So... I've been thinking a little about the gameplay we saw featured in the E3 stream yesterday. And I found something odd about it.
The gameplay apparently starts after the initial battle with Hau. The player is in his room, with a level 6 starter. The player then leaves his house, and walks up Route 1, through two unskippable patches of tall grass, and past two skippable ones. Two trainers are battled on the way. Then he enters the village for the second battle with Hau. To me, this raises a question: If the starter is received in the village, how can the player be in his house, without having passed through Route 1? Every Pokémon game starts with the player in his/her house (apart from RSE and ORAS, where you start right outside it instead). You then receive your starter Pokémon before you can get to any tall grass. But evidently, there is grass between the player's house and the village where the starter is received.
OK, so it could be that the game starts by you being "teleported" to the village as soon as you leave the house. But how, then, did the player get back to the house without passing Route 1? There appears to be
a mandatory trainer battle just south of the village, which should have been over with if you're free to leave the village after receiving the starter. Looking at
the map, it's possible that Route 1 splits, giving you one path with unskippable grass and one without. This can be seen even better in the
starter reveal trailer. Still, the trainer is positioned so that he clearly is standing between the village and the fork in the road. He should have been battled as you leave the village with your starter, before you reach the "safe" path back to the house.
There seems to be three ways to solve this dilemma, and how the early-game plays out:
1. You travel up the safe road to the village, receive the starter Pokémon, and take the safe road back as well. The trainer won't battle you without a Pokémon, and he either overlooks you on your way back too, or you can sneak past him. You then have to climb the hill again, visiting the village twice before you can go anywhere else.
2. You are "teleported" both up and down the hill. Gameplay starts, you go outside, you are dragged to the village, receive your starter, and are dragged back to the house before you can go explore.
3. The starters aren't received in the village after all, but rather at the professor's beach house. This would leave Route 1 "virgin" until the time when you have to climb the hill to partake in the festival.
I listed them in order of declining likelihood. It may be that you're intended to explore Route 1 as you go down from the village after receiving the starter, but that it's possible to leave it "untouched" until you have to go back up for the festival. It'll be interesting to see whether you actually have to go the grassy path at all.
Also, since the festival is to honour the guardian Pokémon of the island, I guess it has bearing on the plot immediately afterwards. You win the battle, and get to enter the woods to visit the guardian Pokémon. You arrive to get a glimpse of it, but can't encounter it yet. Maybe even the evil team steals it/scares it away, which kick-starts the plot. This either happens immediately, introducing the legendaries very early in the story, or you have to walk around the entire island and see the guardian just before you return to the village.