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The problem with Sun and Moon was they were experimenting with a more direct narrative. They decided they wanted a lead character that was more defined and directly involved in the back story of the game. But they also wanted to allow the player to continue controlling a character who was mostly up to the interpretation of the person playing, like the previous games.
As a result, you have two characters. Lillie essentially acts as the actual story relevant heroine, while the player just controls a puppet like entity that's just along for the ride. This didn't really work too well though. While Lillie is definetly more structured than a usual lead in a Pokemon game, it's the player's role to actually DO everything, which ends up making Lillie seem particularly helpless, even by damsel in distress standards. She delivers story and motivation well, but she leaves everything to the actual player controlled character, even rescuing Nebby, the whole reason she ran away in the first place.
Things get sloppy on the player character's end too. The player character has always been just kind of a reactionary entity in these games, but the delivery didn't cause any serious issues before. Now you have cut-scenes of characters letting out all their feelings on some blank-faced kid with comparatively no characterization. It's just odd, and it makes you, the player seem entirely out of place in the world.
I think GF really needed to bite the bullet and just have the player control a defined, fully characterized entity with their own story related motivations if they wanted to have the narrative go in this direction. Essentially, you would play as a character like Lillie instead of just playing body guard to that kind of a character. But again, I think they are worried people will dislike not being able to interpret the player character freely.
