As Iwata summarized in the interview, usually when a strategy works, most companies decide to stick with the formula. However, Masuda specifically stated that he wanted to take everything he knew about the game — everything that they had thought was “obvious” about the series — and break it. Some of the changes Masuda put out were so shocking that the team completely doubted that it could even be done.(As for Sugimori, his first reaction to Masuda’s proclamation of the newly-declared revolution of the content was, “…Again?” His next reaction, after hearing the plan, was, “Don’t give me so much work…”)
Masuda and Sugimori have worked together for a long time, and they’ve come to terms with their differing styles of development. For Black/White, Masuda took on the role of the “idea man,” while Sugimori was the “damper,” to prevent him from going too far. He was in charge of making sure that the games retained that aspect of “Pokémon-ness.”
However, Masuda was churning out ideas so quickly that there was bound to be a lot of change. To describe this, Sugimori described a truck where Masuda was the driver. Masuda was always pressing down on the gas, going forward. Sugimori was in charge of the brakes.
However, regardless of how much harder Masuda continued to press the gas, Sugimori would simultaneously press down on the breaks with the same pressure as before, resulting in the truck moving even further than before. As such, the changes in the game were much greater than in any past Pokémon project.
In fact, Masuda handed Sugimori a 200-page draft document with all the new ideas listed in it. This was the first time ever they’d done this. Sugimori read through all the pages and picked at every single sentence, asking questions such as “What do you mean by ‘crossing the bridge?’” or “How would you ‘take part in other people’s games?’”
As a result of Masuda’s radical ideas that sought to redefine the games, Pokémon Black/White turned out to be radically different from their predecessors. And because of Sugimori’s careful cautiousness that tended towards the conservative, the games still retained aspects of the series at their core that were unchanged.
We’ll bring you more on Pokémon Black/White’s development throughout the week.
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