Alright, so this is the interview quote that people are calling Game Freak liars over.

(July 13 Famitsu interview translated by http://gengo.com , via NintendoLife)

First off, Masuda says what I've said several times by now. The limitation had to happen sooner or later and this is where they decided it was time for it. It's future proofing.

That's really all Masuda says here.

Second, Ohmori mentions that they are remaking models from scratch.

That's the thing people are now calling out as a lie by comparing models from earlier titles to the new game.

But here's the thing. Ohmori is not saying that all the models are being remade.

And of course there's more models than just Pokémon. And Ohmori is a Game Freak employee, not a Creatures employee, so he's not even involved with making 3D models.

Now, I do believe that some of the models in Sword and Shield are reused from earlier games.

I personally compared a few for the sake of seeing how true the claims were. Onix, for example, seem to be a near identical model to Sun and Moon.

But Onix's model looks good.

Like, really good.

So yeah, that wouldn't need remaking (provided this isn't remade) in the first place to match HD visuals.

But let's go back to Creatures for a moment.

Creatures have been making Pokémon's 3D models since 1998. They have the archive that all 3D Pokémon titles borrow from when being developed.

They had a big "upgrade" to their archive of 3D models in time for Pokémon X and Y since it was going to be the first mainline title with 3D models for every Pokémon.

(By the way, this was something Game Freak didn't want, they said in 2012 that they wanted to stick to sprites.)

Following X and Y, Creatures have primarily made models for new Pokémon and expanded the archive.

Sometime before Pokémon Go they started updated the textures so that the models would look good at higher resolutions.

Generation 8 most likely started planning and scheduling the moment Generation 7 kicked off in 2016 and Masuda and Ohmori admit that they already started talking about the trouble with the expanding Pokémon count when developing Sun and Moon.

Creatures likely started updating models and looking at which ones needed remaking from scratch before Sword and Shield started development.

But that's kind of not the point here, is it?

No, the accusation is that Game Freak lied to its customers.

But again, Ohmori did not say all Pokémon had to be remade.

I was under the impression he did because that was the way this story was framed by everyone, but he just doesn't say that.

If it turns out not a single Pokémon model that isn't an entirely new Pokémon has an updated 3D model, then I guess Ohmori might have been lying or received misinformation from Creatures.

But right now it's a handful examples that don't even come with actual evidence.

You can put how many wireframe renders of ripped models you want over a screenshot, that's not solid proof.

So no, even if some of these models are reused because they look fine, that does not prove that Game Freak lied.

At most, it suggests there's more to it than Ohmori said, which makes sense since it's a vetted PR interview, but that's all.

And this isn't the first time people quote what Game Freak employees have said inaccurately to justify attacks on them.

The same thing happened when Masuda first talked about the national dex being cut.

This piece right here, which I sadly don't remember the original source of, is what became the source for attacking Game Freak over reused animations.

Never mind the fact that there's no direct quote involved, only paraphrasing, it does not talk about animation reuse.

Masuda talked about wanting the Pokémon to be more expressive, which they are. There are new unique little details when camping and interacting with Pokémon.

Yes, a lot of old battle animations are reused. Yes, a lot of them are stiff, I fully agree there.

But again, that doesn't make Masuda, or Game Freak as a whole, liars.

The game does have new animations and tries to present more expressive Pokémon.

People also picked apart the comment about competitive play because "Game Freak has never been good at balancing that" as if that doesn't prove their point.

Maybe they weren't good at balancing competitive play because they had 800 individual "player characters" to balance.

I could talk about more things. Like how a 3D model is more than just the wireframe and polycount, how people keep saying Game Freak should just delay despite the fact that they don't control their deadlines, how Game Freak gets all of Creatures, TPC and Nintendo's flack...

But in the end, I only had one basic thing I wanted to reach the conclusion of with this little thread.

Did Game Freak, Masuda or Ohmori lie to their customers?

And the answer is that right now there's no evidence that they did.

Quick corporate guideline.

Game Freak: Below average size independent development studio, develops the mainline Pokémon games in-house.

Creatures Inc: Average size independent development studio, co-develops Pokémon games and makes all of the 3D models of Pokémon.

Nintendo: Distributes all Pokémon games for their own hardware, but not ones for other systems such as mobile phones or PC.

The Pokémon Company: A company founded by the other three in which they hold equal shares. Controls the Pokémon IP and makes all publisher decisions.

So, to summarize.

The Pokémon Company makes decisions.

Game Freak and Creatures comply and work together to meet a deadline.

Nintendo distributes the finished product.

That's the process of a mainline Pokémon game.