After years of waiting,Pokemon Brilliant DiamondandShining Pearlare finally here, and fan reaction has been decidedly mixed. While many appear to have found something rewarding or at least entertaining in the Gen 4 remakes, other fans have noted a number of visual and mechanical issues in the games. OnePokemon Brilliant DiamondandShining Pearlplayer recently compared a number of screenshots taken from the Sinnoh remakes with screenshots taken from the originalPokemon DiamondandPearl.
One of the biggest changes made between the original Gen 4Pokemongames and the Gen 4 remakes was thePokemonseries switching from 2D sprite graphics to 3D models. The two art styles lend themselves to very different styles of visual presentation. In an attempt to combine them,Pokemon Brilliant DiamondandShining Pearlfeature elements of both aesthetic lanes, which can be a bit of a problem.
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Redditor Fern-ando shared several images of the player walking with a Pokemon through towns to showcase the differences between the original games' graphics and those of the remakes. The originalPokemon DiamondandPearlfeatured heavily stylized chibi graphics and a zoomed-out display that made the world resemble a dollhouse. However, the remakes seem to combine doll-like trees and buildings with paths and object proportions meant for a much larger scale. It also appears that thePokemon exist on a much smaller scalethan the player in the remakes, which wasn’t the case in the originals.
In the screenshots, the player is shown walking with Hoenn Legendaries Groudon and Rayquaza as well as Giratina, one of theSinnoh region’s Legendary Pokemon. The screenshots taken from the original games depict the Legendaries as towering over the player while trotting–or floating, in Rayquaza’s case–right on the avatar’s heels.
Combined with the smaller scale of the environments and the player avatar being quite small and stylized, this makes the Legendaries appear larger. In contrast, the screenshots taken from the remakes show the world as large and spread-out, the player avatar as a more detailed human shape, and the Legendaries as noticeably smaller than they were in the originals.
Fern-ando commented in the post that this was intended as a rebuttal to anyPokemonfans arguing thatPokemon Brilliant DiamondandShining Pearl’s follower animationswere meant to recreate the original games' following animations. It appears to point out the art style dissonance that makes giant Pokemon look small and far from intimidating. Additionally, it draws attention to the way larger and more spread-out environments can mess with thePokemongames' traditional presentation.
Pokemon Brilliant DiamondandPokemonShining Pearlare available for Nintendo Switch.
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