"No, #gamefreaklied was NOT caused by a mistranslation and I can prove it."

I want to preface this by saying that I don’t care if you love SWSH or hate it, bought it or didn’t, I’m not here to convince anyone about the merits or flaws of the game. I just don’t like seeing misinformation going around and I’m hoping that I can maybe nip it in the bud before it spreads even further.Apparently someone made a Tumblr post claiming that Ohmori’s infamous statement from a Famitsu interview, in which he says that the pokemon models had to be remade from scratch, was a mistranslation, and that his original statement was very vague and possibly wasn’t referring to the models of the pokemon themselves at all.No, it wasn’t a mistranslation and no, it wasn’t vague. I’m going to break down exactly what he said as simply as I can, in the hopes that you’ll understand it even if you can’t read Japanese.Below is the relevant text from the interview:「ポケットモンスター　サン・ムーン」の時点でも、（すべてのポケモンを連れていけるようにすることは）実際はなかなかきびしい状況だったのですが、ハードがNintendo Switchになって、モデルを最初から作り直すことになり、何かしらの選択をしなければならないと。Here is my rough translation:“Even when we were developing Sun and Moon, it was fairly difficult for us to bring over every pokemon, and with the transition to the Nintendo Switch hardware we have to remake the models from scratch, leading to some decisions having to be made."So first and foremost, I want you to keep in mind that this is all one sentence not only in my translation but in the original Japanese as well. I’m going to try and break it down for you piece by piece. The first line in bold is the original Japanese, the second line is my translation, the third line in italics is a VERY literal translation.​「ポケットモンスター　サン・ムーン」の時点でも、Even when we were developing Sun and Moon,(lit. Even at the time of Sun and Moon,)​（すべてのポケモンを連れていけるようにすることは）実際はなかなかきびしい状況だったのですが、it was fairly difficult for us to bring over every pokemon,(lit. the act of being able to bring over every pokemon was a fairly severe situation and,)​ハードがNintendo Switchになって、and with the transition to the Nintendo Switch hardware(lit. the hardware becomes the Nintendo Switch,)​モデルを最初から作り直すことになり、we have to remake the models from scratch,(lit. the situation becomes that the models have to be remade from the beginning)​何かしらの選択をしなければならないと。leading to some decisions having to be made.(lit. we have to make some kind of selection.)​As you can hopefully see, there’s really no way to interpret this as Ohmori referring to anything other than the pokemon models. It’s all in one sentence, and the sentence itself is about the pokemon in particular, not the characters or the environments or anything else. There is no reason for him to be talking about the act of transferring over pokemon from game to game and then suddenly mention that they need to make new non-pokemon models with no logical transition in-between. Besides, if the Japanese fans were so up in arms about this then that means they clearly read this sentence the same way that I did, and I'll trust the judgement of thousands of native speakers.Now, some will say that Ohmori and Masuda have mentioned elsewhere that their reasons for cutting the number of pokemon was because of gameplay balance, and for better animations. That’s true, they did say that! However, these things are not mutually exclusive. They’ve given a number of reasons explaining their decision to cull the pokedex, and there’s no reason to believe that the decision to do so was due to one thing only. It’s also true that there’s an interview on the official website with a Gamefreak employee who says that his job was to touch up the models that had been previously made, and though he doesn’t specify exactly which models, obviously the environments and human characters of SWSH are completely new so I’m not sure what else he could be referring to other than the pokemon (that, my friends, is an example of an actual vague statement).That doesn’t change the fact that Ohmori did, in this interview, make the claim that the pokemon models have to be remade from scratch because of the transition to the Switch hardware. As we all know, that doesn’t appear to be the case at all. Do I think he lied maliciously in order to fool people? No. I can’t explain why his statement apparently contradicts the one made by the employee on the website, because I don’t work at Gamefreak. It’s quite possible that Ohmori genuinely has no idea what the 3D art department is actually doing, despite being the director of the game (you’d be surprised at the level of miscommunication that can happen in situations like this). Like I said, I’m not here to convince anyone that their rage at the developers is justified or not. I just don’t want people to think the entire thing was all because of a “mistranslation.” The fact remains that Ohmori said something that wasn’t true.The interview in question: https://ift.tt/2XMc4H3 via /r/pokemon https://ift.tt/2q85lwx