Pokémon Legends: Screenshot Paintover Adds Details The Game Needed

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A spruced-up screenshot of the recently released Pokémon Legends: Arceus shows fans what the game could have looked like with a little more detail. The game dropped onto Switch consoles last month and has been getting a lot of attention for how it majorly shakes up the Pokémon formula by implementing a Pokémon-filled open-world and more real-time mechanics than previous entries in the series.

While players have always had some degree of freedom when it came to traversing the worlds of various Pokémon titles, the games ultimately offered very few options when it came to where to go and how to get there. Pokémon Legends: Arceus expanded upon this basic, long-running structure by allowing players to explore massive, wide-open areas in a manner similar to other seminal open-world games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. For many gamers, however, this increased scope and freedom came at a cost: visual fidelity and detail. Pokémon Legends: Arceus is a game that doesn't offer up much in the graphics department and takes a far more simplistic, cartoonish approach that isn't too different from what players saw in Pokémon Sword and Shield. Even with Pokémon Legends: Arceus's dynamic weather system and other modern open-world features, it doesn't hold up to other contemporary games in the technical or graphical departments for many fans.

Related: Legends: Arceus — Every Mass Outbreak Pokémon In Cobalt Coastlands

Professional artist Trent Kaniuga has come along to show the world what Pokémon Legends: Arceus may have looked like if its developers were willing or able to put more detail into the game's design. Kaniuga Tweeted a screenshot from the game along with his touched-up version of it, in which he added a series of