Last year, Game Freak released Pokemon Scarlet And Violet, the first open world game in the Pokemon series, which went on to achieve massive commercial success despite many technical issues and mixed reception from critics and fans.

Recently, at the Computer Entertainment Developers Conference in Japan, Game Freak spoke about their approach to Pokemon Scarlet And Violet‘s visual style, and in the process showed off a bit of early concept art from the game.

As translated via Serebii.net’s Joe Merrick and Pokemon Archivist Lewchube, it seems Game Freak tried to adopt a “Real and Deform” approach where the background environments would look more realistic, while the characters and Pokemon would appear less so, at least in comparison to Pokemon Sword And Shield.

new Pokemon Scarlet & Violet concept art from CEDEC and holy shit the colors are gorgeous here pic.twitter.com/t5SWzhrPtd

— Lewtwo (@Lewchube) August 23, 2023

been waiting on these for months now pic.twitter.com/6cLCMCig0c

— Lewtwo (@Lewchube) August 23, 2023

Their concept for SV was for it to be Real and Deform where backgrounds etc. are more realistic than before while Pokémon and humans aren't completely realistic.

There's also a lot of talk about how they did various other effects. Will try to get a professional translation done

— Joe Merrick (@JoeMerrick) August 23, 2023

This “Real and Deform” approach can be seen quite clearly in the final product, where the world itself indeed tries to look more realistic while the Pokemon themselves retain their usual more cartoonish designs. If you’re interested in checking out more in-development images shared at the conference, you can check some out here.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.