>>49011943That, plus all the lore that's still grounded within the mundane side of the pokemon world. You've got ancient ruins that don't really have a deep plot relevance yet still has a mystery to look into, the puzzles are mechanical in nature - arrange the stones in the proper order and they'll knock something into place that opens something, strange pokemon start appearing and there's weird radio signals, but you still don't know who built it or why so you're left wondering what else is there to this place, the unown have a peculiar move and a gimmick that was unique at the time but aren't very powerful so it feels like there's more to it without being a let-down. You've got a folktale tied to a historical event in a major city that seems like a fable told to keep people out of a dangerous zone only to find that it's at least partially true - 3 pokemon nobody's ever seen anywhere else slumber in the ashes and they seem wary of humans, then with a little luck and adventuring you unlock something that proves it - befriending those pokemon, the same ones ho-oh revived and watched as humans cruelly rejected, and returning its feather to the remaining tower shows ho-oh some people can be trusted and it comes to roost there for the first time in living memory then allows you to approach and befriend it. And with just a couple clues - some off-hand comments about a sea monster and another strange feather - you can pick up the trail and venture deep into the whirl island caves where lugia has hidden since the tower burned. You've got some old dude preserving a traditional craft and sharing the products with you. There's a mysterious shrine in the forest, and while the original games didn't tell you much besides it was for a forest guardian pokemon, other media and crystal made it clear that celebi was that pokemon, abd with the vc release it's even catchable so that mystery even bled into the real world and became something we got an ever clearer picture of over time.