And why on earth would Game Freak have foreshadowed a faraway region via the Strange Souvenir instead of the region right below Kalos? No, a single line in the Volcanion event (which most people are unaware of) is nothing in comparison to how in-your-face the backpacker's references are.
Bulbagarden
Silktree
Esserise
Yeah, if Southern Kalos were a "Johto" to Northern Kalos's "Kanto" - well, N. Kalos is simply too big to be a post-game region. So would it even be in the game? I doubt it. Which would leave Southern Kalos as the only region in the game, and then as you say - why bother? "Southern Kalos" as a concept is only interesting because it's *more of* Kalos. So without the rest of Kalos present, there just isn't a compelling reason to do it. Zygarde doesn't have enough sway and is already being dealt with by the anime, Eternal Floette is comparatively minor, and Volcanion is just another standard event Pokémon. I don't even expect there to be anything about it that we don't already know - I guess you could say they might "Deoxify" it for the next game, but I really don't think that's going to become a common thing. The Delta Episode Deoxys was just to canonize those playground rumors about going into space. Which was cool - but less useful than being able to say, "Hey kids, you want this thing? Come see the new movie."
I also think it is yet another wrinkle in the fandom's worrying habit of relying on the past to predict every future move. "This situation is unusual" = "Uhh maybe they're falling back on their old trick?" Which doesn't get us anywhere; it's still stuck in the past, unable to envision any possibility other than ones that we have already explored.
Zygarde's preemptive anime promotion is so far off-base that it should really tell us something. And that's on top of OR/AS's persistence into this year as the competitive games, *and* that timeline picture, *and* the Strange Souvenir flat-out telling us that we will see a new region soon. This situation is unorthodox. It stands to reason that the outcome will be similarly unorthodox, not the most perfunctory, most predictable, most archaic option available.
I also think it is yet another wrinkle in the fandom's worrying habit of relying on the past to predict every future move. "This situation is unusual" = "Uhh maybe they're falling back on their old trick?" Which doesn't get us anywhere; it's still stuck in the past, unable to envision any possibility other than ones that we have already explored.
Zygarde's preemptive anime promotion is so far off-base that it should really tell us something. And that's on top of OR/AS's persistence into this year as the competitive games, *and* that timeline picture, *and* the Strange Souvenir flat-out telling us that we will see a new region soon. This situation is unorthodox. It stands to reason that the outcome will be similarly unorthodox, not the most perfunctory, most predictable, most archaic option available.