Palworld, Pokemon, and the Inevitable Conversation
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- Опубліковано 22 січ 2024
- Slight change of pace with this vid, hope you don't mind!
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If Palworld is an indiscriminate gruel of other games Pokemon is the emergency crackers off the Titanic. They're just as bland as they were 100 years ago.
I like this channel to be focused on the smaller indies but I’ve got a couple thoughts about Palworld I wanted to jot down. I think they’ll remain relevant to our overall gaming convo together long after the hype around this game has died down. I don’t think that will take long. Gamer attention spans are shorter than my little rat dick.
Palworld released a few days ago and has quickly blown the charts. It’s Steam's second most played game EVER, behind only PUBG. It's done equally gangbusters on gamepass, outpacing Starfield. I’d tell you a fun fact about the Epic Store but I’m trying to keep this script focused on things people actually care about.
But every time a monster collector game comes out people ask two things. The first is "is this the Pokemon killer."
These clickbait titles need to come clean and admit the only game that can kill Pokemon is Pokemon itself. And it's doing a good enough job on it's own... With all its record breaking sales.
"Is this the X killer" is a symptom of being the biggest game in your genre. Be halo in the early naughties, or stardew valley, or a souls game now.
I'm going on a little bit of a limb here but if palworld is going to kill any game it would have to be Ark Survival Evolved. The remake ARK: Survival Ascended dropped late last year in a very actual early access state if you know what I mean. They can't afford to lose players like Pokemon can. And two of the three largest Ark UA-camrs I could find all had Palworld videos up, hitching that wagon just in case Palworld isn’t a flash in the pan.
The second question is "is this a Pokemon clone".
It doesn't take a Spot The Difference scientist to see where Palworlds monster inspirations come from. Every monster collector, no matter how different it is lives in Pokemon’s shadow whether they’re trying to steal that shadow or not.
But let's be completely honest for a second.
Gamefreak would not and could not make Palworld. If pushed they could almost make a Pokemon Game.
I think this alone is enough to clear Palworld of any wrongdoing. (There have been claims around AI usage but there’s a lack of any real evidence for that, so I’m not touching that.)
Games are a constantly iterative medium. Every game in development is in dialogue with every other game that has already been released. We never know where cross pollination will occur.
Except in the case of palworld, which was born in the Bermuda triangle of most popular genres mashed together. There's something about it which feels ineffably cynical in its calculations. It's like The Expendables of video games. It's the sort of game that EA would make if they had the balls.
Palworld is brazen in its inspirations. Right out the gate you wake up and get a Shika slate, complete with blue dooong text.
Weirdly PocketPair says it's taken zero inspo from Pokemon, and fails to mention Zelda entirely, instead citing Ark, Minecraft, rimworld, Rust, GTA and Dragon Quest.
But deciding when a game is inspired by, and when it is a soulless derivative is an almost entirely emotional journey. It's a bit like Porn, you know it when you see it. but none of that matters at all if you're having a genuinely good time. At this point in the online dialogue having this conversation about Palworld can sort of look like you're being a sore loser about it's success, so perhaps it's something best left for when the hype has died down.
But when discussing this in my brochat Monkey summarised his thoughts nicely.
"It's whether they've brought vitality and soul to it, and whether the elements are there for a reason that contributes to the quality of the game"
To tastefully rephrase his statement, Is the Pokemon element of Palworld a pair of fake tits bolted to a skeleton to add sex appeal to the bones? or are they attached to a breast cancer Survivor looking to regain a little dignity. On balance I’d say it’s probably the latter, despite the games current early access jank.
While the world itself can be barren, this game has brought new and interesting ways to interact with your Palemons that pokemon has so desperately needed for years now. even if that interaction is slavery and cannibalism.
I’m going to refrain from bothering to give any sort of recommendation for Palworld because at this point everyone with a Steam account and gives a shit already owns it.
I'm astounded at the level of success of Palworld. I've been following it since the early access and always considered it to be a joke. I picked it up but am waiting for friends to give it a shot.
awesome game ! you'll enjoy it
i hate to steal words from an influencer but ludwig put it best (paraphrasing) ‘we don’t need to white knight for nintendo or gamefreak, because if they had any legal grounds, these famously litigious companies, would have already shut them down.’
words worth paraphrasing!
Valid.
Jesus H, Rat Man, your imagery is harrowing.
I don’t play current games in general. Too expensive. I for one welcome any disrupters like this because it sounds like a fun game and isn’t that why we play games?
The rat is always right~
My friends and I have been enjoying it a lot. It has some buggy things here and there but I'm not going to expect an early access game to be super well polished. There's some rendering issues that almost seem reminiscent of what GameFreak did with P:LOA, but keeping in mind that it's not a fully released game, also that the budget for this game was an astonishingly low 6.7 million dollars. They got in a lot for what they could squeeze in. Overall I'd say it's a good, fun game.
The building is nice (though it does need some polishing), combat feels amazing and smooth, and catching Pal's feels very crisp and enjoyable, part of that I think is because you can see the physical number catch rate and watch the bar fill up as that chance of a successful catch goes up as well. It's engaging, challenging, silly, allows for creativity, and the exploration is VERY good despite every server being a copy+paste world with the only major difference being how much or how little a player interacts with the environment. Maybe it's because the game is still fresh but it has that replayability to it which I find very important for a game to see if it's worth my money or not. And I think part of why it has such a high replayability value to it is because of that open world exploration.
2:31 there's absolutely no way this is true. They look undeniably like pokemon. They look like the pokemon very hard-core pokemon fans make when new pokemon are announced and they try to guess the evolutions. If you showed me these monsters and I didn't know about the existence of Palworld I'd be confident in saying they're pokemon. I'm a more casual pokefan but I certainly wouldn't clock these designs as Digimon or DQ monsters or their own thing. I'm not saying that's a bad thing though. However if you're going to very heavily draw inspiration from something (to the point of making things that are almost indistinguishable from the source material) just say it. Why lie about it?
That has to be a quote about the gameplay or the developers are full of crap. I'm glad they're successful because this is a fresh take on Pokemon, people have been clamoring for a pokemon game like this for at least a decade. They did what Nintendidn't. But they don't need to be shy about it.
Agree with everything you said. And yeah definite Pokemon aesthetic, in a good way. Here's the original article the one I included was quoting. It was via a translator also so maybe there was a little difficulty there, I also wonder if he was allergic to painting himself into a corner for any sort of lawsuit shenanigans Nintendo might pull.
www.thegamer.com/interview-palworld-not-just-pokemon-with-guns/
"Mizobe says that Dragon Quest was a huge influence on the overall designs of each Pal." Lol
@@bigrathole That was my take, avoiding any verbal confirmation of Poke'mon as an inspiration for legal reasons. All those other inspirations are probably true, they just may not be the only ones.
outside of the designs being a little too inspired at times by pokemon it honestly seems kinda cool, my friends are big fans of it and if someone would hire me ill definitely at least try it on gamepass. i hope it comes out of early access an interesting game!
I just love that ark players just continue being pulled towards games with animal cruelty in them.
PocketPair saying it has taken NO inspiration from Pokemon is wild, evading Nintendo's legal team fr
I care about playing Palworld about as much as I care about playing a Poke'mon game... Which is none. (I just came here for the live-studio-audience-of-one reactions in the background.) 😂
The ratwife fandom pulls through once again. XD
@@bigrathole It's literally one of my favorite little things about this channel. It adds a depth to the um... "production value", if you will, that most other channels don't have. Like, I know you're probably recording in your living room, but when she chuckles, I hear "a live studio audience" and suddenly imagine a big set with lights and a stage, hundreds of seats... And one audience member. 😁
That imagery is too funny. I have to draw that sometime
@@bigrathole Oh my god, please do! I will print it, and frame it, and I don't know... hang it above my toilet or somewhere equally appropriate. XD
@@Nicklefritz a true place of honour, right above the throne XD
I just think it's funny seeing the most insufferable nintendo fanboys come out of the woodwork to have a fit over this, for some reason? I don't think this game has poor ol' little nintendo quaking in their boots.
the "Leave multi million dollar company alone" meme is seeing a lot of good use at the moment haha
Nintendo should have put Pokemon on pc their fualts really
The whole "It's AI" also just came out of nowhere and no one gives any proof of such thing being made with AI generation.
Wild how misinformations just fly around.
And personally, I like Palworld.
Totally! I recorded it but didn't end up putting it in but I said without any solid evidence it's just straight up slander. we saw a lot of designs prior to stable diffusion etc coming out as well.
The developers have made a separate game with Ai generation as a key mechanic. But idk.
If pokemon fans hate this, who are the 8 million people who bought it so far?
I love Pokémon and I'm one of those in the 8 million.
I gave the 69th like ,
Nice .