Why Pokémon Legends: Arceus Doesn't Look Better Than Sword & Shield
The trailers for Pokémon Legends: Arceus have had many controversial discussions surrounding them in the lead-up to its January 28 release. The game draws immediate comparisons to Breath of the Wild, but the gameplay looks significantly different. The game’s graphics at once look expansive but also might be under-textured. There hasn’t been much talk regarding the story, but the promise of a look at the world before Pokémon were trained is exciting. All of these issues have been raised and debated, but one element that continues to be concerning is the graphical quality not improving much (or at all) since Sword and Shield.
The development of Pokémon Legends: Arceus has been kept under wraps for some time now. Still, the trailers that Game Freak and Nintendo have shown the public haven’t convinced everyone that its visuals are much better than Sword and Shield from a few years back. While the gameplay might convince new players to pick up Legends: Arceus, Game Freak has now had time to learn from its rough production of the Switch generation and it’s somewhat disappointing that the graphics have seemingly not been updated.
Although an official reason might be useful for fans, there’s currently only speculation to be had as to why the game doesn’t look much better than its predecessors. There haven’t been developer interviews even as the game rapidly approaches its release date. At the end of the day, Pokémon Legends: Arceus will have to succeed by being a fun game with less graphical quality, as the game’s large scope and the system it’s trying to run on both limit its possible visual appeal.
Game Freak hasn’t worked on many games outside of Pokémon that require the scale that Legends: Arceus' new Hisui region needs and is most likely pouring time into making sure the game runs all its content smoothly. The game isn’t open-world, but all this means is that larger sections of the map won’t be pre-loaded and will be separated by occasional loading screens. It’s a large undertaking for a team that’s primarily worked on 2D games and lower-resolution 3D games. There may have not been enough time between the development of the new gameplay concepts and the production of the large areas to design the massive landscapes in higher quality.
As the many cloud versions of games have taught Nintendo fans, the Switch’s hardware also holds many games back from being fully playable on the system. Even its first-party games sometimes have trouble running at high frame rates when undocked. Given that the last hardware revision to the Switch OLED made no changes to the processor, there might not be much more that the developers of Pokémon can do to make the game look better than previous entries right now.
The real concern is not that Legends: Arceus looks similar to Sword and Shield, and more that it hasn’t proven itself as unique enough from the mainline games yet. It makes sense Legends: Arceus would have some rough patches due to hardware and development limitations, but the spinoff hasn’t found its own identity just yet. Art direction can make games with smaller budgets and time crunches stand out - it’s what makes indie games on Switch still look great when compared against their AAA counterparts. The hope and care that fans want put into a project as new and different as Pokémon Legends: Arceus hasn’t quite been on display for what could be as game-changing as Pokémon's 9th generation. Regardless of how polished the graphics are, the gameplay will be the deciding factor of whether or not the game is a worthy successor to the mainline RPGs.