Game Freak Spent Half A Year Fussing Over Tall Grass In Pokemon Sword/Shield

It looks like Pokemon Sword/Shield’s jump to HD introduced its own set of interesting challenges for the developers at Game Freak.

In a recent Famitsu interview with the game’s producers Ohmori and Masuda, the topic of the game’s new HD visuals cropped up. Interestingly, Ohmori highlights that the development team took some time to settle on the placement and look of the game’s tall grass – citing that it took them half a year of ‘disagreements’ to figure it out! The reason for this was that Game Freak recognized tall grass was the main way that players would meet wild Pokemon, so it needed to look right.

Check it out the full excerpt below, with translations courtesy of Siliconera:

Famitsu: The other day during the early access demo event for the media I got a chance to try it out – but when I saw the game screen for Pokemon Sword & Shield, I saw some stuff that made me feel at ease, and there’s just something mysterious about the power of picture. I couldn’t help but gaze at the game.

Junichi Masuda: “We put a lot of attention on ways of looking at the screen. Although we had trouble on lighting, glass reflections, and such… [laughs wryly]”

Shigeru Ohmori: “For example, one of them was the ‘tall grass,’ which took us about a half-year of disagreements until it took its shape.”

Famitsu: Half a year for the tall grass….!

Shigeru Ohmori: “The tall grass in the world of Pokémon are places were the users and Pokémon meet. As for the game, it’s part of the core way of playing that tells you ‘There’s tall grass there so you might find some Pokémon, let’s check it out,’ so it is very important. How much should we make its distance, how much space, how much graphics should we use to present it. It’s a part that affects game characters, so we really put in a lot of time on that.

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