One of the biggest questions surrounding Pokemon Sword and Shield is how the Wild Area works when it comes to online functionality. After playing the first 90 minutes of Pokemon Shield we got the chance to speak to producer Junichi Masuda and director Shigeru Ohmori for details.

The Wild Area is meant to be an ever-changing trainer’s playground. Different Pokemon appear based on the weather conditions. And if you're connected to the internet, you can be paired up in the background with other players who are also playing in the Wild Area from all around the world. They'll also populate that area allowing you to see trainers doing different things from Max Raid Battles to camping and cooking curry.

“This real-time synchronous connection with other players is facilitated through the Y-comm feature in the bottom left [of the screen],” says Ohmori. “You can access it and you're able to kind of throw out [a signal indicating] what you want to do.” For instance, you can put out a request for things like trading or battling.

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As we detailed in our preview, we didn't have a chance to test out the online functionality ourselves so we'll have to wait until the game comes out on November 15, 2019 to see how well this feature works in practice. For more on Pokemon Sword and Shield, be sure to check out everything else we learned during our interview with Masuda and Ohmori and our Pokemon Sword and Shield wiki for which version to buy, every confirmed Pokemon in the game so far, and much more.

Janet Garcia is IGN's associate guides editor. For more Wooloo, all the time, follow her on Twitter @Gameonysus.