10 Video Games That Lied Straight To Your Face
8. Pokémon: Sword And Shield's New Models And Animations
With GameFreak on a three-year streak of main series title releases, 2019 was going to be no different. Fans were more hyped than
ever for the start of Generation VIII in the form of Sword and Shield.
Yet dark news brewed on the horizon.
GameFreak announced that Sword and Shield would cut down the national Pokédex, suddenly snapping half the Pokémon roster out of existence. Why? GameFreak claimed that the development team were focussing on creating new animations and making all Pokémon models from scratch.
Yet when the game was published, this was not the case, with many moves and models recycled from previous games. The #GameFreakLied hashtag exploded onto Twitter, as data miners discovered old models hidden in the games’ code.
In GameFreak’s defence, it’s clear the small development team was seriously under pressure with the recent annual release windows. Perhaps it's a blessing that we probably won't see a mainline game release for 2020. In any case, the company could have controlled the damage by delaying Sword and Shield and making the necessary changes, yet instead, fans received an underwhelming product.
In the words of Shigeru Miyamoto:
“A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.”