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Masuda and Ohmori talked to the website metro.co.uk about the Sword and Shield games and how the games implement new things gradually.
In another interview with Kotaku, Junichi Masuda and Shigeru Ohmori shared more insight into Gamefreak’s philosophies behind the production of these new titles.
GC: The new game almost seems to be divided into two sections, with the stuff around towns working like previous games, with a relatively fixed camera, and then the Wild Area is more like a modern open world game. Was that a purposefully created compromise?
SO: I think that’s fair to say. When we try to make big changes in the series we want to do it a bit more gradually. Every time we make a new game we want to change up the formula and do new things but if you do too much all at once then it feels like it might not be a Pokémon game.
So we try to implement new things fairly gradually, to try and satisfy some of the requests from fans to try out new things, and if it goes well we would incorporate that in the future. So yeah, I think you could say that the Wild Area is our answer to some of the requests for a more open area, and we’ll continue to do new things gradually, as we progress with the series.
You can read the full interview on metro.co.uk's site.GC: So why was it that Dynamax became one of the main gimmicks for the new games? Where did that come from? Is that something that had been considered for a long time?
SO: It was really inspired by the move to Switch, higher resolutions and the ability to play on a big screen TV. With the 3DS we really didn’t have the resolution to portray very small characters versus very big characters at the same time. So being able to visualise that kind of size difference, of the pokémon, was something that the Switch enabled us to do. So we wanted to create these kind of cool-looking battles.
GC: I’ve being looking at the reactions online and everyone seems very keen, except there is concern that new features get added to Pokémon each time and, whether they’re well received or not, they seem to disappear for the next iteration for no obvious reason. Is Dynamax something that’s going to stick around forever?
SO: At Game Freak, it really just comes from our desire to surprise the players with new gameplay. Not to do the exact same thing every time but have a new twist on something, that keeps people surprised and enjoying the new style of gameplay.
GC: If a feature has been removed – things like Vs. Seeker, Battle Frontier, and so on – is there still a chance they might come back in the future, even if it’s not for this one?
SO: I think, if by bringing it back, it would be a surprise in itself or be a new take on the formula I think you might see some things like that happen. For example, in these games, the bike is back, which was gone for a while. In Sun and Moon you could ride on the back of certain pokémon, to get around, but we felt with the Wild Area being so large we wanted to look at what would be the best way to let players get around and very smoothly, without too much trouble.
So we brought back the bike, but we also changed it a little bit so it can now go seamlessly over water and we added new things to make it feel like it’s a surprise again.
In another interview with Kotaku, Junichi Masuda and Shigeru Ohmori shared more insight into Gamefreak’s philosophies behind the production of these new titles.
Source: LinkMasuda: “What I always come back to, working on the original Red and Green games, is Venusaur. That kind of evolution chain represented what we wanted to do with Pokémon—creating these creatures that look like something you’ve never seen before, but with elements of the things that you have seen.
It really captures your interest to see them on the package, for example. I’d see the games in stores, and they’d be red and green, and looking at Venusaur, you just think, ‘What is this? I don’t really know what it is, but it looks kind of familiar.’ Makes you really interested. That really captures the spirit of producing the original Pokémon games.”
Ohmori: “For me, it’s actually Caterpie. The reason for that is, in real life you have bugs that will evolve. If you’re raising a dog, it’s not going to change its appearance. In the Pokémon games, one of the reasons that we always have bug type Pokémon in the early parts of the game is because it’s something that is familiar to the player, that they can believe that would evolve.
That kind of teaches the concept of Pokémon: growing and evolving. It’s not just the Pokémon who are getting stronger and growing, it’s also the player alongside the Pokémon. We have a lot of that in these games with the added focus on reaching the top, becoming the strongest and the greatest.”