Pokemon Sword/Shield Devs Discuss Changes To The Games, Balancing Battles, And More

Pokemon.com has published a massive interview with Game Freak’s Shigeru Ohmori and Junichi Masuda, where they discuss several behind-the-scenes details about Pokemon Sword And Shield.

In the interview, Ohmori and Masuda discuss several of the changes that were introduced in Pokemon Sword And Shield, balancing the new battle mechanics, the creation of new Pokemon, as well as what they feel make Pokemon an RPG.

You can check out some highlights below, or read the full interview here.

Changes To the Games

Pokemon.com: Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield introduce several interesting ways to train Pokémon outside of battle, such as Pokémon Camp, Poké Jobs, and new items like mints. Why did you feel that was important?

Mr. Ohmori: We felt that it is important for all players who spend a lot of time with the games, even if they don’t focus on battling, to be able to finish the main story. There are lots of different ways for players to have fun playing with their Pokémon outside of battles, and Pokémon Camp is one of them. We felt it wouldn’t make sense for players to spend a lot of time engaging in those gameplay features only to end up under-leveled and unable to progress in the story, so we decided to give Exp.Points for playing at camps. Our thinking was the same with the other new ways to train that we introduced in these games.

Pokemon.com: What motivated the change to leave the Exp. Share on permanently for the first time in the series?

Mr. Ohmori: I spent a lot of time discussing this with our battle design team. We came to the realization that the vast majority of players played the games with the Exp. Share left on at all times. When thinking of why players would want to turn it off, we thought it would primarily be to give Exp. Points to only one of the Pokémon in your party. We felt the same result could be achieved by players simply limiting the number of Pokémon in their party to one. That would be a more intuitive way to limit Exp. Point gains for most players.

Balancing Battles

Pokemon.com: Are you able to anticipate which Pokémon and team combinations will be popular in competitions? Is that something you think about when developing the games?

Mr. Ohmori: When the team works on balancing the battles, they try to foresee which Pokémon will likely see a lot of use in battle and work on balancing the games accordingly. However, there are many instances where players come up with innovative strategies that we could not predict. I think that is one of the things that makes Pokémon so interesting, and I’m excited to see which Pokémon become popular in battle after the games are released.

What Makes a Pokémon RPG?

Pokemon.com: How do you find the right balance between maintaining the identity of what it means to be a core Pokémon RPG and introducing new features? Do you ever come up with new features or mechanics that you decide to not include because they don’t fit the feel of a Pokémon RPG?

Junichi Masuda: Pokémon are mysterious creatures—they are our friends, and they are thought to have power that surpasses humans. We make our decisions about the games with those elements in mind. For example, one important decision might be whether or not we should make a certain aspect more convenient in terms of gameplay or prioritize making a Pokémon feel more like a living creature. Another important core aspect of the Pokémon games is that while you may first encounter a Pokémon as an enemy in battle, that same Pokémon can become your ally if it joins your team.

Pokemon.com: After you introduce a new feature or mechanic in a Pokémon RPG, how do you determine whether it will be brought forward into the next games?

Mr. Masuda: We always take player feedback into consideration. We also consider what is possible with the latest evolutions in hardware as well as how people’s interests change over time. When coming up with new features and systems, we also consider how well they will fit in with the existing feature set.

Creating New Pokemon

Pokemon.com: What is the process for creating a new Pokémon? For instance, do you come up with the design first and then look at that to get inspiration for its type and skills? Or do you come up with a concept necessary for gameplay and design a Pokémon to fulfill it?

Mr. Ohmori: There is no single process for coming up with new Pokémon designs, but instead there are lots of different approaches, which we believe leads to the wide variety of Pokémon designs. For example, sometimes a designer will get an idea from the real-life region that the in-game region is based on. Other times, one of our game system designers makes a request for a certain type of Pokémon to better balance the battle system, which leads to an all-new Pokémon design. The initial idea for a Pokémon can come from anyone in the company, regardless of their job title, including those who aren’t in game development positions.

Pokemon Sword And Shield launch on November 15 2019 for Nintendo Switch.

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