Over the past few generations, Game Freak has been slowly introducing quality of life features that allow players to use their favorite Pokemon competitively without necessarily going through the long process of breeding the perfect Pokemon.

Speaking to Gameinformer, planning director Kazumasa Iwao revealed that Pokemon Sword And Shield would be no different in this regard. According to Iwao, this time Game Freak decided to introduce some new features which would allow players to transform the Pokemon they had grown attached to over the course of their journey in Galar into competitively viable battlers, instead of having to ditch their partners for a perfect “super-mon”.

“Traditionally in the series, you start with your starter Pokémon and then you catch a lot of Pokémon in the beginning, and those are with you throughout your whole adventure, and the player gets attached to them. But a lot of times, they get into the competitive battles and they find they can’t actually use those Pokémon or they’re not competitive, so they have to go out and find the exact right Pokémon or breed them in a certain way to make sure they’re viable in competitive battle,”

“This time around, we really wanted to introduce some systems that help the player be able to take those Pokémon they caught in the beginning, and the first one they chose, and actually take them straight into competitive battle. There’s a lot of hidden parameters to Pokémon that aren’t surfaced to the player. We’re doing a lot of stuff in the back end introducing systems that allow players to make sure that Pokémon they want to use in competitive battles are viable.”

When pressed for more, Iwao unfortunately could not reveal much, but he did drop a hint as to what one of those “hidden parameters” may be:

“I’ve got to be very vague about it, but one example – it will be visible to the player and they’ll know when they see it, I think – say you have a Pokémon where it’s got all the right stats and everything, but there’s a personality parameter as well that comes into play in battles, and it might not be the right personality, so you’ll breed until you get the right one, is what people do currently. But you’ll see that there’s a system in the game that will fix that for people.”

To any longtime Pokemon fan, it seems fairly obvious that Iwao is most likely talking about Pokemon Natures. Not only does it fit the description of “personality parameter”, it is also the only “personality value” of a Pokemon that cannot be compensated for using an existing mechanic (e.g. Bottle Caps for IVs). That said, we will likely only know for sure once the games come out.

Finally, Iwao re-assured fans that they can still put in the effort to breed the perfect Pokemon for competitive play, and that these new options are mainly meant to accommodate players who would prefer to use Pokemon that they have a strong history and attachment to.

“We do think there’s value in that effort that players put into it, but at the same time, I think with Sword and Shield we wanted to also have a system that makes it a little bit more accessible. For example, if you’re bringing a Pokémon over from a previous game into these games, being able to use that specific Pokémon that has sentimental value to you in the battle system competitively is something we wanted to try this time.”

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