Palworld under the hammer

 

The Pokemon successor title that Nintendo told you not to worry about, Palworld, has certainly had something of a year- hasn't it? Exploding onto the scene with a frankly gross amount of initial success right from the moment go, picked up by Gamepass, distributed to the millions on PC, the title became a stable of the scene in no time flat establishing just how desperately people are willing to accept anything with that Pokemon DNA stretched over a more ambitious body. That being said, it really takes some balls to rub your shoes on Nintendo's feet and not expect them to take a bazooka to your offices- thus I stood with many others in absolute shock when months of silence pervaded the conversation about inter-company discourse. Experts clucked their tongues, columnists prepared their obituaries and nothing happened. Until now. Surprise Nintendo Lawsuit. Boom.

Pocketpair confirmed themselves that the big N took a shot right at their offices for the crime that everyone expected six months ago. Infringement. Which just makes sense, doesn't it? I mean say all you will about Palworld and how fundamentally it takes the idea of Pokemon and moves it in many more interesting directions than the franchise itself was ever going to stretch- but from a design standpoint those two were really drinking from the same font. Palworld literally borrowed the exact same design philosophy as Pokemon, with colour combinations and animal switch-ups, emulated the exact same cutesy art style and, allegedly, even scribbled over some of those old Pokemon designs for good measure. The resemblance is uncanny is some examples and others look like actual mash-up 'what if' designs you see uploaded to Reddit ever other day. It makes total sense why Nintendo would go after them for that there copyright infringment.

Hmm? Excuse me, I'm hearing that they weren't aimed at for Copyright Infringement? That doesn't make any sense though- what else would there be to... Patent Infringement? As in, the Patent for Pokemon? The legal filed design documents? They're claiming an infringement over there? That is... I'm not going to lie- a really smart way to blindside everyone. I bet that Pocketpair had loaded up laywers on retainers that were drafting up copyright rebuttal speeches every other week and bouncing them off each other just to stay mean with it. But kick down the front door and slam a 'Patent' suite on the desk and suddenly everyone is given a little pause. Cages are rattled. Oh, and the foundation of art itself creeks against the abyss whilst another careless gust of litigious wind batters it- but who cares about that? Nintendo sure don't!

Nintendo can't be alleging that Pocketpair straight up kidnapped one of their OG technicians and squeezed the secret to a winning Pokemon formula across hours of extreme torture methods, nor do I think they are accusing the Palworld devs of infiltrating the heavily guarded Nintendo vaults- breeching the six-foot steel walls and making off with the original design documents to flog on the Pika-market- so we can only assume this is a pointed finger at the accusation of 'copying'. Nintendo must, by all logical deduction, be looking at Palworld and finding something in it's design and systems so egregiously lifted from the legally unique and distinct Pokemon formula that it constitutes immediate cease and desisting. So let's put on our amateur attorney hats and see if we can't drum up a case for Nintendo- do the exact kind of garbage picking their legal team have been up to over the past half year...  

So lacking the insight into the workings of either Palworld or traditional Pokemon we can only really opine on the visible gameplay mechanics and in that comparison Palworld is actually pretty distinct. The game isn't turn-based, does not set itself in a similar style of explorable world with themed routes and small gym villages- utilises it's mons for a very basic battle system which shudders in the face of Pokemon's half-involved complexity. Palworld's gameplay loop is built around survival systems, crafting and efficiency management- none of which exist in the Pokemon pantheon. All we can really draw in connection to one another would be the very concept of catching monsters and pitting them to battle- which to be fair, does invoke the spirit of Pokemon at a glance- but should it exclusively?

What if these were soldiers on the battlefield being captured and put to work against the enemy? Like for 'Shadows of Mordor'? That's right, Shadows of Mordor borrowed that basic philosophy with a more randomised approach so you were less filling up a Pokedex and more browsing for the coolest looking Orcs to recruit into your vanguard. Maybe the idea of 'filling up a list of specifically designed creatures for a competitive battle system' is important, despite Palworld lacking that competitive battle system. Well then, one might merely invoke the name of Shin Megami Tensei, no? Persona, Soul Hackers, SMT- that's the bread and butter of all of them! And guess what, Nintendo- the first SMT game debuted in 1992... Pokemon Yellow came out in 1996... Maybe those are the kinds of rocks you don't want to turn over, huh.

Of course, we have no idea what the actual pain points are and currently neither do Pocketpair who are apparently having to launch a legal investigation into themselves to figure out what the heck Nintendo is even on about. Although N isn't taking this lightly! Apparently they've identified several patents being infringed upon- which makes this sound like a damn-near copy'n'paste situation if you weren't at all aware of the actual products involved and how materially distinct they actually are. For optics sake I can only assume Nintendo will try their hardest to keep this close to the chest but that cat has long since fled the burlap, friend- we're all fascinated to find out what apparent chink in the armour Palworld didn't notice until now and I pray we get follow-ups from the two journalists who actually still exist in this medium.

In the grand scheme, however, can I just say that this sucks. Patents towards modes of design, concepts of gameplay, are like hot knives stabbed into the back of creativity itself. All art is iterative, most great art is whole-sale Frankenstein-ed together out of lesser works. The greatest games of our age all owe vast pedigrees to gameplay systems, development methods and concept figured out and refined before them- this year's presumptive Game of the Year Black Myth Wukong probably have Hidetaka Miyazaki's every odd mannerism down for how closely they've imitated his work and style. When aspects of design like this enter litigation, or Warner Bros try and lock down the 'Nemesis System' from their games- everyone loses. And I'd think that Nintendo would know that well for how much their own games have proven influential- but I guess desperation makes enemies out of everyone- huh?

Your move, Pokemon.

 

So perhaps you've noticed but over the month of January the world was briefly swept by something it almost never gets when we're talking about Nintendo products- Competition. I mean sure, Mario has Sonic to 'contend' with, but those are never actually fair competitions- those are just exhibitions for Mario to showcase how much more market dominance he has over the blue blur at that particular moment of time. They're really rather cruel if you think about it. But Pokemon on the other hand? Oh that right there is the product of a life born with literally no hardships whatsoever. You couldn't dream of a more privileged, silver spoon, space within which to flounder and collapse in on one-self. Every way in which Pokemon has let down it's fans over the years can be traced back to the iron fist that the Pokemon Company has enforced over the world, as spurred on by Nintendo's great wall of lawyer muscle.

Which is why it has been so surprising that Palworld has been allowed to go on as long as it has. Even former Pokemon employees seem flabbergasted by it, which either means the big N are riding up for an apocalyptic lawsuit so destructive it will burn up the entire game's industry- or they simply don't have the legal grounds that they thought they did. And if it is the latter- then that means Pokemon is going to have to face up to something terrifying that they've never had to face before- expectations. When you own the monopoly lion's share of the market for your game type, the onus rarely falls on you to really try when it comes to wooing over your customers. But set up a new stall on the front lawn that offers something more than you do, at a cheaper price? Well then you've just been captialismed on, son!

Of course, what this means for The Pokemon Company is that they actually have to step up their game if they want to wrest fans back from Palworld- because whilst these player counts are current a dent on Pokemon's giant empire- this is the seed from which the great oak grows. Palworld, assuming they aren't nuked in a lawsuit warhead, are going to grow off the back of this game. They're going to get more resources, feedback and staff aboard and they're going to take another shot at this genre in a couple years or so. And that game? That one might be a little bit better, and gain a little bit more traction. And at some point consumers are going to be asking themselves whether or not they want to shell out for Pokemon's latest failure experiment in basic game design principles that somehow managed to fail making open world exploration interesting even with decades of examples to learn from, and just pick up the cheaper option Palworld is providing.

 I suppose what I'm trying to manifest within the world is the possibility that Pokemon is going to need to react and change in order to keep their spot at the top of the roster, and we might be able to take a guess at the way they're going to do it by looking at the company we're dealing with and what they typically do in nervous moments. For example, I think the biggest ability currently residing in the Pokemon tool-kit is that of nostalgia. When weaponised, nostalgia baiting can subsidize a lot of your marketing budget simply by word of mouth that the thing people loved is coming back to them practically unchanged, remade on a slightly worse- but shinier- engine. And we already know this is a tool the Pokemon Company are obsessed with.

It's practically all but confirmed fact that the team are juggling a remake of Pokemon Gold and Silver adorned with mascot Pokemon and borrowing the exact same game design their ancestor teams worked on back in 1999. Yes, the 'Let's go' remakes are presumably going to come with the 'Pokemon Go' redesigns of the originals that 'Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee' enjoyed- and the Unova remakes which have also been leaked and will feature their own set of quality of life improvements- which to be clear are all utterly negligible. Basically the bare minimum to make it feel worthy of being called a new game whilst forgoing the risk of actually trying to make something new. Which at the very least gives GameFreak time to work on their next main entry game which promises so much and delivers so very little. It's easy to forget how little GameFreak actually deliver on until you've gone through their latest entry and reflect on how unfulfilling your experience just was.

But that doesn't mean The Pokemon Company are just going to write off making something new! Oh, they've got to try and win over the conversation somehow, which means they have to try and make their next Pokemon game a contender to Palworld. I think this confirms that the company aren't going to be pulling back on the open world elements like some figured they might following the performance hiccups of Scarlet and Violet, but they may just be spurred to try and make that open world experience more involved as Palworld does. So what does that mean? A return of the 'hideout' mechanic offering basic base building? Possible. Simple survival mechanics? Unlikely. A more comprehensive Pokemon populated worldspace which better champions explorative play? I hope so.

Because you see- that is what is so great about this coming fight! Challenge breeds competition and competition breeds improvements! If they can't cheat their way to market dominance the way that Pokemon have relied on doing all these years, then they have to start getting out of their comfort zones and doing things they would never normally do. Maybe that means being a bit less anal about the way they handle cross-marketing between their products, maybe a bit less regional locking of content- and maybe we can start to see Gamefreak actually grow as a company in a way that a developer who has been making games for over two decades really should have by now. Why don't they have an international office at this point?

Now to be honest with you I don't think that Palworld is the prophesised Pokemon killer of yore. It wears the boots and talks the talk, but it's stride is clumsy and it's vision lazy. But who's to say that someone else can't follow Palworld's initiative with an even better realisation of the Pokemon idea? I've said it before, but I think these Pokemon-style games are currently in an invisible arms race to see who can be the first to create a game which depicts a 'Ryme City' style world as teased in Detective Pikachu. Nail that and you've become the king of the genre, in my humble opinion. And if that winner isn't The Pokemon Company- I ain't gonna be whining.

The Palworld craze is real

 

What is the biggest slap to the face that one can receive in the creative arts? It it condemnation? The ridicule of your supposed target demographic? Perhaps it's just feeling that you've failed to live up to your own lofty expectations for yourself, in that kind of 'I'm not mad at myself- just disappointed.' Because after watching the absolute state of Palword in the face of Pokémon- I think it's having someone else try their hand at a monopoly you've held for decades and garner so much success in their very first go at it. According to their own numbers, Palword managed to sell 5 million copies in just three days; no doubt assisted by the fact the game was selling for half the retail of your typical Pokemon game, on top of the fact that it is a game available pretty much everywhere that Pokemon isn't! (Except Playstation. Xbox seems to have manoeuvred a little bit of limited exclusivity in that regard.) Which is still a ways off from the 23 million that Scarlet and Violet, the most successful games currently in the franchise, has scored- but it's a shot across the bough. 

Could it be that Palword does so much better than Pokemon in a fashion that is waking people up to the fact that The Pokemon Company haven't been trying their best for years? The game seemed like such a simple and disposable premise when it was first announced- Pokemon using guns to fight against poachers- (or sorry, 'Pals') adding just that little sprinkle of juvenile mature content that Pokemon is deftly afraid to touch at. But for whatever reason it seems to have taken off in such a way that if this developer was even considering doing one of the industry-standard 'release a project only to dump it' grifts they would be straight forced to reconsider their efforts. This is a golden opportunity rarely afforded to anyone- to slide into an otherwise iron-clad game genre and put the screws to the one underserving master once and for all.

I think part of Palword's initial popularity (I'm in serious contention over whether or not this game will be able to maintain it's interest for longer than a month) comes from the fact it was released just a few weeks after the end of Pokemon's Scarlet and Violet's final event- which presented no significant endgame prospects in the way that Pokemon Sword and Shield did. In that generation, we were given a rougelite minigame where we could grind for significant shiny Legendary Pokémon potential, whereas all of Violet's end-of-generation Legendries were stubbornly Shiny locked. Pokemon fans are already reverting back to Gen 8 for something to do. They are thirsting for more Pokemon style action. So throw a whole new game their way? You bet Palword was going to have some biters right out of the box. We need anyone to keep our interest in these dire times!

Because when you really break it down to brass tacks- Palword is actually somewhat basic on when it comes to the actual world it sets out. Having played it myself for a bit, Palword appears to be your standard 'dropped into a largely characterless survival world' template which is all too common in indie games, only with a more stylised artstyle, a mercifully forgiving hunger system (which still doesn't need to exist) and a somewhat sensible integration with Pokemon like mechanics. There's no comprehensive world to explore here, with culture and personality and Palmon integrated into everyday aspects of life- in many ways it is a Minimum Viable Product to prove this idea even has a market. If Pokemon were in the market of providing robust open worlds, and not still just dipping their toes into that idea- I don't think Palworld would have much of anything worth bragging about.

I don't think Palworld is an exceptionally well made game. It's not a steaming mess, don't get me wrong, but the bar of quality is not what is bringing people through the door. It is the concept, plain and pure. The idea of capturing cute monsters, training them up and battling- that alone is a game seller- and it's for that concept that folks have put up with The Pokemon Company's endless crap for all these years. The dual games for every generation with the absolute bear minimum of effort put in to make those versions at all distinct, (This generation they couldn't even bother with different version trainers.) the quality of life accessories we have to fight tooth and nail for such as being able to access the Boxes anywhere. (That wasn't a thing until Gen 8!) The lacklustre approach to narrative design that makes each game still feel like they're being written entirely for a child audience in the 2000's- ignoring how widespread and multifaceted the franchise has become since then. Palworld solves none of these issues directly (Well, there isn't a 'version exclusive' Palworld yet) but just by existing the way is open for others to come and challenge the pain points of the Pokemon franchise in the future.

Of course, the game is not without controversies. There are those who think the game has been ripping off parts of Pokémon in order to make their pals, Frankenstein stitching together design elements from popular mons like 'Lucario' and 'Skitty' in order to make their 'OC don't steal's. Now, there are currently just over 1000 Pokemon in existence and Gamefreak are already repeating themselves in places. (That Bouffalant somehow isn't a regional variant or evolution of Tauros is insane!)  That some design elements might be shared with Palword is no great shock. I wouldn't even call that a conceptual issue. They borrow the same basic design philosophies, similarities will happen. Then come the accusations of the game being made by AI which, as far as anyone can tell, have been pulled out of thin air. Okay, so the CEO mentioned being interested in AI on a few occasions and experimented with it. But if you think AI is capable of slapping together coherent 3D models- I'm sorry that you're so ill informed.

I suspect that the way the Palworld life cycle is going to is thusly. This initial surge of interest which we're currently in will plateau pretty quickly, then people will start to grow bored of the survival building aspects and start nagging the developers to add something else to do in the game. The developers will fumble about trying to stick to their vision (which I suspect will be further leading into the Pokemon design template. AI trainers, generated gyms/dungeons etc.) and meet player demand. The public will turn on the Palworld team for not being quick enough to implement everything within a 'reasonable' time frame, and come December the game will be another forgotten title of the year. I hope i'm very wrong with that prediction, but I'm decently confident judging from what I've played and how I know the industry to act.

Palworld is a craze, of that there is no doubt. But I have to say it's not quite the game I hoped it would be. To this day I am waiting for a game that takes the world we saw teased in the Detective Pikachu movie, a Flintstones-esque monster-harmonic society, to life. Building Palmon camps and watching them scramble about desperately trying to fulfil your work orders is fun an all, but there's a big chasm between the 'we've made a world' approach and the 'we've given you the tools, make it yourself' paradigm. Sure, the game is in early access and I'm sure the team expect to buff up the package in the months to come, but we're just going to have to see if the audience are willing to stick around for that long.

So is Palworld... sticking around then?

 

I've already introduced the rampant excitement over the existence of a real competitor to Pokemon veering it's face, providing players with something they haven't had from the big N in so long- some damned variety! I still think the game is mid, but I despise Survival games and Palworld retains that eye rolling demand for keeping your 'food bar' full so... I was never going to love it, now was I? But with the eyes on it that doesn't just mean the furor is reaching it's zenith, but the backlash too. It is surprising how many go to bat on Nintendo's behalf, a company that would suck out your blood and crush your bones for compost if you got somewhat in it's way. Don't get it twisted, Nintendo despises it's players for anything more than their wallets. If they could lobotomise everyone in a global campaign of tyrannical terror they would giddily jump at the chance, just to avoid hearing us lesser bein gs dare to espouse the names of their scared properties with our unworthy lips. 'Play the games and shut up', is the memo at Nintendo HQ.

In fact, the only people who don't appear to be trying to balance atop Nintendo's 'hubris' are the inexplicable animal right's activists that rally against Palworld for the 'support of animal abuse' that it 'promotes'. Which is to say that the game allows the player freedom to beat Pals to death, shoot them, or literally grind them up for resources. Terrible things to do to real animals. Good thing this is a game! This is a pathetic and wasted argument by children who never developed their frontal cores enough to differentiate between fiction and real life. They're the kinds of scum to rattle on about their virtuous mannerisms and then send off barrels of vitriolic hate-filled fan mail to actors who played mean people on a show they watched. They're idiots, not worth the time of day or the right to be listened to.

 

The 'Palworld AI' theorists on the otherhand, lean on something concrete. They allege a world wherein Palworld used AI to make it's game or design it's Pals and drum up fears in the rampant take over of non-human run tech other throwing creativity. Which is a genuine concern born from the belief that those with no idea what art is about are reading to turn it up in factory to the detriment of the very idea of art itself. And if a game championing that suddenly became popular- what does that mean for the industry? Except... that is total vibes based assumptions at this point. Not a single verifiable accusation has been made, and not even a convincing example proving the influence of AI has been uncovered. The CEO mentioned interest in AI technology in the past, but that doesn't mean it had anything to do with Palworld. And if AI did suddenly learn how to code coherent 3D models, I would be shocked.

One popular thread on Twitter alleged that the Palworld team were literally stealing assets from Pokemon, leading to a lot of the familiar feeling Pokemon we've seen. Primarina was the poster child of this one, with a wireframe model of hers compared against Azurobe's hair piece. The comparison is absolutely crazy... until you learn that the Twitter user in question literally malformed these models in order to make them seem identical. Why? Because of the animal abuse thing again, she doesn't like 'the promotion of animal abuse' and decided to create actual deformation. And why come to Pokemon's defence, a game which "sanitizes cockfighting" as one Twitter user put it? Well... she thinks that's bad too. (You can tell from her vacant expression, the lights are not all on upstairs.)

The next accusation? That Palworld is stealing the designs of Pokemon and changing them up in small ways. That one actually has some legs, there are some Pals that look eerily similar to popular Pokemon in such a fashion that 'copying' can be pretty safely called. Similar design elements are one thing but literally switching and swapping out parts, such as Snorlax's iconic face design with the teeth switched downwards, is pretty blatant. That being said, it's not all the Pals who suffer from these issues. It's not even the majority of them. And the validity of this issue has been watered down by critics who literally slap up non-sequiturs like the two Penguin monsters from either franchise, both with designs based off of nautical imagery. You mean they made a Penguin into a sailor? How could they ever think of that without copying Nintendo's homework? 

But the crazy part of all of this? Nintendo has said next to nothing on the issue to anyone. All we ever got was a 'we're looking into it', and zilch. Nintendo even knew about this game for at least a year, and they've yet to take action. And yet when a Pokemon mod was teased for Palworld, Nintendo shut that down before the creator could even upload a full video showcasing it, yet alone release the thing. Even former Nintendo employees seem confused, with one former copyright department employee remarking how they are surprised the game made it this far. Which kind of implies that something is in Nintendo's way right now. Perhaps Palworld really has managed to wiggle it's way out of the path of copyright infringement by the absolute skin of it's teeth!

Which really brings me to the pertinent question in all of this- Is Palworld actually safe then? Is this the kind of game that is going to last long enough to be a staple of this year, or will it be gone in a month from a takedown notice? If I were being a realist, I'd say that the only reason Nintendo haven't taken this down is because they're so upset that they're busy compiling the personal details of everybody who worked on, advertised for or distributed the game so that they go after all of them individually in separate lawsuits- because that is the kind of people Nintendo are. As I've said before, if Nintendo could legally fire bomb the homes of people who are too outspoken about their love for Nintendo franchises, we'd be dealing with world wide wildfires every other week. 

So, my advice is to all that are interested in an Ark Survival clone that actually plays like a game and not a glacial breeding simulator tied to a wallet milking machine- get yourself a copy of Palworld right now whilst it's still for sale and, considering it's an online only game as far as I can tell, squeeze as much entertainment as you can muster from the game before big bad Nintendo comes knocking. Merely the concept that people are having fun within a subgenre they thought they had monopolised is enough to drive the murderous rage in Nintendo's cold heart, and if they can't win in a legal case I wouldn't but it past the team to go door to door visiting vengeance on all those who betrayed Pokemon for this pretender. But personally, I hope Palworld stays. And I hope it's just the start of many more creative offshoots of the monster collecting concept that push Nintendo to get their act together and revitalise the Pokemon franchise to actually, oh I don't know: be competitive in the modern game design space? Wouldn't that be something?

Palworld

 Team Rocket has made some dark changes in direction lately...

They're locked in a cages during the night and released only to work the production lines in the day. Bending and weaving shapeless metal into deadly firearms on a ceaseless conveyer belt of arms and death, driven by the knowledge that should they ever falter in their daily required numbers, if their wardens should ever find them wanting, their next duties would be getting strapped to a table having pieces cut out of them. What is this I describe? Some ghoulish prison camp run by the worst of the worst? Actually it's my best guess at what I can see from the daily goings-ons in the indie Pokémon-style game which recently flaunted its wings; Palworld. Yes, you read that right. Those battered and bereaved? They're Pokémon-like creatures. No, I have no idea what kind of weird dreams have to be running through your mind in order to even conceive of an idea like that, but I can't lie and say I'm not fascinated to learn more. Even if that's morbidly so.

Palworld is a proposition by Pocketpair who seem to be an indie studio with a penchant for making these grand and unfocused mismatch products that throw everything at the dart board in order to see what hits it's mark. It's an admirable approach to the development process for those that can pull it off, even if it typically suffers from your age old 'jack of all trades master of none' conundrum. Independent games have a licence to veer off wildly exploring any avenue that catches their fancy, or stick their fingers in whatever pies they happen to stumble on, and that can be as much of an developmental  exploration to witness as a user as it can be for the creatives behind the lines of code. Craftopia is one such example of this, as their last game to be inundated with all these hunting, farming, base building elements standing as a backbone for the detritus of their whirlwind imaginations. Who knows where a new project by these minds could end up?

Now it is important to say that Palworld is coming later this year and likely in an early access state, which mirrors the state that Craftopia launched in back in 2020 and very much still is in. Now that's red flag number one when it comes to indie products, starting the next project before you finish the last one, however apparently the team at Pocketpair do have a separate studio working on that last game before they move onto their next. (Or at least they say that they do. Whether or not you believe such a proposition is your own provocation) But if you're willing to accept a brand new Pokemon-style game featuring monsters (or 'Pals' as their called here) firing guns and fending off slavers, then do I have the trailer for you and your hyper-specific preferences!

From all I can tell Palworld's trailer presents an adorable and colourful openworld buzzing with cheery delight and some genuinely cool and/or sweet looking 3D monster sprites. It's not as easy as it may seem to create brand new monsters to the quality of what the Pokemon devs do (That is, on their good days. Even Gamefreak get lazy sometimes and just slap a face on a pile of actual garbage.) but the Palworld developers are certainly knocking at their door with some of their characters, although there's also some of that oversized teddy-bear vibe from Doraemon in some of these designs too. If I'd have to criticize the designs it would only be for the fact that right now I can only see them in relation to their probable inspirations than for their standalone merits as their own property. A distinction that veers on problematic for some designs in the recently released trailer.

The player inhabits this open 3D world as a 3rd person explorer armed with nothing but an eye for adventure and their cadre of Pal followers. (And an M16, of course.) Much of the exploration of this world takes obvious cues from, go figure, Breath of the Wild and similar free exploration games, but mixed with a Flimstones-style utilisation of creatures that we've always wanted from a proper Pokemon game. I'm talking gliding with flying monsters, building large structures with small and long-necked monsters serving as manual labour and even using big bodied, and hopefully sturdy, monsters as bullet shields against gun-toting hunters. Oh, and then there's the Monster who shoots explosive eggs out of it's rear end. He's pretty cool too.

I have to say, whilst there's undeniable hint of independent mania implied by the scatter-gun approach to themes and concepts in this premise, sometimes the presentation alone seems to elevate the trailer to something more than the sum of it's parts. That shot alone of the player riding a flying stingray Kyogre look-alike into a gorgeous sky citadel balanced on various mountain tops is absolutely magical, and gives me hope that the ambition of the game can carry this title a little more into the mainstream than Craftopia ever was. Marry that with the expressive open world, solid design work, and pretty engine, and I think there really might be something special amidst all the weird and wacky. A vindication for developers who I suspect have been told their ideas are a little too hairbrained one too many times in the past.

However in order to get to that point there is a matter of plagiarism I want to touch on, because beside the premise (which I think is fair-game; reiterating on an established premise is how we push our mediums forward) there are a few creature designs that hit a little too close to other recognisable figures. On the lower end we've got the female protagonist of this trailer who reminded me of some one for the longest time until I finally placed her and now I can't unsee it. That's Aloy, isn't it? They nicked Aloy's outfit and stuck it on a girl with different hair so we wouldn't notice. Well I did! Oh, and there's the Kyogre look alike. I know, this new guy as a halo, but come on- that is so Kyogre. And then at the end of the trailer, in the Pal showdown scene which looks beat-for-beat like the reveal trailer of Pokemon Unity, that is literally Zoroark. They gave him new hands and rubbed off the eye-paint, but that is close enough to raise a lawyers eyebrow. The team might want to work on differentiating their designs up. Just a little.

I'm happy to see another potential Pokemon competitor step up to the plate, even if this one bought a machine gun instead of a bat. Game Freak have been in the midst of a reimaging campaign for their flagship series, and it's pressure of these competitors which is driving that innovation. If this game manages to convince the Pokemon series to throw in stealth action elements, we might be on track for the legendary Metal Gear Pokemon crossover game that both franchises were born to do! Or at the very least we might one day get a truly packed RPG Pokemon game with enough weighty kick to it that it lasts longer than a single year in the public eye. If Bethesda can do it year after year than why can't Gamefreak? And if they won't, then Palworld will because everything I've seen from this game is that it has heart. It's a diseased and misplaced heart, but it's beating. That's got to count for something.