I'm not particularly fussed by graphics. Maybe that's a habit born from playing indie games on an ailing laptop throughout my university years, or maybe it's because I've never really felt confident of the difference between 30 and 60fps. But even I think that Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's visuals don't cut it in 2022.
Over the past few days, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet leaks have become increasingly prevalent. That appeared to culminate yesterday, as a full Pokemon Scarlet ROM reportedly surfaced on 4Chan, leading to an hours-long stream in which multiple new Pokemon, gym battles, and storylines were fully accessible. When it comes to Pokemon, I'm also not particularly spoiler-averse, and over the course of the day I saw a considerable chunk of gameplay. I came away very unimpressed.
In a very general sense, Paldea's open world looks like it fits the Pokemon model nicely. That doesn't come as too much of a surprise after Pokemon Legends: Arceus, but it's the graphical details, not the overall gameplay, that concern me. The stream was filled with issues that were apparent even at a glance; NPC walking animations were dangerously juddery, with characters walking across the screen like a 1950s puppet; environmental textures would shimmer like something closer to the PS2 than 2022; pop-in was rife – not just characters in the middle-distance, but entire squads of Pokemon that would appear almost beneath your feet.
Pop-inlio
That latter detail is the most crucial. The whole point of the new, more open generation of Pokemon ushered in with Legends Arceus was to fulfill the fantasy of living in an actual Pokemon world, in which Pokemon feel as much a part of the world as they do in the rest of the franchise. Graphically, Arceus did struggle a little, but where pop-in did occur, Pokemon appeared at a distance that seemed reasonable, if not ideal, especially for what felt like it amounted to a more experimental title.
But Arceus was, essentially, a spin-off, and one that came out months ago. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are full, mainline entries that herald the next generation of Pokemon, and, in theory, the next step in an open-world evolution that's been heading this way for years. There's still a chance for some graphical improvement – the leaked version that I saw was far from the way Nintendo intended Scarlet and Violet to be seen – but right now it's not even close to good enough.
The performance in that leaked stream isn't just enough to put a dent in Paldea's believability, it's enough to shatter it completely. In the days of the infamous 'Long Grass', it was feasible that you might stumble upon a Pokemon you hadn't seen coming. In this new Gen, in an era where each creature is supposed to be a part of its own living ecosystem, that simply doesn't work. Pokemon is too big to fail, but in a world where Nintendo could pack Breath of the Wild into a base Switch, from what I've seen so far, in this state, Scarlet and Violet don't deserve to succeed.
Make sure you get the Pokemon Scarlet and Violet day one patch downloaded - it's crucial for online.
