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\nBack in May of 2018, I remember briefly asking Junichi Masuda, then of Pok\u00e9mon developer Game Freak (and now chief creative officer at the Pok\u00e9mon Company), whether Pok\u00e9mon might one day follow the likes of Zelda and Mario into some kind of open-world format. At the time he called it a “possibility,” if, and only if, the studio could find the right way to balance the traditional Pok\u00e9mon staples with the open-world formula that was proving so successful elsewhere. It wasn’t until this January, a good four years later (a lifetime in Pok\u00e9mon development terms), that we saw what that possibility really was in Pok\u00e9mon Legends Arceus – an open-ish world game that was really more of a series of open areas, linked together but gated according to your progress, and that progress achieved by doing very traditional, classically Pok\u00e9mon things.\n<\/p>\n