I loved Pokémon Legends: Z-A, but looking at a game in every stage of its development is inevitably going to make you wish a studio had been able to implement every idea it had into the final product. The infamous Game Freak Teraleak from last year has given us a pretty thorough look at Legends: Z-A’s journey from design doc to finished game, and while it’s interesting to see these screenshots and pieces of test footage, it also has fans weighing in on Game Freak’s processes and sharing how they feel about the final product now that they’ve seen how the sausage was made.
YouTuber TurtleBro compiled all his findings in the Teraleak into a feature-length video that goes chronologically through Legends: Z-A’s development files dating back to 2022, shortly after work on Legends: Arceus had wrapped up. Some files are from so early in the process that Game Freak was using Legends: Arceus’ Irida as a placeholder for the player. These screenshots and videos show some cut content and features, like additional building interiors to explore, being able to use overworld abilities around Lumiose City, and even some additional multiplayer modes that had players throwing Poké Balls at one another, dodgeball style.
Perhaps most surprising in these early builds is a much higher level of environmental detail than we see in the final game. Legends: Z-A was memed to hell and back for its flat-textured buildings, and some of the first pieces of footage TurtleBro shows off include windows and building structures that are much more detailed. In January of 2023, many of these assets were swapped for something similar to the flat ones we have in the game now, and internal notes suggest this downgrade was a “burden” on the team. It’s here you can see a lot of the game’s initial ambitions get pulled back, though some things, like the real-time, action-based combat system, started to take shape here, albeit in a more third-person shooter style than the command-based one we have now. By March of that year, the team was on track to deliver the game we got, and morale started to improve.
There’s one aspect of the development timeline that is kind of fascinating considering 2024 was the first time in quite a few years since there wasn’t a new Pokémon game or expansion: it sounds like Legends: Z-A was feature complete by June 2024, and Game Freak spent around 16 months on polish before it launched the game on October 16, 2025.
TurtleBro speculates that the reason the game’s visuals were deliberately downgraded was to give the team the year to spend refining the game in order to avoid a massive performance fiasco like the one that surrounded Scarlet and Violet in 2022, though others who viewed the game less charitably suspect Game Freak may have just shelved Legends: Z-A for over a year and moved onto a new project, rather than using that time for meaningful iteration. It’s unclear, however, as the development details stop at this point; the Teraleak occurred in August, and thus, we don’t have any more of these design docs that might confirm the team’s thinking.
Overall, it’s a fascinating look at how Legends: Z-A went from concept to finished game, and TurtleBro does a great job of comparing images of aspects of the game from early in development to what those aspects look and play like in the actual, released game you can play on your Switch or Switch 2. Check out the full video below:
I do mourn some of the stuff we lost in the development process, but that’s the risk you take when you look at unfinished work. The video puts the leaks we’ve seen from the upcoming Pokémon Wind and Wave games into perspective, serving as a reminder that several of the mechanics and concepts those leaks have revealed may not make it into the final product, either. We’ll know for sure when those games are revealed, which will likely happen for the series’ 30th anniversary next year.
