Pokemon BDSP Concept Art Hints at of What Could of Been

[Smeargle-Sketch]

The artbook for BDSP has released in Japan and with it come pieces of art that makes me believe that conceptually, ILCA had a very different approach in mind to the games.

Most likely Game Freak restricted them to the 1 for 1 remake approach so that Legends Arceus could have the development time and resources for how it looks.

These pieces show us though, what a Pokemon game could really be one day.

 

[Teravolt]

*screams in agony*

WHY

WHY COULDN’T WE HAVE GOTTEN THIS

 

[BCVM22]

Now hold on. You can see in what little context text we have that it says “these images were drawn to share the common understanding of the settings’ mood, climate, and luminosity among the development team.”

People can and will infer anything and everything from this art but there is nothing in what was posted here that suggests ILCA had a different approach in mind and that Game Freak put the clamps on them. What little context we get for this art makes perfect sense at face value, that this art was created to convey the tone and feel of each locale, not as 1:1 art of what the game might have looked like in execution.

“ILCA wanted the game to look like this but Game Freak didn’t want them to hog the resources” doesn’t quite hold up either when we remember the games were handed to ILCA so that they could be developed without taking up a plurality of Game Freak’s resources, so that the latter could focus on Legends.

If people want to re-litigate what they feel the games “should” have looked like, much less on the basis of some wonderful color art that was likely never intended to indicate a visual and functional tone for the games, I suppose that’s their suuuuuper-productive prerogative. And if there’s context from elsewhere in this artbook that suggests differently, fine. But we can avoid falling into the pit that is suggesting, absent any proof, that at any point this is what BD/SP would have looked like if not for Game Freak or time constraints or budget or whatever bogeyman someone wants to blame. We definitely do not have to do that.

 

[Sαpphire]

Yeah, I think it’s clear by now that a lot of the limitations that we see in the modern Pokémon games isn’t necessarily a lack of vision - it’s about business decisions and making a particular release schedule. Had Game Freak been the primary developers and devoted a few more years to BDSP, more than SwSh even, then they might have looked something like this. ILCA was never really going to be able to build something that looked like this in the time that they were probably given, though, so to me this is less concept art about what the game could have been like and more how the setting should feel.

Regardless of us being picky about the technical purpose of this specific art though - I think what makes these images difficult to look at for some fans is that this evokes where the series could already be if we had a few less games and more time and care was put into each generation. It’s not even that this was ever meant to directly represent BDSP, that’s not the point - it’s that they capture something that could be possible in the games if things were different. They highlight the wide chasm between what’s in the developers’ and fans’ imaginations and the actual visuals we get, despite the series not being restricted to handheld consoles or two-dimensional styles anymore (at least in terms of technology).

I hope that we get something that does feel like this someday. I hope Legends is the start of it, because it kind of looks like it could be.

 

[Vini310]

Concept art is just that: CONCEPT art, it's not an indication of what the final product will look like.
Most concept/promo art for Pokémon games look like this, look at this concept art for Hau'oli City, for example:

 

[Smeargle-Sketch]

Now hold on. You can see in what little context text we have that it says “these images were drawn to share the common understanding of the settings’ mood, climate, and luminosity among the development team.”

People can and will infer anything and everything from this art but there is nothing in what was posted here that suggests ILCA had a different approach in mind and that Game Freak put the clamps on them. What little context we get for this art makes perfect sense at face value, that this art was created to convey the tone and feel of each locale, not as 1:1 art of what the game might have looked like in execution.

“ILCA wanted the game to look like this but Game Freak didn’t want them to hog the resources” doesn’t quite hold up either when we remember the games were handed to ILCA so that they could be developed without taking up a plurality of Game Freak’s resources, so that the latter could focus on Legends.

If people want to re-litigate what they feel the games “should” have looked like, much less on the basis of some wonderful color art that was likely never intended to indicate a visual and functional tone for the games, I suppose that’s their suuuuuper-productive prerogative. And if there’s context from elsewhere in this artbook that suggests differently, fine. But we can avoid falling into the pit that is suggesting, absent any proof, that at any point this is what BD/SP would have looked like if not for Game Freak or time constraints or budget or whatever bogeyman someone wants to blame. We definitely do not have to do that.

I'll be honest I did not see that text and I was going off of another post I read which seems to have been falsified information.

I apologize for the misinformation.

The art is nice though.

 

[BCVM22]

The art is wonderful and spirited and vibrant, yes. I always enjoy seeing how Game Freak’s artists envision the world to look without the limitations of game development.

 

[janejane6178]

The artbook for BDSP has released in Japan and with it come pieces of art that makes me believe that conceptually, ILCA had a very different approach in mind to the games.

Most likely Game Freak restricted them to the 1 for 1 remake approach so that Legends Arceus could have the development time and resources for how it looks.

These pieces show us though, what a Pokemon game could really be one day.

Beautiful pictures