>>48522056But there still no mainline STORY to Red/Blue. The closest there is to a story is Rocket's takeover with bits of lore about Mewtwo and Giovanni, but all of that is separated from your journey of getting badges and fighting the Elite Four. Ericka doesn't give two shits about the secret Rocket casino, and Sabrina doesn't investigate why Rocket has taken over her city. Your goal of beating gym leaders so you can challenge the Elite Four and your obstacles of fighting Team Rocket or defeating Marowak's ghost have no connection to each other beyond finding a key item that lets you progress to the next town.
The gym leaders never team up with you over the course of the game to help you fight Team Rocket and chase them out. None of them are aware of your achievements as you're literally rescuing cities and fighting ghosts just to reach them. The gym leaders never interact with you in any meaningful way because they're always stuck inside their building, with the exception of Giovanni who is the ONLY one that acts as a tiny link between obstacle and goal.
The slightest possible motivation there could be to becoming a Pokemon Master is to spite your rival, but you don't NEED gym badges to do this. If you caught every Pokemon and raised them to be level 100 and beat your rival repeatedly in battle, why doesn't that satisfy your goal? Why do you have to get badges and beat the Elite Four just to spite him?
Gym leaders are not essential to Pokemon. They've gradually tried to fix them by having them more involved in meaningful ways, but it's getting to a point where even GameFreak knows Gym Leaders are just going through the motions and they might as well experiment with changing their roles to Grand Trials or Wardens. I mean, by your logic, the Game Trials are a perfectly fine substitute because they still aid in the "story" of beating obstacles to become a Pokemon Master... But we can all agree they fucking sucked.
