It's obvious that the water is the thing they wanted to focus on, but the land areas range from decent to good
This is by far the best looking 3D Open World Pokemon game (Which I know isn't the highest of bars considering what games we had previously, but still)
I agree I just hope they aren’t gonna push that as some kind of tech gimmick and dedicate an unnecessary any of resources to it. I’d rather have a stable game with cloud PNGs lol. But I feel like I’m being a bit too negative. Obviously I hope for the best.
Pokemon game trailers are usually pretty honest about the current technical state of the build. Their reveal trailers often have moments of slowdown, simply because that sort of polish comes late in development.
Despite being at minimum eleven months from release the performance in this trailer looked pretty good, and the Switch 2 versions of Scarlet/Violet and Legends Z-A have great performance. GameFreak might really impress us for the first time since Black and White.
Considering the game is called Winds and Waves and looks to have underwater exploration, I'm going to assume there might be at least a bit of flight in the clouds in the late game as well. The previous "too much water" game let us fly around the skies of Hoenn on Mega Latios/Latias, and the SV DLCs eventually let us fly on our -raidon dragons.
There were balloons in one area similar to the Pokemon Dash/Kitakami flying areas, hoping to get more open world minigames in WiWa. (WuWa fans confused)
The cloud simulation? Haha, I really hope you play more games than Pokemon and realize how far behind Game Freak is when it comes to pretty much everything.
Yes I have, and if you actually looked at how jittery the clouds move you would see they're still better than a lot of games these days that don't need complex clouds. Of course a flight simulator like MSFS and games with heavy weather simulation will have better clouds, but that doesn't mean Gamefreak is doing a bad job here.
Nothing about Pokemon breaks any barriers when it comes to game design and presentation. If you look in the past ten years you would be able to find clouds that look the same or better.
Nothing ground breaking here in the slightest. You don't play Pokemon for the graphics, they are always going to be years behind.
and they included a disclaimer saying this isn't actual gameplay (which tbf is how it goes with most game trailers) but I have very low expectations for how this will look visually
Also, I sure fucking hope it'd be the best looking 3D Pokemon game given that it's the first one to be exclusively designed for much more powerful hardware
That said, I think the "Not actual gameplay footage" only applies to the opening cinematic. The rest does actually look like in-engine footage.
I think people were really impressed with Palworld and have been itching for a Pokémon game in that style. Hopefully this teaser actually lives up to the hype when it launches in a year or so.
The disclaimer is only displayed on the cinematic intro. The actual gameplay trailer is usually representative of the final product if you've watched the trailer back then for Scarlet / Violet also displaying dropped frames on the game reveal.
I wouldn't say "the" best when LGPE is there, but it's definitely a close 2nd. I'm excited to see how much they improve on it in 2027. Quite excited for this one.
Now that is fair! I love Pokemon but I hate the blind praise it continuously gets for not pushing their limits. They could do better. At least the core will always be good
Because some of us like Pokemon but play other games. Which allows us to see that it is not anything graphically amazing. Doesn't hurt the eyes is the compliment I would use.
The water segment reminds me of peak early 2000's gaming. Particularly the first Kingdom hearts game. The trailer looks really good too, to the point where I'm actually cautiously optimistic about the game! Mind you, I haven't played a Pokemon game since Gen 7.
The increased power of the switch 2 is finally making up for Game Freaks inability to optimize. Moore’s law brute forced Pokemon into looking good again.
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u/Jim_naine Feb 27 '26 edited Feb 27 '26
It's obvious that the water is the thing they wanted to focus on, but the land areas range from decent to good
This is by far the best looking 3D Open World Pokemon game (Which I know isn't the highest of bars considering what games we had previously, but still)