Pokemon Sun/Moon devs on the drip-feed of news updates, fan theories, thoughts on hardware, more
Plenty of Pokemon Sun/Moon developer interviews have been popping up as of late. In the latest issue GamesTM, the trend continues. Producer Junichi Masuda and director Shigeru Ohmori spoke with the magazine on a wide array of topics.
We’ve included some of the more interesting comments below. Between the two, there was talk about why there have been regular Pokemon Sun/Moon news updates, fan theories, thoughts on hardware for the series’ future, and more.
Masuda on the different approaches to Pokemon Sun/Moon and Pokemon GO…
“I was actually involved in the development of Pokémon Go as well. One thing that Go really focuses on is the catching aspect – going outside and having fun catching Pokémon. With Sun and Moon, the heart of the game is raising your Pokémon and battling Trainers and other players around you. We very deliberately try to have our games push in different directions, focusing on different things. We hope that players who enjoyed catching and learning about Pokémon through Go can now come into Sun and Moon and enjoy a deeper experience.”
Masuda on the near constant drip-feed of news updates since the game’s announcement…
“We’ve got this change in the style and play of the game, but one thing we’re aware of is that previously, you’ve been able to keep excitement just by saying one or two things about the game and people remained excited. Nowadays, you can say some things and people can lose interest quite quickly – it becomes yesterday’s news and something else is exciting. We want to try and keep people interested with this slow, continual release of new information and hopefully people will still be looking forward to the game by the time it comes out.”
Ohmori on Pokemon fan theories…
“When creating the story, there are lots of different things that inspire us, but no one thing that points us in a certain direction – no underlying message in that regard. But what we do have is players discussing these things and really thinking deeply about the story, which is really interesting from our side and we do want to encourage players to think about what Pokémon is all about.”
Masuda on the importance of communication and why the main series stays on handhelds…
“As you say, it’s all about communication and handhelds have long been the best way to get that connected aspect. Moving into the future, Nintendo hardware will continue to change with the times. Wi-fi is everywhere now and with that in mind, maybe the ways in which you communicate with other players will change. We always want to carry on making our Pokémon games for the most appropriate hardware based on what we have in mind for each game – we want to bring out the best in the hardware that we put our games on. We’re really excited to see where Nintendo goes with its hardware in the future and we want to continue making games for that.”
Ohmori on concerns that Hyper Training could make those who prefer to shoot for perfect Pokémon the old-fashioned way feel like their hard work was being undermined…
“To carry out Hyper Training, you need to collect silver and gold crowns and these are very rare items, so it’s not like you can get your hands on them easily. It’s not that the idea of hatching, breeding, raising, evolving and training your Pokémon is completely gone – you still very much have that in the game. It’s still a worthwhile pursuit and we hope that people who enjoy that aspect can continue to do so. What we can give players the chance to do with this new Hyper Training feature is if they’ve got their favourite Pokémon from previous games, they can bring them over and give them a chance to shine in this new game. There are various ways Trainers can enjoy the depth of the battle system and we hope they’ll keep doing that.”
