>>48112191towns will be in the wild area and accessible as soon as you unlock that section of the map, but you will certainly enter them like you would in a normal pokemon game. there is no way gamefreak is going to be able to make a decent looking city with free camera control and no load screen.
i think gen 9 is going to be a step between what we got in gen 8 and the eventual fully open world pokemon game the series will inevitably get to. there will be no routes in the way they have existed before. there will be trails and paths that function like routes where trainers will hang out, but you can skip the routes entirely and run across fieldsand such.
but because game freak is kind of incompetent i don't think they will be able to make a single open world for a while so instead they will make a region with 3 or 4 open world like chunks. they won't be able to make a seamless open world so they will need to load between areas. these areas will be open for you to explore with some roadlocks for story reasons, but once you get to one of these areas you will be able to go where you like.
i'm sorry if my posts are coming off as confusing. i guess i'm just doing a poor job articulating my thoughts.
