should we have more of the less serious evil teams for a while?

[colours]

i'll be honest here: when SM introduced Team Skull as villains, i was excited! not because they brought anything new to the table as villains, but because they seem to be a self-parody of sorts. after generation and generation of evil teams wanting to take over/destroy the world in various different ways, for me, it felt almost relieving to see an "evil team" that's just a bunch of delinquents and that's it.

Gen 8 falls into a similar boat. Team Yell might not be your standard evil team, but it was a sort of nice surprise when you found out what their real identities were the whole time.

how do you feel about this less serious evil teams? do you think we should have more of them to take a break from the evil teams that constantly want to take over/destroy the world like most others? or should we have the more extreme ones back?

 

[Commander Saturn]

I personally want more extreme Teams back. There is room to balance goofy in with the serious, like they did with some of the Team Rocket and Team Galactic grunts. The last two "evil" teams, well I can not consider them so and as such I have nearly forgotten them. Team Flare, while extreme, was not much better. The executives felt stiff, and nothing really made them stand apart. Team Flare's story also seemed to pale in comparison to their goal.

I would prefer for the next team to have an extreme goal, and enough backstory to become invested not only in their ideals but in their team members.

 

[Lysander]

Barring Team Flare, I prefer all of the extreme villainous teams over Team Skull and Team Yell. I can see why some people will have appreciated the change from the usual seriousness of villainous teams when Team Skull showed up, but Team Yell weren't nearly as memorable. If they continue to do goofy teams, then that trend will eventually become just as repetitive as the extreme villainous teams.

 

[colours]

hmmmm i can see where that perspective is coming from. i definitely don't want the goofy teams to become stale, but i do think they're somewhat of a welcome break from the constant extreme teams we've been seeing for several generations. although to be honest, i wouldn't mind a team similar to Galactic coming back in the future. o:

 

[pkmin3033]

It really doesn't make a difference when they just keep recycling Gen III's narrative - the evil team is either pointless filler to distract from the antagonists after the Legendary, or are the antagonists after the Legendary. Changing their role from one to the other doesn't make it any more engaging than it was before.

That said, my personal preference would be to return to the days of extremists, because the less serious evil teams have been an annoyance. I'll take cliche over obnoxious.

 

[TepigLover101]

I'm not sure but I do prefer teams you can look at and your mother will go "honey that's what will happen to you If you don't go to collage"

 

[Palamon]

Rather than either a more serious evil team or less serious evil team, I think I'd prefer an evil team that's somewhere in the middle. I do like my fair share of extreme evil villains and joke villainous team, but I think a mix of both would be cooler to see? I don't know.

 

[Sheep]

I really liked Team Skull - def my favorite 'evil team' to date, even if the Aether Foundation is supposed to be the actual evil team for that generation. Team Yell was a bit bland for me on the other hand, and I hardly even saw Marnie and Piers as part of them since they had other identities as one of your rivals & a gym leader. Would like to see more silly ones if done right though, but not assuming that will happen since Skull was as good as it'd get imo. Anything else would seem like a poor replica if my opinion Team Yell is anything to go off of :(

 

[Zeostar]

I would like to see a morally grey team, instead of being blatantly good or evil

Aether foundation was close, but I never understand them completely. It felt like one side of the group was helping preserve pokemon, while the other was doing the typically evil stuff. But there was never any rift with the faction.

 

[Sydian]

i have no preference either way when it comes to evil teams and their goals. i liked team skull a lot; it was refreshing that it was just a group of misfits and the actual bad team was someone fronting as being good. nothing amazing in the large scheme of things, but for the pokemon series, it was a nice change of pace. sometimes the evil team serves to the narrative well and i thought team skull did a good job of that. similarly, i thought team yell did a decent job of that as well in swsh. people take the gym league or w/e it was called so seriously that a team of marnie stans was pretty funny to me. but a lowkey team in something like RSE wouldn't work bc the evil team IS driving the plot and it's obvious about it.

idk i guess i'm not bothered either way as long as it works with the plot (or even makes the plot flow) and it's interesting. so basically i'm happy as long as it's not team flare bc what even was that honestly

 

[tzujm33]

I think Evil teams that are the size of Team Rocket and have "realistic" goals (stuff you could imagine to happen in real life) are optimal. Team Magma/Aqua goals where on the limit on what i consider to be ok. Teams that want to destroy the whole world/universe should be restricted to every 10. game or so.

 

[PokeKids2]

Did you say the EVIL Team from Games or Evil Team from Anime?

 

[Figure]

Did you say the EVIL Team from Games or Evil Team from Anime?

Is this in the gaming or anime section?

 

[Figure]

I think Evil teams that are the size of Team Rocket and have "realistic" goals (stuff you could imagine to happen in real life) are optimal. Team Magma/Aqua goals where on the limit on what i consider to be ok. Teams that want to destroy the whole world/universe should be restricted to every 10. game or so.

I stan this comment. Team Rocket was a nice threat, organized crime is also a neat theme for a villanious team. Team Aqua and Magma felt epic at the time because we had had nothing like them. From there though, rising stakes for the next two generations straight felt like a bit much.

 

[Mab]

I don't mind less serious teams, but I think a Pokemon game needs some kind of villain who can be taken seriously. I like the approach SM took a lot because Skull is introduced as a traditional team, but you (or at least me during my playthroughs) eventually come to sympathize with them. They're mostly runaway kids and definitely aren't trying to take over the world or gain the power of a god to shape a new universe or silly stuff like that. Then at the same time you get the Aether twist which actually totally works for me. Just as Skull starts being sympathetic, you get the actual villains.

I'm not sure if this is what SWSH was trying to do as well? But at least imo they totally failed because a) unlike Skull, Yell was completely bland and unsympathetic to me and was more annoying than anything b) the whole "macro cosmos" thing was underdeveloped and happened WAY too late in the game to really even feel like a twist to me.

Soo anyways not only am I okay with silly teams, I think I prefer them if they're done well -- Team Skull is my favourite evil team.