Why were X and Y's characters so fucking awful?

>>33475085
Everything's been going downhill since Masuda had his post-DS era epiphany of shitting out games with minimal effort since it'll sell well anyway.

You mean every Pokemon game ever.

Because they're meant to be characters you can easily project yourself onto, op.

because they are characters in a pokemon game, who are always awful
it is sad that pokemon is objectively better the less story and dialogue is present in the game

>>33475099
Awful is a relative term.
Compared to Gen 5 and even Gen 4's, XY's were a step down.

>>33475102
that only applies to the player character. Not the gym leaders, elite 4 and villain team.

>>33475085
You mean you don't like dancing OP?

They aren't really awful, it's just 95% of them are just big lumps of fuckin' nothing. Like every game except SM.

>>33475085
Tierno and Trevor are completely useless and only exist to take up space.
Team Flare was supposed to be taken seriously as a creepy cult but came across as incredibly goofy, creating a dissonance.
The Flare Scientists saw barely any use and are forgettable as a result.
Lysandre came across as an extremely delusional madman entirely out of touch with reality instead of the suave villain with misguided goals the games intended to make him out to be.

Those are the worst. Of the better characters, you have:
Shauna and your rival are tolerable, and add a bit more to the story than Tierno and Trevor ever did.
Xerosic is memorable mostly for the Looker sidequest, which was a surprisingly decent story.
Ditto Emma.
Ditto Malva, but to a lesser degree.
Sycamore is decent with a memorable design and way of acting.
Sina and Dexio are...okay. Their make believe dress up wasn't a bother.
Diantha is tolerable because of her noninvolvement. She fulfilled her role of being a champion, nothing inherently wrong with that.
AZ is carried by lore and history, by concept and design, and by the genuinely touching reunion at the end. GameFreak actually pulling off body language that subtle surprised me and really sold the whole scene.
Everyone else is a gimmicky NPC that don't leave any real impressions or have much going for them outside of their role.

>>33475085
Implying gen 2 had good characters

Main/"important" characters were meh but gen 6 npc's had a nice amount of smut made about them.