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SwSh Team Yell

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I searched three pages of the forum listing for this thread and didn't find it.

For the first time in 7 generations of Pokemon, we have a team that isn't antagonistic and while a bit of an eccentric nuisance isn't threatening.
What are our thoughts on this?
Is essentially not having an antagonistic team or an antagonist at all in these games (unless Bede counts) refreshingly unique and a welcomed absence of distraction or an insubstantiality?

I believe it possesses both qualities but a bit more of the latter.

On the one hand, Marnie is refreshing in her motive for entering the gym challenge being to being excitement her quiet small town rather than just to be the champion and the whole small-town local celebrity characterization is a commonality in competitive reality TV shows such as The X-Factor and American Idol. Hence it pairs nicely with the stadium gym format in creating a realistic atmosphere. I also love their punk dress style though I'd lose the pink. I want a jacket like Marnie's. Can we get one?

However, I'm at the 5th gym and up to this point at least so little is learned about both Marnie and Team Yell. Before I just received her league card I was left wondering what exactly Team Yell's motivation was and their relationship to Marnie and while her league card contains clarification that she's a local celebrity in her town, that remains unclear.
Although the scene with the sleeping Silicobra suggests that Team Yell might be drawn to any individual they deem worthy of their support/a cheer squad (even when the situation prevents them from performing true to their name) Marnie's entire town is apparently supporting her so what makes these people especially enthusiastic enough to follow her to every stadium while the rest of the town cheered from their living rooms?

The lack of a team causing trouble in the region has also reduced the plot including most notably, the amount of purpose and conflict in between gyms.
When I'd first heard about Team Yell I'd expected a bit more aggression such as rigging gym missions or perhaps preventing other challengers from entering them at all or just somehow being a lot more disruptive to the competition. In this regard and in that Marnie is actually a friendly character, they have managed to surprise me I'll give them that.

I thought perhaps we had something when we find Nessa initially absent from her gym but the lighthouse scene was not only short and pointless but required no journey.
So far at the point I'm at, the most dramatic thing that has happened is Bede's destruction of the Stow-on-Side mural and resulting termination from the league challenge. It would be awesome if he turned full on villain out of resentment but I'm not holding my breath.
 
Is essentially not having an antagonistic team or an antagonist at all in these games (unless Bede counts) refreshingly unique and a welcomed absence of distraction or an insubstantiality?

Well, Bede extends out of the games' other "antagonistic" group, that being Rose's company. And strictly speaking, an antagonist is just any character whose goals run perpendicular to that of the protagonist in such a way that leads to conflict, which Marnie/Team Yell and Bede still serve as. It would probably be more accurate to say that the games lack the traditional "dangerous visionary" antagonist, although Rose still fits that bill - it's just that his presence in the story is greatly reduced in comparison to familiar antagonistic visionaries like Cyrus, N, and Lysandre.

What I do like about Sword & Shield's approach, though, is that rather than having these antagonists intrude upon events from outside the context of your quest, they instead emerge organically from within the League structure, which has always been the main narrative thrust of the core Pokémon games. It works to make the Gym Challenge *part of* the story, rather than just a benchmark-providing backdrop against which the story takes place. Here, Team Yell are overzealous fans of a particular Gym Challenger, and Bede is a golden boy chosen by the head of the League himself who has ulterior motives involving the central mechanic that makes the Galar League unique.

Granted, you could say that the Alola games experimented with this first by having Team Skull be social rejects who failed the island challenge. And that is true, although I would argue that the Aether Foundation/Ultra Beasts/Ultra Recon Squad still come into the story at an angle, and Team Skull ends up becoming entangled with them all anyway (and had they not, they wouldn't really serve a purpose - they don't have a goal other than to disrupt other island challengers out of spite, whereas Team Yell are obstructing other Gym challengers for a reason - to give Marnie an advantage). Of course, for Sun & Moon, that was the point, as the stark aesthetic contrasts between the Aether Foundation and Ultra Beasts in comparison to everything locally Alolan clearly illustrates. It seems Sword & Shield are trying to create more endemic conflicts in order to reinforce the increased significance of the Pokémon League, which to me seems like the right call for these games. (Even Hop is not just some neighboring Trainer, but the younger brother of the Champion, whom he aspires to be like - this provides an up-close portrait of the kind of idolization that comes with the role of being Champion in Galar, unlike in previous games.) Personally, I really like this new approach, although I'm not expecting it to become some kind of standard - I would rather have them continue to come up with original settings and to sculpt suitable storylines for each one.

However, I'm at the 5th gym and up to this point at least so little is learned about both Marnie and Team Yell. Before I just received her league card I was left wondering what exactly Team Yell's motivation was and their relationship to Marnie and while her league card contains clarification that she's a local celebrity in her town, that remains unclear.
Although the scene with the sleeping Silicobra suggests that Team Yell might be drawn to any individual they deem worthy of their support/a cheer squad (even when the situation prevents them from performing true to their name) Marnie's entire town is apparently supporting her so what makes these people especially enthusiastic enough to follow her to every stadium while the rest of the town cheered from their living rooms?

Well, the basis for Team Yell is not just punk rockers, but also British sports hooligans. And why do they do what they do? Largely just because they're obsessed with a certain team or player. It's that tribalistic "us vs. them" mentality that binary conflicts can often incubate. Some people become so obsessed with winning or proving themselves right that they forget the point of sports is simply to have fun and be active. Similarly, the point of Pokémon battles is self-expression and being able to learn about other peoples' ways of doing things.

Of course, Team Yell do have a more sympathetic motive that ties into the bigger picture of it all - their hometown used to be very popular, when Piers was a big singing star, but now it's been left in the dust because bigger crowds are drawn by the spectacle of Dynamax battles, which their town is incapable of hosting due to its lack of a Power Spot. But they are a proud community, and Piers refused to allow corporate politics to relocate his Gym elsewhere. And that sense of pride is precisely why they are so excited about a prominent Challenger hailing from their hometown, because Marnie becoming the Champion could remind people of what Spikemuth has to offer. And this too serves to illustrate something about how the Pokémon League is a bigger and more complex institution in Galar than we've seen before.

I find your thoughts on the Silicobra situation pretty interesting! I always thought that scene was somewhat strange, but it hadn't occurred to me how them trying to avoid waking up a sleeping Pokémon contradicts their typical habit of shouting and making lots of noise.

The lack of a team causing trouble in the region has also reduced the plot including most notably, the amount of purpose and conflict in between gyms.

This is what I'm getting at when I say that the Gym Challenge now *is* the plot rather than just being a skeleton for it. I don't think of it as a reduction so much as a refocusing. The reason, purpose for which you are traveling *is* to take on the Gyms, and Team Yell are there to hinder you.

That being said, while I do think it's fairly clever to integrate the typical core series roadblocks into the narrative via an entity dedicated to obstruction like Team Yell, others have noted the inconsistency with which they can be dealt with. Sometimes they're creating an obstacle, and you can battle them in order to drive them off. But other times, they just prevent you from going where the game itself doesn't want you to go. I wonder if this would have been more effective if Game Freak had embraced a more fully open-world vision of the game, so that Team Yell's roadblocks function as gateways to places that you *can* choose to go to by defeating them, but might want to think carefully about doing because you're not at a high enough level (and frankly, the Badge cap on what we're allowed to catch already accomplishes this within the Wild Area, so I don't see why it couldn't have been utilized to that end in the rest of the region as well).

When I'd first heard about Team Yell I'd expected a bit more aggression such as rigging gym missions or perhaps preventing other challengers from entering them at all or just somehow being a lot more disruptive to the competition. In this regard and in that Marnie is actually a friendly character, they have managed to surprise me I'll give them that.

Personally, I expected more of them on a functional level because the official site included a blurb that talked about how they would "shout and distract" Marnie's opponents during battle, which indicated to me that they would sometimes be able to make your Pokémon flinch or miss or receive a stat drop in order to give Marnie the edge against you, which I thought sounded like a very neat new way of giving the antagonist group an actual influence in the mechanics of the game. Unfortunately that was not the case.

Actually, now that I think about it, I would probably perform a significant rewrite of the Team Yell plot, were it up to me. I think it's implied that Piers is the person who endorsed Marnie, but Team Yell were acting independently - he wasn't aware of them because he's been holed up in his concert hall all this time. I would make it so that he was very much aware of Team Yell. It's clear that Marnie appreciates Team Yell's enthusiasm, but nevertheless believes in good sportsmanship and doesn't want them to be a problem to other Trainers. Moreover, she wants to earn the Championship on her own merits. What would it be like for her to discover that even though Piers, her own brother, had endorsed her, that he then undermined that and directed Team Yell to sabotage the other Trainers so that she could make it to the top? If her victories were never truly her own, that would be quite a realization, and of course would only make her want to prove herself even more. Piers's motive in this scenario could be to bring attention to Spikemuth but also to spite Rose - he is disgruntled about Spikemuth's state being a result of Dynamax's popularity, which Rose is responsible for. So he sends out his Team Yell goons to interfere with the integrity of the Gym Challenge. It's sympathetic, because you have to admire his resilience in standing up to Rose's pressure when it came to the issue of relocating his Gym to a Power Spot. But he shouldn't have used Marnie to his own ends. And, by being directly responsible for Team Yell's interference, this makes him more strongly fill in the role of "Team Yell Boss" that he is clearly meant to occupy - while also making him an antagonist not just to you, but also to Marnie. Which I think would lead to a good opportunity for resolution between Marnie and Piers - in order for her to win the Championship, she would of course need to defeat him, and perhaps he was planning to go easy on her. But after she finds out about his machinations and tears him a new one for it, he realizes what he did wrong and agrees to take her on with his full strength. I think this would work better than the current resolution of "meh, I'm planning on retiring, you wanna be the Gym Leader?" "nah mate I want the Championship, I'd be too busy" "o rite k" ([Marnie ends up taking the Gym Leader position anyway]). Instead, Piers could agree that because of his poor sportsmanship he must resign, and then Marnie could more organically take up the reigns in the post-game, having proven herself capable in the Championship Cup despite not winning. Piers leaving the Gym out of disgrace would necessitate a new Gym Leader for Spikemuth, but the popularity that Marnie's performance in the Semifinals garnered her would bring some well-earned attention back to the town if she chose to become the new Leader.

Can we get one?

The closest you'll find is probably the black motorcycle jacket sold in Wyndon.
 
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I liked the turn of Team Yell not being an evil team - while I don't mind dealing with the evil teams it always seemed a bit of a stupid Pokémon trope to me after dealing with team rocket in Gens 1&2. I did like the Rainbow Rocket section of Ultra-Sun/Moon though as it turned the evil team thing on it's head in a different way.

In fairness it was particularly good in Sword and Shield because it subverted the expectation for there to be an evil team. To my mind the next new game will either need to not have an evil team at all or go back to full on evil team, they can't just pull the same stunt again.

Between the switcheroo with Team Skull/Aether Foundation in Sun/Moon and now Team Yell not really being an evil team I do get the feeling that Game Freak are trying to come up with new ways to structure the main games which I fully welcome.
 
Granted, you could say that the Alola games experimented with this first by having Team Skull be social rejects who failed the island challenge. And that is true, although I would argue that the Aether Foundation/Ultra Beasts/Ultra Recon Squad still come into the story at an angle, and Team Skull ends up becoming entangled with them all anyway (and had they not, they wouldn't really serve a purpose - they don't have a goal other than to disrupt other island challengers out of spite, whereas Team Yell are obstructing other Gym challengers for a reason - to give Marnie an advantage).

That's the thing though, I haven't felt thus far as though Team Yell has been obstructive at all.
Thus far in my experience, they've just caused a disturbance in the Budew Drop Hotel and blocked a few paths which we're not supposed to access anyway until clearing a gym.
Whereas, even when eliminating the Aether Foundation, Team Skull taunts a Trial Leader, intrudes on the player's first trial and steal barries and a Pokemon to bait the player for elimination.

This is what I'm getting at when I say that the Gym Challenge now *is* the plot rather than just being a skeleton for it. I don't think of it as a reduction so much as a refocusing. The reason, purpose for which you are traveling *is* to take on the Gyms, and Team Yell are there to hinder you.

I'll admit that this is an intriguing view.
As I said in the likes/dislikes thread, I quite appreciate the more lively and official nature of the league challenge but it never occurred to me to see that build-up of a common concept as a plot focus.
That I can appreciate.

Personally, I expected more of them on a functional level because the official site included a blurb that talked about how they would "shout and distract" Marnie's opponents during battle, which indicated to me that they would sometimes be able to make your Pokémon flinch or miss or receive a stat drop in order to give Marnie the edge against you, which I thought sounded like a very neat new way of giving the antagonist group an actual influence in the mechanics of the game. Unfortunately that was not the case.

Now that, though not just limited to Marnie's battles would have been fantastic.
 
Now that people mention that Team Yell should have obstructed battles, I wonder if something similar to the audience system from PM:TTYD would have worked in the games.
 
I liked Team Yell a lot more than I thought I would. They're goofy and Piers is the best so... yeah.

It's kind of like how I didn't think I'd like Team Skull at first but actually they're pretty cool.
 
I've now beaten Piers and this is when Team Yell's truth is revealed as gym trainers who used their own gym as a barricade to stop other challengers' progress for Marnie's benefit and how this explains Piers' absence at the opening ceremony.
They'd gone behind his back so the poor guy thought he was disrespected as a gym leader by the challengers due to his inability to Dynamax.

Now that's more like it!

I do wish that angle had been more developed and in-depth, and that Team Yell had received a more moral punishment/revelation for what their actions inadvertently did to their leader. While Marnie does give them a bit of a talking to, we don't get to see how that plays out.
It might have been a bit more interesting if Piers' was in on it so that it was a full out dirty gym, that would have been entirely unique but this was still conceptually pretty good.

I quite liked the concept of a slums/poverty based gym and that as a result, it was more the classic style with pure gym trainer battles as lead-up rather than a mission.
 
I really wanted to like Team Yell but I just found them obnoxious. I get that game freak was trying to replicate Team Skull but I feel like Team Skull was implemented far better (and consequently they are my favorite evil team).

I think Team Yell suffered from a lack of screen time to really explain their motives (then again Rose's plot has a similar issue). But also they lacked real consequences. I find it really grating that Bede got disqualified (though granted it was VERY valid that he got kicked out for destroying a historical monument regardless of the fact of being manipulated), but Team Yell gets nothing.

I feel like if maybe Rose came up to Team Yell and said "hey if you don't cut it out I'm either shutting down the Spikemuth gym for good" or "I'm kicking Marnie out of the competition if you guys don't calm down". I mean when Rose kicks out Bede he mentions sportsmanship and Team Yell's antics are the direct opposite of that.
 
I feel like if maybe Rose came up to Team Yell and said "hey if you don't cut it out I'm either shutting down the Spikemuth gym for good" or "I'm kicking Marnie out of the competition if you guys don't calm down". I mean when Rose kicks out Bede he mentions sportsmanship and Team Yell's antics are the direct opposite of that.

This is a very good point. There really isn't any tension to what Team Yell are doing, which precludes them from being a clever spin on the typical "artificial roadblock in video games" trope. They just are those roadblocks, but with faces and loud colors, so they don't give you that extra desire to push through them. If you just progress through the game as you normally would, they'll dissipate without much fuss. (Personally I think it's kind of bewildering that the first Pokémon game to involve open-world elements didn't make more savvy use of something like Team Yell - the concept of being able to explore a Pokémon setting however you want with no constraints is very enticing, and having Team Yell keep you from being fully able to do that would be, in my opinion, a way to make them feel more directly antagonistic, in sort of a more ludonarrative way. Although I guess at the same time, that kind of undermines the idea that it is truly open-world, although I don't think that's an unsolvable problem. You could have the shortcuts or more enticing paths in the Wild Area be blocked off by Team Yell, giving you the choice to either take the more long-winded approach, or to try and defeat Team Yell even if they might be stronger than you, kind of like how you already have the very high-leveled Wandering Pokémon in the northern Wild Area zones. But of course, all of this would certainly work a lot better if it weren't just the Wild Area that was an open-world.)

In terms of comeuppance, they do get a scolding from Marnie, but that doesn't carry much heft. You would think more people would take issue with them sullying the integrity of the League, especially since I don't get the sense that they're a typical presence in the proceedings. They seem to have sprung up for the first time ever in this year's challenge, specifically because of Marnie's participation.

That said, their motives are pretty simple and I thought were explained clearly enough. They want Marnie to win, to regain some of Spikemuth's lost pride. They intend to do that by making sure that Marnie has a leg up in the competition. (And once again, I'm reminded of how the official SwSh site made it sound like they would actually interfere in your battles in order to make things harder for you, but then that never happened. Ironically, Team Skull did some of that far more practically and meaningfully in their games, and I do agree with your observation that Yell seem like a less-successful attempt to repeat what worked with Team Skull. Especially, oh my god, with the puns. Skull could often be legitimately funny, but Yell's jokes about being "Yell-ow bellied" or whatever are trying too hard.)

Edit: tfw you (and by "you" I mean me) read back the post you made at the start of this thread which is old enough to where you forgot ever making said post and are pleasantly surprised by the consistency of your own opinions because usually you have a tendency to change how you feel over time, but are also slightly frustrated because now you've just said the same thing twice on the first page :X3:
 
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In terms of comeuppance, they do get a scolding from Marnie, but that doesn't carry much heft. You would think more people would take issue with them sullying the integrity of the League, especially since I don't get the sense that they're a typical presence in the proceedings. They seem to have sprung up for the first time ever in this year's challenge, specifically because of Marnie's participation.

This.

I feel like part of why Marnie's scolding doesn't have much heft is that her own arc was pretty static barring her opening up to you. Where as Hop had his depression arc and Bede gets disqualified, Marnie doesn't have that moment that really sticks out. One thing that I thought about was Marnie's normal league card which states that she was a crybaby before Piers got her the Morpeko. I was thinking what if at the beginning of the game whenever Team Yell does their shenanigans...she isn't able to call them off (like she does in the Budew Drop Inn). That way her plot could be not just opening up to the player but being able to stand her ground against Team Yell (and indirectly her brother). This would give way to what I mentioned in my previous post with Rose threatening to shut down the gym/kick her out the challenge being the huge moment for her where she has to make a change. That way when she does scold Team Yell it carries more weight. Like her saying "how am I supposed to save our town if we have no gym/I'm not in the challenge anymore?"

And yeah, I find it so odd that Team Yell sullies the integrity and no one really says anything (except one NPC and a throaway line from Kabu in the mines). Like I think it would have been interesting if maybe the other challengers complained about Marnie, or maybe NPCs said "I want to like Marnie...but her fans that call themselves Team Yell kind of spoil her appeal". Even though we as the player know she's not directing her fans to do anything, it's the type of conspiracy theory that would likely run around in the gym challenger rumour circuit.

It just really disappointed me because I really wanted to like Marnie more than I did. Like she's cool, but Hop/Bede/Avery/Klara overshadow her as they all go through more meaningful arcs IMO.


And your point about Team Yell being in the wild area blocking paths off and you can try to defeat them (even if they are at a higher level than you currently) sounds really intriguing and would've been really interesting to see implemented.
 
I feel like part of why Marnie's scolding doesn't have much heft is that her own arc was pretty static barring her opening up to you. Where as Hop had his depression arc and Bede gets disqualified, Marnie doesn't have that moment that really sticks out. One thing that I thought about was Marnie's normal league card which states that she was a crybaby before Piers got her the Morpeko. I was thinking what if at the beginning of the game whenever Team Yell does their shenanigans...she isn't able to call them off (like she does in the Budew Drop Inn). That way her plot could be not just opening up to the player but being able to stand her ground against Team Yell (and indirectly her brother).

This would give way to what I mentioned in my previous post with Rose threatening to shut down the gym/kick her out the challenge being the huge moment for her where she has to make a change. That way when she does scold Team Yell it carries more weight. Like her saying "how am I supposed to save our town if we have no gym/I'm not in the challenge anymore?"

And yeah, I find it so odd that Team Yell sullies the integrity and no one really says anything (except one NPC and a throaway line from Kabu in the mines). Like I think it would have been interesting if maybe the other challengers complained about Marnie, or maybe NPCs said "I want to like Marnie...but her fans that call themselves Team Yell kind of spoil her appeal". Even though we as the player know she's not directing her fans to do anything, it's the type of conspiracy theory that would likely run around in the gym challenger rumour circuit.

Now, this would have been brilliant!

Marnie was an utterly static character with no substance, no development, and no clear goals other than the short term goal to bring excitement and something special to her small town.

Requiring her to evolve from a quiet and meek wallflower to a strong, confident badass when her inaction against them leads to Team Yell putting not just her challenge but the Spikemouth gym and the integrity of the entire event all on the line would have been exceptionally unique and iconic.

To add to the idea of fans complaining that Team Yell ruins Marnie's appeal, considering that there were clear deliberate attempts on their part to roadblock other challengers I felt that there should have been a more direct approach.

A distraction mechanic that is similar to the quiz mechanic in Opal's gym in which Team Yell is constantly causing distractions in the stadium that reduces evasion, accuracy, defense, and speed would have been interesting.

Such a concept would have given them more of the dirty edge that I personally feel was lackluster while at the same time provided an interesting arc in which losing challengers cause an uproar over having been cheated out of the competition.

Examples:
"I would have won if those assholes hadn't been distracting me!"
"They did it on purpose, I know it because they're challenger Marnie's fans!"
"And no one ever kicked them out of the stadiums!"
"Challenger Marnie is a cheater!"
"The Galar Gym Challenge is a scam!"


This would be Marnie's turning point, the moment she's forced to "woman up" to borrow GoGo's slogan in 'Big Hero 6' and stand up to Team Yell and clean up their mess. She'd feel guilty and obligated to save not only the Gym Challenge but Spikemuth's reputation and by extension her brother's.

It's not just her appeal Team Yell would have ruined but fans would be against her. Even those who didn't believe she'd directly instigated Team Yell's actions (because there would 100% be those that did) would still hold her accountable and distrust her by association as well as for not stopping them.

This sort of direction would have put Team Yell on more the same level as Team Skull and secured them a spot in my top favorites with Plasma and Rocket.
 
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