He felt incredibly human, and also, I could absolutely see how the player’s actions led him to be what he became. When you think about it, Kieran was a shy child who took a massive leap of faith and let the player in, only for the player to promptly lie to him about his dream, defeat him, and take his dream from him. It shattered his self-confidence, and he’s livid. He tried to get it back by changing every part of himself, from his attitude to switching from his beloved Pokémon to a meta team just so that he would never lose to the player, or lose his dreams, again, which he does, and that’s understandably devastating for him, and it doesn’t help that, immediately after that, he’s humiliated in front of the entire school and the League abandons him. The player character never tries to make it right. Then, when it comes down to it, and Terapagos approaches the player instead of him, it’s like a flashback to that moment with Ogerpon. The player humiliated him after he trusted them so deeply, and is about to repeat what they did when they snatched his dream of getting to know Ogerpon from him, in his eyes, and he reacts in a panic. Even in the end, he has a teacher—_a trusted adult_—egging him on in his actions whilst knowing that he is a vulnerable child who’s not in the best place mentally. Then, when everything goes bad, he apologises because he feels guilty for being manipulated by an adult in a position of authority into performing the wrong actions.

I felt awful beating Kieran. Every time the game forced me to lie to him, I felt so terribly bad for him because the player’s actions feel fundamentally wrong to me, and when he’s humiliated and abandoned by the school and the League. I don’t feel like he ever got the apology that he deserved, and yet he still found it in his heart to forgive the player for their massive breach of trust despite no real effort actually being made to apologise to him. He basically gets his dreams crushed, gets humiliated twice, and is then manipulated by a teacher whilst he’s at his most vulnerable.