[Sword & Shield] It's no smiling matter

[bobandbill]

It occured to me one of the complaints about gen 7 titles was the always-smiling protagonist (a touch less-than-always in USUM). Despite the situation or events, your character would just smile blankly, as if they were a Ditto, or controlled by their hat.

But lookit, no smile!

Spoiler:

Here's to a greater variety of expressions for the player at least.

 

[Sheep]

Hopefully we'll see a more diverse range of expressions in the cutscenes and this isn't just custom animation for raids or anything! I'd love to have a protagonist whose face isn't glued to have the same expression 24/7, lol.

 

[professor plum]

Oh yay! I do hope this exists outside of raids and whatnot. Having the protagonist blankly smile during cut scenes was weird to say the very least.

 

[#1TrubbishFan]

During the shot of you and Hop on the train you can see the protag laughing. (I don't know how to post pictures)

 

[Palamon]

I MEAN, to be fair in SOME cutscenes in Sun/Moon, your character is shown with SOME expression, lmfao.

But since this footage really isn't final, I do wonder if the main character in Sw/Sh will actually have expressions. So far, it looks promising.

 

[Sydian]

what :) you mean :) you don't like to just :) smile as the world crumbles around you :) i think it's :) a very realistic thing for pokemon :) we do it irl :) why not in pokemon :)

 

[Raicheot]

It would be nice for a change to give the characters a wide range of emotion, also maybe giving them voice would bring them to life instead of speech bubbles all the time

 

[Fairy]

I'm hopeful that protags will be more emotive too, but I'm not getting my hopes up until we see some legit gameplay lol.

 

[ElBurrito]

I dunno, I kinda liked having a character that was so dead inside they never reacted to the destruction around them. I really felt like the character and I were one.

On a serious note though, with the cuts that GameFreak is making, there better be more changes to facial expressions on the protagonist.

 

[colours]

definitely an improvement from how things were in gen 7. :o kinda excited to see what other expressions the player character shows!

 

[blue]

i'll miss it

nah i'm glad they're finally adding facial reactions to pokemon, i want my character to look PISSED OFF when he's insulted

 

[Rynne]

The lack of facial expressions for SuMo's protagonists was pretty awkward. Hopefully the new protagonists are much more emotive in cutscenes, if nowhere else.

 

[#1TrubbishFan]

Isn't it hilarious that we're freaking out about this when the rest of gaming has been doing it for decades?

 

[CrimsonMajestic]

Hopefully we'll see a more diverse range of expressions in the cutscenes and this isn't just custom animation for raids or anything! I'd love to have a protagonist whose face isn't glued to have the same expression 24/7, lol.

This could be an occupational hazard for being a silent protagonist, which is "no smiling matter".

 

[bobandbill]

Isn't it hilarious that we're freaking out about this when the rest of gaming has been doing it for decades?

I don't see anybody "freaking out" about it - an exaggeration there. Besides, we've seen more varied expressions on other characters - just not the protagonist specifically.

 

[Zeiro]

It's nice to see but I wasn't overly bothered by it in SM. Maybe this will help with the immersion though

 

[normie6]

It does feel abit weird, they're always smiling