Most of this guy’s points are dead-on accurate, but his fix just isn’t enough IMO. All his proposed idea does is make Rose more credible as a smart person instead of an absurdly impulsive idiot who can’t even wait one day and give him better foreshadowing for his villainous turn, but that still doesn’t account for other problems such as why he would even take an extreme risk with Eternatus without many safeguards in place for if things go wrong, his way-too-genial-for-villainy demeanor, and the lack of properly explained support from characters such as Oleana and Leon. Rose would still be a weak Big Bad even with this fix.

I stand firm that the better way to go about this was to either have Leon as the bigger driving force behind the plan instead of Rose as @ultraericthered suggested here, or have the Royal Twins as the bigger driving force behind it as was done in the Pokemon Adventures manga. Both those choices have far more narrative justification to go the Eternatus route of helping preserve Galar’s future than Rose, and him as a more reasonable secondhand villain even though he’s still technically the bigger driving force’s boss means his affable demeanor works a lot better and frees him up for more character development and interactions with others.

And above all else, just make this epic battle music feel worthier of belonging in the game:

^ See this? That’s the sort of thing that music was truly made for.

It could fit Rose too if he was a darker villain, like in this TCG card:

But no such Rose exists in conventional storytelling mediums, so  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I do not care about how bad the gameplay can be, I just want to know if the story of Scarlet and Violet is any good or at the very least better than Sword and Shield’s.

The story is WAY better than Sword/Shield’s.

It’s honestly up there with Black/White and the Alola games’ stories. The way that all three of the distinct story routes come together in the end and how they come together in the end is just masterfully done, and the writers weren’t afraid to get as weird and wild as possible.

Pokemon Franchise Major Villains/Antagonists, Divided By Tiers, UPDATED To Include Sw/Sh Villains.

Eternatus joins the A Tier Villains, as it’s honestly the most effective antagonistic force in the game(s).

Piers and Oleana join the B Tier Villains, as they’re both very interesting characters who sadly both feel like they ought to have been even more prominent villains in the story that they were.

And Chairman Rose and the Royal Twins (Sordward and Shielbert) join the C Tier Villains, with Rose being certainly a stronger villain than Archer of the Johto Games but falls behind all the other generational Big Bads due to his Twist Villain nature giving him limited time to be an actively antagonistic force and he himself being honestly not so evil or even all that threatening, and the Royal Twins being adequate postgame antagonists like Zinnia but nigh impossible to take seriously as major villains due to those foppish suits and ludicrous hairstyles.

Bede and Leon don’t count for this listing, as they are a rival and a Champion respectively, not actual villains.

And please note that it’s entirely possible that these villains placements could change by Gen 8′s end based on oncoming adaptations. (I mean, just look at Lys there at S Tier - when Gen 6 started with the X/Y games, that’d seem unthinkable!)

Sounds fair, although when it comes to personal preference I actually prefer the Royal Twins to both Chairman Rose and Oleana. Maybe adaptations or DLC content will change that, but the sheer waste of potential in those villains is disheartening to me, whereas I feel the Royal Twins at least accomplish what was needed of them (also, villains coming from a royal family is more interesting and more fitting for the environment of Galar than more villains coming from yet another supposedly charitable but actually sinister corporation. Knock it off, Ohmori!)

Reblogging because the more this game sits, the more I find that it’s the Macro Cosmos-based triad of Rose, Oleana and Leon that really gall me in terms of the story’s antagonists. Regardless of how they could have been handled better, the Bede, Team Yell, Royal Twins and Eternatus that we get in the finished product at least reflect the good quality inherit in their characters. Bede is a lonely orphan who developed both a huge ego and an obsessive drive to back said ego up when he was “adopted” by Rose and Oleana, Piers is a facetious dick who uses Marnie’s noble cause and supposed need for boosted confidence to fool his Gym Trainers into following her around and making a Memetic Badass of her in hopes of getting her to give up her Champion aspirations and relieve him of the burden of being Spikemuth’s ill-suited Gym Leader, the Royal Twins are pompous snobs who want to keep cruising through life on their “celebrity” status no matter what the consequences may be, and Eternatus is fucking scary as Hell. These are all well-depicted (not utilized) antagonists.

But with Rose, Oleana and Leon, the problems run in how they are portrayed as characters, not just how they are used in the plot. Rose seems like he’s just as selfish in looking after maintaining his own extravagant way of life as the Royal Twins, but he also has clearly sincerely deluded himself into thinking what he’s doing needs to be done because of something something 1000 years in the future. He’s supposed to be really smart, but the choices that he makes are unbelievably stupid. He’s supposed to be ruthlessly devoted to his plan, but he’s also perfectly civil and graciously allows you to move forward after defeating him. His final fate of turning himself in doesn’t even happen on-screen! I actually think that Lysandre added up to a more coherent character in X/Y, and that is saying something! 

Oleana is similarly confusing. She was poor, but now she’s not thanks to Rose and that makes her obsessively devoted to him. OK, fair enough, but surely she has other ambitions beyond that given that she has the specific career of a scientist and helped to create Dynamax?  And then it turns out she’s crazy for some reason, except when she suddenly isn’t in the very next scene she appears in!  Her character is just absurdly ill-defined. 

And then we have Leon, who could have been fascinating if he was a prime mover in the Macro Cosmos plot to unleash the Darkest Day because he thinks it will help Galar and he feels that as Champion he owes it to all the people who worship him and chant his name in the stadiums to ensure they have a better quality of life. But no, he’s just a man-child who couldn’t care less about the plan and is only interested in the sport of the Gym Challenge. Maybe they didn’t want him to come off as too unlikable, but he still kind of does when he tells Rose “Hey man, don’t interrupt the Champion Cup of the Gym Challenge, let’s wait until afterward to unleash the Darkest Day, all right?”…instead of, y’know, “Hey man, don’t unleash the Darkest Day at all! You’re gonna get us all killed! Are you insane!?”

So yeah, Macro Cosmos was Epic Fail. I hope Kusaka can make something out of them…

A better story makes for better characters and vice versa. This is why the story in Sw/Sh was in desparate need of a rewrite.

I hope Kusaka can make something out of them.

This is why the story in Sw/Sh was in desparate need of a rewrite.

As it turns out, Sw/Sh basically got its rewrite in Pokemon Adventures. While the DLC-based stuff will connect to the Sun/Moon Chapter, everything up to the Darkest Day was basically the games’ story as it should have been. While Leon isn’t part of the Macro Cosmos plot, his characterization is deeper than just being an unfocused man-child who needs to become aware of his shortcomings and grow up, there’s an actual burden to his Champion status and a compelling sadness behind his smile. Oleana isn’t depicted as crazy and is willing to go against Rose if it’s for his and other peoples’ own good, feeling far more like the Pepper Potts to his Tony Stark that she should be, and Rose is an actually coherent and well-developed character whose role in the story is well paced out rather than just falling by the wayside between booting Bede from the Gym Challenge and approaching Leon with his crazy plan (the latter of which, again, he doesn’t even do here). And to pull it all together, the Royal Twins are actually involved in the plot in place of Leon, and they are even the major impetus for the protagonists’ journey through their villainous shenanigans in the Slumbering Weald.

Thank you, Kusaka! You came through for us yet again!

No spoilers, but the one thing the leakers have said about the game that has me really excited is that the story is supposedly really good, with the final chapter even making some of them cry.

I didn’t really care much for SwSh’s main story, tho I did like the lore about people in power rewriting history to benefit themselves and most of the characters just fine. I just didn’t like the laser focus being on Gyms (I’ve played since Gen1, Gyms are just really “been there, done that” for me at this point, it was pretty bland), the player not being really allowed to engage in some of the more interesting parts in the story (like rampaging Dynamax Mons), and thought Rose and Leon were kind of a waste of potential.

Imo, with the sports theme, I think it would have fit better with Leon being corrupt or Rose fixing matches (with or without Leon’s knowledge) over the 1000-yrs away energy crisis. My initial theory was that Leon was gonna be exposed as a fraud and wake Eternatus in an effort to regain the clout and fame he lost, only to need to be bailed out by the player, Hop, and the wolves when Eternatus shows him he’s in way over his head.

Moreover, even tho Leon didn’t really seem to understand Rose’s haste to fix the crisis, he still agreed to help and Hop states to us that he’s always the sort to keep his promises. The whole villain conflict just felt really forced.

Rose meant well, but waking Eternatus without his safety net being there was foolish. Leon was bound to lose anyway to it anyway for story reasons, but it getting loose probably would have just been seen as a tragic accident if he had waited. Dude probably could’ve even avoided the jail sentence, like he had asked for the “unbeatable Leon” to help corral it and keep civilians safe, but they just didn’t realize the full extent of its power.

Your regular reminder that Pokemon Adventures does the SwSh story so much better.

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet wishlist, item #1: Please give us a villain Champion. Like, since it looks like the League is back, anyway. I don't know how, but it's a twist we haven't gotten yet. (Please, I don't really want the main villain being the local CEO again. While that's accurate to real life, it's just overdone at this point. Lysandre, Lusamine, Rose, that's three Gens in a row.)

I was hoping this in Gen8 with Leon, like they had a good opportunity with the whole competition theme by making the Champion a cheat who holds onto his title thru unscrupulous means like bribery. Instead, we got Rose Leeroy Jenkins-ing his way into waking Eternatus for some weird energy thing that was a thousand years away, even tho Leon had already offered to help him on the grounds he wait just a day. The entire debacle felt so forced tbh.

I’m not sure if Game Freak will ever commit to a villain Champion, but yeah, they’d better not do another CEO. (Also, word on Leon and Rose’s roles in Sw/Sh’s plot being absolute bullshit. Pokemon Adventures executed it so much better: being a longtime glorified, idolized, “unbeatable” Champion is actually shown to have an negative impact on Leon’s psyche and he ends up finding out his rise to the top wasn’t entirely clean, and Rose’s stupidity is treated honestly and partly a result of Sordward and Shielbert manipulating him.)

Ok, but imagine Amity in Marnie’s outfit

Oh, I can easily imagine that, and vice-versa.

A truly villainous incarnation of Chairman Rose has yet to be seen (the Twilight Wings version is possibly an even friendlier guy than his gameverse counterpart, the anime will likely follow suit, and we’ve not seen enough of the manga version to tell at this point), but if someone wanted to apply Adaptational Villainy to him, emulating Prime Minister Wong Yunfat really would be the best way of doing so.

Nice to get an animated Sonia who has her trademark pet Yamper. It’s highly unlikely that the one we’re getting in the main anime this Sunday will have it, for pretty obvious reasons.