Game Freak talks Pokemon – fan feedback, making new creatures, cries, new Sun/Moon online features
In its latest issue, GamesMaster published an interview with two of Game Freak’s developers working on Pokemon Sun/Moon. Director Shigeru Ohmori and Junichi Masuda were both interviewed. Ohmori’s comments mainly reiterated what we heard in previous interviews, but many of Masuda’s comments were very interesting.
The Masuda interview was more about Pokemon in general. He talked about fan feedback, the process of making new creatures, plus voice acting and Pokemon cries. If that wasn’t enough, Masuda also dished on a couple of new online features being included in Sun/Moon.
Head past the break for a rundown of some of Masuda’s top comments.
On fan feedback…
We do always listen to our fans and their hopes and what they have to say about the game because it’s really important. but if we just take their ideas and bung them into the game then that’s not going to be very surprising for players, because they’ll have already thought of those ideas. What we really try and do is listen to those ideas, but then take that and think, “How can we use this to surprise players? How can we give them something new that they perhaps haven’t thought of?” This time around, as an example, we’ve got the Alola forms. A lot of these are Pokémon from the Kanto region that people are really familiar with, but now we get to see this new form, these new evolutions, and by doing this we’re able to provide them with a surprise that they never even thought was possible.
On the creation process of a Pokemon from the concept stage to final completion…
There’s really no set process in the way we go about designing Pokémon. Different designers have their own personal way of going about things. One designer might first consider a real world animal and start from there. Another might think of a Pokémon that would fit well with the feel of an area. Another thing designers can often do is think about the battle system, so perhaps one Pokémon type, or one particular Pokémon is really strong, so we’ll design a Pokémon that would work well against that. There are all these different ways we approach designing Pokémon, I think this actually is what gives us such a great range of Pokémon and different styles across the games.
On why Pokemon don’t say their names…
When we first started, we were really restricted by the hardware, but nowadays that’s not the case. For example, in the games we have Pikachu saying its own name just like it does in the anime, but what we do with our games is really consider what the purpose of the Pokémon’s cry is. We consider what type of creature it is, its habitat, how it lives… all these kinds of things help to decide what style of cry it might have, based on all of that information. We also have slightly different cries for the same Pokémon, so when you stroke a Pokémon for example, it might have a different tone to its cry because it’s feeling happy. When we’re designing the main games, exactly what kind of cry we want the Pokémon to have is something we really consider.
On improvements made to online Pokemon trading…
So just like previously we’ve got the GTS feature where you can use wifi to connect with people all over the world. This time around we’ve also added the Quick-Link feature where you can quickly open a trade with another player, and just get straight into it like that. There’s also a simple chat feature in there so you can exchange fun greetings or messages with other players, so we really think that these sorts of small additions will add an extra layer of enjoyment to the communication features in the game, and hopefully allow players to have a deeper experience on that side of things.
