hat always struck me as odd about Sword and Shield even as far back as the first reveal trailer was how standard everything about the game's development had felt. It felt like an upgraded 3DS game, and it was even directed and made by the same team who made the 3DS games. They even went as far as to admit that they developed the games to take advantage of the game most in handheld mode. In fact it felt so standard that I personally wasn't even going to follow the pre-release info of the game until the Dexit controversy.
This is especially odd in the wake of everything and every project involved with the Switch basically going out of its way to push boundaries and change for the better by returning to older gaming designs and revitalizing them for the modern day. Whether that be games like Odyssey and BotW pulling in new, younger devs to revitalize their franchises under the guidance of the old guard, to Intelligent Systems collaborating with Koei Techmo to make the biggest splash with Fire Emblem Three Houses, to even making secret genius of Nintendo, Yoshiaki Koizumi, the General Producer for the Switch. Hell, this philosophy even extended to third party offerings like Sonic Mania (series fans making the best game in 25 years) or Dragon Quest XI (series fan got to be the director of this game), not to mention all the efforts made to really test just what games can make it onto the portable. Meanwhile Sword and Shield play it super safe, with Masuda even insisting the staff at GF need to stay so small and similar to ease his personal style of development. And I can't think of a greater sign of just how stagnant they are than the fact that the first console Pokemon games From Gamefreak were Kanto remakes with systems from an already popular mobile spin-off.
This is especially odd in the wake of everything and every project involved with the Switch basically going out of its way to push boundaries and change for the better by returning to older gaming designs and revitalizing them for the modern day. Whether that be games like Odyssey and BotW pulling in new, younger devs to revitalize their franchises under the guidance of the old guard, to Intelligent Systems collaborating with Koei Techmo to make the biggest splash with Fire Emblem Three Houses, to even making secret genius of Nintendo, Yoshiaki Koizumi, the General Producer for the Switch. Hell, this philosophy even extended to third party offerings like Sonic Mania (series fans making the best game in 25 years) or Dragon Quest XI (series fan got to be the director of this game), not to mention all the efforts made to really test just what games can make it onto the portable. Meanwhile Sword and Shield play it super safe, with Masuda even insisting the staff at GF need to stay so small and similar to ease his personal style of development. And I can't think of a greater sign of just how stagnant they are than the fact that the first console Pokemon games From Gamefreak were Kanto remakes with systems from an already popular mobile spin-off.
