When you hear the name Game Freak, your mind is bound to go to Pokémon immediately. Even though the studio has made several games outside the monster-collecting series, it is practically synonymous with the pop-culture juggernaut. That may never change, but Game Freak is about to undergo a major evolution. Its next game, Beast of Reincarnation, launches on Aug. 4 for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. It’s not the cheery and brightly-colored adventure we’ve come to expect from the studio, but rather an intense and moody action game with a big-budget sheen.
It sure looks like a total departure for Game Freak, but Beast of Reincarnation isn’t as philosophically distant from Pokémon as it appears. In an email interview with Polygon, game director Kota Furushima explained where the left-field project came from and how it fits neatly into Game Freak’s design ethos. It may be targeting a very different audience, but it’s still invested in making fictional monsters feel like real creatures.
Beast of Reincarnation wasn’t born out of a big-picture strategic vision within Game Freak. It’s not a response to criticisms of Pokémon or the studio’s technical capabilities. Instead, it’s a true passion project. Furushima had a concept for the game in mind and submitted it to an internal system within Game Freak dubbed Gear Project, where developers are encouraged to pitch new game ideas. Furushima, who has worked on the Pokémon series since its Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon days, submitted his idea during a contest where Game Freak President Satoshi Tajiri reviewed proposals and selected promising ideas. The concept won an award and was moved into a prototyping phase.
Furushima’s idea was for what Game Freak has dubbed a “one-person, one-dog game.” You play as Emma, a Sealer who explores a post-apocalyptic Tokyo with her dog, Koo. That last bit has certainly made for some good early marketing, but Koo isn’t just a cute gimmick. The “one-dog” half of the pitch is as important as the “one-person” half.
“Koo is absolutely essential to realizing the core concept of this game,” Furushima told Polygon. “To express the theme of ‘loneliness,’ I felt that the story needed not just a single character, but a pair. When thinking about what the most meaningful pairing would be, there were many possible approaches, but I concluded that a silent animal companion would best serve the gameplay experience. At the same time, I didn’t want the creature to be just a cute, comforting presence. I wanted it to evoke a sense of fear as well. Something that could create inner conflict. That said, in a turn-based command-style RPG where the companion follows your instructions, the idea of a dog naturally came to mind.”
I believe there is a fundamental way in which Japanese people perceive plants, animals, and the world around them.
It may not sound anything like Pokémon — and it’s not — but you can start to see some of Game Freak’s signatures when you dig into it. The studio has always been big on crafting mythology. Pokémon games are filled with stories of space-bending creatures and ancient times. Beast of Reincarnation is similarly interested in crafting a world with a rich history, an idea rooted in Japanese culture.
“In traditional Japanese beliefs, there’s the idea that spirits dwell in all things,” Furushima said. “For example, a massive river might be seen as a multi-headed serpent — an awe-inspiring, fearsome deity. In this game, powerful enemies known as ‘Malefacts’ appear, serving as a physical manifestation of the world’s unforgiving nature. Within this world, everything aside from the protagonist, Emma, and her companion, Koo, is hostile. It’s a world where vast plains can instantly transform into dense forests, as if trying to consume them whole.”
The intersection between the spiritual and natural worlds can be found in plenty of Japanese media. In fact, Beast of Reincarnation’s segment during January’s Xbox Developer Direct quickly drew comparisons to the animated films of Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki. The post-apocalyptic setting, where nature has begun to reclaim a technologically advanced world, recalls that of films like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. That’s no accident, even if it may have been a bit subconscious.
“I’ve been watching [Studio Ghibli’s] work since I was a child, so the response to this project made me realize it had become a much deeper part of me than I had ever expected,” Furushima said. “In particular, I felt that the sense of movement of the plants and animals was deeply rooted in me. I believe there is a fundamental way in which Japanese people perceive plants, animals, and the world around them. There is a cultural view that plants possess a spirit, and when that spirit takes on physical form as an animal, its appearance and movements can be imagined quite naturally.”
While Beast of Reincarnation is a personal expression for Furushima, it’s also a team effort at Game Freak. A small internal team is leading the project and handling “creative direction, production leadership, technical problem-solving, and overall project management.” The actual development is being done by “several dozen trusted external partners,” but Game Freak is the guiding voice and the studio’s ethos is baked into the project.
“At its core, I believe the goal of a game is to let players genuinely enjoy themselves through play,” Furushima explained when asked about Game Freak’s guiding philosophies as a studio. “Rather than presenting a fixed path or delivering fun in a one-sided way, the experience should allow players to actively engage with the game and discover their own moments of surprise and wonder. With this title as well, we focused on how we could offer those kinds of surprises and discoveries, like finding new combinations of combat styles, uncovering hidden elements through exploration or lore, and giving players the feeling that they are carving out their own journey through the world.”
But there’s a less abstract way that you could clock Beast of Reincarnation as a Game Freak project: it’s full of memorable monsters. The game’s first trailers have shown Emma and Koo facing off against spindly-limbed robo-freaks and elegant giants covered in thick tree bark. They may not look like cute pocket monsters, but you can see the studio’s knack for designing critters on full display. Why is it that Game Freak is still so good at making monsters?
“It comes from a desire for players to truly feel that the creatures living in this world are real,” Furushima said. “As symbols of the world itself, I want them to feel like genuine living beings, so I am always thinking about how to make them exist in a way that feels believable.”
We’ll have to wait until August to see how it all comes together, but Beast of Reincarnation is already a great example of how one studio’s body of work can be in conversation with itself. There are some clear spiritual ties that bind Pokémon and Beast of Reincarnation together, even if the latter wasn’t consciously conceived as an evolution of Game Freak’s previous work. It’s another game that will make us think about nature and the creatures that inhabit it from a studio that has spent decades sparking our curiosity.
Beast in Reincarnation will be released Aug. 4 for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
