It seems like everyone in the world is playing Palworld right now, and that means it seems like everyone is talking about Pokemon. Mainly about how much Pokemon needs to sue Palworld. There’s an interesting discussion on the ideas of plagiarism and how much Pokemon borrows itself, and has been borrowed from previously, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:which I&rsquoᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𓆉ᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ;ve written about in more depth here. But leaving that aside, Pokemon and its developers should be concerned about Palworld for reasons 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:beyond theℱ alleged design similarities.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pokemon Scarlet & Violet was supposed to be a bold step forward for the series, embracing the open world and giving us the Pokemon game of our dreams. And in a way, it was this bold step forward. Unfortunately, it was an equally bold step backwards. Not only did the game barely work, which appeared in direct contradiction to the open world using the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Switch’s power to create a more alive Pokemon world, but it was as stale as ever. We still started as a know-nothing ten year old, we still got a Water, Grass, or Fire starter, we still walked along a relatively set path (though the open world allowed for more deviation), and we st🥃ill beat eight gym leaders and a smattering of trainers, who still didn’t put up much of a fight.
It was the same game Pokemon had always been, and the buggy state it launched in distracted us from the diminishing returns. It’s unclear where Pokemon goes next; Scarlet & Violet’s record breaking sales may encourage Game Freak to stay the course with these underwhelming results. But if the mild experimentation of Legends and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Let’s Go don’t con🐈vince Pokemon’s devs to head back to the drawing board, maybe P𒐪alworld will.
Palworld’s record-breaking numbers don’t mean much in the face of Pokemon, which dwarfs every other series in the world with its sales figures. Any 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:records Palworld has set or may set on Steam would be destroyed in an instant if Pokemon decided to release its next mainline game on PC. But Palworld’s numbers are impressive nonetheless. Whatever qualifiers you may throw at it, that it’s a fad, that it’s a meme game, that it’s less than half the price of a regular game, they can be off-set by the counter-punches that it’s free on 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Game Pass, and that many ot🧸her games have arrived with similar qualifiers and failed to sco🌃re such success.
Palworld꧑ Is An Original, Interesting, And Utterly Shameless Pokemon Ripoff
Palworld brazenly copies from Pokemon, but doeཧs it so well that I can't help but love it.
The fact is, people like Palworld. There’s merit to the questions of why people like it so much, what it says about how much (or little) we value artistic originality and creativity, and the (unproven and largely circumstantial) claims of AI usage have broadly led to a shrug from the playing⛄ masses. Aspects of Palworld’s success may be worthy of debate, but above all the noise, it is a success. And what does Pokemon make of that?
Pokemon has largely been making the same base game for over twღo decades, not just the turn-based monster battling and catching, but the same protagonist, the same story, the same journey, the same ending. From the Game Boy through to the Switch, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Most games that have copied Poꦰkemon have copied this idea wholesale too. Palworld has not, and people like it. Will this finally make Pokemon brave enough to try something new?
If Palworld is a cheap rip-off of Pokemon and can have this much success, doesn’t that suggest that a more ambitious Pokemon game has an even higher ceilingღ? Palworld has no real characterisation, no sense of place in the world, no narrative arc to speak of, and nothing sustaining it beyond the serotonin of the survival game feedback loop and the promise of more Pals on the horizon. Pokemon may have been telling the same story for years, but it does excel in offering a sense of place for each new region. It doesn’t need to pull the Uno Reverse and then copy Palworld’s survival crafting, but something to chang🐬e up the formula would help Pokemon kick on.
Palworld has been an unabashed ‘Pokemon with guns’ game ever since its reveal three years ago, and that suggests Nintendo is unlikely to call the lawyers now it’s finally out. But that it h𓂃as been so successful by being ‘Pokemon, but different’ might cause Pokemon to think a little differently too. Even a new story ♏where we don’t know the ending before it starts would be something. If anything is going to shake Pokemon out of its comfort zone, maybe it’s Wooloo with a machine gun.
