>>59003191I read an interview at one point a few years back about the production of X and Y. I think it was with Masuda, but it might not have been. Shauna was mentioned as a sort of off topic and the interviewer pointed out that she seemed really close to a love interest and was clearly designed in a way that grabbed player attention and the answer was something like "She was when the game was in its conceptual stages, but they got cold feet part of the way into production and scrapped the idea. But they liked the design so much they kept her." They wanted to give the player a love interest after B2W2 toyed around with romance and wanted the design to be cute and inoffensive, so they made Shauna. And after they dumped the idea it felt like a lose to dump the design too, so they retooled the plot to include extra "rivals". Then during production they still toyed with the idea of giving her scenes or dialogue that looked romantic, while not fully committing again to the original concept. After X and Y, they tried romance one more time with Lilly. They were as subtle as they could be with that one and ultimately swore off romancing the main character after Sun and Moon.
Again, I remember reading this but I don't have the interview on me, obviously. So take whatever I said with a grain of salt. I might not remember it so good, or the whole thing might've been a fake interview. Who knows?
