Game Freak on Pokemon: Let’s Go Master Trainers, Meltan’s reveal, open-world game “still on the cards”, more
Eurogamer has come forward with its own interview for Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu / Eevee. Once again, director Junichi Masuda and designer Kensaku Nabana have shared some comments about the new entry and other topics. They discussed the post-game Master Trainers, the handling of Meltan’s reveal, the possibility of an open-world game like Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and more.
We’ve rounded up some of the more notable excerpts from the interview below. Read the full discussion on Eurogamer here.
On those players who are crying out for a bit more of a challenge…
Junichi Masuda: So you know to those kinds of fans we’d mention the ‘catch combo’ mechanic, whereby you catch the same Pokémon multiple times in a row and get various rewards and benefits for that.
Kensaku Nabana: And also the postgame content as well, in particular the master trainiers – so these are trainers who are kind of the ultimate trainers of a specific Pokémon, so you will challenge them. So you will challenge them, and then get their title for that Pokémon, so you become the master of that Pokémon if you manage to beat them in battle.
Junichi Masude: So for me, my favourite Pokémon is Psyduck, so I’d be training my Psyduck amazingly and then would challenge the Psyduck Master, and then gain the Psyduck Master title, and that’s something you can put a lot of effort and a lot of time into, if I really wanted to create a challenge for myself – and these Master Trainers exist for all of the 151 Pokémon in the game, so you know, if you want to collect all of the titles then that’s something you can really challenge yourself with.
On the post-game…
Junichi Masuda: So you know this is obviously based on the Yellow version, so in addition to the Master Trainers in the postgame there’s always the challenge of completing the Pokédex, and not just the in-game contents, but we’d like players to also challenge themselves with meeting up with friends and just trading Pokémon from both versions to complete that Pokédex.
On the possibility of a National Pokedex beyond the 151 from Kanto or plans to add Pokemon from other generations…
Junichi Masuda: So not right now – we’ll kind of, or what we’re looking forward to most right now is how the game is received. We’ll see it’s reception amongst all the players, and really we just… so right now players should become the trainer, throw their Pokéballs, and achieve that dream that everyone should be having including myself – you know it’s everyone’s dream to become a Pokémon trainer, and you know, take up your Pokéballs and get going.
On Meltan’s reveal…
Junichi Masuda: So in terms of who made the decision, so it was TCPI’s PR team and Niantic, and also myself who got together and started talking about it, and really we were thinking about how we wanted people to first lay eyes on Meltan, and how to kind of make it appear like a cute Pokémon right from the start, so some people might look at it, if it were handled the wrong way, as “oh it’s like a gross Pokémon”, but they had it appear in Pokémon Go, kind of moving around, doing it’s thing, and then you know, people would be like “Ooh, what’s this now?!” And we thought that was the best way to kind of have Meltan first appear to the world.
On the possibility of Pokemon having an open-world game like Zelda on Switch…
Junichi Masuda: Well you know in general, I always want to be kind of facing new challenges and trying to you know, do new things with Pokémon. You know it’s a different matter whether players will actually enjoy that kind of playstyle, but really you know, things like setting up an AI so that you know real world Pokémon appear, or different ways to appreciate the game, I’m always kind of thinking how to approach the Pokémon series from a different aspect so, in that sense, it’s still on the cards.
