>>55172042The design language is definitely off. I love gen 5, but id be lying if I said that the dex didnt have a LOT of shitters. I get the impression that the Pokemon had less time overall put into them, and the diversification of the design team started straying too hard. Not even just a James Turner meme, just that it's starting the lack unification around here. I don't think it's limited to Gen 5 either, I think the trend started in Gen 4.
Pokemon has always had a lot of designers, but we have hard evidence showing that they went through a shit ton of drafts in development before being finalized. I don't think later gens have that as much. I mean, look at Terrakion, you've got all of these bits and bobs all over the place-- the weird nondescript horn esque things, the random orange bits glued on, the strange bracer-like shapes around its legs. It looks like they didnt really know what they wanted to "fill" the design out with beyond just the basic general idea. And while this isn't unheard of, USUALLY the random "bits and bobs" that are added tend to have some visual cohesion.. maybe they'd be plates, or spikes or something, but they'll at least look like something that might exist on a monster. Not "pointless orange shape.".
Pokemon has a rule where they need silhouettes to be entirely unique... this seems to extend to the eye design as of late as well. If you notice, post Gen 2, eye designs almost always have some unique quality to them, somethings arbitrarily so.
The increase in people actually work on designing Pokemon means that these design differences are exaggerated, and you start to lack that visual cohesion very quickly. Looking at Gen 1, you can take a huge selection of Pokemon at random and they will generally share traits. There's going to be exceptions for the sake of variety of course, but as an exception, not the norm like with modern designs.
