I have never played a Pokemon game. Nope, not even Pokemon Go. I do not like JRPGs and I never got into it as a kid, which is the time I think most fans started playing. (Side note my cousin Trent was once the world champ of the Pokemon card game). That being said I am fascinated with the controversy following Pokemon Sword and Shield, and how angry everyone was after they reused models and left some pokémon out. I watched the Arlo video on the controversy to educate myself on the whole issue. This is the video I used for reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5skcy9AT4pw along with the other videos he posted which I had watched in the past.
To start, I don’t know why Pokemon releases two games that are essentially the same at the same time. But I will try to explain this the best I can sorry if I get colloquial I’m not a good narrative writer. So…. Pokemon announces a new game (games?) which is a big deal because it would be on switch so its an HD game. They will not include all pokemon because they wanted to build new models, which takes a lot of time considering there are about 5000 of those beasts. Many fans were disappointed but most understood. However, before the game came out some ardent fans found that they did reuse models and lied. So now they were pissed, because if they were reusing models why didn’t they include all pokemon? Why not rebuild the models.
Here are my final takes on this situation. People were not mad about the game models, they were mad about them, but it wasn’t all about them. Instead this was just the last straw for many pokemon fans who have seen a game series they love stay stuck mechanically and visually in the late 1990s. While Zelda matured into BOTW and Mario matured into Mario Odyssey. Pokemon, because of GameFreak and other reasons, has stayed exactly the same. So while pokemon fans may have seemed irrational, it’s the larger implication of lazy developers which made them so angry.
Quinn Oberg's Writing For Games Blogs 