Game Freak says it wants to introduce big Pokemon changes gradually
Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield finally let players control the camera in the Wild Area. Although this isn’t present throughout the entire experience, it’s a step closer to letting fans explore the world in a full 3D area.
Speaking with Metro, when asked if splitting the game between having a fixed camera and a more modern open-world-type game, director Shigeru Ohmori had this to say:
“I think that’s fair to say. When we try to make big changes in the series we want to do it a bit more gradually. Every time we make a new game we want to change up the formula and do new things but if you do too much all at once then it feels like it might not be a Pokémon game.
So we try to implement new things fairly gradually, to try and satisfy some of the requests from fans to try out new things, and if it goes well we would incorporate that in the future. So yeah, I think you could say that the Wild Area is our answer to some of the requests for a more open area, and we’ll continue to do new things gradually, as we progress with the series.”
Ohmori was then asked how big of a change Game Freak was willing to consider for Pokemon Sword/Shield. Ohmori responded by noting:
We of course, in the conceptual phase, we think of a lot of more, possibly, radical changes that we might want to try out. But a lot of them are just ideas at the time and we end up not incorporating them. But we are inspired by the current gaming environment, games that modern players enjoy.
A long time ago, for example, it was traditional to have a camera looking down at 2D gameplay, with much more fixed movement, but now 3D games are the norm and being able to freely move around the camera is something that people are used to and we’re able to incorporate that more.
So it really just comes back to what we think Pokémon fans are really looking forward to trying and, for example, real-time combat – we’ve thought about that before but we just keep coming back, at least for these games, to the turn-based system that is what fans of Pokémon enjoy more.
When asked if this is something that could be tried in a spin-off, Game Freak’s Junichi Masuda closed out this part of the conversation by stating: “We’ve got a lot of ideas, but nothing to comment on right now. [laughs]”
