Eurogamer recently had an interview with two people from Game Freak, the main developers of Pokémon games. Junichi Masuda (executive director and head of game development) and Kensaku Nabana (designer). It’s a really interesting read, especially with all the changes they had to make when adapting the game to a different style of playing.
Two decades on from Pokémon Red and Blue’s arrival here in the west, we’re going back to Kanto once again.
Pokémon Let’s Go have made big changes – some proving more popular than others in the lead up to its release – but there’s still a lingering sense that, with just the first generation of Pokémon available, in the first region, we’ve seen it all before.
A couple of weeks ago, alongside an extended hands-on preview of Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee, we talked to Junichi Masuda, executive director and head of game development at Pokémon’s main studio Game Freak, as well as fellow designer Kensaku Nabana, about some of the nitty gritty details fans are always after, including how that whole Meltan reveal came about, HMs, and those perpetual questions of difficulty, open worlds, and the series’ future.
It ends with a answer from Junichi Masuda, which is quite reassuring about their idea of how the main series of Pokémon games will be played:
I know that a lot of people and fans have spent a lot of time hatching eggs, they’ve hatched… a lot of eggs, but we want them to kind of discover new ways to enjoy Pokémon games, you know I’d be really sad to think that for them, Pokémon is hatching eggs, so with this one we’re trying to show them a different side of the game.
Pokémon GO is super popular, and I still play it quite a lot, but I wouldn’t want the main games to be simplified to match. So this is good news!