Pokemon.com: Creating an entirely new region sounds like a daunting task. How long does it take to develop a new region? What goes into the planning of these worlds?
Ohmori: It really depends on the game, but development can go on for quite some time. Specifically with Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield, we began the conceptual phase immediately after development wrapped up on Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon. That concept phase took about a year, and then we moved on to full production. All of that, along with the debug phase, took about three years.
