Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
Bringing up a reference it's the stupidly big muzzle, lack of a snout, and massive proportion of its head to its body that makes it hard for me to see a Squirrel. Pachirisu has a more simplified head shape and face, while exaggerating the tail proportion more.
Greedent also has the issue where I think the face is too detailed, with the extra muzzle, dimples/freckles, and longer-proportioned arms invoking too much of an uncanny valley feeling vs Pachirisu as a cartoon squirrel. Eevee gets away with its design for the same reason, mostly being a bunch of simple round shapes.
I think it's weird you mention the tail when greedent def has a larger tail to body proportion. The rest are opinions of course, but jumping from "it's design is a bit of a mess" to "this peter griffin idiot is the ugliest thing in the franchise" is making me giggle.
I'm not interested in defending greedents honor, this guy gives me 0 feelings and I only know it exists because I have pokémon autism and I love knowing all pokémon, but to me this is some of pokemons most inoffensive, safe, generic designs theyve made since like gen 1 seel and raticate. Ultimately its all opinions but the vitriol is what makes me laugh. I'd rather greedent get hate than my homie bruxish tho
I think it's weird you mention the tail when greedent def has a larger tail to body proportion. The rest are opinions of course, but jumping from "it's design is a bit of a mess" to "this peter griffin idiot is the ugliest thing in the franchise" is making me giggle. View attachment 569744
I'm not interested in defending greedents honor, this guy gives me 0 feelings and I only know it exists because I have pokémon autism and I love knowing all pokémon, but to me this is some of pokemons most inoffensive, safe, generic designs theyve made since like gen 1 seel and raticate. Ultimately its all opinions but the vitriol is what makes me laugh. I'd rather greedent get hate than my homie bruxish tho
The ugliest pokemon is by far dustox. Not only it is ugly, it has nO use neitger in game nor in strategy. Firstly the inspiration is a moth, my most hated animal, I almost broke my back because of one, And it commited the war crime of having the worst ever shiny!
That is An outrage! I bet 50%of you just tought it was just a regular one at night. I will never regret trading mine for another shiny. Here is regular one:
this one is Even better. Shiny is unacceptable And should be changed the sooner the better
The ugliest pokemon is by far dustox. Not only it is ugly, it has nO use neitger in game nor in strategy. Firstly the inspiration is a moth, my most hated animal, I almost broke my back because of one, And it commited the war crime of having the worst ever shiny!
As for an unpopular opinion, i guess I talked about it here but legendaries should be uncatchable. idc abt competitive arguments because half of them are straight up ass and cheeks, but lore and writing wise I find it much more interesting to interact with legendaries by treating them as legendaries, one off mons with their own plot points, personalities and stories to tell.
you can still keep some of the legends that are better off by being catchable like ogerpon by downgrading them from legendary into just special goobers anyway, like bloodmoon ursaluna.
also because i think itd make ppl mad and thats funny
Ever since 5 years ago the "spirit of the franchise" has been completely ignored in a duo combo of "pokemon wont be guaranteed to be present in the game and some of their formes will be completely unobtainable" and "the main game boss is an uncatchable form you can only see in a cutscene"
Also i don't really care. catching legendaries sucks and is lame anyway
Personally I would like to experience the opposite, i.e., being able to play with formerly boss-only Pokémon like Eternamax Eternatus or the Starmobiles. I don't care if it's unbalanced, I want to use Master Hand and the Torque moves, darn it!
The ugliest pokemon is by far dustox. Not only it is ugly, it has nO use neitger in game nor in strategy. Firstly the inspiration is a moth, my most hated animal, I almost broke my back because of one, And it commited the war crime of having the worst ever shiny! View attachment 569748
That is An outrage! I bet 50%of you just tought it was just a regular one at night. I will never regret trading mine for another shiny. Here is regular one: View attachment 569750
this one is Even better. Shiny is unacceptable And should be changed the sooner the better
I read on Bulbapedia that it's a possibility Dustox's Shiny coloration is based on the Japanese silk moth, but it's unknown if that is an intentional reference or not much like with most other Shiny Pokémon. I'm not going to go on record and say this Pokémon is OP by any means, but I personally think it's at least better than Beautifly in most areas. Gen 3 is really when defensive Poison-Types started to become relevant in my opinion, with the buff to Toxic and the expanded distribution of Sludge Bomb, among other things. It's a perfectly fine earlygame support Pokémon that doesn't overstay its welcome.
Personally I would like to experience the opposite, i.e., being able to play with formerly boss-only Pokémon like Eternamax Eternatus or the Starmobiles. I don't care if it's unbalanced, I want to use Master Hand and the Torque moves, darn it!
The Starmobiles specifically seem designed to be available as alternate forms at some point, albeit in a form that abides by the normal rules of the game. I don't know if GF will actually follow through on that(Z version), but they're very clearly easy to port into a player-accessible build.
The Starmobiles specifically seem designed to be available as alternate forms at some point, albeit in a form that abides by the normal rules of the game. I don't know if GF will actually follow through on that(Z version), but they're very clearly easy to port into a player-accessible build.
Are they? I feel like they wouldn't have gone to such bizarre lengths to make them if they were ever planned to be accessable. Especially considering they're even less playable than the previous non-accessable boss Eternamax.
Are they? I feel like they wouldn't have gone to such bizarre lengths to make them if they were ever planned to be accessable. Especially considering they're even less playable than the previous non-accessable boss Eternamax.
The "a form that abides by the normal rules of the game" is doing a lot of work in my post.
This borders on wishlisting, but:
Take a Revaroom, either recolor it themed on the 5 Star teams or give it a new mini-Starmobile model, depending on how many spare modelers you have sitting around the office. New type, new move, new ability(which are already decided on). Give them all a Rotom-style new better stat spread. Release them as the Starmobile Revaroom, accessible with the new DLC for $$$. Never acknowledge in any way that that isn't the Starmobile the player faced.
While the Starmobiles are nominally considered a form* of Revavroom, it’s probably worth noting that in the story, they’re actually a complex hybrid of Revavroom, two Varoom, and Armarouge / Ceruledge. They’re not just a Revavroom with a big, gaudy, swappable exterior on them — which disinclines me to think that Game Freak would re-add them as more conventional forms.
* Though even in this regard, they’re different from usual. The Starmobile “forms” aren’t grouped with all the other alternate forms in the data, they don’t have names or even so much as empty spaces reserved for them in the common text files, which is something that even Koraidon and Miraidon’s various non-battle forms have, for some reason. Instead, the game basically just modifies the data of whichever Pokémon was sent out before the Starmobile.
While the Starmobiles are nominally considered a form* of Revavroom, it’s probably worth noting that in the story, they’re actually a complex hybrid of Revavroom, two Varoom, and Armarouge / Ceruledge. They’re not just a Revavroom with a big, gaudy, swappable exterior on them — which disinclines me to think that Game Freak would re-add them as more conventional forms.
* Though even in this regard, they’re different from usual. The Starmobile “forms” aren’t grouped with all the other alternate forms in the data, they don’t have names or even so much as empty spaces reserved for them in the common text files, which is something that even Koraidon and Miraidon’s various non-battle forms have, for some reason. Instead, the game basically just modifies the data of whichever Pokémon was sent out before the Starmobile.
Koraidon and Miraidon's bike forms likely have form data because it made it easier to code the ui. If the bike mode is an actual form then they can use the same code for displaying the sprite for that slot as they do the rest of the party.
While the Starmobiles are nominally considered a form* of Revavroom, it’s probably worth noting that in the story, they’re actually a complex hybrid of Revavroom, two Varoom, and Armarouge / Ceruledge. They’re not just a Revavroom with a big, gaudy, swappable exterior on them — which disinclines me to think that Game Freak would re-add them as more conventional forms.
While I would personally expect GF to give out the Torques as special tutor moves rather than provide access to the full type/ability swaps of the Starmobiles (if they do anything at all), there's precedent for hybrids being represented as single in-battle entities that are evolutions or super forms of their components. In particular, I'm reminded of Sun's dex entry for Metagross-Mega:
This form results from one Metagross, one Metang, and two Beldum linking up.
When a Pokémon story is so human-centric that it completely disregards the lore and capabilities of Pokémon heavily involved in the story, just to push further development for the human characters, it's a bad Pokémon story.
At first glance this might not be a hot take.
In practice this means DPPt and BW's stories, and even the climax of SM's story. Just the climax of that one.
I feel that while pokémon themselves weren't the protagonists of BWs story, that they had an important function in the plot because of team plasma/N. It's a more human centric story because it's about humans ideals and their place in the world alongside pokémon, so they need to be more featured. You're right about dppt though lol
I agree this is a big flaw abt more recent pokespe arcs. The older ones weren't that great, it's a simple shounen manga etc etc but the pokemon of the protags were as much of characters are the protags themselves. Red's entire team, Greens charizard, blue's jiggly & ditty, yellows entire team again, Gold's aibo/exbo/sunbo, silvers sneasel & murkrow, crys mega and archy. They all had at least one pokémon that was involved in their character development and story.
Things start falling a bit with rse imo. While ruby and emerald were given teams that have a lot of thought put into them, sapphire got the short end of the stick just like her. Her pokemon were less developed and often only had one or two showcases in battles, but not much else. They still get decent stuff, but her starter Toro for example falls really flat compared to Ruby's zuzu and emerald's sceptile.
By dppt, the pokémon slowly became more of backgrounds/tools. Each dexholder was assigned one partner pokémon that would be more present in the arc (Pearl with Chatler, dia with Lax, Platinum with Piplup). But the rest of their teams feel more like random catches that they get for battling (Pearl literally grabs 3 random mons to fill his team in the middle of the battle and they're Never addressed or developed).
BW is. weird. Black harks back to the older arcs better development of his pokemon, but in compensation white sets the standard of the ENTIRE team being nothing more than means to an end. As soon as she loses her tepig, not a single mon in her team has any kind of charm, development or spotlight. And when she gets gigi back, we don't even get to see any character growth from her.
BW2 is weird because both dexholders basicially only have One mon and everything else is more so just legendaries/random borrows, so like, I guess their entire team is developed? Considering whi-two has One mon in foongy, and Lack-two has just dewott and then 3 legendaries for the plot.
After XY it's over. While the mons will sometimes be important in a backstory, sometimes a plot point, 99% of the time they will lose all relevance and the arcs become just about the dexholder themselves. All they're there for is the pokemon battles, or to fit a certain theming (Y has a fletchinder because shes a sky battle person. X has a bunch of mega mons because hes the mega evolution guy. Sun has a litten and a meowth because hes got a cat face, Moon has a bunch of poison mons because shes a chemist etc). It is such a pokemon-less pokemon product that it's kinda astounding
I feel that while pokémon themselves weren't the protagonists of BWs story, that they had an important function in the plot because of team plasma/N. It's a more human centric story because it's about humans ideals and their place in the world alongside pokémon, so they need to be more featured. You're right about dppt though lol
I agree this is a big flaw abt more recent pokespe arcs. The older ones weren't that great, it's a simple shounen manga etc etc but the pokemon of the protags were as much of characters are the protags themselves. Red's entire team, Greens charizard, blue's jiggly & ditty, yellows entire team again, Gold's aibo/exbo/sunbo, silvers sneasel & murkrow, crys mega and archy. They all had at least one pokémon that was involved in their character development and story.
Things start falling a bit with rse imo. While ruby and emerald were given teams that have a lot of thought put into them, sapphire got the short end of the stick just like her. Her pokemon were less developed and often only had one or two showcases in battles, but not much else. They still get decent stuff, but her starter Toro for example falls really flat compared to Ruby's zuzu and emerald's sceptile.
By dppt, the pokémon slowly became more of backgrounds/tools. Each dexholder was assigned one partner pokémon that would be more present in the arc (Pearl with Chatler, dia with Lax, Platinum with Piplup). But the rest of their teams feel more like random catches that they get for battling (Pearl literally grabs 3 random mons to fill his team in the middle of the battle and they're Never addressed or developed).
BW is. weird. Black harks back to the older arcs better development of his pokemon, but in compensation white sets the standard of the ENTIRE team being nothing more than means to an end. As soon as she loses her tepig, not a single mon in her team has any kind of charm, development or spotlight. And when she gets gigi back, we don't even get to see any character growth from her.
BW2 is weird because both dexholders basicially only have One mon and everything else is more so just legendaries/random borrows, so like, I guess their entire team is developed? Considering whi-two has One mon in foongy, and Lack-two has just dewott and then 3 legendaries for the plot.
After XY it's over. While the mons will sometimes be important in a backstory, sometimes a plot point, 99% of the time they will lose all relevance and the arcs become just about the dexholder themselves. All they're there for is the pokemon battles, or to fit a certain theming (Y has a fletchinder because shes a sky battle person. X has a bunch of mega mons because hes the mega evolution guy. Sun has a litten and a meowth because hes got a cat face, Moon has a bunch of poison mons because shes a chemist etc). It is such a pokemon-less pokemon product that it's kinda astounding
In large part I think this is also down to how BW onwards the arcs have stuck so much more rigidly to the game story. There simply hasn't been the room for stuff to develop in the way the older chapters did. The RBGY and GSC arcs in particular meandered a lot, with loads of little side-stories and semi-standalone chapters akin to filler episodes in anime - you'd get an issue that was devoted to capturing a particular Pokemon, or the training/evolution of an existing team member. This happens much less in the later arcs. I'm reading XY atm and it's so tightly constrained; nearly every single thing that happens serves the central arc, and there's barely any time to breathe. BW is a bit better for this but it's where this trend started.
Not to mention that in the older chapters captures tended to take more time and effort, but there's an unfortunate tendency in the later arcs for characters to obtain Pokemon very quickly and effortlessly. Y decides she needs a Pokemon capable of Mega Evolving: boom, she finds and captures an Absol. Pearl gets told "fill up your team" by Wake, and quickly captures three Pokemon. The Plusle and Minun Ruby and Sapphire partner with are recurring characters; contrast that to how, in the ORAS chapter, Sapphire has already caught a Kirlia and it evolves into Gallade basically straight away. And then is barely used. This did happen in the older chapters too, but as noted they generally took a lot more time to flesh out at least some team members. Emerald very awkwardly gets three new team members at once, but we'd spent a lot of time with his original three before that (and let's be real his new three were only ever there to be paired with other dex holders' team members and make Gen IV babies).
Lack-Two has a blade-themed team btw (he has Kabutops, Gliscor, and Escavalier in addition to his others, and they all have a Serious nature). But yeah, they're barely fleshed out and are only relevant inasmuch as they contribute to a theme.
Casey and Henry are so jarring. Now we are using real names for main characters!? Goddamnit, I hate the English version.
---
While we are talking about Pokémon Adventures, I wish people stop calling the manga dark, because it made me expect more deaths in the narrative.
I get it's Pokémon and it should still be family-friendly and blah blah blah, so clearly, I must be in a minority for believing the manga should have a few more permanent deaths here and there. Not necessarily in every arc, but maybe once in a while.
And yes, I did write "permanent deaths". Because two things that really bother me in Adventures are:
The lack of deaths even among villains.
Deaths being undone.
The lack of deaths first. No really, who actually died in the manga? All I could think of are Archie, Maxie, Malva, and Orm, a member of Team Rocket appearing in the FRLG arc. I thought of Lysandre at the end of the XY arc, but apparently he survived with a broken spine.
In short, most villains actually survived. Some of them did get properly defeated, but several others didn't. I'm still baffled at Will and Karen joining the Johto Elite Four in the HGSS arc, for example.
For the second point, the lack of permanent death, the Ruby and Sapphire arc's finale immediately comes to mind:
Hoenn is badly damaged by a fight between two kaijus? Several named characters died on-screen? Celebi goes brrr. We all hate it, the classic reset button ending that was not properly foreshadowed at all.
But the Archie and Maxie situation in the ORAS arc actually, genuinely pissed me off.
Seriously, in the Emerald arc, it is established that Archie's and Maxie's bodies are falling apart, so they were offered a magical suit of armor by a character whose mere existence piss me off to this day. Anyway, Archie kills Maxie and takes the armor. So Maxie is dead.
Then, at the end of the Emerald arc, Archie loses his armor and couldn't suit up again before disappearing into light. So Archie is also dead.
AND YET FOR SOME REASON THEY ARE STILL ALIVE SEVERAL ARCS LATER!?!? And there's LITERALLY ZERO EXPLANATION FOR NOW THEY FUCKING SURVIVED!??!§? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!! KalosianPorygon is having technical difficulties. Please stand by.
"Pok" and "Leg"? Or perhaps just two random names starting with P and L. Peter and Laura. Percival and Liliana. Porush and Linda. Prakash and LaWanda.
I'll stop now. Realistically if there'd been a PLA arc I imagine it'd have been Diamond and Platinum in Rei and Akari's outfits ala Crys/Lyra in the HGSS chapter (and Pearl probably shoehorned in somewhere too)
On a slight tangent I just tried to remember what the canon names for the protagonists in ScVi are and I could not have done it with a gun to my head. Finally gave up, checked Bulbapedia and they're... Florian and Juliana?! Yeah no, never would have gotten that. Glad we're back to colours and they'll just be called Scarlet and Violet in the Adventures manga.
---
While we are talking about Pokémon Adventures, I wish people stop calling the manga dark, because it made me expect more deaths in the narrative.
I get it's Pokémon and it should still be family-friendly and blah blah blah, so clearly, I must be in a minority for believing the manga should have a few more permanent deaths here and there. Not necessarily in every arc, but maybe once in a while.
And yes, I did write "permanent deaths". Because two things that really bother me in Adventures are:
The lack of deaths even among villains.
Deaths being undone.
The lack of deaths first. No really, who actually died in the manga? All I could think of are Archie, Maxie, Malva, and Orm, a member of Team Rocket appearing in the FRLG arc. I thought of Lysandre at the end of the XY arc, but apparently he survived with a broken spine.
In short, most villains actually survived. Some of them did get properly defeated, but several others didn't. I'm still baffled at Will and Karen joining the Johto Elite Four in the HGSS arc, for example.
For the second point, the lack of permanent death, the Ruby and Sapphire arc's finale immediately comes to mind:
Hoenn is badly damaged by a fight between two kaijus? Several named characters died on-screen? Celebi goes brrr. We all hate it, the classic reset button ending that was not properly foreshadowed at all.
But the Archie and Maxie situation in the ORAS arc actually, genuinely pissed me off.
Seriously, in the Emerald arc, it is established that Archie's and Maxie's bodies are falling apart, so they were offered a magical suit of armor by a character whose mere existence piss me off to this day. Anyway, Archie kills Maxie and takes the armor. So Maxie is dead.
Then, at the end of the Emerald arc, Archie loses his armor and couldn't suit up again before disappearing into light. So Archie is also dead.
View attachment 571551AND YET FOR SOME REASON THEY ARE STILL ALIVE SEVERAL ARCS LATER!?!? And there's LITERALLY ZERO EXPLANATION FOR NOW THEY FUCKING SURVIVED!??!§? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!! KalosianPorygon is having technical difficulties. Please stand by.
I mean, not to entirely disagree but in the RS chapter I did think that the deaths themselves were dark. Like, to me the impact of that moment was something I recall being really shocked by, just because it felt like a massively brutal upping of the stakes compared to the RBY and GSC chapters.
The fact that they were reversed kind of stands apart from that. I personally really liked the ending even with the time reset: yeah it's a pretty lame asspull, but the character development makes the happy ending feel earned: Courtney reforming (slightly), Ruby mending ties with his father, and Hoenn getting back to normal carries some genuine emotional weight. Which makes it annoying that the remake chapter undoes a lot of that (I hate the ORAS chapter for how it handled Team Aqua/Magma in particular) but that doesn't detract from the RS chapter itself. On its own merits, it's strong.
By contrast the Pokedex holders being turned to stone at the end of the FRLG chapter was a lot less shocking because it's so much more cartoonish and it was obvious it'd be reversed eventually. It's still slightly grim but not at all on the same level.
Not to entirely restate my earlier post but it's another thing that's faded somewhat over time. The earlier chapters (mirroring the games, really) were fairly dark in a lot of ways. I'm not even talking about the oft-mentioned Koga's Arbok being sliced in half, I mean the genuinely darker elements, like Silver and Blue being kidnapped as children or the Elite Four's desire to wipe out humanity.
But the later chapters are much less dark. Protagonists have far less grim backgrounds (in fairness I can see why they didn't keep this up, it'd get tired). Again, a lot of the elements from the earlier chapters are gone because of how much the manga's story has gradually moved to becoming a closer adaptation of the games. I suspect that characters aren't killed off because it's a sensible assumption that they'll be needed again at some point. Obviously we didn't get a BDSP arc but let's be real, we'll probably see Unova again in the next decade so that'll almost certainly necessitate using N, Colress, and Ghetsis in some form. And that means that the stakes get lower. If characters do die, that just means you have to contrive some way to bring them back.
"Pok" and "Leg"? Or perhaps just two random names starting with P and L. Peter and Laura. Percival and Liliana. Porush and Linda. Prakash and LaWanda.
I'll stop now. Realistically if there'd been a PLA arc I imagine it'd have been Diamond and Platinum in Rei and Akari's outfits ala Crys/Lyra in the HGSS chapter (and Pearl probably shoehorned in somewhere too)
This could be done with a frenzied (Origin Forme) Dialga either sending the DPPt trio to the past or sending the PLA cast to the present.
(PLA spoilers) A few people suspected Volo, PLA's main human antagonist is somehow alive in the modern day... so what if this character teams up with his past self? Hey, that worked with Goku Black and Zamasu.
Casey and Henry are so jarring. Now we are using real names for main characters!? Goddamnit, I hate the English version.
---
While we are talking about Pokémon Adventures, I wish people stop calling the manga dark, because it made me expect more deaths in the narrative.
I get it's Pokémon and it should still be family-friendly and blah blah blah, so clearly, I must be in a minority for believing the manga should have a few more permanent deaths here and there. Not necessarily in every arc, but maybe once in a while.
And yes, I did write "permanent deaths". Because two things that really bother me in Adventures are:
The lack of deaths even among villains.
Deaths being undone.
The lack of deaths first. No really, who actually died in the manga? All I could think of are Archie, Maxie, Malva, and Orm, a member of Team Rocket appearing in the FRLG arc. I thought of Lysandre at the end of the XY arc, but apparently he survived with a broken spine.
In short, most villains actually survived. Some of them did get properly defeated, but several others didn't. I'm still baffled at Will and Karen joining the Johto Elite Four in the HGSS arc, for example.
For the second point, the lack of permanent death, the Ruby and Sapphire arc's finale immediately comes to mind:
Hoenn is badly damaged by a fight between two kaijus? Several named characters died on-screen? Celebi goes brrr. We all hate it, the classic reset button ending that was not properly foreshadowed at all.
But the Archie and Maxie situation in the ORAS arc actually, genuinely pissed me off.
Seriously, in the Emerald arc, it is established that Archie's and Maxie's bodies are falling apart, so they were offered a magical suit of armor by a character whose mere existence piss me off to this day. Anyway, Archie kills Maxie and takes the armor. So Maxie is dead.
Then, at the end of the Emerald arc, Archie loses his armor and couldn't suit up again before disappearing into light. So Archie is also dead.
View attachment 571551AND YET FOR SOME REASON THEY ARE STILL ALIVE SEVERAL ARCS LATER!?!? And there's LITERALLY ZERO EXPLANATION FOR NOW THEY FUCKING SURVIVED!??!§? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!! KalosianPorygon is having technical difficulties. Please stand by.
I'm also going to jump back in with another unpopular opinion: I have very little appetite for a game in which the main character is a member of Team Rocket or any other villainous team (former or otherwise).
For starters, most of the evil teams suck. They're made up largely of incompetents and unskilled trainers who don't much care about Pokemon or Pokemon training for their own sake: in RBYFRLG, one of the Rocket grunts complains after being beaten "if only I'd started training Pokemon at your age..." and in DPP a Team Galactic Grunt boasts about having stolen a Pokemon "from a weak trainer". Only the admins and the bosses tend to be portrayed as serious trainers, and not always even then: Cyrus doesn't much seem to care about being a good trainer, only using the power of his team. Even though he notably evolved his Crobat, he doesn't evidence much care or attachment to his Pokemon beyond them being powerful operatives he can make use of.
That runs pretty much counter to the mindset we're encouraged to adopt throughout the games. And while Team Rocket has no real ideology beyond "steal Pokemon for profit" all the other teams are too idealogical for it to feel natural that they'd left it: having the player be an ex-Team Aqua or Team Plasma grunt wouldn't work at all. Though I would actually really like to see some ex-team grunts appear in the games, outside of the one-line NPCs we've encountered here and there.
Am I saying it couldn't work at all? No, I think it totally could. I mean hell, Colosseum does this approach pretty well. But even then, Wes' affiliation to Team Snagem only works inasmuch as it gives him a more compelling personal connection to Snagem's boss and a slightly deeper motive for stopping them. It affects very little of the story because his mission is a heroic one anyway. If Wes were simply a powerful wandering trainer who'd heard of what Team Snagem were doing and decided to steal the Snag Machine to prevent them using it, very little would change because that's pretty much the story as it already is.
Now, I think something we could do with seeing more is the main character having a bit of a backstory, especially when, as in Black and White, the characters are meant to be a little older. Hilbert and Hilda are designed to look around 17: did they really never once catch a Pokemon before then? They could have studied at the local trainer's school, they could work on a farm or ranch with Pokemon on it, they could even be friends of the local gym leader and be learning from them. Again, XD does this quite well because Michael has grown up at the Pokemon Lab and is familiar with all sorts of Pokemon, having even trained with virtual Pokemon - he has an Eevee already, but it wouldn't be too much of a jump from "don't you think you should raise other species" to "maybe it's time for you to finally obtain your first real Pokemon". Part of why Pokemon succeeds is because the main character is basically a blank slate, but they don't need to be completely so: it would be good to have a main character with a little more to them than just "kid who woke up one day and got a Pokemon".
