>>58362621NTA but going through the scripts of the games:
RT
>protag came from "another world", which is explicitly stated by Gardevoir as something separate. Protagonist "returns to his own world" before eventually settling on staying>friend areas imply long-gone human settlements>the anomaly in this game isn't from the protag himself, but instead Gengar. The Ninetales legend has him encounter and get cursed by Ninetales, with Gardevoir taking his place, but in order for that encounter to happen, all three need to be in the same world. Gardevoir refers to Gengar as her "Trainer", implying he's a Pokemon Trainer, but the framing doesn't make it explicit if he's like the ones from mainline or if it's a catch-all term for humans with Pokemon allies. Likewise, Ninetales' curse lasts for a thousand years, and Gengar was "reborn" as one, so this could have taken place while humans were still alive or more commonplace in the PMDverse before the current abandoned settlement we see during the game's storylineExplorers
>Protagonist, explained by Grovyle, comes from the Bad Future timeline and already has a pre-established backstory with him as a team working together to investigate the Planet's Paralysis>unlike the RT protagonist who disappears by (almost) returning home since he was summoned to the PMD world, Explorers protag has to disappear to save the world due to originating from the Bad Future, a fate shared with Grovyle, Dusknoir and Celebi. No NPCs contradict this fact either or imply the protag was anything but a human from the bad future or that the protag was "isekai'd" in the same vein as the RT one.It can be implied humans existed in the PMD universe with what the games tell us about Gengar and the Explorers protagonist, but we can't gauge how many or if there's a clear society in the present due to the ambiguity of the narrative presented.
