Why Pokemon can't leave the uncanny valley

#pokemon #pokemonscarletandviolet #arceus
SPOILER WARNING: SOME FOOTAGE OF THE BOSS BATTLES IN POKEMON ARCEUS
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Music used:
- Opening title theme (Pokemon Fire Red and Leaf Green)
- Gym leader battle (Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow)
- Trainer battle (Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow)
- Virbank city (Pokemon Black and White 2)
- Route 2 summer (Pokemon Black and White)
- Gym leader battle (Pokemon Sword and Shield)
- Sans theme (Undertale)
- Pokemart (Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire)
- Pokemon Stadium (Super Smash Bros Melee)
- Main Theme (Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Sky)
Thumbnail and art by Angela (@anglesdraws on Instagram and Twitter)
Excellent feedback from:
‪@kikikrazed‬ @TheNukes ‪@HizzyHay‬ ‪@SocraticCinema‬
Additional editing by:
‪@SocraticCinema‬
Thanks for last looks!
‪@Skyehoppers‬ ‪@QuestingRefuge‬ ‪@Veegie‬

[@Afterthoughts]

PINNED COMMENT FOR CORRECTIONS! 1. Evasion can only be increased in battle. Do not be duped into feeding your nidoran extra doogle-berries, you are getting played.

[@adv78]

Thanks for the correction, i was gonna eat some doogle-berries for breakfast today but now i will put them in my pocket to eat only when i get in fight

[@BackPalSA]

Doogle Berries don't even increase evasion, they increase the Mirthfulness stat! Fake doogle fan!

[@virusmochi]

I just figured it was part of the joke and I got what you were trying to say

[@Vandreand]

It can also be rised with the power of friendship! (Gen 6 onwards)

[@khayd3n]

Big Doogle has played the market again

[@DanielSantosAnalysis]

I've always took turn based combat as an abstraction, like, what you're seeing is not the actual battle, just a representation. That said, yeah, some stuff just looks silly and goofy in a way that didn't back in the day.

[@NathanButh]

Ttrpgs do a good job emphasizing this. Yes, in d&d people still take their turns individually, but everything in a round happens simultaneously in a 6 second window of time

[@morganmccool6026]

I think it's just Meowth's small defiance, it's him refusing to wear more than the minimum pieces of flair. "Oh you captured me and now I have to do whatever you say? Fine, but you didn't tell me to dodge, so I didn't. Put me back in my ball if you don't like it. If you want me invested then maybe give me a share of those poke-dollars I'm taking beatings for everyday."

[@Afterthoughts]

LMAO new headcanon

[@OccuredJakub12]

Cool vid. You were wrong on one thing though: this problem was already solved. The Stadium/Colloseum/Battle Revolution games solved it before Game Freak made it a problem. How? By making the Pokemon look alive and exciting in battle! They moved with energy and tension, in Battle Revolution they even had them do either a roar or a semi-attacking move when you were picking their attack and the menu obscured your vision of the arena,and once you had picked it and were waiting for the opponent, the camera would usually just pull way back so that you don't see the seams. Game Freak would need to simply made new battle idle animations for most of the Pokemon that could show them standing or hopping, muscles tensed, eyes focused and ready to leap at any moment. The attack animations should be fast and snappy, like they're able to strike so fast or with such strength and accuracy that you're not thinking they're just standing there and not dodging it. For the Wailmer problem, again Genius Sorority games just had Wailord at an accurate size and it looked good enough because the stages were big enough. For overworld walking, you can just have oversized Pokemon and honestly all fish-like water types not come out of the Pokeball on dry land. Makes sense. These problems are easy to solve but it demands that Game Freak cares to solve it.

[@QuestingRefuge]

I will never forget Meowth being such a good sport

[@SocraTetris]

Great point and hilarious delivery as always! I used to think that Pokemon needed to up its 3D animation quality to start looking good again, but it really is a double edged sword even if they get more realistic. I saw we move backwards and go harder into 3D, but back into more stylized and over the top. Like Houseki no Kuni. I will play a pokemon game again once it looks like Land of the Lustrous! lol

[@jjthepikazard212]

good video. i agree that the progression of this is interesting, it just doesn't bother me v much. the part of me that would be freaked out is much quieter than the part of me that gets excited at the cool move animations

[@Afterthoughts]

Yo I will always be a proponent of the “oh I don’t really mind this actually” approach 👍👍

[@EmeralBookwise]

I think there are a lot of ways to alleviate this while still retaining the turn-based structure. For example, while selecting a move, instead of just having the camera spin lazily around Pokémon who are standing in a static idle pose, make the Pokémon use their walking animations to circle the field as if sizing each other and looking for an opening to strike. Another example would be with moves like Protect. Currently the way it works is that the Pokémon using Protect always goes first and then the attacking Pokémon's move just fails without any additional animation. A more dynamic way would be that while the Protecting Pokémon's turn is processed first, having the attacking Pokémon's animation displayed first only for the defending Pokémon to seemingly throw up their shield at the last second.

[@Afterthoughts]

Aw, I love that first example :) and the second! Yeah having a state transition to indicate that you're selecting a move is a cute idea.

[@amaryllis0]

There's a good video out there about how the "Uncanny Valley" is a myth. What you're seeing is actually just... some things try to be cartoony and fail/succeed at being cartoony, and some things try to be realistic and fail/succeed at being realistic, which is of course more difficult. Pokémon isn't in some transition zone which does weird things to the human mind, it's just doing a more realistic style while being really shitty at it. If you were to put it on the graph, it's two distinct, straight slopes

[@laurenwoods3609]

I feel like a solution to this is to have the animation 'freeze' after a strike and jump into 'bullet time'. Make the camera slowly turn around the frozen-in-place fighters, pop up an icon of your trainer thinking furiously so it's clear that all your menu scrolling is just a representation of your split-second thinking.

[@Knight41b]

In the Indigo League episode “School of Hard Knocks”. They show the GameBoy games as a Battle Simulator to teach “Typing(s) mechanics”. If the newer games existed in the Pokémon world, they would be treated the same way as the Battle Simulator version of the GameBoy games.

[@thatgreenfur6584]

What we really need is a pokémon combat game that resembles armored core where you're flying around as the legendaries and blasting out attacks as fast as the cooldowns allow Imagine. One Gyrados against 10,000 pidgeys

[@Afterthoughts]

YES PLEASE

[@VirtualMarmalade]

I think free camera control was a mistake here too - it's a lot harder to make animations that look good from multiple angles. In Scarlet I was constantly messing with the camera trying to find an angle that looked good and I couldn't find it... It feels like a step in the wrong direction.

[@Afterthoughts]

Ooh that's a good point - allowing the player to control the camera angle puts a lot of pressure onto the artists.

[@Severencir]

The fire emblem series shows a pretty good execution of turn based animations, though the demands are different

[@Afterthoughts]

I haven't played any Fire Emblem games! I should definitely check them out.

[@MegaVirus700]

The Toucannon bit was great editing😂

[@galleryg998]

Youre making everything make sense! Thank youuuu!

[@lyingpancake95]

I wonder how Pokemon combat would look if it imitated Yakuza's dynamic turn-based style that has you and opponents automatically square off and walk around.

[@MrJack8700]

Yeah I will always say that Pokemon should’ve stayed 2D animated. Idk how you would make a 3D turn based rpg look like it was not turn based though.

[@BoxyUwU]

The second you said the word uncanny valley I immediately understood exactly what this video was about

[@retributive]

100% agree with you. I don't think they'd ever do it, but I'd love to see a complete reworking of the battle system where you are completely in control of your Pokémon and having a real time 1:1 battle. Moves could effect terrain dynamically, positioning could be factored in, legendries could feel legendary not by just their stats but unique abilities. I think fans would hate the more fighting style of gameplay, but maybe not after like almost 30 years...

[@Rocketlauncher00]

Monster Rancher kinda managed to display the battles in a way that made the monster not look like passive dummies while at the same time retaining the player being a trainer, i.e. not directly involved in the fight. You'd be seeing the monsters in the arena, moving around, attempting to get a good position over their opponent (available moves were dependent on your distance to the enemy), and the player would indicate a direction, and could control when to attack, but any order would be carried out in real time but with a delay. Like you actually told the monster to "Close distance!" and the monster would then attempt to close the distance, which could take different amounts of time depending on circumstance and monster ability. And if I remember correctly, Monster Rancher started out on the PS1? So they had the 3D enviroment creature battling, and potentially the same issues presented in this video. Though they weren't nearly as high fidelity graphic wise as Pokemon games are now, so that probably plays a big part too.

[@sydneygorelick7484]

I wonder if this could be solved by some sort of bullet time, followed by choreographed interactions? So, Meowth isn't standing there waiting to get hit, there's a bullet-time pause (or even just an active idle) followed by Meowth bracing and maybe trying to dodge to the side but getting knocked back a bit? Like even just a bit more active animating could probably smooth out this uncanny valley. It's interesting to me, if this is the case, that this problem still stands: it seems like if you're making "attack" and "get hit" animations, you'd also think about making an "about to get hit" animation that plays in tandem with attack animations. Overall, weird choices from the devs here! (but, great video!)

[@jaetrnn6000]

Man pokemon and pixels just went hand in hand. It was like they perfected it then just threw it to the side. Black and white was my briefest played series, although i did play it quiet a bit and it just had the peak pixel graphics. Game play wise, omega ruby and sapphire had me hooked for so long, being the game i got into shiny hunting and where i got my live dex to where i uphold and update to this day. Those were the times.

[@upforellie]

what the fuck this is hands down one of the best commentary videos I've seen in a minute. I was never bored and actually vibed with the humor rather than wincing in pain the whole time. Also, on topic, for me the rigidity of how the Pokemon move while being in this massive open space is why it looks like straight garbage

[@kingoftherevolution4855]

my uncle has been saying this for generations, but tbh for me the straight upgrade is just that. I would like a larger animation pool to pull from though lol.

[@Remiwi-bp6nw]

The idea of stylization is a good way to put it. Turn based combat is an abstraction, so it needs an abstract visual language to go with it otherwise it just looks weird.

[@gabrielgonzalez7790]

Idk the whole, “would look like a dog fight”, argument goes out the window when you think about the anime

[@st.altair4936]

The Black & White games and Sword & Shield looked the best in this department imo. I wish they continued to improve the pixel art past B&W... I find Pokemon to look best when it's 2d Also, this video is so engaging! I was 8 minutes into the video before I remembered I was on youtube lol

[@azul4904]

will you ever do more film analysis videos? like, analize particular shows :) i looooved the one on “i am not ok with this”

[@Afterthoughts]

I am working on one currently! It's kicking my butt, though :) it'll hopefully be out sometime in the next few months but I never put out a video until I'm totally happy with it, so we'll seeeeeee! :O Happy you liked the IANOWT video!! :)

[@azul4904]

@@Afterthoughts will be there when it’s out! don’t be to hard on yourself lol, you’re good at this :)

[@stvbuys]

8:27 feels very reminiscent of Egoraptor in his sequelitis videos.

[@stvbuys]

And to be clear, I love it!

[@Number.1Yanfei.Fan123]

That’s why I love Pokémon stadium

[@WarningStrangerDanger]

I've always wanted them to do a speed ramp through slow motion to freezing time between player actions, but with a dynamic camera while time is frozen. Imagine if each turn slowed to a stop right as an attack finished, letting you see the result of the last turn as the camera and, zooms, and sweeps over the battlefield.

[@13meli55a]

I wonder if freeze framing could help pokemon get back to the other side of the uncanny valley. Freeze or slomo while instead of idling while the player makes a decision, then it really is “too fast” for the other pokemon to dodge.

[@KStarPR]

For turn-based games with much less uncanny combat, I'd look into these games for reference: Persona 5, Yakuza 7, & Pokémon Colosseum. Alternatively any 3D Fire Emblem game (Engage and Awakening are the first to come to mind) There's still some awkward standing around, but the actual act of a turn-based battle feels less awkward there, and can still be abstracted enough to potentially turn away from dogfighting.

[@speinz9430]

This was a good video! Some of the stuff was a bit difficult to wrap my head around but I’m also just not great at retaining long bursts of information so I’m definitely going to increase the view count of this video by a large margin.

[@dhi_holo]

"There's 700 pokemon" I love hearing people say things that were true once. A decade ago. Right now, there's somewhere between 1010 and 1015 known Pokemon, it's insane

[@oreolaw9911]

the last Pokemon game I really enjoyed was Ultra sun and moon and I wasn't 100% sure but I think you may have helped me understand so thank you

[@lorenzosciuga8559]

YOOOOO YOUR UPLOAD???? NICEE

[@metalucipherable]

Makes me wonder how you feel about Yakuza 7's turn based idle animations/movement on battlefield

[@alienm00sehunter]

What about a battle system like 13? The pokemon auto battle with simple attacks. You can tell them to change their strategy like defensive or offensive. You then can issue the major attacks like earthquake.

[@cab1113]

This is something I have definitely noticed subconsciously but had never really thought about. The battles look so dumb. WHY DOESN'T MEOWTH JUST WALK AWAY?! Related question, where do the coins come from? Does meowth have an extra coin pouch organ like some sort of weird scroogey kangaroo?

[@Afterthoughts]

Meowth is a precious magical money cat and my phone corrects him to Meow Thing

[@clanpsi]

I've been saying it for like two decades, Pokemon should adopt a battle system more like Grandia. A more contemprary example would be the Legend of Heroes games or Ni no Kuni. It would fit so much better.

[@TangerineTux]

Honestly, for me, the Pokémon games that hit the uncanny valley the hardest are Black & White with their weird animated sprites and robotic idle poses. I haven’t actually played B&W but this is part of what puts me off. I much prefer their later, more relaxed idle animations in 3D games. (There are a few exceptions, such as Miltank and Tauros, whose idle animations still bug me.)

[@dissonanceparadiddle]

Nino Kuni figured this out. Arceus got pretty close

[@yesbloomsan4290]

thought about this. i want to see a main pokemon game that's not about the battles. there's something to legends arceus, with the pokedex and quests. also, while the battle system feels bad, i enjoyed seeing the pokemon in the same space. still would like an official battle simulator though. pokemon battles are on different levels of weird, as mentioned in the video, but i love them as a game.

[@gelfrecs]

100% this. Bless this video

[@Lotloxa]

Actually, I feel like it would be pretty easy to add quicktime events to the single player version to emulate the repeated line of “dodge it!”

[@Afterthoughts]

Haha that’d be a pretty cute change :)

[@breteasley3581]

yay...new video....more please

[@mailiam1]

You should’ve shown off Pokepark tbh, the battles in that game are a lot more like what you’d imagine

[@Afterthoughts]

I've never heard of Pokepark! :O

[@mailiam1]

@@Afterthoughts lmao I don’t blame you, it was a pretty obscure game for the Wii. It has 3D battles which would honestly be a really cool format in another Pokémon game

[@JacobPDeIiNoNi]

Personally I liked the way arceus looked better than Sw/Sh and the other 3D entries because that's where the uncanny valley starts for me is with the 3D, and Legends: arceus at least had improved animation quality and the pokemon making contact. So it still looks off, just less off than previous 3D titles IMO. Not in the way that it looks realistic, just in the way I can look at arcanine using fire fang and not think "why did that hit they were nowhere near each other" I can at least think, "hey that fire fang looked kinda cool" even if right after they're right back to standing idly. There are still many many things to be worked out but I felt like there were improvements.

[@Afterthoughts]

I'm also super happy for all the people who had excellent experiences with Arceus! It's fun to see them trying new things, even if they didn't totally land for me, given how hard it is to get momentum around new ideas in a deep-seated franchise like Pokemon.

[@onigiri_san6546]

The animation in the overworld of Pokemon legend Arceus, when your character gets attacked by a wild pokemon is what they should be aming for. It would be cool if they foud a way to implement that in trainers battle. Maybe a Xenoblade Chronicles style battles, where you manage tacticts of the pokemon populating your team and you can shift the stratedy during combat by giving orders but where you don't control each move your pokemon uses. That would be cool...

[@toubleu3531]

I love your videos. Please come back, your last videos are amazing-

[@Afterthoughts]

Good news!! haha

[@JoshTheHod]

i knew this game looked off but couldnt figure out how. thank you!!! gonna send this to my friend to ruin their immersion! ❤

[@samuelreed1195]

This video is really interesting and I would want to see your critique of a game like dark souls

[@Afterthoughts]

Seeeeee uhhhh I’ve never played dark souls 😶 shh don’t tell on me

[@keeganm139]

I love Arceus, but the battles do absolutely suck. Especially transitioning from real-time dodging wild pokemon attacks!

[@LiteWrites]

I don't play pokemon. Do I care about this problem anyway? Inexplicably yes. Thanks Sam, for your infectious enthusiasm :P

[@steamtasticvagabond474]

I could like Pokémon if it was a better game

[@TheGrooseIsLoose]

I think it would be enough to just add better idle animations, fidget animations, and animations for getting hit that look like they’re trying and failing to block or counter the attack. Personally I was less bothered by the awkwardness in battles than I was by the NPCs just standing still with an awkward idle animation. Especially in the town, where shopkeepers could have been at least behind a counter tapping their fingers or somethings, and people could be positioned naturally around the are, but instead everyone is lined up along the side of the street like soldiers on roll call, and everyone is just standing menacingly. Like they could have made the town look way more reasonable just by having some people walk around a path instead of standing still, having others be in a different pose/location, and putting some people behind a counter or in a chair. I’m hoping that Scarlet/Violet does this a little better. I want to excuse this stuff because it is hard to make a game and they did a good job in many ways, but at the end of the day, with the size of the Pokémon franchise, they should be able to at least achieve a similar quality to other major franchises, and yet all visual aspects of the game are at best on par with GameCube games. Like if someone showed me this game in 2004, I’d be like, “Wow, that’s a cool game,” but I wouldn’t find anything about the appearance to be impressive. Like, compare this to Twilight Princess and think about how the people in town look/act and how the environments look.

[@KarmaDama]

Upgrade Go back GO BACK

[@Afterthoughts]

The nature of progress haha

[@RulerMyriam]

i would wait however longer it would take for gamefreak to make high quality battle animations

[@Afterthoughts]

I do personally think it would be worth it, but buuut I also don’t know anything about the company or selling games 🤷‍♀️ so nobody should listen to me

[@PBromide]

I haven't played some of the newer games, so I really lost it when you showed that Wailord in Shining Pearl/Glittery Diamond or whatever it's called. I was like "please let this be a mod 😭" I wouldn't mind a return to a more stylized depiction of Pokemon like in the early games. There's got to be some kind of design that keeps the abstract sense of the battle and not look goofy. Realism in Pokemon looks weird (eyes detective pikachu movie), so why not lean into the cartoon element? Yeah, we're in the battle dimension, who cares, it's a video game. A fixed camera angle could help this. Maybe having the Pokemon be farther apart, like they were in Stadium? Stadium never looked silly to me - but then again, the animations were a little more lively than the ones we have here, and the standards for what is silly and what is not have changed. Just another example of the great logistics problem of making a good Pokemon game, I presume.

[@josuelservin]

Perhaps it's time to move to an ATB system?

[@mallory-mae]

sam where are The Captions :(

[@Afterthoughts]

They’re on the way! ❤️

[@billyrubin7713]

the problem with aiming to recreate reality...is that you end up with reality.

[@Afterthoughts]

lolll well said!

[@speinz9430]

Perfect

[@kikikrazed]

This video really shows off your ability to incorporate humor without it overshadowing your argument! Great work as always

[@Afterthoughts]

Dawww glad you think so!! Yay!!

[@Big_Dai]

Personally, didn't find anything she said "humorous" She does present a decent core idea

[@ddl385]

Pokemon Stadium/Colosseum did this better 20 years ago, on 3D. Pokemon were shown in full scale, and they moved and attacked each other. But the trick? They never appeared together in the same screen during a move, only between turns. The Machamp threw the punch, then you saw the Pikachu taking the punch, but you didn't see the punch connecting to Pikachu's face, that was left to imagination. Btw, I laughed so much at the toucannon part I just subscribed to the channel.

[@TSPhoenix2]

Which is what Hollywood has been doing for years when they don't want to spend the time and money to do real fight choreography, they understand that if you're not going to do it properly then just fake it entirely with the camera, because if you don't you end up with what Pokémon looks like today.

[@__dane__]

I think it would help if the Pokémon had idle animations that incorporated animations that at least give the impression that they tried to dodge the attack.

[@youtubeviewerxx]

Yeah, I always found it weird even as a kid. "It missed." "No it didn't, he didn't even attack!"

[@__-be1gk]

I mean or you could just give them dodge animations

[@undercoverduck]

Maybe they could steer away from realism while continuing to update by leaning into a heavily stylistic art style... Legends Arceus was close to Okami's art style, but what if they went even further and gave the same paint-strokes look to the Pokémon and human characters? I think the primary problem with this would be the potential alienation of fans who've grown fond of the anime-inspired art style, but that can be mitigated. And it's not like prior Pokémon games haven't alienated a subset of fans while still selling like hot cakes 🤔

[@Afterthoughts]

I’d love to see a super heavily stylized 3D Pokémon game :) there are so many places the franchise can go!

[@undercoverduck]

@@Afterthoughts But do you think it would work to drag the series back out of the uncanny valley? You seem to have a far keener eye for it than I do. I didn't notice the strangeness of these 3D models standing still until you mentioned it, and I still have to focus on it to really notice it. And! Of course a new art style wouldn't solve the lack of movement directly, so I'm genuinely wondering if it'd help mitigate the uncanny-problem in your (and other people's) eyes (Sorry for my long comments 😅)

[@jo-ui3ly]

@@undercoverduck I think you're on to something with this idea! If I may offer a long comment of my own lol: My understanding of realism stems from a literary background, so to me realism is simply "depicting things as they actually are" (There's a bit more to it than that, but it'll do for our purposes lol). As mentioned in the video (which was great btw!) the Pokemon games were more believable in abstract form because we understood we WERENT being shown things as they were actually happening. But when the Pokemon games started adding realism into their art style--entering the third dimension, adding animation, fully rendering backgrounds--it communicated to the players that we *are* now seeing what's actually happening. And, as Afterthoughts expertly explains in the video, what is actually depicted and what "would actually happen" doesn't always match up. It isn't a fully successful depiction of reality, hence... Uncanny Valley. Now back to the stylization question! I wanna introduce another literary term here called verisimiltude. Briefly, it's the parts of a story that "promotes a reader’s willing suspension of disbelief." Or more simply, it's what makes you believe whats being shown is actually happening. In truth, THIS is what we're actually talking about here! Not realism. Afterthoughts actually touches on this point at the end of the video--Pokemon ISNT realistic! Not only is it clearly not our own reality, but there are fundamental aspects of the world that don't make sense, or would pan-out very differently if they played out in a "realistic" setting. Which... is exactly why adding elements of realism to the Pokemon world, even if its "only" through it's art style/graphics, just doesn't work. A realistic visual world directly contradicts the fundamentally fantastical world that Pokemon is, and that's what breaks verisimiltude. That's why we don't believe it. But would stylization fix it? Well lets look at Into the Spider-verse: Is this a world thats depicted through heavily stylized animation? Absolutely! But does that stylization make the world more believable? Actually... that's *exactly* what the animation in Spider-verse does! The stylistic choices made by the animation team ALL served a purpose, and that purpose was to make spider-powers, multiple realities, and the comic book universe that the story takes place in more believable. But how? Why does it work? It works because depicting reality in an "unrealistic" or stylized way visually communicates to the audience that the events being shown, while very much "real", do not take place in *our* reality. There are rules to the world, just not rules we live by. THAT is what successful verisimilitude does for a fantasy world. That is what makes Spider-Verse work in a way that Pokemon doesn't. So, final answer lol: Would stylization pull Pokemon back out of the Uncanny Valley? Sure! I think that could absolutely help re-earn the fan's & player's suspension of disbelief--or rather, our belief that the Pokemon world *could* be real and *does* work. But at the end of the day, I think this is only a symptom of a deeper problem that Afterthoughts outright says right before the closing statements: "How much longer can we go before it is no longer acceptable for them to say, 'But don't worry, they love it!'?" Again, I repeat what I said about Spider-verse; The story works because we believe there are rules to the world that make sense, even if they wouldn't happen that way in our world. But... can we really say the same thing about the Pokemon universe? *Do* the rules of that world make sense? ...I don't know. I think that's something we each get to decide. But the creative team is definitely at a cross-roads with the franchise. A decision has to be made, one way or another. Cause as easy as it is to use the latest graphics and make 100 new characters every time you remake a sightly different version of the same game and say "Look at us! We're keeping up with the times!", If the fundamental aspects of your project haven't also changed & grown in that time, what have you really done other than slap a fresh coat of paint over an old car to hide the damage and call it new? Anyways... I'll stop writing a five page essay in the youtube comment section now lol. Hyperfixation took over me so I just wanted to get my thoughts down, but I hope something in here was at least a little interesting to someone :'")

[@Deadflower019]

My problem with almost all of the 3D Pokemon games is that the art style just isn't consistent at all. In Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, the People, Pokémon, and landscape all have slightly different artstyles which maks it really fucking hard to see a coherent world. If they could get that problem figured out, the graphics wouldn't be a point of contention I think.

[@G-F-D]

honestly all you need are a handful of new animations for strafing and dodging and suddenly it looks way more lively. it baffles me that they haven’t done this and that the idle poses are so bland. look at how interesting and expressive meowth’s pose at 5:12 is even though it’s just a static image! and then look how it stands so stiffly in 3D a few seconds later! why! if both opponents were staring each other down and circling before picking their time to strike it looks like they’re actually engaged and you get so so much more room for expressive posing! they could even have some tweaked animations for redbar where they’re like staggering as they’re strafing oh my god doesn’t it sound so cool. why does game freak just not. please

[@nathonso_edits]

Literally this!! The 3d idle poses are so so bad, the problem is the Pokémon company wanting a new game every year because they know it will sell like hotcakes even if it's garbage, I haven't bought a game since ORAS cause I'm still waiting for a game that actually looks like it's not a pile of hot garbage

[@Skyehoppers]

Pokemon SoulSister is my favorite version :) Great video, hilarious as always! I think a direction worth exploring is seeing how other JRPGs have evolved past turn-based combat, like with Xenoblade and the recent Final Fantasies. But switching that up without removing what makes it feel like Pokemon is going to be insanely difficult. And tbh I think just improving the animations could go a long way. I personally think the battles from Pokemon Colloseum still looking aesthetically more pleasing than those of the Switch games. (I can't believe Toucannon is a war criminal now.)

[@Daehpo]

Yeah, I think just taking some notes from the Stadium, Colosseum, & Revolution games could go a long ways to improving the look and feel of the modern games(as far as battling is concerned). I haven't really played the Colosseum games, but from what I've seen some note worthy details are: +Animations tend to be more exaggerated and varied. Each Pokémon has several attacking animations and a few distinct flinching animations. +Pokémon are more spread out. This lets them be true to scale without over crowding, but also makes the battle feel larger. +Hard cuts are almost always used to transition between attacker & target. Likely as a result of the Pokemon being more spread out, but it helps mitigate the "why is it just standing there?" question & makes attacks feel snappier.

[@Afterthoughts]

Yeah it’s kind of a crime that I didn’t mention coliseum tbh, those battles were the first that really got me stoked about “the future” of Pokémon

[@123goofyking]

Considering the Granddaddy of all RPGs Dragon Quest is seemingly about to ditch turn based combat itself, it's getting harder for GF and PokeCo to stay in their old ways. They didn't want to leave the 2D gameplay, they didn't want to make mainline games on console, and they were deathly afraid of what adding a bit of freedom (SwSh) would do. But even they're being forced to change now

[@cyberrb25]

A long time ago, there was this game talking about the Animation of Pokémon, which restricted itself to the main games. It was before Sword and Shield launched, so they didn't know about the things they did in there. But they said one thing that mostly is akin to: It's a death spiral. It's an issue of exponential growth, where adding more animations to make it feel more realistic (without even considering the "now it's actual dogfighting") would cost so much because there's so many different rigs (a.k.a Pokémon) to do that adding 500 new animations for but a single new thing is daunting. And I'm saying 500 because the newer games seem to tattle on around that mark for different species, but that dismisses post-launch added Pokémon, characters' (which are not as reusable from game to game), camera work...

[@christianhornby6444]

@@cyberrb25 But the growth isn't exponential, its controlled. They only release as many new Pokémon as they want to release. And that doesn't even take into account the fact that they did have complex animations, 2D in Black and White 2 and 3D in Colosseum. But they threw it all out for an uncanny attempt at realism in the latest generations.

[@dragonfluf]

Glad someone's addressing this. I would love if Pokemon went back to making 2D games, lowering the level of reality to where it doesn't matter if the pokemon don't actually touch. That or make animations more... y'know... animated...

[@wygolvillage2637]

I personally like how the battles look in Arceus but this makes some fair points. I would love to see animations for Pokémon attempting to dodge or chasing each other around the battle field or whatever. Or, like, any idle animation that isn't calm breathing.

[@leonst.7471]

I am currently enjoying the DS era on my phone emulator through a "totally legal" copy of mine and I get what you are saying like my last pokemon game I played was X and Y when this phenomen started and it somehow pushed me away...well anyways see you at your 100k subs special!

[@keeganm139]

I feel transitioning from sprites to 3D models was a mistake, most of the time.

[@elias0240]

@@keeganm139 Have to agree with you there. I mean, I enjoyed Pokémon X and Y a whole lot, as it was my first Pokémon game, but I think that game was the only game where 3D somewhat worked. With X and Y, it was on the 3Ds! Lines look bit-crushed and it was stylized! The grass in that game didn’t look believable, but it conveyed emotion and feeling! After that, things got too realistic and we entered the uncanny valley. If pokemon were to make a game in the style of the older ones, it SHOULD be 2D. Of course, that would go against modern business practices, but it would be cost effective, they could make more stylized Pokémon designs, and they could perfect the 2D groundwork the older games had created. It would be so much more manageable of a job than Gamefreak trying a completely new artstyle for the 29th time trying to regain their footing on what made Pokemon special. It’s as they say: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I think if Gamefreak made a new 2D Pokémon it would sell GREAT. Side note: I think games should be more stylized in general nowadays, even in 3D ones. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the kingdoms trailers look amazing, because it has some great art direction. The cell-shaded look makes everything look painted on, every view you take in a new composition. If pokemon would go back to being more stylized, I could see it work, because it seems like they ARE ways to make an innovative game while staying on the more artistic side of the spectrum.

[@ThysiosX]

I think people were ok with Arecus because it was the most innovate we're seen Pokémon be. Even though it still half-arsed it. It was a step in the right direction. A tiny step. Like babies first step, but still a step. Even if animating all the Pokémon takes a lot of time an effort, they could reuse those models and animations across the next few games so I still think it'd be worth it. It's not like Pokémon is breaking ground graphically with each new title. And it wouldn't be hard to go the anime route where getting a flamethrower to the face is just a mild inconvenience. It doesn't have to go full realism. It just has to be immersive.

[@javi7636]

This was a fun video (especially the ballistic missile strikes), and I'm with you on the uncanny valley. Although we've had 3D Pokemon battles since the year 2000 with the original Pokemon Stadium game! I remember there being certain things that disrupted my suspension of disbelief (like how most buff/debuff moves used a generic "grr I'm angry" pose), but as a kid it was overshadowed by the coolness factor of seeing "real" Pokemon battles. Fun times.

[@Afterthoughts]

Coliseum is popping up a lot in this comments section, clearly a lot of us have fond memories 😄

[@wilbo.channel]

This is so good. Like Kikikrazed said, your use of comedy is impeccable. Had me laughing throughout, and that doesn't typically happen for me when it's the non-person-on-the-screen-type essays. It's so clear that you're just naturally funny. The written jokes and your at times improv-esque performance never bog anything down. So good. Loved this.. also just a super interesting niche topic that I had never once considered before as someone who hasn't played a Pokemon game since the DS era, but I know have very strong feelings about this lol

[@Afterthoughts]

Haha oh hooray, I'm so glad! :)

[@daemontale]

They've also got a problem with soulless eyes if you ask me, I mean... just look at that Meowth 👀 With the sprites, you get a lot more abstract emotion/character with the pokemon. Not so in the newer gens, they all have super tall eyes and a distant stare 😕 They've lost all their character

[@AJGexe]

The term "realism" has been colloquialized into just meaning the opposite of minimalism. It just means ambitious and meticulous. Minimalism is my favorite movement. Done right - a limited color palette is far more difficult than full motion video. I think what these fights need is - "the sauce." The camera needs direction and choreography. Exchanges should be playing in quick sequence. For example, hyper beam should play it's animation and only when the smoke clears it would reveal that protect was up all along.

[@100hundert]

I've been watching a TON of video game essays on KZbin over the years, and yours are super refreshing and unique. I'm not even really into Pokémon and I fully agree with your perspective. But in any case, you strike a perfect balance between being entertaining and informative. I'm certain your channel will grow a lot 👌

[@sanctuary570]

Imagine this, what if instead of standing idly by waiting for being struck in the face they did a battle animation. Just running around a 3D battle arena. Occasionally attacking each other without your input (I would imagine these default attacks would be minuscule when it comes to damage and other pokemon could easily dodge them). And when you choose a move there should be a cool down timer in which the other pokemon also attacks. it would still be turn based combat but closer to realism.

[@Rhakimdar]

Xenoblade chronicles comes to mind. Maybe a similar thing where they can have "auto attacks" that eventually builds up into special moves and such.

[@user-sl6gn1ss8p]

I think they could just alternate between standing with some body movement, as if reading each other, some feints, and something like slowly circling each other. It would feel like the pokémon are being active but deliberate, and there would be no confusion, and there's no need to change the battle system at all.

[@JoViljarHaugstulen]

If they don't want to go that far Gamefreak really should at least consider using the camera instead of allowing the player to control it. Because camera work can make it look a lot better and more dynamic Great example of this is Pokemon Colosseum and Pokemon XD:Gale of Darkness yes they do have some decent animations (as the camera does need something to work with and enhance) which are made a lot better with good camera work

[@jadenseju2778]

Me and my friends are playing a ttrpg game of pokemon, where we have stats but also reactions as evasion and clash to make the battles dynamic. Have a dodge reaction or clashing a move with one of your moves and have numbers generated in the background to determine if the reaction was a success or not, could be possible, but game freak will never change their 26 year old battle system.

[@gabrielmorariu9419]

This could essentially be applied to all turn-based RPGs without action commands (action commands like in the Mario RPGs or Undertale). Why don't John Dragon Quest or the Persona squad just step out of the way? It comes with the territory of turn based battles where actions happen without any non menu inputs. That said, 3d Pokemon has had better ways of disguising this inherent flaw. Pokemon colosseum/XD/Battle revolution had much more dynamic idle and stagger animations that made battles feel less stilted.

[@sinuvasinuva]

Another "possible" way of creating pokemon battles that has more of a "trainer orienting his pokemon feel" is how digimon world 1 did. The digimon there fight with or without your commands, but you can give commands to help it make better decisions, like defend. He will TRY to defend, it may fail but that is because he is not you playing with it, you are just giving it commands. Of course it would be a good spin off game like arceus, cause a base game with a change in mechanics like this will destroy the competitive game and etc.

[@steamtasticvagabond474]

It’s less egregious when these battles are taking place is a designated “battle space” where your suspension of disbelief is more lifted.

[@MellyMellouange]

I don't think Pokémon needs to be more realistic to look better. Instead it needs to avoid driving attention to the awkward parts. Just little things like, _starting_ to give Pokémon more lively, character-driven idle animations. No, not even _all_ of them, just updating _some_ of them each generation would at least be _something_ . And if I'm honest, they could also be making much better use of the camera for attack animations as well. Pokémon Stadium has a simple system for most moves where their animations are in two steps -- first with the camera focusing on the Pokémon using the move, and then cutting to the target getting hit. It's a simple, cost-efficient but very effective system that really could be used for a lot of moves to spice them up. It's right there, it already exists. Why not implement something like that? My problem with Pokémon is _not_ that they don't do everything right. It's the fact that they've done, almost, _nothing_ to improve these things since Gen 6. I don't demand that they do _everything_ , I want them to do _something_ . _Any_ improvement would be _something_ .

[@fivestringpat]

I hear ya! I feel they could move to a full action oriented system and solve this. OR go back to sprites and pixels!

[@jamesdelisio]

Great vid! Honestly, this is a big reason I like gen 5 so much - they maximized what they could do with just 2d sprites and to me it was really a peak for the series! Can’t wait to see the next vid ;)

[@BUGHUNTER6]

As a life-long fan, ever since pretend-playing Pokémon as a kid up to playing Legends Arceus as a 26 year old, the games have a huge problem with not innovating in general. If they really wanted to give the fans that experience the anime has always made the Pokémon world out to be, we would've been much further along. It may sound cynical, but that's the only conclusion I can arrive at when I look at the rest of the gaming landscape + Pokémon being the highest-grossing multimedia franchise in the world. It's unfortunate that this is the path Pokémon has gone down when it could theoretically get the same treatment as let's say BOTW, and blow everyone's minds. It seems like they're putting in the minimum expected amount of effort with every entry and a lot of the fans have just kind of accepted it. Like, people getting hyped that the games got a dynamic camera recently speaks volumes. That said, of course they will continue to sell... because it's Pokémon

[@guillemmoreno5522]

I think it has less to do with the uncanny valley and more with how bad the graphics actually are and how stiff most animations look. You can make Pokemon look better and have better animations without having to make them more realistic. It's about style. Also, the fact there are people that believe Wailord should stay small is the reason why the death penalty should be legal.

[@RegrettableDeed]

It would be incredibly difficult, but I've always dreamed of a Pokemon game that was a mix between the traditional RPG style of the core series with the fighting mechanics of Pokken

[@Afterthoughts]

I would be sooo curious to see how this played out

[@TheOneWhoHasABadName]

I had the idea to make it feel more like an RTS battle, with pokemon having the ability to learn strategy and do actions on their own, as you cheer them on and shout commands from the sidelines then I had the same thought as Afterthoughts. “wait isn’t this even closer to actual dogfighting” maybe the only way for that to happen is to take trainers out of the picture, at which point the game idea above becomes an autobattler of some sort

[@reptarien]

I haven't giggled at a video so much in such a long time. Thank you for the amazing dry humor!!

[@lorenzosciuga8559]

With all due disrespect, Pokémon fans will literally not see this as a problem if you don't spell it out for them if shit taste was a genre of film Pokémon fans would win the Oscar

[@Afterthoughts]

Aw 💔 we love our Pokémon fan brethren. Haha

[@HizzyHay]

#BigPikachuIsInnocent (great vid)

[@Afterthoughts]

Big pikachu is everything wrong in my life

[@Selestrielle]

So let's do some maths. Supposing a new Pokemon game with a new roster of creatures bringing the total pokecount to a round thousand. To animate each of these to the fidelity of say, an Elden Ring enemy (realistically it would probably need more than that because each of these nuggets has dozens of available moves), it would probably take a single animator at least a couple months (probably more, but I'm assuming some animations can be recycled between creatures with similar body types). That's roughly 5 pokemon a year per animator. With a production time of 3-ish years, you'd need [smashes calculator app] roughly SEVENTY FULL TIME ANIMATORS to make that game happen. Assuming you're paying these folks a livable wage for those 3 years, and including admin costs of maintaining that staff, you're already budgeting somewhere in the 20mil for animators alone. And we're not even talking about artists, riggers, scripters, programmers, designers, testers and management leads. Or anyone making the rest of the game outside of creature battles. So could the Pokemon Company throw money at that problem until it's solved? Technically yes. Would the costs exceed the budget of pretty much every single game ever made? Also yes.

[@paigemalloy4276]

Yellow was my first game too ✨ I had no concept of "strategy", and so I had a level 60 Pikachu by the time I made it to Saffron City and just a couple of randos that I caught because I loved them from the show, but no leveling up there 🤣 My little sparky man was lv 80 by the time I made it to the Elite Four

[@commanderpuffy1014]

Idea: An RTS Turn based Pokemon game. Hear me out Like the old RPG video games such as Baldurs Gate and Neverwinter Nights things such as evasion movement and dodging are taken care of by the computer based on a stat and the moves and attacks used are decided by the player. Variations in the moves and doges can provide more unique and cinematic fights while still holding on to that Trainer-Pokémon separation

[@nanowasabi4421]

I think the future of turn based combat for a lot of games might be freeze framing when it’s time to choose your move. Then maybe you could save the replay and watch it without the freeze frames. That would probably work really well for a Squeenix game, but like you said, hundreds of Pokémon to animate, and now they have to react organically to attacks, and it has to look cinematic the whole time. Venusaur has to have a different dodge animation for shadow ball, earthquake, gust, etc. They might even need to change the animation depending on whether he’s charging solar beam. AI might be able to solve this problem eventually though. The computer would be able to see the attack hit box and the Poké hit box and work within the constraints the animators put on it to make sure the hit boxes don’t collide.

[@luckysgi-5karrow378]

Sun and Moon z-moves were instantly noticed to be extremely wacky. Felt like animations were meant for Final Fantasy. But speaking of that... FF also has such immersion issues lol. FF12 has one of the main characters take 20 seconds hurling giant fireballs with an explosion of gargantuan energy seemingly half the size of a planet....and this can take place inside a mere cave.

[@LaughingThesaurus]

I felt like Pokemon battles lost a lot of appeal starting in, well, the first 3D game that was released, and it basically gradually got worse... and well, it was at its absolute worst in Sw/Sh, and the fact that your trainer reacts to getting hit and can move around in battles, the survival and stealth elements outside of battle, and other little things, did bring Legends Arceus closer to believability. But, well, we're kinda looking at the final fantasy problem, where they spent so long trying to make turn-based battles believable that they gave up and just turned them into action games. There's probably not any way to actually make turn-based battles look fully believable. but, there are ways to make the world feel less fake? The world just, felt completely fake in the games preceding Legends Arceus. I didn't believe a single thing I saw.

[@cucumbermainline]

Turn-based battle is one of the identities of pokemon and i'm quite sure The Pokemon Company will not go away with it for at least within couple or so years. However, GameFreak is definitely on to something when they're adding autobattles in SV. But yeah Pokemons shouldn't really be idle during battles. They should be doing stuff and demeanors appropriate for their natures and according to level of friendship i guess. I wouldn't even care if two Pokemon natures share the same animations, at least they're not idling.

[@PloverTechOfficial]

We are we going? We don’t know. But I’m sure it’s going to be fun.

[@thijsvos1852]

What a good video. Ive had a problem with the new pokemon games, but i couldn’t place it. Now i know what it is, so thank you!

[@Officialencode]

the solution: have attacks and statuses be animated in 3D (it's expensive yes) BUT have the battle play in super slow-mo, as if to say trainers are making decisions as the battle is happening and the trainers aren't just waiting their turn. Each time an actual in-game turn is taken, have the render speed up to normal speed for the selected move, and at the end of that specific move slow it down to the slow-mo state for the next turn (AND if there's a chance to miss, be super effective, or any stat based effect the animation renders accordingly (the numbers can be rolled during the opponents turn so it's technically predetermined if a move will be impacted by the receiver's stats.)) This allows the battle to be as visually dynamic as the anime while still maintaining the logistics of the turn based nature of pokemon