Pokémon Legends: Arceus players are posting “physics gone wild” moments

Written by. Nick Mosier based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2022-02-04 10:53 JST)

Several Pokémon Legends: Arceus players have reported Pokémon in the game sometimes behaving and reacting in odd ways. Or to put in another way, many players have been posting videos of the game’s physics engine going wild.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus is an action RPG and the latest title in the Pokémon series. The game takes place in the Sinnoh region during an age when it was still called Hisui. It incorporates many action elements into the gameplay with systems totally different from anything the Pokémon series has seen before.

The characters and objects in the game also make use of a physics system, so if you throw a Pokéball into something for example, it will bounce in accordance with the angle it hit the other object and so on. Berries roll around when they knock into each other, and players will get knocked back when being tackled by Pokémon.

On the other hand, we can also see these physics calculations causing some strange behavior to occur, and players around the world have been posting their findings to social media. One video that became especially popular shows an Alpha Snorlax lunging toward a player and getting caught on an obstacle. And then, as if it built up energy and expended it all at once, goes flying off in another direction. Other players have been uploading Alpha Hippowdon videos.

It also appears that strange behavior from Pokémon is likely to occur around trees. One Twitter user shared a video of an Alpha Stantler circling around the trunk of a tree like a propeller. Maybe this is how Stantler tries to intimidate those that encroach on its territory.

There have also been reports of Pokémon climbing trees, but probably not in the manner you would expect. One example from Twitter shows a Wurmple floating to the top of a tree in a very… unworm-like way. I’ve also tried to use a tree as a shield to block an Alpha Pokémon while I ran away, only to let out a yelp as it slipped right by it.

In Pokémon Legends: Arceus, when you throw a Pokémon or item at a tree, there is proper collision detection going on. It’s likely that Pokémon spinning around tree trunks or floating up into trees is related to how the game handles collisions between trees and Pokémon.

Here’s an example of an odd occurrence unrelated to trees. When throwing a Pokéball containing Rowlet at a Starly, we see the Starly rise into the sky never to return to the battlefield proper. And Rowlet looks just as confused as we are as it stares blankly wondering why it was called from its Pokéball.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus makes use of the Havok physics engine. The Havok physics engine is a technology used in a number of titles, but also makes some gamers fearful. That is to say, a number of titles that use Havok have demonstrated this sort of rough behavior.

One well-known example is the cart scene at the beginning of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Sometimes the cart can be observed launching into the sky, or the horse pulling it might spin around like a drill. There are several things that can cause these issues, and one developer explained an interesting example on Twitter involving the cart colliding with a bee in the game. Havok opens a lot of possibilities for games that use it, but it can also be a tough technology to get a handle on.

But these reports don’t necessarily mean that Havok is behind the rough edges of Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Havok is used in tons of big titles like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a game that offers players a wide variety of fun through its physics simulation. Pokémon Legends: Arceus gives us dynamic elements and a higher degree of freedom than anything we’ve seen in the series so far which might contribute to these rough edges. But if it isn’t game breaking, maybe the unexpected behavior is part of the charm.