>>56451620There's no reason for the player to think that Lance's position has changed in the 3 years between games at that point in gen 2's story, he only goes after Team Rocket and grills Silver for being an asshole after thrashing him.
You can tell Cynthia is the Champion because there's no one else it could be, the games want you to recognize who the Champion is so they aren't just some random person you don't care about, the Battle Frontier guy is Barry's dad, "Cynthia" doesn't match the planet theming of the Galactic Admins names and there's no way she's just an archeologist with that outfit.
Funnily enough, Steven being just a random guy who's into rocks and the son of the Devon President in Emerald is pretty subversive since he still makes for a wicked hard fight, as an added bonus it's just funny that this guy quit his job to spend even more time with rocks when he isn't even a Rock-type Champion, despite his surname literally being fucking STONE.
