With the generation 9 Pokémon games on the horizon, I've been thinking a lot about the 8th generation that's about to end. Pokémon has always had its ups and downs as a franchise, but the 8th generation games Sword and Shield seem to be among the most contentious and divisive in the series. Personally though, I thoroughly enjoyed Sword and Shield, pretty much the same amount as I've enjoyed every other main series Pokémon game not named Black and White (or B/W 2). In spite of some steps taken backwards and some very awkward choices, the games go in a direction narratively that I feel really works for the series. It tells a smaller stakes character driven story that works, and though its attempts at experimentation didn't completely enrapture me, they still added a lot to my experience of the game. This seems to be a bit of a hot take though, so I want to take this opportunity to highlight two aspects of Sword and Shield that really aided my enjoyment of the game, that I think tend to go overlooked or underappreciated in discussion about these games.
You're truly a newbie Pokémon trainer, and no one trusts you
One of my favorite things about Sword and Shield is the way that other characters treat the player character and their rivals. At the start of the game, the player and Hop are total newbie Pokémon trainers which no one has expectations for. While this is true of every other Pokémon game as well, it plays a larger narrative role in Sword and Shield. Sw/Sh takes the badge collecting/tournament aspect of past Pokémon games and makes it the central role of the story by turning the core of the game into a sports drama. You and Hop are potentially promising new trainers with the endorsement of Champion Leon. People throughout the various towns in the game cheer for you and your journey, and as you collect more badges, you gain more and more fans. But despite this, no one in the world actually seems to trust you to do anything. At various moments throughout the game, a big event will happen, such as a Pokémon randomly Dynamaxing and wreaking havoc on a big city. We're told about this, but never actually get to help with the problem. Other trainers in the area just tell you to leave everything to Leon or a Gym Leader, and ask that you just keep going forward with your gym challenge.
I've seen people spin this as a negative, that the game presents you with interesting scenarios you don't get to see, and that it tells you that bad things are happening but refuses to actually show them to you. But for me, this brought the world further to life. You, the player character, are a promising newbie trainer. That's it, you're a newbie, you're a baby just starting your journey. No one trusts you to be able to help with problems of this magnitude. In fact, you'll only hold back the actually capable trainers. Leon and the Gym Leaders are on another level, you're just the weak little challenger. Maybe one day you'll get to their level, but since you're not there, you should just focus on the gym challenge and your own growth as a trainer. Even Leon, who endorses you, tells you to leave it all to him and just keep going your way. In my eyes, this makes the world more believable. Of course I'm not ready for this yet, and of course no one trusts me to be anything other than a liability in these issues.
I've seen people spin this as a negative, that the game presents you with interesting scenarios you don't get to see, and that it tells you that bad things are happening but refuses to actually show them to you. But for me, this brought the world further to life. You, the player character, are a promising newbie trainer. That's it, you're a newbie, you're a baby just starting your journey. No one trusts you to be able to help with problems of this magnitude. In fact, you'll only hold back the actually capable trainers. Leon and the Gym Leaders are on another level, you're just the weak little challenger. Maybe one day you'll get to their level, but since you're not there, you should just focus on the gym challenge and your own growth as a trainer. Even Leon, who endorses you, tells you to leave it all to him and just keep going your way. In my eyes, this makes the world more believable. Of course I'm not ready for this yet, and of course no one trusts me to be anything other than a liability in these issues.
But what really ties this aspect of the story together for me, and makes me think that it's intentional, is the post game. At various points throughout the main story, you're told to stay away from anomalies and let the champion deal with them. But post game, you are the champion. Since you've won the league, the populace trusts you, you're on Leon's level. So when more Pokémon start randomly Dynamaxing, they don't tell you to just go on your merry way, trainers and Gym Leaders actively call on you for your help. It is only after proving yourself a master trainer that you're wanted to help in matters of such magnitude, and that makes the journey to getting there even more satisfying and meaningful. By the end of the post game, I really felt like I'd earned my spot as the champion, not only by the standards of the game itself, but according to the people in that world.
You are the rival character
One of the most memorable aspects of the original Pokémon Red and Blue/Green games was the rival character. In those games, both of you start at the same time, but your rival always seems one step ahead of you. They always seem to earn their gym badges before you do, they always seem to get to the scenes of big action before you do, and they never let you live it down. There are few great twists in gaming quite like beating the Elite Four and learning that you'd be the Champion if only you'd gotten there just a tiny bit earlier, because your stupid rival beat you to it. Alongside his dickish and arrogant attitude, it's easy to get a little frustrated at him, easy to feel like maybe you're inadequate, not quite moving fast enough. But what if these roles were reversed? Imagine a game where you, the player, assume the role of the rival who is always one step ahead of another character. The one who always seems to be doing better, the one who always seems to get their badges first, the one who everyone has their eye on, and the one who someone else gets frustrated at and feels inadequate towards. Well, this is basically what happens in Sword and Shield.
When you first meet Hop, he's confident and plucky. He has big shoes to fill, and feels he can't live in the shadow of his brother, the champion. He acts confident and friendly at first, but the more you go through the game, the more frustrated and dejected he gets. He finds himself unable to fill those shoes and escape that shadow, because you, the player character, continually stay ahead of him. You always steamroll him in battle, you always get badges around the same time or before him but seemingly with less of a struggle, and every time he loses to you, he feels that familiar sense of frustration and inadequacy. He even changes his team entirely at one point, away from using the Pokémon he loves just to try and get ahead of you. The player character's relationship with Hop in Sw/Sh is interesting to me because you play the role of that gen 1 rival character, you're the one who fuels his growth by fostering that frustration and working him through an inferiority complex. It's another way the game focuses on small scale, character driven storytelling more than the big spectacles of many previous games.
And the end of Hop's arc is super interesting and poignant. After you become the champion, Hop accepts that he'll never be able to become his brother. The two are different people, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, but he doesn't have to place himself in that shadow. He can find another place, and so he chooses to build on his love and passion for Pokémon by becoming a researcher. It's honestly a little sad, the resolution to his arc is to give up on his dream in place of a more achievable one. It's realistic and vulnerable in a way I'm not used to seeing from Pokémon games, while still being uplifting and hopeful. The main thematic core that ties the disparate stories of Sword and Shield together is the idea of moving past expectations set by family; be it Bede desperately trying to live up to his foster father's expectations, Marnie trying to prove herself for her brother and her home town, or Sonia taking up her grandmother's mantle. But for me, the most impactful of these stories is that of Hop moving away from his brother's shadow, largely due to the unique role that the player fills in his story, and how he reacts to and grows from your own success.
When you first meet Hop, he's confident and plucky. He has big shoes to fill, and feels he can't live in the shadow of his brother, the champion. He acts confident and friendly at first, but the more you go through the game, the more frustrated and dejected he gets. He finds himself unable to fill those shoes and escape that shadow, because you, the player character, continually stay ahead of him. You always steamroll him in battle, you always get badges around the same time or before him but seemingly with less of a struggle, and every time he loses to you, he feels that familiar sense of frustration and inadequacy. He even changes his team entirely at one point, away from using the Pokémon he loves just to try and get ahead of you. The player character's relationship with Hop in Sw/Sh is interesting to me because you play the role of that gen 1 rival character, you're the one who fuels his growth by fostering that frustration and working him through an inferiority complex. It's another way the game focuses on small scale, character driven storytelling more than the big spectacles of many previous games.
And the end of Hop's arc is super interesting and poignant. After you become the champion, Hop accepts that he'll never be able to become his brother. The two are different people, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, but he doesn't have to place himself in that shadow. He can find another place, and so he chooses to build on his love and passion for Pokémon by becoming a researcher. It's honestly a little sad, the resolution to his arc is to give up on his dream in place of a more achievable one. It's realistic and vulnerable in a way I'm not used to seeing from Pokémon games, while still being uplifting and hopeful. The main thematic core that ties the disparate stories of Sword and Shield together is the idea of moving past expectations set by family; be it Bede desperately trying to live up to his foster father's expectations, Marnie trying to prove herself for her brother and her home town, or Sonia taking up her grandmother's mantle. But for me, the most impactful of these stories is that of Hop moving away from his brother's shadow, largely due to the unique role that the player fills in his story, and how he reacts to and grows from your own success.
Epilogue
While the Pokémon Sword and Shield games have all manner of strengths and weaknesses, I ultimately found these games to be on par with the rest of the Pokémon main series, and I loved many of the changes to the core Pokémon story structure. The game goes for more personal story that's smaller in scope, and I found that it worked, telling some of the more intimate and vulnerable character driven stories in any Pokémon game and feeling more focused as a result. In spite of their mixed reputation, I found a lot of things to love in them, and with the next generation approaching, I think it would be a shame if we left the current generation on such an awkward note. I hope that I was able to help someone better appreciate some of the strengths of these games, or at least to understand a few reasons why I personally feel mostly positively about them. This was a shorter and more off-the-cuff post than I normally make, so I hope it was still engaging. Thanks for reading.
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