>>43130171I love Marnie, but really, she's a nothing character. If she wasn't cute, she'd be totally forgettable. She's only memorable for her bittersweet aesthetic and her proximity to Yell, and Piers. She basically has no personality beyond "generic nice, but with a tiny bit of spine", and you only battle her what, twice? before she lets you into Spikemuth. If Hop's screentime had been shared out more fairly with Bede and Marnie, they both would've been better for it. Promoting them both to Gym Leaders doesn't disguise that they didn't get any proper, meaningful character development.
>>43130209This. I came to like Hop in the end, but he's so fucking annoying in the early part of the game when he just. Won't. Fuck. Off. All his real development (the "I want to be a professor!" stuff) happened in the postgame, whereas it should've been hinted at a lot earlier that this was supposed to be his calling. SwSh's story is total and utter garbage, honestly. The set pieces they have are fine, but the way they used them and the narrative binding them together is so badly executed that the whole mess needs scrapping and starting over.
I know no one plays Pokémon games for the deep and compelling story, and I know the games are aimed at children, but Gamefreak seriously needs to just hire some actual, competent writers because they clearly fucking suck at doing this themselves.
