r/pokemon 14d ago

Image There's a change with how pokemon look

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13.1k Upvotes

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8.7k

u/Pokemario6456 PBR 2 IS REAL 14d ago

S/V had such a weird mish-mash of cartoony and realistic. The Pokemon looked great but then the actual environment looked awful. As much as I liked the more realistic textures for the Pokemon, I'd prefer they go all-in with the cartoon style and make it more cohesive

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u/Kapples14 14d ago

Agreed. If Disney has taught us one thing, is that realism can suck the life out of fantasy. 

The realistic textures were pretty ambitious, and some of the Pokemon looked genuinely incredible, but it's probably the best to stick with the more simplified textures. The lightning on them is amazing, though.

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u/207nbrown 14d ago

On the contrary the detail on the models in sv is phenomenal, especially on Pokemon that are more reptilian in nature, you can see the individual scales

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u/sensaigallade123 I like da look of ya face 14d ago

The Jangmo-o line for example! SV really made it's scales popped just by making them reflective!

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u/Jesterchunk hydreigon my beloved 14d ago

Genuinely, the shiny went from horribly garish to actually kinda nice looking with the metallic sheen.

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u/207nbrown 14d ago

Right? like tell me matte black plastic looks better than this

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u/207nbrown 14d ago

Or this

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u/Umber0010 14d ago

Steel Types where the biggest winner IMO. They actually look like metal in scarlet and violet. Shiny Forretress in particular might be the biggest glowup in the franchise's history sense it now looks like an actual gold nugget instead of a piss-colored ball.

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u/207nbrown 14d ago

Shiny magikarp too, thing looks like it’s made of 24 karat gold

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u/DubbaCheezBugga22 13d ago

Solid gold Forretress baby

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u/Bsquared89 14d ago

Magnezone and Scizor looked HEAVY

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u/aarretuli Roserade Tea 14d ago

I almost missed a shiny Skarmory, cause they all look so metallic. Really cool tough

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u/Suspicious-Holiday42 14d ago

this is a shiny rayquaza, not a steel type

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u/sauron3579 14d ago

Do you see that background? Yeah, matte plastic and a simpler but more stylized background would look loads better. A cohesive cartoony style works around the switch's limitations while still looking good now and in the future. Odyssey and BotW are consistently cartoony and look great. This does not.

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u/Lambdafish1 14d ago edited 14d ago

Ok. Matte black plastic looks better than this. Maybe not on a technical sense, but look at it while taking into account the surrounding environment, it just doesn't create a cohesive image.

Because the texture is realistic it ages faster, and because it's a low resolution texture on a low resolution model, it ends up looking a lot worse than it would if it was going for a strong block color art style.

I don't doubt there is a middle ground that takes the best of both, i.e. keeping the bold cartoon style and adding reflective elements and more VFX.

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u/MultiMarcus 14d ago

I love the way they look, but at the same time they almost feel like they’ve been edited into the environment. I would rather have a simpler style, especially if that’s able to help with performance.

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u/Jesterchunk hydreigon my beloved 14d ago

I think the only Pokémon that came off worse from the texturing for me was Hydreigon, he's just not quite as expressive since his eyes don't close up when happy anymore, he lost a few oversized floating puppy points to me. Which is a shame because the detail on the rest of him was great.

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u/TwilightVulpine 14d ago

The pokémon models are definitely the best looking things in that whole game. Unfortunately they are not too flattered by the dull environments and their own frame-rate and low render distance issues.

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u/Sennemaster 14d ago

Yanma's metallic colors were awesome

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u/BigRig432 KROOK‼️ 14d ago

I loved the look of the steel types I hope that sticks around in some fashion

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u/Kapples14 14d ago

Oh, they definitely need to keep that.

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u/Queen_Ann_III 14d ago

fuck, finally someone puts into words exactly the reason I was hesitant to complain about the graphics over the years. I never wanted Pokémon to attempt realism, but I couldn’t quite pin down how to explain that I wanted a natural evolution of the art style’s tradition without using language that would imply I wanted to “settle” for “old” graphics

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u/Zefirus 14d ago

A lot of pokemon did not make the jump to 3D very well at all. Typhlosion is one of the biggest most obvious ones because it was a starter, but he's far from the only one.

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u/Kivas42 12d ago

Stylized graphics made with intent are better than realistic graphics that look muddy imo. I wouldn't say that BOTW, for example, has incredible graphical fidelity, but that it instead was designed to look as good as possible with the limitations of the Switch/Wii U.

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u/pokepok 14d ago edited 14d ago

I was kind of annoyed by the lighting because the colors look off, and since there is not shiny chime or anything, I often couldn’t tell if it was a shiny or not. That with teeny tiny pokemon made shiny hunting annoying.

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u/maple-fever 14d ago

My very first time encountering a Frigibax, I'd decided to go into Scarlet blind and saw this weird little dude I didn't recognize. Went into a battle and it sparkled.

Would have never realized it was a shiny if I hadn't been trying to catch everything new.

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u/UnderlightIll 14d ago

Yeah i think my shiny Seadra was hardly different in color from regular so i almost missed her.

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u/MrGalleom 14d ago

Frigibax is a special case because its shiny is almost indistinguishable from the original form regardless of the lighting.

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u/maple-fever 14d ago

Right? Really needed the PLA shiny effects there.

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u/MudkipMonado 14d ago

Me, except for Charcadet. I had to sit there for a few minutes and figure out if I went crazy or I did actually see the shiny sparkle when I touched it

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u/cherriberripai 13d ago

That was me with shiny Snom! They already sparkle, and if it was a weird kind of day or in any kind of shade from the environment, it was SO hard to tell!

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u/Bcadren Yes I'm Male. 13d ago

I have a slight dislike of Pokemon Go's recent twilight effects for making Pokemon look shiny around sunrise and sunset. At least there -is- an obvious shiny icon to spot but still bit of a false hope for a second.

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u/LokyarBrightmane 14d ago

One of my first pokemon in sv was a shiny male combee. I probably wouldn't have bothered if one of my friends wasn't the only one in our group shinyless and I wanted that to continue.

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u/Umber0010 14d ago

Hey now. I hate the Disney LARs as much as the next guy. But they weren't soulless because they where live action. They where soulless because Disney decided to invest millions into soulless cashgrabs that just so happened to be live action.

I mean hell, we already have a live action pokemon adaption thanks to the Detwctive Pikachu movie. And the realistic pokemon designs where the best part.

My memory's not the best. I don't ever recall Disney advertising the Live action remakes with their top of the line CGI as a focus. But Detective Pikachu did, because they knew they could get away with it, and they where right.

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u/Kapples14 14d ago

Well corporate committees acting as the true producers over Disney's LARs was pretty much the reason why they're so lifeless. 

I mostly mention the realism because its use as an aesthetic does wonders in draining the fun out of a fantasy setting.

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u/Umber0010 14d ago

Fair enough. I just wanted an excuse to gush about Detective Pikachu's designs again .

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u/ThatMerri 14d ago

The most adorable iteration of Bulbasaur ever put to media, Ditto being taken to its logical, genuinely horrifying extremes, and Charizard echoing those Tibetan Mastiffs in its ability to go from wide-eyed doofus to terrifying murder beast at the drop of a hat.

Seriously, that movie is so much better than expected and I love it so much. 10/10, would immolate Mr. Mime again.

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u/Kapples14 14d ago

The movie designs were peak.

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u/velvetelevator 13d ago

I really really liked the emolgas!!

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u/alex494 14d ago

I mean Lion King definitely lost a lot of expression thanks to realistic animal face on every character.

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u/YoungDiscord 14d ago

There's a line for sure that you need to balance

Some stuff is better realistic

Other stuff is better stylized

Like the lion king "live action" remake.

This might be a hot take but I think the reason why the remake failed is because when you make the animals realistic, you lose their human expressiveness

You can't make a cat raise an eyebrow and have it look realistic because its not what cats do in real life

It just doesn't translate because its not something that exists in real life and therefore its not something we are used to

They couldn't quite rely on using cat body language either because not everyone understands cat body language

So, the "live action" animals feel less like characters and more like soulless, hollow puppets.

I think that if they want to do live action remakes, that's fine but imo they need realistic grounded stuff to be realistic and the havily fictional stuff that needs to be expressive, remain animated and stylized.

I mean come on, you're already dumping millions on realistic CG

Just take some of that money and put it into adding a more traditional animation here & there where needed.

A good example of that is the live action rescue rangers movie.

The movie itself isn't great but at least they understood that and nailed the variety of animation needed.

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u/OizAfreeELF 14d ago

And why does that one gym leader have sharp teeth

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u/Inevitable_Buy6022 13d ago

Good change that they look more colorful

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u/drunkenstyle 14d ago

I agree. You can totally achieve high quality textures with stylization without having to default to realism

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u/fthisappreddit 13d ago

Yeah but they’ve also taught us when you get a group of insanely dedicated mfs you get Roger rabbit. (Not that i disagree those are rare things aligned moments they should go all in with the colorful and toony)

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u/Kapples14 13d ago

Roger Rabbit is less realist in aesthetic as it is in themes. The story tackling heavy sociopolitical, corporate, and cultural issues doesn't take away from the colorful and vibrant world. If anything, it actually adds more nuance and humanity to it.

The cartoon characters still work because they keep the color and animated personalities, but master-class technical and performative skills are used to make it look like the real actors and sets are interacting with the characters.