Second set of starters to choose from? Anyone else reading into this a lot? Of course someone is. I seriously doubt this was a random choice of somebody on the team who "thought it would be cool." Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that's definitely possible but a decision like this just has too much impact on the game to be "for the lulz."
For example, in the pokemon role play I am doing with my friends everyone got to pick a starter pokemon. It's sort of an open world game with many directions to explore in. We quickly found though that certain areas were a breeze, and others were painful depending on what your starter (aka strongest pokemon) was. We eventually decided that a second starter was needed to balance out their teams in addition to their wild captures. My hope is that GF added the second starter for very much the same reasons.
For example, in the pokemon role play I am doing with my friends everyone got to pick a starter pokemon. It's sort of an open world game with many directions to explore in. We quickly found though that certain areas were a breeze, and others were painful depending on what your starter (aka strongest pokemon) was. We eventually decided that a second starter was needed to balance out their teams in addition to their wild captures. My hope is that GF added the second starter for very much the same reasons.