 Pokemon fans are divided. While most players are enjoying Sword and Shield, a vocal part of the fan base continues to question whether Game Freak lied in the run-up to the game's launch. The developers claimed that they were recreating models from scratch, and fans continue to debate how much this is actually reflected in the final game. Perhaps the bigger question, though, is why? Why were Game Freak unable to include all Pokemon in Sword and Shield, and why did they have such a hard time justifying their decisions in interviews? From interviews published in the November 2019 issue of Game Informer magazine, it's possible to paint a picture of a studio in crisis, as Game Freak struggled to meet the demands of developing for the Switch, and curbing their own ambition, while meeting their aggressive launch deadline. By the release of the Switch, Game Freak had become very efficient in developing brand new Pokemon titles every single year, like Clockwork. This involved reusing as many assets as possible, and keeping innovation or experimentation to a minimum. The Switch somewhat threw a wrench into the works of this well-oiled machine. With the sudden leap in graphical capabilities of the Nintendo handheld hardware, Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee required a lot more extra artists and developers. According to Shigeru Omori, I think the biggest takeaway was how the graphics and rendering work is so different from the 3DS. Needing to staff up and figure out how we're able to get that to work really well on Switch takes more time, and we needed more resources. Game Freak nearly doubled in size in an attempt to accommodate for the challenges of releasing a home console-quality Pokemon game, but this alone wasn't enough. They still needed more time to actually settle on direction for the games, something that was in short supply considering their annual release schedule. It absolutely didn't help that whatever they made was going to be compared to Breath of the Wild. Coming at the start of the Switch's lifespan, the acclaimed Zelda title had been in development for over half a decade, and had dramatically reworked the formula for the series. Everyone was expecting the first proper Switch Pokemon title to be that same big, bombastic genre-defining game, but Game Freak had a fraction of the time in which to achieve this. Shigeru Omori said, We set out with the idea of making the ultimate, strongest, the best Pokemon game yet, being on the Nintendo Switch, the first time an all-new generation is coming to a console. It was really just kind of applying this idea of ultimate to every facet of the game. Gameplay, visuals, everything. That was really the theme for when I set out making the game, the greatest Pokemon game. In spite of the obvious danger of overextending themselves, the creative leads of Sword and Shield began unpicking the core Pokemon gameplay. They attempted to rethink the rules of what a Pokemon game ought to be. For example, the team began experimenting with giving each Pokemon five available moves instead of four, or, alternatively, reducing the number of available moves down to three. Neither of these attempts really worked. According to planning director Kazumasa Iwao, I think that hurts the balance of gameplay quite a bit. You really start seeing there are haves and have-nots in the Pokemon world, like these Pokemon are obviously way stronger than the rest of these Pokemon. We keep coming back and finding that four is the right number for the current battle system. The challenge of balance was really weighing on the developers, especially when it came to making competitive play less frustrating. Gamefreak didn't need to simply build a balanced single-player campaign. They also had to make sure that they crafted a fairly balanced metagame that wasn't inherently tedious. According to Kazumasa, traditionally in the series, you start with your starter Pokemon and then you catch a lot of Pokemon in the beginning, and those are with you throughout your whole adventure, and the player gets attached to them. But a lot of times, they get into competitive battles and they find they can't actually use those Pokemon, or they're not competitive, so they have to go out and find the exact right Pokemon, or breed them in a certain way to make sure they're viable in competitive battle. All the while as the team were experimenting, the clock was ticking. Their deadline was getting closer, and their vastly inflated staff needed guidance. So the decision was made. Gamefreak would cull the number of Pokemon that appear in the finished games. This meant that balancing the game was quicker and easier, and it meant that more polish could be put into the game's art assets. Apparently, this decision was not unanimous, and various people within Gamefreak disagreed as to which Pokemon should be included. According to Junichi, a wide variety of discussions happened, as the team attempted to narrow down the included Pokemon. They thought long and hard about which Pokemon would fit with the game's Britain-inspired setting, and obviously decided that if they needed anything, it was a living smog cloud in a top hat. Nice. Thanks, Gamefreak! This of course led to the infamous interview in which Junichi Masuda and Shigeru Omori attempted to defend a reduced Pokedex, and inadvertently dug themselves deeper into a hole in the eyes of many commenters. In the interview, Junichi and Shigeru gave both the graphics and the gameplay as explanations for why they decided to scrap the national Pokedex. Junichi said, The number of Pokemon, counting both new Pokemon and forms of existing Pokemon, has crossed 1,000. In addition to improving the graphical quality to adapt the new hardware platform, when it comes to battles, it has become exceedingly difficult to give Pokemon new individualistic traits and balance affinities. Shigeru said, Even during the development of Pokemon Sun Moon, it was extremely difficult for us to bring along all previous Pokemon. With the move to new hardware, it became necessary to recreate models from scratch. While Gamefreak were mostly concerned about balancing the finished game, Shigeru had inadvertently created an open invitation for commenters to analyse every minute detail of Sword and Shield's presentation. Hence, the Gamefreak Lied hashtag and the endless debate over how Shigeru's words were meant to be interpreted. So Gamefreak failed to deliver on their goal of creating the ultimate Pokemon titles. And therein lies a lesson. It's wise not to overextend yourself, to push yourself too far, and to hold yourself to an impossible standard. It's certainly not wise to try and reinvent yourself from the ground up, while in the midst of a stressful, time-sensitive challenge. That said, it's worth pointing out that for all the nitpicking Pokemon Sword and Shield are being subjected to by a vocal minority, most players of the game are having a very good time. Millions of people around the world are enjoying them. Perhaps that's the second part to this moral. You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to overcome all your challenges in a single instant. Sometimes, it's more than enough to simply be happy to be you, as you are today.