Pokemon Sun/Moon devs talk programming challenges, squeezing power out of 3DS

A portion of a Famitsu interview with director Shigeru Ohmori and series producer Junichi Masuda...

F: Exeggutor is quite popular in Pokemon GO, so when I saw its Alola Form in Sun and Moon, I was taken aback by how well their appearances complimented each other. But you didn’t plan for that in advance, the games just happened to both come on the 20th anniversary. Moving on, what aspects of Sun and Moon did you two find to be challenging to implement?

Ohmori: For me it was the Trials. In typical Pokemon games there are a series of Gyms that you have to defeat, but we decided to try changing the formula completely for Sun and Moon. We redid the internal systems many, many times, working diligently to finalize them up until the very end of development. The Gym battles in previous games focused on the ‘trainer vs. trainer’ aspect, but this time we wanted the Pokemon themselves to take a more active role. We started with that simple thought in mind, but in the end they turned out to be much more difficult to implement than we ever imagined.(laughs)

F: The Gym battle format from previous games had been perfected, after all.

Ohmori: That’s right. If we changed one thing even slightly, it would have a drastic effect on many different levels. Those kinds of adjustments couldn’t be made lightly. But despite the doubts we had about whether or not we should make those changes, we were determined to take the plunge. This might sound a little boastful, but our previous games were very well designed, and it took a lot of courage for us to take a break apart a working formula. So, even we had our own Trials to overcome (laughs).

Masuda: Gym battles were kind of like checkpoints within the games. Once you were powerful enough, you would go and fight the gym leader, and win their badge. It was like getting a certificate showing you had made progress. We had a lot of discussions about the Trials, as we were worried they would feel too much like wild Pokemon battles if they didn’t have that same sense of progression. The team must have worked tirelessly to find a system that fit that requirement.

F: This is the third game coming to the same system. Since you’ve enhanced many things without changing to more powerful hardware, you must have had to find new ways to draw out the 3DS’s power.

Ohmori: I thought we had reached our limits with the previous game, but the team had no other choice but to go beyond those limits, and in the end they were able to work their magic into what we have now. For example, many of the cinematic aspects of the game have been improved, and more information is available to the players all at once. I think people will be surprised by the advances we’ve made.