Whenever there’s a new Pokémon game on the horizon, fans’ expectations are always high – and that’s doubling when we’re talking about a sequel to a beloved sub-series. For New Pokémon Snap, The Pokémon Company has entrusted the development tasks to Bandai Namco, and it sounds like the project is in safe hands.
The game’s director, Haruki Suzaki, also directed the 2016 Pokkén Tournament, a fighting game that showcased Pokémon in a new, exciting way. Some background scenes featured Pokémon living with humans and interacting with the world around them in a similar way to the Detective Pikachu movie, and Suzaki has revealed to IGN that his studio’s work on Pokkén gave them New Pokémon Snap yielded:
“Pokkén Tournament took advantage of the strengths of Bandai Namco Studio and made Pokémon attractive in a new way. This gave us another chance to do something together again and this led to the development of New Pokémon Snap. developers talk. [from the original game] and the project started with the involvement of many people. “
It sounds like the studio’s experience of showing Pokémon living this way came in handy for New Pokémon Snap, where seeing the monsters roaming their natural habitat is an important part of the experience.
“The main focus was to build the world where wild Pokémon actually live in this game. To do this, we first wanted to create an exciting world by thinking about the environment in which Pokémon live, by creating detailed landscapes and also by Switch to take full advantage of the hardware’s capabilities. While doing this, we tried to make Pokémon the star of the game by making them move naturally and with a sense of presence, so it’s fun to play. just look at them and even more fun to take pictures of them. “
In another recent interview, Suzaki explained how the team decided which Pokémon would choose New Pokémon Snap. Consistently, in all of its comments, it seems that Pokémon actually ‘living’ in the game’s world was the focus during development.