Pokemon Sword/Shield devs on amount of content, more content after the main story, Pokemon timeline talk

Game Informer is one of a few outlets to have published an interview with Pokemon Sword/Shield director Shigeru Ohmori and producer Junichi Masuda. As part of their discussion, they spoke about how big these games are compared to other entries, teased more content after players finish the main story, and spoke about the Pokemon timeline.

We’ve rounded up the answers to these topics below. If you’re interested in reading the full interview, hit up Game Informer’s full piece here.

On whether the length of Pokemon Sword/Shield is comparable to other Pokemon games…

Ohmori: I think it’s hard to go into details of that, but in terms of the volume or the amount of content in the main adventure, it’s comparable to other Pokémon generations that we’ve played. I think there’s a lot of interesting activities that, for example, completing the Pokédex or really going out into the Wild Area and engaging with those mechanics, that’ll add a lot of replay value for players who are looking to get really hardcore into that.

Masuda: I feel like a lot of players these days will typically burn through content and try to go to the ending as fast as they can. From our perspective, we spent three years making it! [Laughs] We do hope that players will take their time through the adventure, but yeah, that’s my perspective.

On whether there are other parts that will be difficult for players like Max Raid Battles…

Ohmori: With Max Raid Battles, we have the star ranking system and I think what he’s talking about was when you go to five stars – the highest-ranked ones – they are quite difficult. I’ve tried to play them on my own and lost many times. When you get to the highest stuff, you need really good team coordination to defeat them. I can’t really go into details, but I can say that there’s other content for players to engage with over the long term and more deeply after you finish the main story.

On the Pokemon timeline…

Masuda: It starts to get a little complicated if you pay too much attention to timelines. Like, there might be a professor that appears and it wouldn’t make sense at all if we applied that kind of timeline logic. So we try not to apply it too rigorously. Maybe one hint is that if a character is appearing with Professor Oak, they’re living in the same era. Rather than some series where it makes sense to have the timeline progress as you go and the story evolve, the approach that Pokémon takes is expanding the world, like what the regions are, and making it richer as we go. Rather than a timeline, it’s more of a physical space thing.