>>44145038all they have to do is make it non-intrusive.
Let the players visit any route they want from the wild area and have story events take place in locations around the gym town. Sword and Shield totally could have done this with all of Bede's character arc happening on the left side of the region while Marnie's is on the right side and none of it really needs to take place in any specific order considering the wild area easily could have connected the world instead of two towns.
the first two gens flourished because they put exploration first rather than forcing you to play out someone else's story in exactly whatever order GameFreak wants. If everything was connected yet disconnected like Breath of the Wild did with Zelda's story Pokemon would actually feel fun and engaging to play again and zoomers that apparently can't go more than two seconds without switching to a smartphone game would actually have a reason to pick the game up again after dropping it.
