Releasing towards the end of the Nintendo 3DS lifecycle and selling fewer than a million copies, Detective Pikachu would be considered a modest success for the Pokemon franchise at best. Were it not for its big-budget Hollywood adaptation, which earned more than $500 million at the global box office, Detective Pikachu would still be relatively unknown. That dynamic puts the game’s sequel, Detective Pikachu Returns, in a unique situation: most of the fans that will be interested in the sequel will be coming from the movie, not the p🧔revious game.
Speaking to Creatures Inc. senior creative director Yasunori Yanagisawa at The Pokemon ♊Company International offices in Bellevue, Washington last week, where I also played a demo of the game, the developer acknowledges that there will likely be a lot of people interested in the sequel that have only seen the movie. This created something of a challenge for the team, because while both the film and the game follow the same plot, they have completely different endings. In the first game, Tim Goodman and a talking Pikachu team up to investigate the disappearance of Tim’s father, Harry. But unlike the movie, it isn’t revealed in the end that Pikachu was Tim’s missing father the whole time. Nor is he played by Ryan Reynolds.
“With the film and this next game, they are completely different stories that are being told,” Yanagisawa says via translator. “In Detective Pikachu Returns, there is a Chapter Zero where Pikachu talks about what happens up to that ❀point. The hope is to get fans to understand the story by watching Chapter Zero.”
While the game is entirely sꦯeparate from the movie, Yanagisawa says he was inspired by the movie while visiting the set in London during production. “I definitely got some inspiration from that, even to the point where, at Heathrow airport I met with the producer and kind of started thinking about the story for this game.” That said, Yanagisawa didn’t develop Detective Pikachu Returns to be the blueprint for the next Detective Pikachu movie. “[We] treat the game and the film as completely separate entities, basically. [We] don’t really think about making a story that can be turned into a film.”
Plenty of Detective Pikachu Returns' story will be familiar to movie fans though. It follows Tim Goodman and a coffee-loving, deerstalker hat-wearing Pikachu in Rhyme City, a place where people and Pokemon coexist, on their continued journey to find Tim’s father. Gameplay also remains similar to the original game, as you explore parts of the city talking to people and Pokemon, collect clues in your journal, then combine the information you’ve gathered to make deductions and move the plot forward. It’s less puzzle-focused than something like Professor Layton, and more built around exploration, paying attention to dialogue, and observing your surroundings to solve problems.
Detective Pikachu was not a difficult detective game, and based on my short time with the sequel, I didn’t encounter any obstacles that gave 🍬me even the slightest pause. Yanagisawa says, like the original, Detective Pikachu Returns is intentionally very easy to play. “It is made so that even very young children can easཧily solve the mysteries and the detective work aspect of the game.”
Yanagisawa says experienced players and adult Pokemon fans will be able to use their advanced Pokemon knowledge to skip sections that require a lot of evidence gathering, which I encountered myself during the demo. While looking for evidence left behind by a Pawniard in a park, my familiarity with the Pokemon allowed me to ea♔sily identify a rock that had been sliced up🍷 as the evidence I was looking for, without having to explore all the other potential points of interest around the park.
It may not be a challenging detective game, but for Pokemon fans, there’s still plenty of things to lov♓e about exploring Rhyme City. The seque💞l adds a couple of new features that add variety to the gameplay and enrich the story, such as the ability to play as both Tim and Pikachu.
Being able to interact with Pokemon around the city as both Tim and Pikachu creates a lot of fun scenarios. Since Tim can’t understand other Pokemon, Pikachu has to 💞serve as his translator whenever they do interviews or look for leads. Pikachu has a way of summarizing what other Pokemon say and injecting his own commentary in these interviews, similar to the way he does in the movie, that make him a bit of an unreliable narrator. When you go back later to talk to those same Pokemon as Pikachu, y🙈ou get to hear what they actually have to say, sans Detective Pikachu filter. I didn’t encounter any puzzles that required me to talk to a Pokemon as both characters, but it’s an optional thing that adds flavor and humor to the story.
You’ll need to play as Pikachu often in order to access the sequel's other major new feature: riding Pokemon. Not only is riding Pokemon as Pikachu adorable, but it also gives you access to new abilities that you’ll need to solve cases. In the demo I got to ride a Growlithe, who could sniff out a missing Ducklett by following scent markers on the ground.
The jump from the 3DS to the Switch is a massive visual leap for the series, and I enjoyed my short time running around the city with Detective Pikachu. Yanagisawa says the hardware specs of the Switch allowed the developers a lot more freedom of expression when it came to the cutscenes in Detective Pikachu Returns, and even from my short time with the game I could tell it’s going to be a much more cinematic experience than the original - though perhaps not as cinematic as the Det♉ective Pikachu movie.
Charming ꧙and low-impact, Detective Pikachu Returns seems like a perfect send-off for the Switch, just as the original Detective Pikachu was for the 3DS seven years ago. And while it may not provide any big insights into the next Pokemon movie - if there ever is one - I’ll take any excuse to ride around on a Growlithe and interview a Lickitung about the size of its tongue.