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Prediction: Quartisco isn’t evil.
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Oooh I think I've got something. Quasaritico is redeveloping Lusmoise, which is angering Zygarde. They don't realize that they're doing it except for one person who's goal is to capture Zygarde for it's power.
Yay or nay for that one?
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Pokémon villains tend to be very predictable, and even when they try to be subtle or make it a twist, it tends to be so heavily telegraphed if you know Pokémon, or even common media tropes, that it becomes obvious.
Part of the reason is that Pokémon villains often lead large organisations or businesses, so that they have the resources to execute on their schemes and underlings to fulfill the roles of grunts and minibosses when fighting their faction throughout the game.
Giovani started this trend with Team Rocket, and there was something of a twist with him being the eighth gym leader and your rival becoming champion (though he was just an antagonist more than a villain). So since Game Freak generally reproduce and remix all the elements of Red and Blue in all their games, you almost always get a twist villain/antagonist and a large organisation fulfilling those roles.
PLA somewhat tried to subvert these tropes in having you join the only major organisation (and heavily implied future evil team) and making Volo a recurring character not really connected to or leading them, but I still feel he was obvious as a villain character, though I can't really say what tipped me off other than his presence seemed very random and he was a little too forthcoming and generous.
Team Magma/Aqua and Galaxy played the trope straight. Team Plasma were not so much a subversion as antagonists with logical and sympathetic motives, before it was revealed that the subversion was the fact that it wasn't a subversion at all and they were villains out for world domination all along.
French vanilla Ganondorf and Team Flare are such a nothing to me. He was obviously a villain the second he ipened his mouth. The game hints at some sympathetic motive with him, but the game does not explore it enough and his team ironically seem like the selfish criminals and jerks he claims to despise.
The Lusamine twist would have worked better if we didn't see Lillie fleeing the Aether Foundation at the start of the game. Lillie could hint at their problems before the reveal, but instead the second we know her mother is head of the foundation, it's all completely obvious, if she didn't also start acting crazy the second she saw an ultra beast.
Rose is perhaps the most pertinent example. He does nothing villainous throughout the majority of the game, and yet I feel that everyone had him pegged as the villain the moment he walked on screen. Team Yell are far too goofy and pathetic to even attempt to play the red herring, which Team Skull at least had a passing chance of accomplishing, which just leaves Rose to paradoxically somehow simultaneously be completely obvious as the villain from the first cutscene of the game and randomly become a villain out of nowhere at the end.
By Scarlet and Violet we don't really have a villainous organisation, leaving Star to get slapped with the arbitrary Team moniker that Pokémon games are require one group to have by Game Freak law. The twists are all predictable, yet GF saw fit to cram the game with them anyway.
Clive is Clavell. Penny is the leader of Team Star and Cassiopeia. There is something suspicious about the Professor. It turns out its a robot.
The conclusions we can extract after breaking down each previous game: any organisation with a unique, named character as a leader could be antagonistic to the player, if not outright villainous. Game Freak love the trope of antagonist organisations, so if there is one organisation in the game, they must be antagonists.
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Zygarde just does what it wants at this point—it can’t make up its mind to save its life.
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I'm slightly embarrassed about this, but I didn't realize Clive was Clavell for the longest time. 😅 I replayed the game and was like, "It's so obvious!" Penny I totally didn't see coming, but I think that's because me and my friends referred to Cassiopiea as 'he' for the longest time and that gave me a sort of metal block.
For me it was actually quite a surprise Volo was the bad guy. I think I got the hint when he started really talking about Arceus' power. When someone talks about 'power' like that, that's a dead giveaway. Actually I really liked Volo before, he reminded me of a lot of older friends I've had.
Lysandre was like an instant "okay bad guy", but honestly when he died I was tearing up a little. But I also teared up during AZ's story. I'm a little sensitive.
Honestly the second I saw Lusamine, I hated her. I was like, "You're creepy, I don't like you." Something was wrong with her right away, and I didn't even know where Lillie was in the beginning and actually didn't notice I was standing right there until after the Ultra Wormhole cutscene. She was actually the one that DIDN'T shock me at all that she'd put Pokémon in ice like that (Slowpoke's face still terrifies me, and Pikachu just curled up there. Shudder).
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I'm slightly embarrassed about this, but I didn't realize Clive was Clavell for the longest time. 😅 I replayed the game and was like, "It's so obvious!" Penny I totally didn't see coming, but I think that's because me and my friends referred to Cassiopiea as 'he' for the longest time and that gave me a sort of metal block.
I have heard a number of people mention that they didn't realise Clive was Clavell, so you are not alone in this. But for me it was so obvious that I was half expecting the joke to be that he wasn't actually Clavell at the end. I was expecting Clive to wander in and make some comment to Clavell like, "wow, you look exactly like me!" But they played it straight.
For Penny, it was obvious the second she contacted you via phone anonymously after the encounter on the steps. She was the only character with a unique design associated with Team Star. Her showing up to deliver rewards after taking down bases just confirmed it.
The professor I wasn't too suspicious of at first, though I have been expecting the "professor is the villain" twist in the games for a while now, even if they are not technically evil this time. It is one of the more obvious subversions you can do with the elements of the Pokémon formula. I wonder if they will lean into one of the early manga plotlines and make the gym leaders and elite four villains at some point.
Anyway, the fact that the professor never showed up in person and always communicated via screen or phone tipped me off that there was something going on after the third or so time it happened. The professor is one of the first NPCs Pokémon games shove in your face and have the player meet, so the fact that they were so distant and never showed up in person rang alarm bells. My bet was that it was someone impersonating the professor, which was sort of accurate.
Perhaps it comes from decades of playing Pokémon games (and games in general). Being genre savvy can really clue you in. Though these are games designed for children, so the twists are rarely going to be too complex or subtle. I feel I know exactly how Game Freak thinks and how they will subvert their own tropes.
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When I saw the online professor, I thought maybe it was because Clavell was meant to be more like the Prof. and that maybe the Professor was in Area Zero (which was 90% accurate) doing whatever it was he does. When there was the stuff about Arven's dad being the prof, I had actually something nagging at me that Pokémon was going somewhere with this. And then basically AS I went into the lab, the idea that his dad might have died came to me, and then I saw AI Turo's jerky movements and thought "Robot."
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