‘Pokemon Sword & Shield’ Screenshots Show Off Big Upgrade to Graphics

Some new screenshots have revealed hints that Pokemon Sword & Shield has gotten some visual upgrades since the release of its first trailer. Earlier this year, Game Freak and Nintendo revealed a first look at Pokemon Sword & Shield, an upcoming pair of new Pokemon games for the Nintendo Switch. While fans were hoping for some major visual improvements over past Pokemon games released on the Nintendo 3DS, the first Pokemon Sword & Shield trailer was a bit underwhelming especially when compared to Pokemon: Let’s Go, which was visually stunning. However, recent screenshots published by the Japanese magazine CoroCoro revealed that Game Freak has made some major upgrades to the graphics, adding tons of background and texture details.

The screenshots were meant to show off a new t-shirt that will appear in Pokemon Sword & Shield and show the game’s character standing in front of a small cottage. This cottage (which may be the player’s home) also appeared in the first trailer, and thus provides a great comparison about how much the graphics have changed over the last few months. The new screenshots show backgrounds with a lot more texture and details, ranging from better lighting effects to more details on plants and buildings. You can see a comparison below:

While the screenshots aren’t the best quality (they were scanned from a magazine as opposed to screenshots from a video) they do seem to indicate that Pokemon Sword & Shield will have better graphics than its predecessors. That might seem obvious as Pokemon Sword & Shield are made for a household console, but the first trailer left fans a little bit worried. We should have more news about Pokemon Sword & Shield in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.