Game Freak's Masuda and Ohmori on the first Pokemon World Champion from Taiwan, the cultural impact of foreign employees, and how Pokemon Sword/Shield's Galar region works

Gamer Taiwan recently sat down with Game Freak's Junichi Masuda and Shigeru Ohmori to talk about Pokemon Sword and Shield, as well as the world of Pokemon in general. The pair kicked things off with special video messages, where Masuda congratulates Pi Wu for becoming the first Pokemon World Champion from Taiwan. Masuda is very happy to see a champion from Taiwan, and says it's been a long time since the first Pokemon games were localized in Chinese.

As for Shigeru Ohmori, his video focuses on running players through the various aspects of Pokemon Sword and Shield, and he hopes players are looking forward to the titles.

Following those videos, Ohmori fielded some more general questions about Pokemon. One question asks Ohmori about Game Freak employee James Turner, and the cultural impact foreign employees bring to Game Freak. You can see his response below.

James has been involved in design and development since Pokemon Black/White. His Japanese is very fluent, so we don’t really consider him as a foreigner (laughs). However, because he’s an Englishman, this time we consider him a “goalkeeper” who helps us judge whether a Pokemon design has a “British feeling”. For example, he could suggest for a room to have a lot more small decorations, which is similar to homes in the UK. He also gave feedback on the Pokemon Center, where we had to replace the automatic door to give it a more “British feel”.

In addition, our current development team has a lot of members from Asia. I feel our team is very international. I think it is because of such a team that we can make a game widely accepted by players worldwide.

Finally, Ohmori addressed how the Galar region works in Pokemon Sword and Shield, and confirms that it's not one big, seamless area.

Although it is not seamless, we wanted to make sure that every part of the Galar region looks great. I hope players will appreciate the different scenery while moving between various parts of the Galar region.