5th Gen Pokemon B/W Have Bad Graphics

[Kitsune-bi]

The graphic of the generation V games were good overall.However, I would have expected better from a game that is supposed to surpass is predissesors(spelling?). The pokemon featured in the box or in the summary look pretty good, that all changes when you go into a pokemon battle. Pokemon participating in a battle have a pixelated qualtiy to them,even from afar. Some features of your pokemon are blurred to the point that they don't look like a seperate appendage at all, I couldn't tell whether or not my Typhlosion had ears or not at first glance. I'm wasn't expecting much in the graphic department but why are Black and White's graphics so bad compared to Diamond,Pearl, and Platinum. Anyone else see what I'm talking about?

 

[Sydian]

Okayyy, dunno how you completely missed the Black and White forum, but moving there. I completely disagree btw. DPPt is just disgusting to look at imo. The grass. That's...all I even need to say. I can deal with pixely backsprites. But...DPPt grass.

 

[Kenshin5]

The back sprites were so pixelated because it was a close up shot compared to previous generations. And I am sure the constant animation didn't help. I'm not really seeing anything wrong with them. Overland stuff looks great as well, very detailed, and shows things from a distance like Castelia City from Sky Arrow Bridge looked amazing. Or the Subway passing under Tubeline Bridge. I think they did a great job, and graphically surpassed it's predecessors. I had the same issue you did when they were doing Black and White coverage before the release and thought dang that back sprite looks like crap I hope this is a beta version they are showing us.

 

[Palkia]

Uh, what's with all the fuss with the grass in D/P/Plt. It looks fine to me.

Anyway, I do think that the graphics are a considerable improvement over Gen 4. Everything looks much more refined and 3D is used a lot.

 

[Enigma]

I think the graphics are a pretty good improvement over the last generation. I do have to admit that the B/W back sprites do tend to bug me at times, though. :/ However, I don't find it to be too big of a deal. All of the graphics in the games are pretty amazing, including the bridges and the appearance of Reshiram/Zekrom.

 

[PokéSwimmer]

You're saying BW's graphics are worse than those of DPPt, but the only thing you seem to be complaining about are the backsprites. That doesn't make the graphics as a whole bad, just the backsprites. The rest of the game's graphics are clearly an improvement on previous generations. Besides, it's easy to get used to the pixilated back sprites, especially if you grew up playing Gen 1 games (in which the backsprites were VERY pixilated).

 

[Ho-Oh]

I'd say the graphics of B/W do have issues tbh. :x Idk it's like graphically they could be better (especially for zoomed out Castelia, etc so pixelated), buuuttt at least we aren't back in the R/S days where the graphics were ugh. On the plus side, they're likely to improve in the third game, so really I'm just gunna wait til then and if the graphics aren't better, then I'll complain.

Actually on the note of backsprites, I honestly don't even notice them anymore, yay. Sooo if anything, battle graphics are awesome.

 

[Femme Fatale]

The backsprites bother me as well! I can't get over how gross it looks to have pokemon all pixelated, but other than that the graphics are amazing!

 

[Legendary Silke]

Well, aside from the back sprites, it looks exceptional. I have a feeling that the back sprites are made with the normal Pokédex screens and status screens in mind. Besides, having 1:1 back sprites means 4 times the video RAM usage when compared to the current size (halved resolution), and it won't be pretty when you run out of RAM of any kind. It's a compromise so that it runs properly... hopefully. And they are well-animated. The spriters are doing their job well.

All the locations look great that it blows DP out of the water by a huge margin. Pt and HGSS fared better, but not by much. BW still has the best graphics, I think.

 

[Pokestick good times.]

DP had a lot of graphics experimenting going on, and while they developed it to the better in Pt, it still had its flaws. That's why they could keep experimenting with graphics on the DS console.

BW, still running on the same handheld as DPPt, has really enhanced and developed graphics, and I'm in love with them, albeit I found them questionable at first when I saw pre-release screens :P

Like Twiggy here says, the backsprites were made pixelated to make them fit better with summary screens and such, as well to apply less weight on the game itself.
Personally I'm completely used to the backsprites, and I think they look really good. It gives it a sort of a cool, good balanced theme. And this way the zoomed out backsprites and the front sprites are the same size, which makes many things, like zooming in battle cutscenes, and sprite comparison way easier and better looking.

So tl;dr:
BW has some really good and efficient graphics. And I can't wait to see what they'll manage to make of the 3DS's graphic capacity :P

 

[Tropical Sunlight]

I say I have to agree with this. The animation of Pokemon could look a lot better in my opinion, the backsprites seem fine though.

Oh and, I prefer DPPtHGSS's pixel drawn trees over BW's 3D models.

 

[The 100 Mega Shock]

The graphics in BW are a shining example of why people don't often use 2D graphics in RPGs anymore - the work involved to make it look anywhere near as good as a large-scale 3D game is just too much and too restrictive.

Pokémon animations are bits and pieces moved around by the hardware which results in the distorted and pixellated look of the game's battle scenes. This is because drawing proper animated sprites for over 600 Pokémon front and back is both too much work for any artists to handle - unless there's far more artists working on graphics than usually in handheld development teams, and because it would soon eat into storage space and graphics memory to keep tons of seperate sprite frames in the data.

The blown-up backsprites are a result of them being re-used in the Musical sequences (again something which suffers because of 2D graphics) and probably also due to memory constraints when working on double and triple battle sequences - or again, just because drawing 600 large, full sized sprites is too resource intensive.

Pokémon only have one animation loop which plays throughout when they're in battle - compare this to the Stadium series where Pokémon have idle animations, attack animations, recoiling animations and fainting animations among others. 2D graphics on a large scale like Pokémon makes it very hard to add these kind of animations, so we're stuck with a single animation in battles.

Finally, the sprites themselves aren't anything to crow home about. Pokémon sprites are a brilliant example of being forced to emphasise quantity over quality when producing a game, as a result the sprites have a very simple style and use of colour (again, limited to a restrictive 16 colours presumably due to graphics memory constraints) so they're not really that impressive as sprites go.


If you look at other RPGs on the DS, ones that use 3D graphics like Dragon Quest IX, Final Fantasy IV DS and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn you can see that they're able to pull off much better animations and graphics quality overall.

 

[drarixio]

Are you nuts?!?!? B/W graphics are amazing, though the back sprites are slightly pixleated, you'll get used to it. After playing Black all the other game sprites are static and still for me.

 

[Katja]

I like the BW sprites the best. The animations on the Pokemon make them feel like they are alive. The backsprites are pixely, sure, but it never bothered me too much. I think the game looks fine, and 10x better than DPPt.

EDIT: One thing I've always hated though, was the battle backgrounds...it's so ugly with the weird colours all the time. -_- I wish it was more realistic looking lol.

 

[drarixio]

I like the BW sprites the best. The animations on the Pokemon make them feel like they are alive. The backsprites are pixely, sure, but it never bothered me too much. I think the game looks fine, and 10x better than DPPt.

EDIT: One thing I've always hated though, was the battle backgrounds...it's so ugly with the weird colours all the time. -_- I wish it was more realistic looking lol.

I guess you're right about the backgrounds, but at least they're better than the other games.

 

[The 100 Mega Shock]

You can keep saying they're better than previous Pokémon games but that doesn't mean there aren't other DS games with proper backgrounds.

 

[Meganium]

The graphics in the game aren't that bad, to be honest. I think they were a huge step above D/P/Pt and HG/SS. I do have a small problem with the back sprites, which they were pretty pixelated, but it doesn't bother me. They could have done a bit better on that.

 

[Clefairies]

I personally feel B/W have better graphics then D/P/Pl.
Playing Platinum briefly to trade things over I was bit like "Ohwow, they did notch the graphics up a fair amount on Black."
The pixelated sprites of extreme close-ups on Pokemon can be forgiven imo, its a hand-held console after all & graphics have never really bothered me in games anyway, as long as gameplay is good, not really fussed ^__^

 

[Gymnotide]

I think some slack needs to be given for their inability to use 3D models in the DS games. All things considered, there are 649 Pokemon, 48 of which have gender differences--accounting for form changes (+27 Unown, +3 Castform, +3 Deoxys, +4 Burmy / Wormadam, +1 Cherrim, +3 Shellos / Gastrodon, +5 Rotom, +1 Giratina, +1 Shaymin, +1 Basculin, +1 Darmanitan, +6 Deerling / Sawsbuck, +1 Meloetta), there are technically 754 Pokemon. With Alternate Color Pokemon taken into account, that's 1508 different sprites--3016 including backsprites, and just under ~3700 including the Pokemon icons. If we discount the use of backsprites (because we're talking about 3D), then that's 1508 different models AND 1508 skins that have to be generated. I didn't include Arceus / Genesect forms because I wasn't sure if they were actual sprites or alpha recolored in-game. This also doesn't include all the NPC sprites, nor those of items, attacks, tiles, etc. Also--3D sprites look like crap up close.

The reason why other games can use such gratuitous amounts of 3D is because they lack such a heavy load of information. GS:DD has nowhere near the same amount of depth as P:B/W, nor a bestiary that can come close to matching.

That, plus the fact that these games are supposed to reflect the style of their predecessors.

When I started the game, I remember that as soon as you left your house, a flock of Koromori flew by your screen--and your first step into the grassy route was accompanied by a gust of leaves. I liked that. The little things.

 

[Mew~]

Well, like most people would tell you - Graphics don't make up a game.

Either way, I have to agree with most of the other people in this thread and say that I think the graphics in B/W were so much more better than the other 4th gen games. But I wouldn't go as far as saying you want them to look like PS3 and Xbox360 games, as the DS can't handle that. But the graphics were great in B/W considering they were on the DS, which i'm suprised even handled it.