Evil Team Discussion/Speculation

[Blob]

team Raisin sounds like a bunch of idiots tbh. i'm a city girl, but we need the countryside for things like food production.

They're not anti-food production, they just think that it's better to save money for places people actually want to live.

 

[Team Gaara]

I'm really hoping we return to some more serious teams. Team Flare were all gags besides their leader. They were amusing but it was pretty weird that they were far less intimidating compared to Lysandre. If they had just been as serious as him, I'd have enjoyed them a lot more.

Team Yell and Team Skull were nothing to really write home about and also felt as though they were intended to be more funny than threatening. Which isn't the worst thing in the world when you're coming off of psychos like Team Galactic and Neo Team Plasma, but we've had enough of a break.

Give us something other than a group of regional thugs or degenerates. I'd like some sort of competent, evil goal. They should feel more like a threat to society than a mild inconvenience.

 

[Eitarou]

Team Skull and Yell are jokes because they're not the evil teams. That's Aether and Macro Cosmos.

 

[Blob]

Team Skull and Yell are jokes because they're not the evil teams. That's Aether and Macro Cosmos.

Colosseum was the only game that did the "not really the evil team" thing well, because Team Snagem was still intimidating.

 

[Eitarou]

Colosseum is also not a main series game.

 

[Gengarzilla]

Team Skull and Yell are jokes because they're not the evil teams. That's Aether and Macro Cosmos.

That's the thing though: I personally wish they'd drop those dumb charades and go back to having the advertised evil teams actually be the real evil teams. Those two examples only convinced me that the mainline games cannot do a good "twist villain" act and should quit trying this angle.

This is one reason why I came to like BDSP in spite of its numerous glaring flaws. Their unwieldy nature as a strict remake became a benefit here because it meant that many personally undesirable story aspects from recent games were all cut.

 

[SammyW27]

Well...just when I thought they couldn't stoop any lower...are villain team is just a bunch of juvenile delinquents...

Of course, this most likely means ANOTHER twist villain...

 

[galacticarticuno]

Not really sure how I feel about Team Star. I mean the pose they do is neat, I like that and how they draw the animated star before it disappears but...I don't know. So far they do not seem to have a villianous vibe to me, despite the player apparently going to attack their bases. From what I understood, they're basically a bunch of juveniles. I'd like to know what is their goal...do they have even have one besides potentially just causing trouble? They seem lackluster like Team Yell in Sword and Shield were.

 

[Emmy]

I think I would care more about Team Star if the trailer communicated better the reason why we're supposed to have to deal with them. According to the website, they're fellow students who cut class and disturb the peace in Paldea. So why not just expel them and have the Gym Leaders or a Champion Rank Trainer deal with them?

 

[Cute Charm]

So why not just expel them and have the Gym Leaders or a Champion Rank Trainer deal with them?

Probably because the school has taken upon themselves to deal with their own delinquents. Maybe they intrust you to take care of the illegal gyms that their MIA students are running without alerting and/or troubling the real leauge.

 

[Kallyle]

At this point, I can only see two possibilities for Team Star that would keep them from being a rehash of Team Skull and Team Yell:

1. Team Star may seem like mere juvenile delinquents, but they actually have a vendetta against someone specifically at the school/the school itself and plan to go as far as causing major damage just to defame their target. Penny would essentially be a student pushed too hard by (in her opinion) the school's/an instructor's/staff member's unreasonable standards who finally snaps from the pressure. She would lead Team Star, who is composed of students in similar situations, all of who revel in the delinquency and get progressively worse the more bases you take down. Things end up escalating to a point where they're longer in control of the situation and we end having to clean up their mess. This would be used to show the target audience that even if things might seem unreasonable, rules and regulations exist for a reason and destructive delinquency is never the answer to your problems. In other words: Team Star might be technically just a group of delinquent students, but their methods of rebellion/retribution are extreme enough to make them a serious threat.
2. Game Freak doubles down on not making Team Star the big threat and pinning that role on another group… but that isn't the big twist this time. Rather, the twist is that they were the good guys all along! It turns out the school has been using both their students (including the player) and the Paldea Pokémon League under the guise of "Treasure Hunts" for raising trainers in Pokémon-related career positions as part of a money laundering scheme to get around the mining restrictions on things like Tera Jewels and the Herba Mystica. The rebellious students of Team Star are the ones that found out the truth behind their academy and set up bases in order to keep the institution and the ignorant trainers under their thumb from doing just that. The reason they apparently cause trouble? It's trouble specifically for the school that the populace trusts, and the Pokémon League + the average citizens of Paldea have no idea the big institution is taking advantage of the kids for their own greed.

We really don't need "an incompetent group of delinquents who's only purpose is to hide the twist villain" for the third time in a row.

 

[Daren]

I'm not thrilled by a third seemingly harmless antagonist team but at least the mechanics around raiding their bases might be interesting.

 

[ripplefieldz]

i don't think i've ever seen a trailer so thoroughly hook (see: ceruledge and armarouge) and then immediately lose me tbh. like the school setting already felt pretty iffy but the "evil team" just being a bunch of rebellious kids who are like, skipping class and stuff... i dunno man i'm arguably ROOTING for them

 

[Norzan]

Like with generational battle gimmicks, i'm so done with evil teams. At this point i don't care if they are pure evil or just a bunch of dumb deliquents, just drop this and do something else.

 

[Greninjaman]

I have mentioned this in the Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Leaks/Speculation thread, but how is Team Star considered an evil team? Like, they are rebellious students. Skipping class does not scream evil. I consider Team Rocket, Team Galactic, Team Flare, and Team Plasma evil since they have plans that involve hurting people and taking over/destroying the world.
Teams Magma, Aqua, Skull, and Yell I don't see as evil in the same sense. Yes, they have done bad things, but nothing that I would consider evil.

 

[There Is No Arceus]

they should have just dropped the whole evil team thing after gen 7. team skull was an interesting deconstruction of the concept, but after that, you can't really play it straight anymore, and repeating what team skull did just rings hollow. we'll see whether they do anything interesting with this team star, but i seriously doubt it.

 

[There Is No Arceus]

I have mentioned this in the Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Leaks/Speculation thread, but how is Team Star considered an evil team? Like, they are rebellious students. Skipping class does not scream evil. I consider Team Rocket, Team Galactic, Team Flare, and Team Plasma evil since they have plans that involve hurting people and taking over/destroying the world.
Teams Magma, Aqua, Skull, and Yell I don't see as evil in the same sense. Yes, they have done bad things, but nothing that I would consider evil.

teams magma and aqua were ecoterrorists. the committed theft, took over buildings and would have caused wanton destruction if they weren't stopped. they were evil.

Team Skull overran Po Town and are implied to have driven its original inhabitants out. that's also pretty evil.

i'll agree that team yell were just hooligans, though they did help us break into Rose Tower (which is, y'know, illegal)

 

[Eitarou]

"Bad" and "evil" are related, but are not necessarily the same. Aqua and Magma commited crimes because they (wrongfully) believed it would benefit others. Skull was full of societal rejects who were lashing out because they were treated poorly because they failed the island challenge. And Yell was only trying to help their dingy, rundown town.

 

[Ryoma Maser]

While I like the leader of Team Star, the grunt designs are very atrocious. They don't scream rebellious students to me, it feels like they just put helmets and sunglasses on them and called it a day. While I understand not every place is Japan, they take their uniforms very seriously and the fact their uniforms are nearly the same as ours really says so little of how much I want to like them.

It just seems GameFreak are just trying to replicate the success of Team Skull but to no avail. I just hope the League Chairwoman isn't the main antagonists, but they probably are knowing how predictable these games go.

 

[Cute Charm]

"Bad" and "evil" are related, but are not necessarily the same. Aqua and Magma commited crimes because they (wrongfully) believed it would benefit others. Skull was full of societal rejects who were lashing out because they were treated poorly because they failed the island challenge. And Yell was only trying to help their dingy, rundown town.

I don't really understand where all the evil team stuff came from. I mean up until recently evil teams wasn't even widely used. It used to be just villainous teams.