Chief director of Pokopia at Koei Tecmo, Takuto Edagawa, says that his team was "very focused" on writing dialogue for each of the game's individual Pokemon, with the game's producer at The Pokemon Company, Kanako Murata, calling the large amount of conversation between Pocket Monsters "top class".
In an interview with Famitsu that's been translated by GamesRadar+, Edagawa, Murata and the game's director at Game Freak, Shigeru Ogawa, discuss the amount of dialogue between Pokemon that will be featured in Pokopia, and how it showcases each species "unique personality."
While Pokemon show their charms through their animations in most series games, there are a few where Pokemon hold full conversations. One of the major successes of the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series is that they allow players to embody a Pokemon, and make friends with other 'mons as an equal. However, this is certainly an outlier in terms of the series
"Truthfully, I didn't think [the team] would be able to create so many unique lines of dialogue," says Ogawa. "It's all thanks to Koei Tecmo's deep understanding of Pokemon." Edagawa responds, "We decided that it was extremely important to represent every Pokemon's unique personality, so we really focused on [writing]."
Ogawa goes on to discuss how Edagawa and his team's "labor-intensive" efforts have led to "a huge amount of dialogue" in Pokopia. This, in turn, led to challenges with the game's localization and the preservation of each Pokemon's personality.
"Just in terms of the amount [of dialogue], I think it's top class compared to existing Pokemon games," says Murata. "In addition, when localizing we were extremely careful to ensure all of the various conversational tones were translated into every language."
Turns out that saying 'my friend Malamar' could become a reality.
