Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Has the open world of Bao Ke Meng Zhu Zi failed?

On November 18, 2022, "Bao Ke Meng Zhu Zi" developed by GAME FREAK landed on the Nintendo Switch platform and went on sale synchronously around the world.

This also means that the "Bao Ke Meng" series, as the ceiling of the game IP, officially ushered in a new ninth generation.

Since its debut at the press conference at the beginning of the year, "Bao Ke Meng Zhu Zi" has been closely watched by players all over the world. Fans of "Bao Ke Meng" IP believe that "Zhu Zi" has innovation potential to be reckoned with and may usher in a new era for this ace series.

"Bao Ke Meng Zhu Zi", the figure source network data also seems to testify to this point. On November 17, Yudomiya Chongren, chief operating officer of Bao Ke Meng Company, said in an interview that the scheduled sales of "Bao Ke Meng Zhu Zi" hit a series of new highs. Even in the wake of the leak, Zhu Zi still showed its popularity.

Has the everlasting "Bao Ke Dream" become more fun?

From GB games to the open world, every generation of "Bao Ke Meng" is being written, and its naming follows the law of symmetry.

The trainer's story begins with "red and green", experiencing the classic "gold and silver", the glittering "ruby sapphire" and "diamond pearl", followed by "black and white", "X Y" in alphabetical form, "sun and moon" about celestial phenomena, and "sword shield" inspired by weapons.

"Bao Ke Meng Hong", the latest generation of members of Tuyuan Network, is our protagonist today: "Bao Ke Meng Zhu Zi".

With the same arrangement of two colors, there has been a full gap of 26 years between "red and green" and "red and purple". In the two versions of Zhu Zi, the immortal beast design corresponds to the sense of history and science and technology respectively, and the theme is "past and Future", which seems to be quite appropriate today.

Red and Green is the place where the dream begins for players around the world. It runs on the ancient Game Boy portable game console, with huge pixel particles that make up the original little fire dragon and wonderful frog seeds.

The icon of "Zhu Zi" lit up from the color Switch screen, and the new leaf meow of the 3D model followed at the trainer's feet, and day and night light fell on them.

The changes from "red and green" to "Zhu Zi" on the network of the new generation reflect the 30 years of great progress in modern video games.

For a long time, "Bao Ke Meng" continues the core paradigm of "capture-cultivate-fight", but the platform and the appearance of the picture have already undergone earth-shaking changes.

The new generation presents exquisite shapes with higher game performance, gives full play to the experience of handles and vibrating motors, and tries to use performance resources to show big scenes, such as the exciting "maximization" and "crystallization" battles.

In the new ninth generation, players' high expectations are due to a trendy keyword: the open world.

The Padia region in Zhu Zi is the first real open world in the history of Bao Ke Meng.

Padia Preview, Tu Yuan Network in fact, since the previous work "Sword and Shield" in 2019, "Pokemon" has shown the momentum of evolution to an open world. The first large-scale water test is the "wilderness" in "Sword and Shield". This limited area has changeable topography and climate, and players can adjust their perspective and explore freely.

But on the whole, the wilderness still seems to be a bit of a "small fuss". Because it is not only limited in the scale of the map, but also has a strong sense of ecological patchwork, there will be frequent frame drop and other problems, the whole is not mature. Many fans believe that this is the experience that the production team is accumulating for the open big map.

Since then, in the Legend of Pokemon: al Zeus in early 2022, the flavor of the open world has become stronger. Although it is not an orthodox sequel to the "Pokemon" series, it has brought a lot of surprises for players.

The official screenshot of the Legend of Pok é mon: al Zeus, the source network, first of all, there is a broader free area in Al Zeus. Strictly speaking, the map that should be made is not a real open world, but is closer to the design of "monster hunter". Players cannot go directly to different regional plates, but each area is free to explore, which is equivalent to a super-doubled version of "wilderness".

Second, AlZeus designed a convincing ecosystem that greatly enhanced the sense of immersion in the Pokemon world. Here, different Bao Ke Meng has differences in body size and habits, and there are also leading overlords in the ethnic groups. The knowledge previously written in the map can finally be witnessed by the players.

After experiencing the "wilderness" and testing the waters, we have ushered in today's "Zhu Zi", a real "Bao Ke Dream" that really takes the open world as a selling point.

The mixed praise of the new generation "Bao Ke Meng" to open the world is exciting news, but it is not surprising.

On the one hand, the open world is the biggest "tuyere" in the game circle in recent years.

Whether it is the shopping mainframe market or the endless emergence of the new generation of mobile devices, the open world is becoming the "standard" of more and more new projects. Naturally, "Bao Ke Meng" should also try its best to follow the industry trend and avoid falling behind.

On the other hand, the "Bao Ke Meng" series already has many characteristics that fit the open world style of play.

In the early promotional map of "Bao Ke Meng Zhu Zi", the question that every open world needs to solve is, why should players put their energy into the journey of exploration? In the story of Pokemon, there is no need to worry about it at all. The city, the Taoist hall and the colorful Pokemon in the wild are the most attractive features of this series.

At the same time, the process of cultivating Bao Ke Meng requires continuous investment, which suddenly verifies the reuse value of the big map from the bottom logic.

So, how is the open world of Bao Ke Meng Zhu Zi doing?

First of all, the good part is obvious. Zhu Zi brings unprecedented freedom of exploration, and we are finally able to swim, climb and glide in the seamless world of Pokemon-and ride on immortal beasts.

Ride immortal beast, map source network at the same time, open map to create a non-linear possibility for the game experience, dojo challenges can be carried out out of order, Pokemon capture energy and sex. Players can even experience the start of "Hell difficulty" if they like.

The ecosystem in "Alzeus" is also carried forward by "Zhu Zi". Bao Ke Meng moves towards "Ming Lei" and appears on the map with a real body shape. It can not only respond according to the environment, but also show characteristics such as living in groups or walking at night.

Mini-Fu, which likes to bask in the sun, then talk about its shortcomings, and the overwhelming complaints on social platforms may explain a lot.

On November 18, "how outrageous Bao Ke Meng Zhu Zi BUG" was posted on Weibo. Many players uploaded strange BUG scenes and uncovered the fig leaf of the "Zhu Zi" optimization problem.

In bilibili, a series of videos about "Zhu Zi" technical power appeared. Looking at the unpredictable stone texture in the camera, netizens can't help playing with the old stalks of "near big and far small". On this day, people are reminded of the fear once dominated by Game Freak, the production company of Pokemon.

The more intuitive word-of-mouth data of bilibili is the score.

On the eve of the official launch of "Zhu Zi", the media rating was lifted. At that time, the Metacritic media scored 79 points, with 14 of the 21 media giving favorable reviews and 7 giving moderate reviews, which seemed to be decent.

But when the user's score was announced, the situation became a little less optimistic. The player score of "Bao Ke Meng Zhu Zi" soon fell below 3 points (10 points), setting a record for the lowest score in the "Bao Ke Meng" series of games.

A large number of disgruntled users on the Tuyuan network scored 0, with their anger stemming from the game's poor frame count and bizarre loopholes, such as "suddenly floating in the air on the street".

On the overseas forum Reddit, several Zhu Zi players have posted posts saying they have complained to Nintendo about the poor performance of the game and applied for a digital refund. It is reported that the claims of some players have been officially accepted and the refund has been successfully completed.

At present, although the vision of an open world is good, the producers of "Zhu Zi" do not seem to be able to control such a big leap. When trainers walk on the stairs and wear models to "different dimensions", it's hard not to scold: "good for you, Game Freak!"

In the end, the orthodox sequel, which was supposed to create a new chapter, turned into the lowest (temporary) wind review in the history of Pokemon.

Behind the top IP, frankly, the word-of-mouth of Pokemon's new work is below expectations.

Almost at the same time three years ago, the previous work "Sword and Shield" of Zhu Zi also faced all kinds of criticism. Although "Sword Shield" does not have an open world as the target of public opinion like "Zhu Zi", some of the rough scene modeling has attracted a lot of criticism.

To make matters worse, many of the problems that dissatisfied players in "Sword and Shield" still exist in today's "Zhu Zi". Even considering the objective limitations of the Switch platform, the performance of the two generations of "Bao Ke Meng" is not outstanding, and such a frequent BUG does not match this gold-lettered signboard.

In the final analysis, the source of the sense of disparity can be traced back to the company behind the scenes.

Dislocation always exists. On one side of the scale is the ardent expectation of the majority of users for the "Bao Ke Meng" series, and on the other side is the reality of the production team Game Freak.

Tu source network is in the coordinate system of the whole game industry, and companies like Game Freak are also very special. First of all, it should be pointed out that Pokemon is not a pure "Nintendo game" as people imagine.

It is true that today's "Bao Ke Meng" is one of the pillars of Lao Ren, but the whole "Bao Ke Meng" IP is a rather complex business system. It includes game ontology, animated dramas, peripheral goods and licenses, and even related events, comics, cards, mobile applications and other fields, involving Game Freak, Creatures, Nintendo and other business characters.

Generally speaking, Game Freak is responsible for the development of game series, Creatures has been engaged in animation for a long time, and Nintendo occupies the leading position of The Pokemon Company, a joint venture company, dealing with all kinds of IP licenses.

In practice, the details of cooperation may be much more complicated. The LOGO of the above-mentioned companies appears in different works in turn, and it is somewhat confusing in the eyes of outsiders.

To some extent, Game Freak is the product of this confusion. The territory of "Bao Ke Meng" IP is complicated, but also relying on this system, Nintendo has realized its business aspirations through The Pokemon Company, especially its core distribution status.

As a result, Game Freak has never been acquired by Nintendo or other giants and has maintained a relatively independent position. It was the first person in charge of the Pokemon game in the past, is now, and will be in the future.

So the dilemma arises.

Game Freak itself is not a secular head game company. Apart from Pokemon, Game Freak has played other games, but it has hardly caused any splash, and the whole family can't beat Pikachu's tail together.

From the large number of defects exposed by "Zhu Zi", we can also see that Game Freak can only take a second place in terms of development strength at least. Of course, for some painful fans of "Bao Ke Meng", using the "second line" to describe the technical ability of Game Freak is probably a compliment.

The technical ability of Game Freak, Tu Yuan network at the same time, it has indeed given birth to an unparalleled king of IP.

With the passage of time, the top level of the game industry continues to improve, "Bao Ke Meng" players' expectations of this series continue to rise, as a world-class popular style, "Bao Ke Meng" should continue to improve.

But up to now, the scale, talent reserve and development speed of Game Freak can not match the sound volume of Bao Ke Meng. Obviously, Game Freak can't realize the player's dream of top masterpiece.

As a result, the collision between company positioning and game positioning was so fierce that every true love fan of Pokemon had gold stars and tears in their eyes, causing them to hypnotize themselves and comfort each other. Sitting on the moulded floor of the dojo in the dead of night hates the steel.

But they will still pay after scolding.

That's the paradox. Pokemon is so easy to sell.

Even though Game Freak is sometimes inevitably disappointing, the game is still selling worryingly well.

On the Switch platform, Legend of Zelda: the breath of the wilderness was released in 2017 and Pokemon Sword Shield in 2019. The former is destined to be an unforgettable masterpiece of a generation, winning numerous awards with full marks on its resume, while the latter is the eighth-generation masterpiece in the "Bao Ke Meng" series. You know, you can catch "Bao Ke Meng".

The Legend of Zelda: the breath of the Wild, as of September 30, 2022, the Legend of Zelda has sold 27.79 million units, and the Pokemon Sword Shield has sold 25.37 million. The two are next to each other on the Switch sales list, making them a pair of "We are really good" brothers.

Then, five years after the publication of the textbook template "breath in the wilderness", the open world of "Zhu Zi" arrived late, and as soon as it was listed because of BUG's popularity. But this does not prevent Zhu Zi from setting a new record for booking sales and will continue to sell well in the future visible to the naked eye.

Dear friends, if you were Game Freak, would you still work hard?

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: hedgehog Commune (ID:ciweigongshe), article: Xinghui, edited by Li Leshu

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.