"Pokemon doesn't need to be open world to accomplish what it's going for."

Think about it- what are the benefits of an open world? Being able to do gyms in any order you want? ...you can do that without it being open world. The camera being mobile? That's... also something you can do without it being open world. Something like Pikmin 4 where they use this to make larger scale environments would be REALLY cool too! I'd love to see routes and cities that FEEL massive in scale!...but you don't need to go open world to do that. What benefit is there to being able to jump off any random bridge? Run behind the crevices between a mountain and a building? Climb up any ragged terrain? It's just a lot of meaningless space the devs have to account for. By keeping the route system of older games, but playing more with how the camera and progression of the game is handled, you can achieve all the benefits people want from open world Pokemon games without needing to make it over-ambitious.That's not to say a fully open world Pokemon game can work- but it requires the devs are able to FULLY handle how much space they'd need to manage, and it would require more optimizations and presents problems that need solving.I feel like S/V are only open world games because the devs saw people clamoring for it and wanted to pick what they thought would be a low hanging fruit to please fans- But they didn't ask themselves what THEY think the benefits of it would be first, and if doing something this ambitious is necessary to accomplish their goals. via /r/pokemon https://ift.tt/lIgcv7o