Apopheniac
Monolith Soft action game truther
- Pronouns
- he/him/his
given how intertwined gym progression was to story progression (arbitrarily, I might add), that's why we think that the text also means gyms can be done in any order.
but due to the lack of specifics (like if there's even gyms), I posit that it could just mean that gyms and the story are disconnected and that gyms (or whatever) are still linear. I could just be paranoid though, because of Game Freak
Breath of the Wild feels like it had a great way of handling this with you being able to high tail it to Ganon. pokemon could adapt this by skipping the story missions entirely and go for all the gyms and become champion before you even "start" the story. and vice versa
maybe, thanks to the school setup, being champion isn't actually the end all be all. maybe you need "graduation points" or some shit, and you can get that however (aside from saving the world). become champion, be a contest champion, etc.
I think this is a good video that brings up the issue with open worlds and their sense of progression. Pokemon Legends is touted as a good method for its style of game even
Legends Arceus had the ranking requirements to progress, but Let's Go also incorporated some new requirements for accessing Gyms, most notably Fuschia Gym requiring 50 Pokémon registered before you could challenge Koga. I could see SV's progression having similar roadblocks to what LGPE had (clearing dungeons as in RBY, level requirements, Pokédex completion).