"People who want an "edgy" and "mature" game don't understand the real reason why Pokemon stories are generally bad"

I've seen so many people talk about how they want a dark and mature Pokemon story, so much to the point that if a fangame exists you can bet your ass it's gonna have an edgy story. It gets annoying after a while, mainly because the idea that Pokemon has to be mature, or isn't already for that matter, is a misconception.​First of all, a story is not determined by how good it is by how dark it is. Lets compare two pokemon games that are both dark, but the quality difference between their stories is radically different. Pokemon XY and Pokemon Sun and Moon. XY's story involved the gods of life and death themselves being captured by a parallel to Hitler in order to kill everyone he doesn't like. SM's story involved a grief-stricken mother become obsessed with studying the Ultra Wormholes in the hope that she could bring her husband back, and ended up getting manipulated by an evil space jellyfish capable of producing neurotoxins, twisting her positive traits into negative traits.​Generally, XY is considered to have a terrible story, and SM is considered to have a good story. Probably because SM's characters have actual personalities, whereas cardboard boxes are more engaging then some XY characters. Except they're both reasonably dark. Now there are all kinds of ways to make fun of XY's story and praise SM's, but I think the key difference ties into my overall point.​It is hard to write around a silent protagonist who you're supposed to project your own personality on. Some complained about how SM shifted focus away from you and onto Lillie, but I think they're ignoring the fact that Lillie is infinitely more interesting then your blank slate. And XY characters had almost zero characterization or growth or anything for that matter, and the lack of interesting NPCs shifts all the focus on the main character, who is a blank late.​Admittedly, there are ways to make silent protagonists interesting(like how Undertale lets you characterize yourself with choices like "do i kill or spare this person" "do i encourage or insult this person" "how much candy do i take from this bowl") and Pokemon could very much implement these choices, but overall the NPCs will always be more interesting then the player. Yes, stories can make their protagonists have unique personality and character growth, but Pokemon aims to appeal to literally everyone, and therefore tries to make sure their protagonist does too.​Pokemon games that I personally consider to have good characters(5, 7, and more controversially, 8) all have at least one character who is interesting enough and relevant enough to make up for the lack of personality from the protag (N, Lillie, and Hop respectively). They all have arcs that span the whole game, and sometimes into the postgame, that your character is either prominent in or at least aware of, and therefore makes them effectively a secondary protagonist.​Now, to be fair, 5 and 7 do have relatively dark villains for a Pokemon game so you could make an argument for there being a correlation(I don't consider gen 8 to have a good story, I just really like its characters). However, 5 and 7 also have non-edgy elements to balance stuff out. BW had Bianca, and then SM has Team Skull for more light-hearted but still well-written villains, and more upbeat characters like Hau and Kukui to contrast doom-and-gloom characters like Gladion and Lusamine.​Not to mention, Pokemon is actually pretty dark for a kids game. Even all the way back to gen 4 - Cyrus is literally just Pokemon Endgame Thanos. The idea that Pokemon stories are all children's fairy tales with absolutely no dark lore or mature themes is an incredibly short sighted oneTLDR:pokemon games not being mature isnt the issue with the stories. the stories have a blank slate for a protagonist and therefore need to either make the protagonist's personality more customizable or focus more on NPcs via /r/pokemon https://ift.tt/3jt6Wmj