as a more serious take i think video games are in a *very* similar place to romance anime where the arc and role of the protagonist is severely limited for morality/respectability/audience expectations reasons and the supporting cast is used for all of the interesting/subversive narratives

this isn’t a bad thing necessarily; it’s a way of packaging a lot of subversive content in a container which has mass appeal by making the main narrative / core story something everyone can relate to

this isn’t to say video games are good

but anyway blah blah this differs from the expectations of western genre fans because in the west we generally expect the protagonist to have all the interesting stuff happen to them, rather than serve as essentially a structural device for enabling the interesting stories

this is why western games with silent protagonists are trashy power fantasies, because they try to use the model of genres in the west while using structural techniques not designed for them

whereas pokémon is good because the protagonist is basically just a ribbon for tying together “the individual narratives of each of your pokémon”, “the story arcs of the supporting cast”, and “the plot of the game”

yes tying those things together necessitates you being Champion and saving the world and all this other shit but nobody cares because that’s clearly just a plot device in order to let you even SEE it; the actual narrative focus of the game is on everybody BUT you

can’t believe i’m defending the storytelling of POKéMON on the timeline today

seriously go watch an episode of pokémon though; Ash is boring as fuck and the supporting cast / characters of the day is where all the interesting shit is at

that’s how to do video game