Pokémon Sword and Shield Fans Critizing Leaked Reused Assets

PokÃ©mon Sword and ShieldÂis due to launch this week, but ahead of launch, there’s already an angry hashtag trending within the walls of Twitter. The hashtag has sparked a large number of tweets calling developer Game Freak liars after leaks surfaced apparently confirming that the game reuses PokÃ©mon models from previous games.

It’s worth noting, if you don’t want to see spoilers, don’t click on the links below that I’ve tagged with (Spoiler).

Earlier this year, a hashtag #BringBackTheNationalDex trended on the social media website Twitter after irritated fans of the PokÃ©mon games learned that not all PokÃ©mon would be transferred toSword and Shield.ÂThis sparked aresponse from Junichi Masudawho didn’t seem to be showing any plans to reverse the decision saying “this was a very difficult decision for me.”

A month after that statement, in aFamitsu interviewwith Junichi Masuda, it was explained why Game Freak had to cut the PokÃ©mon roster. “I wanted to be able to bring every PokÃ©mon if I could, but it was also a decision that I had to make eventually. In the end, I had no choice but to prioritize quality.”

In that same interview, Shigeru Ohmori stated “Even in PokÃ©mon Sun and Moon it was quite the difficult situation to bring in every PokÃ©mon , but then we switched to Nintendo Switch and the models had to be rebuilt from scratch”

Fast forward to today, users on Reddit who appear to have early copies ofSword and ShieldÂhavereleased images (Spoiler)of some character wireframe models that seem to indicate the models are identical. The Reddit post compares theSword and ShieldÂmodels with 2016sÂSun and Moonmodels from the 3DS. There aremore examples here (Spoiler)where “most of them are identical in both number of tris and appearance”.

Fans are voicing their anger stating that reusing the assets contradicts Game Freak’s statement in Famitsu. Essentially the overall tone of the hashtag is, “Game Freak said they were going to make the models from scratch and now you’ve lied to us!” Others are annoyed atleaked footage (Spoiler)which shows “wonky” animations that they aren’t impressed with.

Others have been mentioning the reused assets are just another problem aspopular features veterans liked (Spoiler)don’t appear to be in the game. It was also said that apparentlyover 100 moves from past PokÃ©mon games will not be returningtoSword and Shield.

In October, Game Informer ran an interview with Junichi Masuda who mentioned thatcut PokÃ©mon would be returning in the futureÂ and mentioned thatPokÃ©mon HomeÂwill be a key first step to that.

PokÃ©mon Sword and Shieldstill has not officially launched and leaks usually aren’t anything to go by in regards to judging the overall quality of a game. There hasn’t been an official statement from Game Freak surrounding the angry hashtag, but on a lighter note, fans have been trending#ThankYouGameFreakas a way to fight back against the negativity surrounding the game’s launch.

What are your thoughts surrounding this? Do you care if Game Freak reused older assets for whatever developmental reason, even with an earlier statement claiming otherwise?