"From an audio engineer's perspective, the first 10 minutes of Sword and Shield alone are an embarassment"

So, just to list a few things off real quick:- As soon as I started, I went and talked to Munchlax. Its cry sounds like it's in a different bit depth / resolution than the rest of the game's audio already. I suppose if this is the exact same soundfile used for Munchlax's cry in generation 4, just reused without any updates or touch ups whatsoever. It's also too loud in the mix in my opinion, and doesn't even seem diagetic.- Same with purrloin's cry.- Edit: When spinning in circles, the animation will continue to loop as long as you spin the stick, but the sound file for your character spinning only lasts 2-3 seconds... after a second of not playing it will start again... it does not loop smoothly.- Menu sounds and advancing dialogue have the nostalgic clicking chime sound, but... this probably needed an update. The rest of the game is trying a fairly different aesthetic, and this feels like something that got left behind in some half-arsed overhaul.- Hop's hand slapping sound effect when you start your first battle with him sounds like it was sourced on FreeSound.Org or something; this should be unacceptable in a AAA game title. There's no way this was recorded by GameFreak / their audio folks; and if it was - it must've been done with no more than a 20 dollar recording device, not in a studio with an industry standard microphone.- The crowd cheering as Leon arrived was.... eh.... I guess I can't really pick that apart too much... Not an audio thing, but Leon using the same animation 4 or so times in a row with his hand up in the air was pretty unsettling though.- The crash when Wooloo breaks past the gate, doesn't sound like it occured 50 feet away, or down the road, it sounds like it was against the side of my bloody head. And it again sounds like it was recorded on a cell phone.- The SFX for travelling into the slumbering weald / between areas, again sounds like a nostalgic relic from the older games. Lower bit depth or quantization errors make this sound crunchy and out of place with again, a AAA title being released in 2019.- I get that pokemon games historically have only had music as ambience, and not actual ambience - but hearing some more of the environments we're in, wether it be a charming abode or this foggy forest and less of the music in the mix would probably really step up the immersion this game seems to need.- The super effective / not effective / normally effective SFX for hits mid battle sounds like a GBA sound effect. Again, possibly to appeal to nostalgia, but I'd say this title really needs new things, not recycled assets at this point. People's familiarity with these sound effects doesn't supercede how dated this "bcchh" sound effect sounds.- Hop's 'startled sound' when you encounter the Z dog in the slumbering weald is... Not what you could call Foley. It could just as easily be the 'not very effective' hit noise, as his character physically reacting in shock. Not sure if this was sourced, or recorded - but that's not how you do foley.- Positive feedback point - applying a low pass filter as the mist intensified in the fight with the Z dog, was pretty cool. That's a shining point in the game so far for audio.​I'm only 15 minutes in now, and... Yeah I'm glad someone gifted me the game, and I didn't buy it. But I still would have prefered to not have anyone support the title for my playing it until Nintendo or Game Freak acknowledges the quality control issues and rushed development. There's no reason media released and consumed on this scale should have these levels of problems. via /r/pokemon https://ift.tt/342kvSF