Game Freak spent half a year working on Pokemon Sword and Shield's tall grass

Making games takes a long time, and sometimes certain elements are particularly taxing. With Pokemon Sword and Shield, one of those trouble areas was the tall grass. According to a Famitsu interview with Game Freak's Junichi Masuda and Shigeru Ohmori, the game's tall grass took 6 months!

Junichi Masuda: “We put a lot of attention on ways of looking at the screen. Although we had trouble on lighting, glass reflections, and such… [laughs wryly]”

Shigeru Ohmori: “For example, one of them was the ‘tall grass,’ which took us about a half-year of disagreements until it took its shape. The tall grass in the world of Pokémon are places were the users and Pokémon meet. As for the game, it’s part of the core way of playing that tells you ‘There’s tall grass there so you might find some Pokémon, let’s check it out,’ so it is very important. How much should we make its distance, how much space, how much graphics should we use to present it. It’s a part that affects game characters, so we really put in a lot of time on that.”