
I used to think “they need to hire more talent, they’re being stingy and greedy by keeping the studio small” but after this video I’m pretty convinced that a good product takes time and the Pokemon release schedule just can’t realistically allow that.
What a shame. Pokemon deserves quality games, it’s where the whole franchise originated after all.
Great video as always!
Indie solo dev here (or at least an aspiring one) I agree the scope and time of the development cycle are a huge issue. I haven’t bought/played Scarlet and Violet, but this imo started from XY. They weren’t very buggy, but I’d say they were a bit more of a mess compared to BW/B2W2. While ORAS was much more polished, probably because they had more time and they didn’t have to make a whole new game, the foundation was already there. Asides from that, ever since the switch to 3D, I feel they’ve been having a hard time getting things right. I’m not sure which engine they’re using to develop, but a lot of in-house developed engines tend to have problems that largely used ones Don’t have. Example: Luminous engine vs Unreal4 for square Enix.
They clearly have a lot of talented people working on it, SMT series and Scarlet Nexus are some of my favorite games of all time, and bad management definitely seem to be at play here. It looks they’re just throwing people at the problem, without wanting to pose more realistic goals for their games. But I guess it’s just capitalism…
I like the filter you have in this video, gives off a cool aesthetic
I really liked the formating of this video, all the info you wanted to share was clear and concise. Unfortunately for me, I had no plans to get Scarlet and Violet because to be honest, I'm just not digging majority of the Pokemon designs this time around. It's Black/White all over for me again and I'm hoping that the next gen will have better designs but as of now with the Paldea region, I think I'm gonna pass on it because there's just not much about this game that is enticing me. Lackluster Poke' designs (in my opinion), the character customization is severely lacing (when it comes to the clothing choices), and the main gimmick this time around is not doing anything for me neither so yeah, I think I'll sit this one out lol. But again, awesome video!
The release cycle is untenable, and I say that as someone who loves Gen 9. Still, I am interested to see what SV looks like by the time the expected DLC releases given Nintendo's statement on patches being worked on.
The release cycle is doable, just not with their team size and methods. People can clown on COD, but they also have a tight schedule and release more complete games than Pokémon.
The thing about patches is that I'm not sure there's that much that can be realistically patched. Camera clipping through the ground, flickers, and actual bugs, sure. But as far as performance goes I'm not sure they'll be able to squeeze out that much more. It will probably still dip below 30 and stutter a lot (and yes I am very aware of the difference between models being animated at 2 FPS and actual stutters that you can feel in the camera movement and player animations)
I would be glad to see this series to understand the current issues with Scarlet and Violet.
Great vid! Appreciate all the research you did into who actually worked on the game. I'm kicking myself for picking up Violet day one - it's the most disappointed I've ever been with a new release, but it's more disappointing to know that there is a great game in there somewhere!
My favorite glitch so far is entering battle with your back to a higher ground and appearing on top at the end of battle. Great for exploration. Early on. I found a Tera Leafeon within minutes of starting the game!
As someone who was a fan since Ruby/Sapphire days, this was rather painful to watch; watching a title clearly needing more time.
And still net millions worldwide sales. Scarlet and Violet's infamy reached a point of hyper-sensationalism, further burdened by the implementation of annual releases and media tie-ins, and not helped by a release schedule when Arceus came out months ago in spring.
I met someone who kind of passive-aggressively snapped at me stating, "she's sorry I didn't get the game" and "games usually have bugs and glitches". Sure, while it is playable; it does feel like the marketing team is taking us for granted, we love Pokemon, but we hate it to see a new jump into the generation by clipping into a backroom. A new patch is just the bare minimum; it doesn't change the fact the game was clearly rushed, released within the same year as Arceus.
Based on reports, it's still impressive the team was able to churn out what looks like a solid, game within less than a year. Praiseworthy, but accidentally earned for the most part. Pokemon was held down by linearity where series traditions started to have trouble be written together organically. And for once the 3D models do have nice textures, a graphical element I wished to see in Sw/Sh.
As much as I hope Gamefreak/Pokemon Company would improve their structure, we simply don't know. Does it mean they will have to rebuild it from scratch, or just place their solution on top of their problems? Hoping, but a teaspoon's worth.
We appreciate your research into this piece.
👍
What’s truly unfortunate is these games are never going to get any better. When they achieve sales records with the absolute bare minimum time and effort, what’s the point in trying?
Absolutely nothing will change until people stop buying these games.
THANK YOU FOR THIS VIDEO I'm so tired of people calling the developers lazy and untalented when you can clearly tell they're talented and experienced and they know how to properly scope their games and focus on the right stuff. The problem is crunch time and has always been crunch time. Ever since X and Y it's been so clear most of the new games aren't complete
that's what happens when you push a main series title or remake of a previous one out every year on top of maintaining a half dozen mobile apps and spin off games like the new snap or a mystery dungeon game.
I'm honestly surprised people aren't completely burnt out on Pokemon by now... I played the first 4 gens. I owned at one time or another: red, blue, yellow, gold, silver, emerald and Platinum... I skipped black and white when it first came out cause I wasn't a fan of the pokemon of that gen, nor the setting, but I fully regret buying Y thinking I wanted to give the 3d aspect a go, only to have my save data that was destroyed by the save glitch in lumios city.
Once it was clear that the company itself no longer cared about anything but the bottom line-- lying about the models and animations in sword and shield to justify the cutting of the pokedex, charging extra for content that should have been in the base game (and was but locked behind that paywall as data-miners found out), I was completely done with the company altogether.
A person can only be burned so many times before they learn to stop putting their hand on the stove.
The fact that Gen 6 is the only generation with a cancelled game shows that they really have had a rough time making the 3D jump.
Yeah, this checks out. It'd been apparent for a while that the time crunch was getting to the developers, but nowhere is this more apparent than SV. Like you said in the video, I think they prioritized content over performance this time (as opposed to SwSh where it was the opposite) and it makes for a much more fulfilling game, just one that is terribly optimized. And that was definitely the right move, I would take another SV any day next to some bland mess.
If they had more time, I have no doubt SV would've been THE best games in the franchise. As it stands I still adore them, but I can't fault people for wanting to skip them. Sadly ik this crunch will only get worse as time goes on. We can only hope someone higher up gets some of that passion back so we can get the fantastic games everyone deserves and worked so hard on
One thing to keep in mind... Anything like textures and models are usaly done by a art team... The terms of game play (which includes a lot so hang on) is handed by the developers and designers... What these guys do is set up the systems to apply the textures, apply the models, and apply the animations to the engine, they work on the pathing of the NPCs, the put the logic behind the NPCs decisions and the battling system, they put the logic into the tracking system (because every game needs one of those, especially if you're doing a large open world), they work on the mapping system, the menus, the mutiplayer, the world it's self, the indoor areas, where the NPCs are in those arieas, stability, optimization, and more. If the game is a broken buggy mess, look and the programmers and designers. Considering that most of this team was from Arceus, it's no wonder why this game came out the way it did... It could of used more time in the oven...
If 100 people worked on this game and for 5 years it would of looked more polished than Sonic Frontiers, a game that was developed by 60 people in 5 years. Because it wasn't, the game suffers greatly...
Beautiful as always
I feel like the franchise is unsalvageable right now. Even up through gen 5, the dev's seemed to have passion for it, but since then, it seems like it's all just soulless corporate marketing and penny-pinching. Gen 1 was buggy because they were passionate; Gen 9 is buggy because they don't care. WHen Gen 1 glitched, it was because you did something obscure, but Gen 9 just glitches out on its own.
I feel like the Pokemon games now exist just to provide a reason for their multi-billion dollar merchandising.
Not too on topic, but if someone gets tired of pokemon, the Megami Tensei series is a great RPG to get into. They've aged pretty well (IMO) and there are sooo many of them.
great analysis as always, Your videos are so informative! It's really sad how much crunch I'd assume happened with these games. The core of it is some of the most fun I've had in pokemon in a long time. However the performance, textures, lighting, as well as the art direction really hurt these games. Some of the new pokemon have the best designs we've ever seen with others being complete cop outs to add fluff to the over all dex. *spoilers ahead for those that may read this* Dudunsparce, Mousehold, Pawmi line, etc are some of the worst designs we've ever had. As well as some lines just having extra polygons added. Paradox pokemon are a good idea in theory but most designs are boring or ugly. I understand these takes to be subjective but I still believe the designs to fall short due to crunch.
Great video loved it as always. Very in depth. You always look pretty as ever.
Its really sad to hear SMT devs worked on this game and it is still as horrible as it is.
Reading anything about this game has been so frustrating because it’s either “I’m so disappointed STOP BUYING POKÉMON GAMES THIS IS YOUR FAULT” or “Guys, stop nitpicking it’s really good actually, my game only froze 3 times before I got my starter but I can look past that” and it’s like….where’s the nuance?
Another banger! Keep ‘em coming and I’ll keep watching! Still won’t play Pokémon though 🤣
I stumbled upon your channel randomly after years. Hope you’re doing well.
Interesting stuff. I wonder if it’s a too many chefs in the kitchen type deal. Like, a lot of outsourced work to speed up the time, but it doesn’t come together just right.
Scarlet and Violet are among my favorite games of the series, from a pure gameplay standpoint. The focus on gameplay and the efficient story telling that somehow manages to endear me to characters better than overwritten games like Sun & Moon culminate into something that I genuinely have a lot of fun with. But all of that is despite the numerous technical issues. I did not have a bad time with the game so far, the exact opposite, actually. But these are also the only Pokemon games I cannot recommend to anyone or even defend. At most I can say "I enjoy them a lot, but yes, they are a broken mess".
The optimistic part of me says that this is a wake up call for the Pokemon Company to slow down, that the games will get more dev time because clearly this straw broke the camel's back. The pessimistic part of me says that they realize the value of after-release patches and the games will continue at this absurd breakneck pace.
I like this take better than “Game freak/Nintendo bad”. It’s clearly an industry wide problem that is more visible with bigger and prolific franchises.
Sad thing is the anime was given extra time to finish up their story, being the only series (gen 8) to finish after the next generation of games (gen 9) debuted, but I guess there were other factors into why they couldn't just release it in January
Gamefreak: We must solve these problems. *Hides the credits & doesn't show them after beating the story in the next game.*
This was a great discussion. I am worried that the Internet is going to Internet and manhunt these names of people tho 🙁
"What happened" is that Pokemon keeps breaking sales records, so GF has 0 incentives to actually put in the effort, hire more staff and give themselves more time to develop the games.
And we only have the consumers to blame for that...
It’s nice to see someone actually look through the credits if these games since its always been something I’ve been curious of. Credits are important for this kinda thing imo, and yet people hust throw around conjecture about who made the games without actually knowing who made the games. A video like this is nice to see :).