#even a delay to summer 2023 would have likely solved a lot of the issues at hand

[pinchraccoon]

I think I'm gonna write an actual like, real review of it, but here's my mini review of Pokemon Violet to get my thoughts summarized.

The latest entries to pokemon, while a bold step in a new direction, may be a step into Alaskan snow in flip-flops. The game has some great ideas and lofty ambitions, and for what it does accomplish, there's clearly a lot of fun to be had with the product that was delivered, however, the preparation given to bring these ideas into fruition was far under prioritized.

To speak kindly of the game before speaking ill, I have always, and will always, love pokemon. It's a series that is very near and dear to me, and there's a certain magic that comes with learning all about the new creatures that have been added to the growing roster of canonized monster designs I've come to love, especially on a semi-blind playthrough, the magic of learning about and hunting down as many new pokemon is unmatched. SV does deliver on this, as I feel that this generation has a series of lovely pokemon designs that I have fallen in love with in my short time with them. (Tinkaton, Revavroom, Ceruledge, Meowscarada, and Chi-Yu are all new favorites)

Additionally, the story of SV is quite well done, easily one of the best-executed stories in pokemon in a while, and while I don't think I'm comfortable calling it "better than" the story of BW/BW2, I feel that it's comparable in quality. Characters, themes, and plot points all feel surprisingly natural in a game that theoretically allows you to go off and challenge its many hurdles in any order, utilizing the scripted events that it does have cleverly, and to great effect. I particularly enjoyed the Team Star narrative, and how it takes the "evil team" formula that pokemon has had for a long time, and juxtaposes the idea of a group of bullies onto it, only to learn over time that they're just bullied people sticking together, and aren't bad, just misrepresented.

On the basis of the typical gameplay loop, SV delivers Very well. The incorporation of overworld encounters and optional trainer battles allows the player to feel free and uninhibited by the game itself, and free to engage with exactly as much content as they would like to, whether this be picking and choosing what pokemon to battle in the wild, or which trainers if any, they feel the need to battle. SV's design philosophy seems to be prioritizing freedom as much as possible, while also meaningfully rewarding progression, and I feel that the game flow comes off as organic.

This is to say, that this game has more team-building potential out of the gate than just about any other pokemon game, with countless pokemon accessible to the player even moments from starting the game, appealing to collection freaks and competitive fans alike.

Then, what's the problem?

In short, the game is unfinished. The game, at launch, would routinely dip to what I could ascertain to be 12-17 FPS regularly, and while steps have been taken already to make the drops in framerate far less drastic, the time to do that incredibly important work is before release, not after. The framerate, the chief among issues, and generally its lack of optimization for switch hardware, sometimes spoils the other wonderful parts of the game. Finding pokemon is less intriguing when extreme pop-in only allows you to look at pokemon less than 20 feet away from you, and somewhat harms the immersion of the experience. And while updated models and style of the pokemon have been made, and they're quite impressive, it's hard to say that the pokemon "look good" when after 4 appear on screen at once, or even two pokemon with some attacks, their frames drop far below what they should.

Additionally, while this game loads quickly traveling between areas, smaller, more subtle, but similarly important loading times feel far, far too long. The boxes take far too long to load the images of your pokemon in each individual box, which somewhat harms the collection fantasy, and upon starting a battle with a wild pokemon, their "low poly open world" model will still be loaded long into the first turn. Additionally, menuing remains rather clunky and sluggish, which quickly becomes annoying when things like Wonder Trade or other such "quick" menuing activities take a minimum of 45 seconds due to their lack of optimization.

The issues I'm listing sound comparatively minor, however, in an experience as dependent on a lack of obstruction as SV are clearly trying to be, the failure to deliver on a product that runs consistently and reasonably is a major slight against it.

These issues are not deliberate design choices that simply do not work, these larger issues are a product of the dev teams' inability to put out the product that wouldn't have these problems, and the issues with Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are by and large issues with management, not the dev team themselves. The worrying pace at which Pokemon games are released, especially considering that SV is not even our first major open-world Pokemon release this year, is clearly harming Game Freak's ability to provide a product that will meet the expectations of both fans AND the artists themselves.

SV is in many ways, an extremely fun game that has been weighed down by the weight of the industry, and as much as I loved the time and fun that I had with it, its issues cannot be overlooked. I can't say that Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, in their current state, are "good" games. Violet is a game that I enjoyed, it's a game that perhaps will be good in the future following patches and performance updates, but at current, the development issues that are so apparent and the clear lack of optimization for switch hardware made by these issues genuinely harm my perception of the game quite a bit.

Is it fun? Yeah. Is it good? No.

[marauders-fanfilm]

Hey Everyone- We apologize for the delay on this update. We had hoped to have more tangible progress and updates to present to you before posting this, but an update is overdue. First off, we all want to say how much we appreciate everyone’s patience and continued support for this project. It’s taken much longer than any of us had anticipated, but our team is committed to seeing this project through. Unfortunately this year has been challenging for everyone, and progress has reflected that. While VFX has made progress in the past year, it is not as much as we would have hoped. We’ve lost a number of our artists this year, both due to Rowling’s ongoing bigotry making it understandably hard for people to continue working on the film, as well as unrelated schedule and workload issues outside of the project. We started 2023 with 10 artists on our VFX team, and nowadays even on our best days we have less than half that. This leaves plenty of days/weeks where members of our smaller, but dedicated team are entirely unavailable.

While I presume most of you are aware of the WGA & SAG strikes that shut down much of the film industry from May to November, what many people outside of the industry aren’t aware of was the pressure that came down from the studios on those who work in Post Production, especially VFX, during that time. Many of the talented artists on the TGS team work in VFX as their day job as well, and this studio crunch left little to no time for side projects unfortunately. We had artists report working 60-80 hours a week. Other members of the team were out on the picket lines fighting to protect the industry and their livelihoods. All of this led to a rough summer and fall for progress on the project.       Beyond that, a variety of other struggles have also faced our team throughout this past year. Without going into too much detail so as to protect the feelings and privacy of our amazing team, we have had members dealing with life threatening illnesses, deaths of loved ones, others facing numerous struggles due to rising transphobia, and several who simply had less time for TGS due to being forced to take up lower-wage jobs to survive during the strikes. 

    That said, it hasn't all been negative. We've also had members of our team forced to lighten their workloads due to happier circumstances, such as welcoming children, getting married, or attending grad school. It's not all dark clouds and gloomy circumstances, but one way or the other, the past year has undoubtedly thrown so much at our team that progress has at times become far slower and far less than we would have always liked.

    All of that said, there has been some wonderful progress made this year. After a tremendous amount of collaboration between multiple artists, one of our most deceptively challenging VFX shots, the Dungbomb Prank seen in our very first piece of concept art was finally wrapped up by artist Porter Justus.     Work has also progressed beautifully on various digital establishing shots. After a ton of work, our VFX Supervisor Martin Bayang was able to solve the issue of a particularly problematic Petrificus Totalus shot. There has been continued work on some very exciting Potions and Invisibility Cloak effects, and we recently wrapped up the spells for a very fun Lily versus Regulus altercation. And while not completed, there has been a lot of excellent progress has been made on much of the third act, including many of the most difficult sequences of the film.

     To put some more-concrete numbers on the amount of progress we’ve made versus what we still have to tackle, only about 12 minutes of the film remain unfinished as of the time of this update. The vast majority of the film is just about fully locked, barring color and some slight timing adjustments. Within what remains, most if not all effects are already in progress. Obviously the climactic third act contains some relatively complicated VFX shots that may take slightly more time to complete, but the finish line truly is in sight now. 

   One of the last big updates, and perhaps the elephant in the room, is that this year we also found ourselves forced to finally part ways with a member of our team - our composer. This was an incredibly difficult decision and one that we obviously did not take lightly. In truth, we probably took far longer to arrive at this decision than we should have, given our affection for the person involved and how excited we were about the work they had done. 

   Unfortunately, we reached a point where essentially no new work had been done for over a year, despite multiple efforts to reach out and work through various struggles. Continuing with the same situation and with the same composer simply became untenable and we were forced to make the very difficult decision to move on and try to finish off the last several minutes of music needed with a new voice. We are currently in talks with a talented new composer, and had hoped to have the details locked in place before giving this update, but the transition is taking a bit longer than expected. Moving forward, we are hopeful that we will be able to still make use of all the excellent music that our original composer did create for TGS, but working through the logistics of that between him and our new music team remains an ongoing conversation as of the time of this update. We hope to have more details for you in the coming weeks. As difficult a decision as it was, it does also feel like a dramatic step forward that gives us much more confidence today than we had prior to the decision that the film is actually, finally, nearing completion. 

We have said this many times before, and unfortunately it still bears repeating: no one wants to see this film completed and released to all of you more than we do. Even with the tremendous toll JKR’s vile conduct has taken on all of us, our hope remains that TGS can be a small piece of that universe untouched by the emotional baggage that the canonical franchise now carries. In light of the recent strikes in Hollywood, some attention is finally being paid to the insane working conditions many, if not all, VFX artists are subjected to. They are one of the last groups left in the entertainment industry that is not protected by a union, and as such they face essentially unfettered pressure from the studios they work for. Many of the artists volunteering their precious free time to TGS face these conditions in their day-to-day lives, and have still found it in their hearts to carve out time for our little movie. We are so incredibly grateful for them, for their time, and for the contributions they continue to make to make this film look as great as it possibly can. We are committed to delivering the best possible version of this film that we can to you when all is said and done. 

It has been a long road. The end is finally, truly in sight. Please know that we are eternally grateful for your ongoing support and your ongoing patience. We are very much looking forward to finally reaching the end of this journey, together, and finally being able to share this film with you all. Thank you again, and all our love to all of you and yours in the new year.