>>47847456When BW came out, there was an Iwata Asks interview where Masuda said that they wanted to change some of the fundamentals of Pokémon, like making its routes more straightforward and obvious for younger players. They said they would still have stuff off to the side for more veteran players to explore, but they were concerned that children were dropping the games because the required sections in previous games were too complex. They figured veteran players wouldn't mind the game being more straightforward because they usually try to reach the post-game and spend most of their playtime there rather than in the main story.
They continued to push this line with later games, like how in SM you always have a map on the bottom screen with a destination marker and it periodically reminds you where you need to go, to teleporting the player to the next destination if it's not geographically immediate like in ORAS after Meteor Falls. Even in HGSS, you can see this mindset like when they now require you to do things that were once optional like Sprout Tower, or in Platinum when they made it so you couldn't go south from Hearthome City when you could go both directions in DP. BW were just the first games to have the region itself designed to be fundamentally more linear and straightforward in addition to the railroading. Then you get stuff in LGPE like being required to have the type advantage to enter Brock's Gym, or being a certain level to enter Misty's Gym, or how they gave the solution for being overleveled in SwSh due to the Exp. Share being permanently on as "Keep boxing your Pokémon and switching to new ones".
It's this whole "no child left behind" mindset where they keep lowering the lowest common denominator while having no concern for the higher denominators.
