Autoboticon here; just using my work log in atm.

As well as to note he was the only Western designer on the team and became Art Director for SwSh after he was brought into the development circle for the games for advice on how a Pokemon UK game should look.Turner at the time said before he was brought in, it all looked liked a medieval game, stone and torches and what not.

He left because his friend started a game studio and now he is a Art Director and Designer, they just released a trailer for their first game called "The Plucky Squire" which is drawn and designed after Turner's own cartoon style he is known for.

Just the changing of the guard really, Masuda got a higher paying senior position and took it, Turner got a job with more freedom. We know as of SwSh that younger employees were being trained in senior roles under older employees. The design team is more or less the same, being the students of Sugimori.

On the contrary Pawmi, Smoliv and Lechonk have become quite popular like Wooloo. On design btw, not just meme reaction. All subjective though (EDIT: I just read your latest post)

Too me, I can see that the art has changed, how posing is being handled and the shading is different. However the modern sugimori style and design approach is still the same. For me Pokemon like Skwovet and Lechonk I prefer over say Pachirisu and Spoink.

I definitely believe as they were updating the models further for the Pokemon, their more realistic textures stood out too much amongst the cartoony humans. So probably they made the humans more realistic to blend the two together,

Honestly to me, sure the New Pokemon Snap design approach might be jarring, but after looking at them further, they really still are just the 2d art in 3d design with textures. Nothing too different.

I also believe the default trainer look was to relate to Japanese school kids, because even though its not that big, there has been some outcry from Japan about how "Westernized" the gen 8 trainers looked.

 

Although the Fire Crocodile totally breaks the chain of the Fire Starters being Animals from the Chinese Zodiac, But if it could evolve like this. maybe they could still keep it.

 

I mean Snivy went from bipedal grass lizard to grass king snake with Serperior so it wouldn't be too crazy.

 

Muh patterns.  

 

People leaving studios for other and better opportunities is pretty common. I don’t see it as a red flag. If it was a massive exodus of devs, then I would raise an eye brow.

 

So its been pretty silent on the official news front, but the leak side of things is going wild.

Before I post it, these are actually legit as they come from Riddler Khu (who leaked Legends Arceus entirely and correctly, as well as gen 7) as well as new leaker KaKa (who actually is the original Chinese Leaker back in gen 6) who has been answering questions and posting pics. Pics that are watermarked and properly taken from a build of SV. Lighting, texture and designs match. Only thing is most are blurred for protection. Only thing is KaKa isn't great with english so we're missing still a lot of info on each point.

Below is just what we know in a text format, I will expand if interesting, but you can actually find all this info at PKMNLeaks, Poke_Leaks and Serebii's SV rumour and leak forum.
However if curious on some of the Pokemon shown, I can pm you the pics.

Spoiler

Region in English is Paldea or something close to it
-3 routes as in 3 separate storylines to complete.

 

Spoiler

Heard about that, and the moment I saw the two words “No Megas”, THAT was the immediate death knell on my hopes for Gen 9. Preorder canceled before even placed.

Still remaining one of the strongest DexIt advocates and remaining in Alola (Gen 7) as a result of Nintendo’s continuing ignorance

 

Nintendo has nothing to do with it

 

I still blame them

 

Pokemon presentation coming on August 3rd.

 

Neat. Give us the region name already!!!

My guess, 2 minutes of trailers, 8 minutes of gameplay and 8 minutes of talking about said gameplay and trailer. The rest is dead air

 

Let's see if the leak dump is real

 

https://twitter.com/SerebiiNet/status/1554818563025797120

Spoiler

Guarantee everyone's just gonna call this one "Pooper."

 

And it is, these games look awesome

 

Welp, I can't say this got me particularly interested. I don't like open world design (especially not for level-based RPGs), I didn't like the design of a single human character, the whole "school" thing seemed really uninteresting, and the new Terastalyzing (sp?) just didn't interest me (it seems like if Mega Evolution was just a hat and a crystal effect).

I don't mean to be a downer, but games following the "everything has to be open world even if it doesn't make sense for the series and/or gameplay" trend I seem to keep seeing has been draining. And overall the series just seems to be moving further away from what I want from it (which is consistent "comfort food").

 

The art style is very hard to look at. Doesn't look like they did any tweaking to the human models or the environment. Did like the new Pokémon and the new Marnie knockoff, though Nemona is still probably my favorite human design. The gym leader they showed off just looks okay. And those are some very, very poor customization options.

Pokémon is an inherently linear game. I really like the idea of several paths, but I bet at least the gym path is going to be really lackluster because this is their literal first time doing this and you're picking the order. Who even knows if they'll bother with team/level scaling? Feels like it can easily end up a Johto style clusterfuck.

New Wooper an Fidough are really cute though... And there are two other options for the story which hopefully aren't super basic and boring...

 

From the leaks and after this trailer, its now confirmed there will be no level scaling

 

Pretty much makes choosing the order pointless. You either climb from the bottom like usual or go out of your way to clean up gyms that aren't even challenges to you anymore. Imagine that you found yourself beating the sixth gym and now, you gotta cross the whole damn map full of weak Pokémon that you probably have already seen evolutions for to quickly steamroll a weaker gym. Then you need to bounce to another and another with no challenge at all. It doesn't even need to be all that out of order either, just beating the second gym first then going back to the first will probably make you overleveled for the third. Pretty much, do the gyms in order or get ready for dull busywork.

If they'd kept the Legends Arceus catching, at least there'd be something to do with the world while doing any of this but they decided that grinding the game to sudden halts was a better idea, so now you'll have to go through repetitive screens every time you think that maybe you can enjoy the overworld... and avoid colliding with Pokémon and having to press "run" after a dull intro when you just want to clean up the gyms you missed.

This is just obnoxiously bad design.

 

No sure what you're talking about, none of the places or towns are seperated by loading screens in this game.

And there will always be Pokemon battle transitions to state when you are in a battle

The return to form is because Legends is a Legends game, this is still tradtionally a mainline game but with upgrades. Confirmations that the move mechanics from PLA are returning as well.