"Low bar" is also a rather subjective notion, and the reason why is right here in front of us.
We all decide what is worth $60. As consumers, we each have the right to choose for ourselves what value a product has. I felt Let's GO was worth the 60 bucks, and I still play it even now. I felt USUM wasn't worth the 40 bucks, and I took it back after only a few weeks. This is the choice we each must make.
No one is right. No one is wrong. We all get to choose. It doesn't matter how much time and effort Game Freak puts into a Pokémon game. They don't get to decide how much it's worth. You do.
I agree. I just can't help but subjectively feel like fans value Pokemon so highly that we have allowed the games to falter, for many years at that.
From the E3 footage, Sword and Shield's overworld art design looks much less inspired than Alola's. The Wild Area's draw distance is impressive, but unless they drastically improve the Pokemon and NPC draw distance to match it, it will just look like flat, empty space with bland coloration. The environment textures look honestly horrible so far, and I wish GF had chosen a more stylistic aesthetic to mask the low fidelity.
Masuda says that kids these days don't have the attention span for post-game content, so I've given up hoping for a meaty end-game like HGSS/Platinum and Black 2.
The storyline peaked at Gen 5, and ever since XY, all the characters around you only exist to service your continued progress through the region. Only the slightest, tiniest bit of character progression and the smallest amount of character involvement makes the story feel like you're in a vacuum. I do not expect Sword and Shield to make a complete turnabout.
The two big cities we've seen so far do look gorgeous, but since it's basically confirmed you can't control the camera except in the Wild Area, I won't be able to turn the camera around to fully appreciate the skylines. I mean seriously, what a waste! That was one of the things I was most excited about, walking into each beautiful town and hoping I could turn the camera around to see it all since we finally have a second analog stick on a proper console. But this was too much to hope for apparently!
And again, just subjectively, I can't help but feel like this is all because we have slowly lowered our expectations so far that we will just buy anything they make because it still has Pokemon in it.