[spoilers] About the story.....

[Nah]

I kinda wanted to talk about Sun/Moon's story a bit. Yesterday I had said that I wasn't sure how exactly I felt about it, but after some thinking about it I have a more solid idea now.

I think it is the 2nd best story in the main series games. Now, it's....not exactly hard to be 2nd best given how meh the stories tend to be. But it still has things going for it that places it over most of the rest: it at least has a solid base. But that's also the problem with it--it's just a base. There is very much a lack of expansion on many things in the game's story.

With Guzma, there's the fact that he was rejected as a trial captain, and is acquainted with Kukui. But why was he never accepted as a trial captain? What is his relationship with Kukui exactly? Were they friends? Rivals? Something else? Why does Guzma join up with the Aether Foundation? Plumeria gives some brief explanation on how Lusamine was "the only person to recognize his strength", but mate that don't cut it.

In regards to Hapu, the game notes that she was once rejected by Tapu Fini to be kahuna, but then later becomes kahuna of Poni island when you go to Tapu Fini's ruins during the story. But why was she rejected back then, and accepted now? Nevermind the whole thing with Mina not having a trial and then you going through some old abandoned one that basically amounts to "beat the Jangmo-o line".

There's also the obvious case of the Ultra Beasts. Despite being directly related to the focal point of the story, we never learn anything more about them other than that they're powerful creatures from another dimension. They certainly could expand the lore them and the Ultra Space (speaking of which, it was disappointing how it was literally just a single short hallway with Lusamine at the end).

The game also makes a bit of an error imo by not telling you until the post-game that Lusamine's husband was the one who originally discovered Ultra Wormholes and was lost one day when an experiment went wrong and all that was left was Cosmog and a few research documents. That detail right there sort of gives an explanation as to why she is the way she is in Sun/Moon. Her obsession with Ultra Space and Ultra Beasts originally began as a desire to rescue her husband, and over time her grief basically drove her insane, and it was exacerbated when Gladion ran away with Type Null, and then again later when Lillie ran away with Nebby. Even with that though it could still use some expansion. Gladion in part ran away with Null because Lusamine was getting bad, so how exactly did it start to devolve into this craziness beforehand? Yes, grief, but not everyone who's grieving becomes a nutcase. How does her whole thing with beauty fit into this?

Now I haven't actually done anything yet regarding Necrozma and Marshadow, but the legendaries as a whole in Sun/Moon are not given much backstory, or at least the Tapus anyway. The Tapus are the island guardians....and that's basically it. We never learn much else about them besides the fact that they may or may not have fought the Ultra Beasts before and lost (that book in the Malie library confuses me, idk wtf it was saying really).

There's also a sort of not much development with Lillie (and Hau, but i can't find words for that one). They both have a moment where something starts, but then it kinda goes nowhere. But it never goes anywhere. Lillie finally gets some courage, as seen with the Murkrow bridge bit and her confrontation with her mother just before you battle her. But outside of that, she's still the same, she's still completely reliant on Hapu/the player character/Kukui for almost everything else. Would've been cool if something happens and she saves the player character, like how you save her in the beginning of the game and again at the Aether Foundation. Or something.


The two bright points for me in the story are the reveal that Nebby does not actually summon Lunala/Solgaleo, but becomes them instead, and basically Kukui. I like how Kukui gets actively involved in the story unlike most professors, who just give you your starter Pokemon and don't really do much else until you reach the Hall of Fame, or maybe make a couple of random appearances at best. He has like actual backstory yo (relatively speaking). I also thought it was great how things come full circle with him: he's the very first person you meet in Alola, and he's also the one who gives you your final battle at the very end of the storyline. Best professor yet imo.

tl;dr: Sun/Moon is 2nd best in terms of story, largely by default, and could potentially become best if it they expanded upon it

Whatcha all think too?

 

[Rivvon]

I think it is the 2nd best story in the main series games. Now, it's....not exactly hard to be 2nd best given how meh the stories tend to be. But it still has things going for it that places it over most of the rest: it at least has a solid base. But that's also the problem with it--it's just a base. There is very much a lack of expansion on many things in the game's story.

I agree with this notion a lot.

With Guzma, there's the fact that he was rejected as a trial captain, and is acquainted with Kukui. But why was he never accepted as a trial captain? What is his relationship with Kukui exactly? Were they friends? Rivals? Something else? Why does Guzma join up with the Aether Foundation? Plumeria gives some brief explanation on how Lusamine was "the only person to recognize his strength", but mate that don't cut it.

This really disappoints me, honestly. Guzma seemed like he was going to be a more in-depth character with relations to other characters, but in the end he really only has his sense of style. I can't believe the whole "Lusamine was the only adult to recognize his strength" thing because in the post-game you find out Guzma won tons of competitions as a child, so there's no way his strength was unrecognized. And then Guzma slightly hints at Hala being ... his mentor or something? But it's never elaborated on, so it's still very unclear as to what really happened to cause Guzma to become the way he is. I think he could have been a really good antagonistic character had he a real backstory and legitimate reason to be "big bad Guzma."

In regards to Hapu, the game notes that she was once rejected by Tapu Fini to be kahuna, but then later becomes kahuna of Poni island when you go to Tapu Fini's ruins during the story. But why was she rejected back then, and accepted now?

Hapu, Hapu, Hapu... One of the main themes of SM is clearly "family." Not just with Lillie, but Hau has some sort of thing about surpassing his grandfather (which goes absolutely nowhere, but)... Yeah, "family" theme. So. Here's the thing.

One. Kukui tells you at the start of the game that there are four Kahunas. You get to Poni Island and Hapu says they don't have a Kahuna. I legit thought she was lying, trying to hide the fact that she was Kahuna or something. Dunno why she would do that but Kukui told us there were four, so there's got to be four. Later, Hapu explains her grandfather was Kahuna... and he died. Years ago. Did... no one know this?? No one knew Poni Island didn't have a Kahuna for years? What???

Two. Notice the parallel between Hau and Hapu: Hau's grandfather is a Kahuna. Hapu's grandfather was a Kahuna. Ooh, great chance for the characters to help each other out and grow throughout the course of the story, right? Nope. Only Lillie gets character development in these games, and I don't think Hapu ever even meets Hau. Hapu could have acted as a very good mentor figure for Hau regardless--if she had been Kahuna from the start, but had the backstory of surpassing her grandfather, Hau could look up to her and that would spur his growth. If she wasn't Kahuna to begin with, but still helped Hau grow as a character and then became Kahuna, it would not only make the scene where she became Kahuna more impactful on the player (as it stands, it was just another pointless cutscene to watch, since nothing changed when she became Kahuna) and could serve as even more inspiration for Hau.

But nope. I really have no idea why they bothered to include Hapu becoming Kahuna as a "plot point" (if you can even call it that). Since she doesn't serve to help Hau develop as a character, she should have just been a Kahuna from the get-go.

There's also the obvious case of the Ultra Beasts. Despite being directly related to the focal point of the story, we never learn anything more about them other than that they're powerful creatures from another dimension. They certainly could expand the lore them and the Ultra Space (speaking of which, it was disappointing how it was literally just a single short hallway with Lusamine at the end).

In my opinion, the UBs should have been a main plot element. As it stands, the main conflict of the plot hinges on the player liking Lillie, because it really just boils down to "help Lillie confront her mom." Otherwise, it really feels like you're dealing with something that doesn't need to be dealt with at all. What I mean is: When Lusamine says "I'll let my jellyfish destroy Alola," she didn't mean it, because she says that and then just waltzes into their Discount Distortion World. Like, they need Cosmog to open the wormholes, right? So once Lusamine is in there, she's stuck for good. We could just leave her, and go fight the UBs who did manage to escape (since they're an actual problem). But no, we leave them for later because poor Lillie can't tell her mom how mean she is without the player's help!

If the UBs had actually been a part of the main story, it not only could have opened the potential for them to have more concrete lore, but also make the primary narrative conflict not rely so heavily on feeling an emotional attachment/sense of duty towards one specific character.

The game also makes a bit of an error imo by not telling you until the post-game that Lusamine's husband was the one who originally discovered Ultra Wormholes and was lost one day when an experiment went wrong and all that was left was Cosmog and a few research documents.
...
Gladion in part ran away with Null because Lusamine was getting bad, so how exactly did it start to devolve into this craziness beforehand? Yes, grief, but not everyone who's grieving becomes a nutcase. How does her whole thing with beauty fit into this?

I feel this is mostly a problem due to the lack of expansion given to nearly all plot points of the game. On the one hand, if they had revealed that information about Lusamine's husband during the main game, it could definitely have given her a bit more... of a sensibility? Like, as she is, she's just whack. I get that her nature is due to her discarding whatever she has whenever she feels it doesn't "fit her needs" any more... But it's that exact wishy-washy behavior that makes her such a weak antagonist and makes the primary conflict so senseless. So if they had given some reason for her behavior, it could have certainly helped her as a character.

...But, when they do reveal that bit about her husband disappearing, I feel it didn't help. At all. Because, as you said, it doesn't tie in with her obsession with beauty, which is a very, very crucial aspect of her character.

There's also a sort of not much development with Lillie (and Hau, but i can't find words for that one). They both have a moment where something starts, but then it kinda goes nowhere. But it never goes anywhere. Lillie finally gets some courage, as seen with the Murkrow bridge bit and her confrontation with her mother just before you battle her. But outside of that, she's still the same, she's still completely reliant on Hapu/the player character/Kukui for almost everything else. Would've been cool if something happens and she saves the player character, like how you save her in the beginning of the game and again at the Aether Foundation. Or something.

I do think that Lillie has better character development than most (not all) characters of the non-gen 5 games because... well yeah. But I think a lot of Lillie's "success" as a character hinges on how "cute" the player finds her to be. I found her very annoying and intrusive, similar to the XY "friends" (due in part to how frequently she stops the player's progress due to her utter incompetence), so I also didn't find her development to be all that outstanding. I definitely appreciate that it's better than most other characters in the series, but yeah, that's (sadly) not a very high bar to pass. Since she remains fairly incompetent even after her "Z-Form Change" she definitely feels like one of the weaker, if not the weakest, character when it comes to characters in the series who actually do undergo change.

It goes without saying that I was extremely disappointed in Hau and Gladion's complete lack of development...

The two bright points for me in the story are the reveal that Nebby does not actually summon Lunala/Solgaleo, but becomes them instead, and basically Kukui. I like how Kukui gets actively involved in the story unlike most professors, who just give you your starter Pokemon and don't really do much else until you reach the Hall of Fame, or maybe make a couple of random appearances at best. He has like actual backstory yo (relatively speaking). I also thought it was great how things come full circle with him: he's the very first person you meet in Alola, and he's also the one who gives you your final battle at the very end of the storyline. Best professor yet imo.

I do like how the player gets the chance to form an attachment with the mascot legendary through its pre-evolution stages. I don't really like... the time at which the player can catch them (but that's... probably tied into game mechanics more so than overall narrative... I dunno if it's a point worth bringing up here...), but it was definitely a clever approach to implement them in that way.

I do appreciate the novelty of Kukui acting as the "final battle" of SM, but I actually didn't like him as a character too much. He's definitely better than most professors, but all he really did was tell the player where to go. I didn't really appreciate that, so to me he just sort of acted as a traffic cop directing me to my next destination, and I didn't find that too much fun. I'll never forget how when you land on the second island, Kukui says "Where these kids go next is up to them on their Island Challenge" and without skipping a beat turns to us and says "The next Trial you have to face is [here]" and we can't go anywhere else...

Also, this is probably minor, but the fact that Hala gives you your starter, and not Kukui, I think weakens the whole "cyclical" thing with him being the final battle. If Kukui had given you your starter it would have felt a bit more meaningful to me.

tl;dr: Sun/Moon is 2nd best in terms of story, largely by default, and could potentially become best if it they expanded upon it

I actually felt this way about XY. I feel like, if XY expanded its narrative to accomodate for actual character development, it would be better than SM, because the primary conflict of XY isn't reliant upon liking any specific character the way SM's is--XY's primary conflict is actually a legitimate threat that needs to be dealt with. But as it stands, if you view gen 5 as a whole as one singular narrative, then I do agree that SM have the second-best story of the main series, mainly due to it having one character who actually develops (with that one character being more than the other games' zero) and the cinematics do enhance the presentation in a way that other games don't have (which is why even though I view Silver as a better character than the entire cast of SM I'd still say SM has an overall stronger narrative than GSC/HGSS). But I definitely don't think SM's narrative is the next best thing since sliced bread, even within the confines of Pokémon main-series narratives.

 

[Rivvon]

I think Rivvon hit the nail on the head as far as the blank/unexplained parts of the story are concerned. One thing I do want to add as a criticism is that it seems the story progresses a bit too quickly after it all starts at the third island. Although I'm more neutral towards this because I'm used to the "action being around every corner" (J)RPGs and the like, with Pokemon it takes some getting used to. It is because of the quick progression of the story though, that there isn't a whole lot of time for most characters besides Lillie and her family to really develop,

I definitely agree that there's a pretty big pacing problem. Had "important" characters such as Gladion and (especially) Guzma shown up earlier, they could have had an opportunity to develop further. The beginning of the game takes a long, long time to get through, but very little of it is actually of importance and so the "real deal" feels a bit rushed, too.

Sure, to most, it's not to a satisfactory degree because there's more questions than answers, but this isn't really the first time a Pokemon game has ended with cliffhangers to some degree (not even the Gen V games were susceptible to this; it's the reason why B2W2 exists, after all).

To be fair, BW didn't really leave many questions "unanswered." Characters that needed to be developed were developed and the "cliffhanger" served mostly to open possibility of another conflict happening later; if B2W2 had never existed, the only thing I can think of that we wouldn't really be certain of is N's true relation to Ghetsis--and that's honestly something I can think would be fine if left up to player's interpretation. (Disclaimer: I am very happy that we got B2W2.)

When it comes to SM, it's not that there are questions left unanswered (although there are some, to be fair, and I do think a sequel could help with those), but that many characters are just static and just exist for the sake of existing. A sequel could potentially add to these characters and present a new conflict that would be better but that wouldn't change the fact that within SM themselves the characters and conflict are weak.

Although XY had an okay plot, their evil team execution is extremely weak in my eyes; I connected with Guzma far easier than I would ever connect with Lysandre. Perhaps this is because Lysandre is your typical Pokemon game bad guy in which there's no actual connection the player can establish with him.

You're right. Team Flare faces a huge issue of the Grunts being purposefully humorous in execution, while their leader is literally trying to commit genocide. Now you could argue that Lysandre was simply using them as pawns and they didn't know any better... but I never interpreted that. Just like it never once crossed my mind that Team Skull was unwillingly being used by Aether.

I would argue that Team Skull is the better team in execution, but I truly believe their sole purpose (as evidenced by their weak lead characters) is to poorly cover the "twist" of Aether being the villains, meaning that they're, well, not the main villains.

Aether are the main villains. And they're boring. Lusamine isn't any better than Lysandre--she's worse. Just like Lysandre, who is utterly awful but they still try to paint as sympathetic due to his love of Pokémon, Lusamine is completely and utterly selfish to the point where she is her own worst enemy. They try to make her seem sympathetic by having her say her daughter is beautiful after the player wrecks her team, and by Gladion revealing the stuff about her missing husband, but her goal is literally just to surround herself by beautiful stuff, and she takes it to the extreme and gets living creatures involved. But she traps herself in the Discount Distortion World and honestly could have just been left as-is. She's so caught up in her own selfishness that she would have caused her own demise had the player not ventured after her. The only real threat in the games were the UBs and those were delegated to post-game missions that, while they did give good backstory to Looker and Nanu, didn't really feature the gripping narrative and character development as the Looker Episodes of XY.

If we're going to compare plot games to plot games, then I'm not sure how how say, Lillie and Gladion are more intrusive than say, Cheren and Bianca, which, let's be honest, were given a lot of attention in the original BW games, especially since they represent truth and ideals, respectively.

Gladion isn't intrusive because he only appears a few times total over the course of the story! Lillie, on the other hand, is constantly stopping the player and forcing them to go wherever the hyper-linear story requires them to go next. Cheren and Bianca were given an appropriate amount of attention for rivals who needed the time to undergo development, and they themselves didn't force you to go any particular direction because the region was laid out in a way that you didn't need cutscenes every five minutes to tell you where to go next.

In fact, I'd go on and argue that whether or not you like BW's plot hinges on whether or not you like a few characters, namely N in particular since the story essentially revolves around his desire to set Pokemon free from Trainers. Sure, we're not involved in his family problems (sans him betraying Ghetsis, if you count that), but that's a rather moot point to raise when the bigger picture is that the games revolve around his personal problems of Pokemon being in Trainers' control, much like we're involved in personal issues in SM, compared to the bigger issue of the Ultra Beasts.

If N succeeded, what would happen? Pokémon and people would be segregated into separate worlds--is that something people want? The player saw Team Plasma, Ghetsis, give his speech about liberating Pokémon, and they (along with Cheren) decided of their own accord that that should be stopped. Not to mention that the entire idea of Pokémon liberation includes aspects of moral ambiguity, and allows the player to think on whether it really is a good or bad thing, as opposed to games where the villains are very clearly evil with no potential positives to what they hope to achieve (Lusamine is one such villain).

If Ghetsis succeeded, what would happen? Ghetsis would rule Unova and eventually the world. Yeah, that's a problem. That should be stopped, whether you know the guy or not--even the Gym Leaders of the region think so!

If Lusamine succeeded, if she got what she wanted, what would happen? She'd be stuck in the Discount Distortion World with her jellyfish for all eternity.

Boo hoo.

That's what I mean when I say the plot of SM hinges around the player's emotional investment of one specific character. In BW, if you don't like N--fine, but you still probably feel like he, and Ghetsis, need to be stopped. And if you did like N, you as the player would have a personal reason to want to stop Ghetsis on top of already knowing it has to be done for the greater good. The game doesn't have to force the player to like N for the conflict to be sensible.

 

[Nah]

Yeah, X/Y's story would be one of the better ones too if they expanded upon it too. Whether or not it'd be better than a more fleshed out Sun/Moon story depends on how/how much the two are improved.

There's also one other oddity in the story, and it's summed up in this comic of all things lol:

Spoiler:

 

[Rivvon]

Fair enough point, although I'm interested in which characters in particular you think are weak in development? I remember you mentioning Lillie at one point, although her development hinges on whether you feel her turning from a terrified kid who hates battles to someone who's slowly maturing and warming up to the idea of even becoming a Trainer is satisfactory development or not. I'd say a sequel would help further build on Lillie's character as well as hopefully give some more chances for the player to get to know Lusamine and Guzma and the rest of the main cast, although I'd argue the Trial Captains should be more center-stage...

Really, any character who isn't Lillie I think is weak in development. It's mentioned about how Hau wants to surpass his grandfather but nothing ever comes of that, he just smiles and eats malasada and loses to the player and says that's okay. Nothing ever changes about Hau despite there supposedly being some motivation to surpass his grandfather.

Gladion shouldn't have been in Team Skull. Flat-out. He does nothing for Team Skull and Team Skull does nothing for him/his character. He could have been a Thrifty Mega Mart employee and nothing about his character would have changed. Also, he's... nice. Not that being nice is bad. But, he's always nice. From the beginning he says he doesn't want Pokémon to get into pointless fights because then they get hurt and that's bad. So, yeah. He's nice. He loses to Guzma and gets upset, hey I'd get upset too if I lost to a loser like that guy, he doesn't even use Ribombee. But nothing about him changes when that happens. Then he ends the game being nice. He seems to smile more and that's cool. But he doesn't change at all aside from learning how to grin.

Now that's not to say I dislike Gladion (or Hau); I do like him. But for largely superficial reasons. I really wish he had real development or maybe if they were really set on him being in Team Skull for like half a battle make him actually involved in what they do.

And just please I really wish Guzma had more direction as a character...

This seems less like Lillie's fault and more like the fault of how Alola as a region is organized, wouldn't you say? You have a large concern with how characters seem to stop you and tell you where to go, but personally speaking, I blame that on the region's linearity rather than the characters!

Sure, the characters don't really help, but despite that, if you set aside the linearity and focus on their growth as individuals, they get the appropriate attention someone with heavy character development should.

This is true to an extent but they already establish Kukui as a sort of "guide," going with the player from island to island and telling them where to go next. If they had kept Kukui as our traffic cop, or delegated that kind of stuff to pointless NPCs, at least I wouldn't associate a lot of the forced linearity with Lillie. And Lillie isn't the only one who does it either; Hau is also very much guilty of this. I mean yeah, in the end it's primarily a result of the hyper-linearity of the game that this happens but the fact that they decided to make Lillie and Hau the ones in charge of directing the player constantly, to me, doesn't do them any favors. I didn't want to see them any more after a certain point.

The core point of what I'm getting at though -- in relation to both BW as well as SM -- is that you're both dragged into personal issues which had world-ending consequences equally. Don't forget that Lusamine already succeeded in summoning the Ultra Beasts before trapping herself into Ultra Space. In that perspective, her job was already done and there was hardly a thing you could do about it at that point; rescuing her from Ultra Space was more of a favour for Lillie and Gladion than anything else. Stopping Lusamine essentially meant having to capture the Ultra Beasts, in which we've already done in the post-game.

Maybe I misinterpreted this completely but from what I understood Lusamine wasn't actively trying to set UBs loose across Alola; it just sort of happened when she was trying to get ahold of her jellyfish and then she was like "Oops, oh well. I don't care that we unleashed the other UBs because I have my jellyfish." Then she goes into the jellyfish's house for some tea and cookies and Lillie makes us go after her... But shouldn't we deal with those rampant UBs first? No? What about if we find some along the way while trying to fix Nebby? No, we still can't do anything until... after we beat Lusamine? Wait, no? We have to wait until after we're the Champion?? Um okay, I hope everyone is alright by then... Wait the post-game sidequests are optional??

the bigger point is that in both plots, we're dragged into personal investments in which the plot is mostly reliant and centered around a few characters for development reasons.

This logic would apply to every game, though. Gen 1's conflict centered around Giovanni's personal desire to... get rich I guess. Gen 2's, the Team Rocket Admins wanting to call back Giovanni. Gen 3, Maxie or Archie likes the sun or rain, depending on your game; gen 4, Cyrus's desire to destroy the universe.

In SM, the real threat is the UBs. But that plot point is literally shoved aside, placed into a set of not-so-exciting (narratively) optional post-game sidequests, leaving the main conflict--the conflict that drives the story forward--as "Lillie needs to tell her mom she's awful; but even after going through 'character growth' she can't do that by herself so you need to help her."

 

[Sabrewulf238]

I kinda figured the reason Hapu was rejected was more a case of a lack of maturity and capability than anything else.

We're probably overthinking it if we try to come up with some other reason.

 

[Bellsprout]

Basically I felt like the story ended to set up a sequel and that some of things you pointed out will be expanded upon in a future game.