>>39505591An RPG is not inherently about the story. It's about the world as a whole. Which can include story but isn't limited to it. Story is fine when the game was heavily based on that to begin with but Pokémon wasn't until Masuda took over and then let Ohmori run rampant.
Pokémon is ideal when it's like Gen 1 and 2 in that regard - mostly stuff you find on your own through exploration. It was plagued with story too but that's one of the reasons Gen 4 was so nice - you never had to but the library in particular was a goldmine.
Meanwhile in S/M you're forced to read a bunch of shit which would've been otherwise cool to come across on your own, in multiple locations.
Would've been pretty awesome to have found those stories of the legends and then happened across the flutes as a result and came to the Altar of your own accord to summon them. Not so much when it's forced. Getting Cosmog at the lake after was way more fun and interesting despite there basically being nothing to it.
Story really only works when it's set characters too which furthers Gen 6+ Pokémon not working with forced story. If you get to entirely customize your character (beyond clothes) then your journey should mostly turn out how YOU think it would for that character. It shouldn't be a big empty square but it needs to be a basic open world type game in which you get to do what you want in whatever order you want.
Gen 1 and 2 were obviously heavily flawed but did this relatively right.
