>>39401680Few things.
1. This is a natural progression. Like I said they have been giving the humans mouth rigs for their cutscene/battle models, but they still had texture eyes. Now they've just taken it a step further and given them full facerigs
2. This is probably because they're now actually saving some time with NPC development by only making 1 NPC model/rig. Prior they NEEDED to have a separate overworld version of every NPC because the higher quality ones used in battles/cutscenes were too high poly to use in dense areas with lots of NPCs. Since they're now on Switch they can use these models for the overworld so they've saved some time by making one and used that time to make those ones higher quality.
3. They may be setting these up for Pokemon Master's to be able to use.
That said, the new Pokemon have all been getting a lot of love too. They don't have eye rigs, but it seems like they've all had at least mouth rigs and some good articulation so far. Their animations are also quite a bit livelier than the old Pokemon's.
I think it's more or less a new animation standard they've decided on. Some of the old pokemon animations don't really fit that new standard, but going back and redoing all their animations would be a LOT of extra work.
