Why does Gamefreak insist on shoehorning a story and silly gimmicks into the main Pokemon games? You'd think that the premise is compelling enough, and that you could just build upon it instead of adding tons of unnecessary dialogue and silliness.

Is it somehow more difficult for them to make a game that's straightforward and sincere, where you just go from town to town collecting monsters and leveling instead of fighting "Villain Teams" and "Rescuing so-and-so from this-and-that"?

Are there people out there that actually care about a "story" in their Pokemon games? It seems like it would be a much better experience if they focused on expanding the core features of the series, rather than just rehashing the same tropes with more and more exposition each time, and coming up with some silly gimmick to tag on each time.