“Top Secret” Pokémon Game Revealed As A Detective Game Featuring Pikachu

This morning, Japanese TV network NHK aired an episode of “Professional—Style of Work,” which gave us an inside look at the development of a new Pokémon title featuring Pikachu. This time, Pikachu won’t be starring as a cute pet or your typical Pokémon, but as a senior detective partner!

During the program, producer and Pokémon Company president Tsunekazu Ishihara revealed that the game is a huge project that The Pokémon Company aim to complete in two years. The game will be a detective game, where you’ll be solving mysteries and using deductive reasoning while paired up with your senior detective Pikachu.

While there are already plenty of games that involve detectives and mystery solving, the Pokémon developers are currently working on new ideas to make it different than the others. While they’ll be making it easy enough for a younger audience to enjoy, they’ll be making a change they’ve yet to have tried—make Pikachu talk.

Ishihara had previously mentioned the possibility of this project adversely affecting Pikachu’s popularity, which is why it’s quite the big deal. The reason for this is because for the first time in 17 years, Pikachu will be speaking.

Not only will he simply be speaking, but Pikachu, who has been considered the cute and innocent Pokémon, will also have lines that are more suited for an adult, which makes sense considering he’ll be your senior detective partner.

For example, the above image depicts one of his lines that reads, “…Oh, they’re just beauties [girls]”. He’ll also have other hard-boiled lines to fit a detective persona. “If this keeps up, we’ll have a bag made from Pikachu…” is another one of his lines.

The decision to have a talking Pikachu was one that Ishihara and the other staff members spent a long time in deciding, as they felt that it would be impossible at first, and also a risky proposal. However, after telling them “let’s make this happen,” Ishihara and the others decided to go with it.

Some of you may remember the motion-capture image of Pikachu’s facial expression in the earlier post, which the staff members shared a good laugh showing during the TV program, as they expressed their surprise in the possibilities of all the different facial expressions.

The reason for this is to have Pikachu show more personality, as he won’t be the same Pikachu who is usually seen as the always-happy character in the anime.