>>36677676Oh, I'm not taking the "met again" too seriously.
Why else would they immediately latch onto the character as if they've been best pals for a long time?
Think about it. In the original Yellow, Pikachu wasn't very friendly with you at all at first, and was mostly reluctant to go out until you spent time with it.
Here, Pikachu (or Eevee) are immediately friendly with you, but not like a Trainer meeting their first Pokemon for the first time, but like friends who haven't seen each other in awhile and are happy to meet again.
Couple that with the strange opening sequence where the character is "waking up" standing in the middle of their room next to the TV, and it's very obvious the player character and their starter have been besties for some period of time before you ever hit "New Game".
These Player Characters aren't truly (You), my dear Anonymous. They're individuals, even if you can name them, much like Link is his own individual but can be named whatever you want, guided to do whatever you want, so forth.
See, that's another thing. We noticed everyone was taking jabs at how the player character in Alola did fuck all except go ":^)" outside of a handful of cutscenes and that Lillie was stealing "your" story and adventure because she had an actual character.
With LGPE, we're turning those criticisms around and instead making the protagonist be a proper character to some degree, even if they will remain silent outside of text prompts.
