[访谈翻译] 《Game Informer》独家专访：增田顺一揭秘宝可梦生物设计全流程与内部评审（三头猫进化论、GB像素限制与圆润大眼演变）
2017年8月《Game Informer》探访东京 Game Freak 办公室，专访增田顺一解密历经20余年、突破800只宝可梦的‘生物设计最高准则’。增田披露新宝可梦提案来自对战策划、剧本作家与原画师等各个岗位；阐释‘必须将宝可梦当做活生生的自然生物’的黄金法则，外貌必须有食物链、生活习性与生态位解释；首次透露 Game Freak 极少将未采纳点子直接扔进垃圾桶，而是由总监引导改造成型；增田现场走上白板画出著名的‘三头猫进化示意图’，强调进化绝非‘随便多长出几个头’，必须讲得清缘由；并正面回应玩家社区对初代与第七世代‘眼睛由锐利棱角变为圆润柔和’的热议，指出初代 Game Boy 受制于极其有限的点阵分辨率与色板无法绘制正圆，才造就了初代独特的凌厉眼神。
增田顺一凯尔·希利亚德宝可梦 太阳·月亮宝可梦 红·绿
逐段译读
Game Freak 如何设计宝可梦？全员创意提案、生态逻辑与眼睛绘制的软硬件演进
Here's How Game Freak Designs Pokémon Creatures: Studio Pitching, Ecological Logic, and Eye Evolution
原文
Between all the different Pokémon games that have released over the last 20 years, taking into account Mega Evolutions and new wrinkles like the Alola forms in Sun and Moon, there are 802 Pokémon. The creatures vary in design to an incredible degree, covering strange influences like keys and piles of garbage to less surprising designs based on cute animals like cats and koalas. While visiting Japan to explore Game Freak’s development studio, we spoke with Pokémon director, producer, and composer Junichi Masuda about what the process of designing a Pokémon looks like, whether they have ever encountered an internal pitch that was immediately turned down, and what has happened to their eyes over the years.
译文
在过去20年间发售的众多宝可梦游戏中，若将超级进化以及《太阳／月亮》中阿罗拉形态等新要素也计算在内，宝可梦的总数已达802种。这些生物的设计风格千差万别，既有以钥匙、垃圾堆等奇特事物为灵感的，也有以猫、考拉等可爱动物为原型而显得不那么出人意料的。在探访日本Game Freak开发工作室期间，我们与宝可梦总监、制作人兼作曲家增田顺一进行了交流，探讨了设计一只宝可梦的流程是怎样的、是否曾有过内部提案被当场否决的情况，以及多年来宝可梦的眼睛设计经历了怎样的演变。
全员创意提案机制：对战机制、剧情节点与视觉原画的三位一体
Cross-Department Pitches: Gameplay Mechanics, Scenario, and Graphic Artists
原文
Pitches for new creatures come from every corner of the studio. How does that creative process begin?
译文
新生物的提案来自工作室的各个角落。这一创作过程是如何开始的？
原文
The graphic designers are obviously going to be the ones finalizing the look, but it’s not just the graphic designers who come up with ideas or draw the Pokémon. Sometimes a battle designer might want to feature a specific move in the game, which requires a specific creature. A story writer might want to execute a narrative beat that requires a new monster. Alternatively, it might be as simple as a graphic designer wanting to explore an animal that has not yet inspired a Pokémon yet. These ideas come from a lot of different places, the gameplay, the visuals, the story, and in the end those ideas just get centralized and designed.
译文
图形设计师显然会负责最终的外观定型，但提出创意或绘制宝可梦的并不仅限于图形设计师。有时，对战设计师可能希望在游戏中加入某个特定招式，这就需要相应的宝可梦。剧情编剧可能想要实现某个叙事节点，从而需要新的宝可梦。或者，也可能只是图形设计师想探索一种尚未成为宝可梦原型的动物。这些创意来自许多不同的方面——玩法、视觉、剧情——最终这些想法会被集中起来进行设计。
活生生的生物准则：食性、栖息生态与为何几乎没有‘彻底腰斩’的废案
The Living Creature Rule: Diet, Habitat, and Why Designs Rarely Get Killed
原文
A glass case in one of Game Freak’s meeting spaces features a figurine of every Pokémon. With over 800 creatures, are there any hard and fast rules about what a Pokémon can and cannot be?
译文
在Game Freak的一间会议室里，有一个玻璃展柜，里面陈列着每一只宝可梦的手办。面对超过800种生物，对于宝可梦可以是什么、不可以是什么，是否存在任何硬性规定？
原文
One thing we always really pay attention to is treating them like living creatures so you have to try and imagine where it would live in the environment and why it looks the way it does, what would it eat? For example. When designing Pokémon, and not just from a graphic design perspective, there must be a reason for why it looks the way it does and you have to think about why it might live in the Pokémon world.
译文
我们始终非常注重的一点是，将它们视为活生生的生物，因此你必须尝试想象它会在环境中栖息于何处、为何会拥有这样的外表、它会以什么为食等等。在设计宝可梦时，不仅仅是从图形设计的角度出发，其外观必然有其缘由，而且你必须思考它为何会生活在宝可梦世界中。
原文
Do proposed Pokémon designs ever get outright cancelled or killed during internal review?
译文
在内部评审中，是否有宝可梦设计提案被直接否决或扼杀？
原文
Pokémon designs rarely get cancelled, so to speak. If a new Pokémon weren’t going to fit in the game or world, Game Freak doesn’t let them get far past the conceptual stages. Once you’re in the middle of creating it and someone were to say, ‘No!, that’s not a Pokémon,’ and the design process gets killed? That doesn’t really happen that much. Usually, instead, maybe the person who is directing the game might say it won’t work in its current form, but maybe if you did this and adding ideas onto it might make it work better. For this reason, ideas for new Pokémon rarely get thrown away.
译文
可以说，宝可梦设计很少会被取消。如果一只新宝可梦不适合游戏或世界，Game Freak不会让它们通过概念阶段太远。当你在创作过程中，有人突然说‘不！那不是宝可梦’，然后设计流程就被扼杀？这种情况其实并不多见。通常，游戏总监可能会说它目前的形式行不通，但如果你这样做，加上一些想法，可能会让它变得更好。因此，新宝可梦的创意很少会被丢弃。
白板上的‘三头猫’：进化必须经得起‘为什么会变成这样’的生态拷问
The Whiteboard Three-Headed Cat: Questioning the 'Why' in Evolutions
原文
How do you approach designing evolutionary lines, and what are the biggest traps to avoid?
译文
你们如何设计进化链？需要避免的最大陷阱是什么？
原文
Game Freak has been working on Pokémon for just over 20 years, so it knows what makes a good Pokémon at this point, but evolution tracks can still be tricky. One thing that happens a lot – well, not a lot – but happens sometimes, is that you start out with a cat, and when it evolves one easy idea is to say, ‘Okay, now there’s more heads’. We always want to make sure we think, ‘Why does that happen?’ And when it evolves why does it have three heads? So that’s just something we’re always trying to think of – what’s the reason for what changes and how it looks? Even if I said I really wanted to make this three-headed cat, I would probably get shot down [laughs].
译文
Game Freak开发宝可梦已超过20年，因此它知道什么造就了一只优秀的宝可梦，但进化链仍然可能棘手。有一件事经常发生——好吧，不是经常——但有时会发生，就是你从一只猫开始，当它进化时，一个简单的想法是：‘好吧，现在有更多的头了’。我们总是想确保我们思考：‘为什么会发生这种情况？’以及它进化后为什么会有三个头？所以这是我们一直在思考的问题——变化的原因以及外观的缘由。即使我说我真的想制作这只三头猫，我大概也会被否决（笑）。
从 Game Boy 像素限制到圆润大眼：硬件演进如何重塑宝可梦的美学符号
From Game Boy Pixels to Rounded Eyes: How Hardware Limitations Shaped Aesthetics
原文
Fans have noticed that over the generations, Pokémon eye designs have evolved dramatically — from sharp, angular lines in Generation I (like Mewtwo) to soft, circular eyes in Generation VII (like Popplio). What caused this shift?
译文
粉丝们注意到，随着世代更迭，宝可梦的眼睛设计发生了巨大变化——从第一世代的锐利线条（如超梦）到第七世代的柔和圆形眼睛（如球球海狮）。是什么导致了这种转变？
原文
It’s definitely conscious of the evolving design, but some of the reason behind that, for example, is in the beginning, the Game Boy had a really limited palette and a very small amount of pixels to express the designs. It was hard to make circles so that was one reason a lot of them had a similar sharp look. As the technology evolved we had more options for expression with different shapes and more variety, so I think we’ve focused on trying to have a lot of variety in the eyes, for example.
译文
这无疑是有意识地顺应设计的演变，但其中部分原因在于，最初Game Boy的调色板非常有限，可用于表达设计的像素数量也很少。绘制圆形很困难，所以许多宝可梦都呈现出相似的锐利外观。随着技术进步，我们有了更多表达选择，可以呈现不同的形状和更多变化，因此我认为我们一直专注于尝试在眼睛上实现丰富的多样性。
原文
How do you see the creature design philosophy evolving in the future?
译文
您如何看待未来生物设计理念的演变？
原文
The design and process of creating new Pokémon will likely shift and change as the series moves forward, adapting to who is working in the studio and what ideas the studio wants to convey. It’s reassuring to know, however, that nearly no idea is out of bounds as long as it has ecological and biological rationale in the world.
译文
随着系列的发展，创造新宝可梦的设计和流程可能会发生变化，以适应工作室的人员构成以及工作室希望传达的理念。然而，令人安心的是，只要在宝可梦世界中具有生态学与生物学上的合理性，几乎没有任何想法是被禁止的。
Archive record 档案信息
- Date
- 2017.08.10
- Source
- Here's How Game Freak Designs Pokémon Creatures
- People
- Game Informer, 增田顺一
- Game / Work
- 宝可梦 太阳·月亮、宝可梦 红·绿
- Page
- 未标注
- Language
- en
- Status
- published