what do you imagine the protagonist's personalities being like?

Depends on the protagonist. Honestly I find most of them to be like stereotypical protagonists; brave, caring, definitely not Mary Sue's, practically no flaws outside physical limitations, and maybe caring TOO much.

Possible love interests include:

• Shy, kind girl who wants Nebby to stay in a bag
• Not many other viable options unless protagonist has a defined personality

 

In the Alola games, I imagined my player character in two ways. Sometimes he was simply an un-flappable, determined kid who never gets upset, like when Guzma (a somewhat intimidating 35-year-old man-child) gets in his face and the kid is just smiling, totally not bothered. The other way I see him is as a blank-staring, sinister and likely crazy psychopath for the exact same reason. He sees people surrounded by thugs, getting dragged into wormholes, or generally some wild things happening, and he just keeps that blank-staring smile. It's really unnerving, and I can't decide which I see more.

 

It really depends. The thing with silent protagonists is that you can insert yourself or your own ideas for the character. Though, as Negative Zero put it, the almost-unchanging smile on the Alolan protags are rather unsettling at times...

 

I've always just thought of them as self-inserts. So any time I play a Pokémon game, the PC is just in-game me.

 

I'm not sure about a lot of them, but I can imagine Brendan being someone who is self-determined, but because his dad's a Gym Leader and thus isn't home a lot, so it's coming from a place of weakness rather than strength. He has a good heart because of his mother, but isn't a big fan of adult men in general. He knows when to be respectful, but does it grudgingly.

 

Oddly enough I mentally add my own subplots into my story playthroughs. For instance in USUM I saw my character as a very heavily emotional character who believed in friendship and was terrified by the thought of what the villains did. That characterisation spawned fights with his partner after it didn't listen during crucial villain fights (it was a traded pokémon naturally). The uneasiness lasted nearly the entire game starting around the end of the first quarter. It completely changed the story for me and my view of how the character felt amongst everything.