#story. mostly because yt hasnt told you and she hasnt met him in that proper context yet. he'll learn eventually. let him pretend

[isaacathom]

also i had a thought. instead of all the grunts wearing really bland clothes, there IS a uniform. its just that. well. not all of them are in uniform. some of them are disguised! you fight members from team whatsit all game long, and you dont even know it, because theyre ordinary trainers! basically the only trainers that cant secretly be team whatsit are preschoolers and the schoolers. everyone else? fair game.

and you could even bring it back, where sometimes you actually fight the same trainer twice is quick succession but because they changed outfits you have no idea. or at the climax of the team whatsit story, when the cities in chaos, you fight a bunch of grunts with the same names as they had before, they have the same basic team set ups but with higher levels, evos, new pokes, etc. thatd be kinda rad. like, your first hint that team whatsit are being sneaky is when you encounter YT in one of their bases and realise their a team whatsit member. so youre sus now, because yt is a fairly generic looking person.

then at the end, ooh, the end, when you fight the team whatsit boss in that skyscraper overlooking the city, they tell you their people are all amongst the chaos. youve fought them all game long. theyve reported back. they knew youd be coming today. after beating the team leader (and summoning the legendaries, which might be semi concurrent, that sequence of events is fuddly) you go out into the city with the intent to defeat the remaining team whatsit members who are causing havoc. and you cant find them. until one random trainer approaches you and whoof, there goes their disguise, its fight time! and you realise, FUCK, you HAVE been fighting them all game

thatd be cool. or, maybe you fight through the chaos first. instead of team leader explaining it. you get called back to the major city (melbourne, i guess) and its run amok, and when you arrive a random trainer approaches and fights you, and once you win they reveal that team whatsit runs this city now. and as you head for the tower with the team leader, youre challenged by all the random trainers! and the closer you get to the tower, the more they start wearing uniform and clearly displaying insiginias. its basically just SLIGHT edits to the generic trainer portraits, but itd look sick.

god listen i just like the idea of trainer portraits in battle changing SLIGHTLY. just slight alterations. variants within a ‘class’. some ace trainers are gingers and some are brunettes, its variance. i like that idea. and of trainers outside the main cast having some persistence. shit, maybe you even return to old routes later in the game and the trainers are gone! like once you beaten a trainer, the next time you load that route, their gone! permanence?????? i like the idea of some sort of life to the world, like it goes on when you arent watching, you look away and that trainer went home, or to the pokemon center. maybe theyll come back. probably not, thatd be really complex to code. but having two states - beaten and not beaten - would be fairly easy. ensuring that trainers dont immediately disappear once fought might be tough but fuck it, right

maybe YT explains it. like, youre fighting through the city, and you make it to the pokemon center (bearing in mind the idea is you cant fly direct to the city due to the chaos, thatd be interesting to me) and YT is there, and they tell you team whatsits hid amongst the people. maybe thats the end of YTs thing. like youve already had their rooftop fight. though i DID want YT to be involved in the legendary fight thing.... hmmn. fuck it. YT tells you to get out of the city, because thats half of YTs motivation, to not really hurt people or let them be hurt by the actions of others (its irony, sorta, though YT personally only causes harm to elito as part of her revenge against him, and NOONE ELSE). Yt tells you to flee, and that this is your last chance, because further in the city its team whatsit sway, and she wont be able to stop them hurting you. and then she leaves. that way, she can be on the rooftop to summon the legendaries, she can take part in the potential double battle in which you and your friendly rival fight the team leader. nice. nice!!!! i like this!!!

i also had an idea about the whole ‘dialogue branch’ thing affecting the outcome of yt/elito. i think itd need to change. in that, if you tell elito who YT is, elito will not flee. elito will stand his ground with your and your friendly rival, and when YT comes to see how its going, she’ll be pleasantly surprised by this outcome (and by elitos admission that hes scared but wanted to prove to her that he wasnt a coward anymore) and it results in her attempting to reconnect with him after the team whatsit story ends. if you DONT tell elito who YT is, he will attempt to flee and YT will stop him, and it will reaffirm to her that elito is once a coward, always a coward, and she will never make the attempt to reconnect because she believes he fundamentally hasnt changed.

that works. why knowing who YT is would stop elito from fleeing... i mean, his desire to prove to YT that hes not a coward anymore, that hes actively working to let what happened to her happen again, thats a pretty powerful emotion. hes determined to do it RIGHT this time. why that desire wouldnt be there if he didnt know??? well. he IS a coward. like elito is a big coward. guy talks a big game but hes the biggest wuss. OOH, ive got it!. see, elito thinks YT is dead, thinks she died because of him, and if he doesnt know she lived, he simply thinks of himself as a failure with no real chance at redemption. even if he outwardly projects like he has improved, his mindset hasnt, he thinks he cant save the kids and instead prevents them going (or tries to, old man). thinking that the kids are gonna end up like his YT - long gone - he flees it. he runs from it. but if he KNOWS that YT is alive, that she survived and became a member of team whatsit and has been helping orchestrate this chaos, hes still a failure, but now he has an actionable, clear way to improve. YT is right there. he can save her. he can restore how it used to be. he can fix his mistake, directly, instead of fixing his mistake by helping others. so, knowing YT will come, he stands his ground with the kids.

god thats worded like shit. tl;dr if he doesnt know, he thinks himself an unredeemable failure and simply repeats his mistakes because he thinks its inevitable at this point. if he knows, then he still thinks hes a failure, but he thinks that MAYBE, just maybe, he can redeem himself by saving YT, because now he has the chance! he failed to save her before, but he can save her now!!!! admittedly this might be because he doesnt understand her motive and possibly thinks shes been held captive and brainwashed by team whatsit, but it motivates him to do something good (that is, not flee, expecting never to return, leaving two like 14 year olds to get ganged up on and probably really badly injured/killed by armed thugs)

good on you, elito, you big ol wuss, you. hes trying, sometimes.