Pokemon Scarlet / Violet tech analysis, including frame rate and resolution

A new video from Digital Foundry has explored the technical side of Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon Violet, including frame rate and resolution.

Unfortunately, the games just aren’t up to snuff in this department. That doesn’t mean the actual gameplay is bad. Across the board though, the titles are by all accounts disappointing – frame rate, resolution, glitches, and more don’t meet standards that many had hoped for.

Here’s the full roundup of technical tidbits:

– Many technical problems
– Poor visual design and asset quality
– Environmental assets are low quality
– Basic geometry, ugly tiled textures, simple designs
– Poor textures in terms of artwork and quality
– Game has low resolution 2D art everywhere
– Texture art used for larger surfaces is usually very crudely tiled with obvious segments and repeated patterns
– Issues with draw distance and log management
– NPCs and Pokemon pop in suddenly at relatively close distances and often jump in and out of existence as you approach
– Game doesn’t keep track of Pokemon entities after they pop out, so moving forwards and backwards despawns Pokemon that were present
– Environmental geometry and shadow maps pop in quite close to the camera
– Zero approximation of shadows at range except for some ugly texture-based cloud shadows
– Certain environments have sudden lighting changes when you pass a certain threshold
– At any reasonable distance from the player, animated objects will start to run at reduced rate animations
– These rates vary from one quarter rate to 1 / 15 rate
– Awkward camera animation in battles plus poor asset quality
– Camera can clip through geometry even without trying to
– Some of the smaller scale environments can look a bit better
– Game runs with a dynamic resolution setup on Switch
– Pokemon Scarlet and Violet resolution is between 720p and 1080p when docked
– Tends to hover around 864p
– Portable mode has ranged resolution between 576p and 720p
– Tends to stay closer to 720p in handheld mode
– Pokemon Scarlet and Violet frame rate targets 30 FPS
– Unfortunately, near constant frame rate dips and stutters are present
– Portable mode and docked are similar for frame rate
– Can run at 20 FPS for extended periods
– Battles are a bit more stable than traversing
– Game speed seems to be tied to frame rate
– This isn’t just a matter of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet being too ambitious for Switch

You can check out the full analysis from Digital Foundry below for the full Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon Violet technical analysis, including frame rate and resolution.