Pokémon Sword and Shield introduce autosave to the Pokémon series

The folks at Game Informer recently made a trip to Game Freak’s Tokyo headquarters for this month’s cover story, which happens to be Pokémon Sword and Shield. They had a chance to chat with the game’s director, producer, planning director and art director, picking their brains on the direction of the series and what they hope to accomplish with the upcoming Nintendo Switch titles. Among the topics discussed include Max Raid Battles, The Game Informer Show and the new autosave feature:

“When you connect with them to actually trade or do some kind of interaction, it then seamlessly switches to a synchronous connection,” director Shigeru Ohmori says. “It’s also saving in the background, which is something we previously didn’t do, so there’s quite a bit going on in there that is represented in the Wild Area.”

“It’s a new feature we’re implementing: full autosave functionality. Traditionally in Pokémon games, it’s an important thing to write your report to record your save, and that’s always been a staple, like, “Remember to save your game!” We do have an autosave feature this time, where you can just adventure and it’ll constantly save the game.”

For those who don’t want Pokémon Sword and Shield to autosave, fear not: You can turn the feature off and stick with the traditional save method where you pause the action and manually save. I imagine that will come in handy for encounters with difficult-to-catch Legendary Pokémon. However, Ohmori says that process might also feel a bit different on Switch.

“I think the Nintendo Switch, compared to previous consoles, it’s actually a bit harder to restart your game,” he says. “Like, on the NES, you’d have a dedicated button to reset the whole thing, but with the Switch, it’s a little bit more complicated of a process.”

Source: Game Informer