I heard the game warns you against it and there are police forces that chase you if you commit crimes against humans. Though I don't know if that happens if you capture a human specifically.
Still, distasteful but I wouldn't see it much differently than, say, killing innocent bystanders in Hitman. The game allows you to do it but it doesn't encourage you to do it. It just doesn't block it either. It's not something I do or I'd approve of, but considering it's a more edgy version of the genre I can understand the game not making humans immune to the device that traps and essentially brainwashes living beings. Because, why would they be?
The Day Before did not sell a single million units and Palworld is not getting widely refunded, even though everyone who starts it, dressed like a caveman, immediately realizes they aren't getting to play with guns anytime soon. There were streamers showing this even before the game was out.
It's true that virality is unpredictable and popularity is not a measure of quality, but I think a lot of people are being overly dismissive of the fact that Palworld managed to hook people with something that appealed to them. Not to say it's a bastion of quality and originality, obviously not, but it has something going for it.
Pokémon with guns wouldn't have gotten millions of sales on its own. When the trailers came out people were laughing but they weren't exactly eager to play.
Given the persistent popularity of survival crafting games, I think "Ark with knockoff pokemon" is exactly what people wanted. After all, even before this, Pixelmon was one of the most popular Minecraft mods.
This take reminds me of how disappointed I was when I got Pokémon Violet, excited to see what pokémon would be like in open world, and then I realized there was nothing to do in between towns and bosses. Overall, it felt less interesting than older games where you needed to solve puzzles and mazes to progress. It's not even like there is much of an incentive to do things in your own order because every challenge has fixed levels. You could play multiplayer but there was nothing to do in multiplayer but to roam around. Due to the short draw distance and low frame rates it wasn't even like admiring the creatures roaming around felt so impressive.
The real time catching mechanics in Arceus were pretty fun, I liked the stealth elements, but without them SV felt like it was only going through the motions of having an open world, without understanding how to make use of it.
Like any RPG? Nah. C'mon, in most RPGs the characters are brought together by the story. Even the occasional antagonist who is fought and then allied with has a whole discussion where they are convinced of the merits of the protagonists. I could grant that in the Pokémon anime fairly often the creatures are convinced or decide to come along willingly, but in the games that hardly ever happens.
How do you reconcile the idea that the creatures want to come along with the active resistence of fighting them and having them break your pokéballs repeatedly?
Of course if you take the story by its word they'll say that trainers are good and friendly and only these criminal teams really are evil. And for fun I indulge that fantasy while I'm playing it, that these are martial artists pets that just love fighting so much and that pokéballs must be super comfy inside. But if you take a moment to compare what is happening you'll see that it isn't that different from what Palworld is doing.
Right? I see people saying "oh but the violence! the slavery!" as if it wasn't a collective act of childhood goodwill that prevented such associations being made to Pokémon. They talk a lot about friendship, but it's a friendship built on beating up creatures in the wild, which then obey and fight for you unquestioningly. Even some which are human-like and stated to be as intelligent as humans.
I consider myself a Pokémon fan and I defended them often, but it's a concept that gets a little iffy if you think about it for more than a minute.
Maybe it's just a consequence of growing up poor but I just don't get all the drama going on about what a ripoff it is. It's not like off brand stuff is anything remotely new.
I get it, but part of my point is that there are games that are very much like Pokémon for someone who wants 90% of that with a little bit of a different twist. Meanwhile I'm seeing some people looking into Palworld and going "Wait is this Minecraft? I wanted Pokémon with guns."
Yeah, but I would say that already makes it more markedly different, even compared to, say, Monster Hunter Stories. Sure, there's cutesy creatures which gives it some similar aesthetics but the gameplay experience is not even remotely similar.
Compared to Lies of P which looks and plays like Bloodborne, it's not really that close.
Look, I want a Steam Deck from the deepest depths of my heart and I love what it offering... but this take just isn't it. The Steam Deck is said to have sold "multiple millions" of units, lets say generously around 10 million. The Nintendo Switch has sold 132 million units. The Steam Deck couldn't hope to begin threatening the Nintendo Switch.
Though in all fairness, I don't think it needs to. It's much more of a specialized device rather than something you give to your kids.
The creature designs are similar to Pokémon but that's where it begins and ends. Palworld is a survival sandbox with creature collecting, it doesn't even have turn-based battles. It's far more similar to Ark or Rust than Pokémon.
If anyone wanted a game that "is but isn't Pokémon" they should look into TemTem or Cassette Beasts.
Caring about the product is not incompatible with making profit, but it is incompatible with maximizing profit, because then your design priorities must shift to emphasize functionality and entertainment to cutting costs and expanding monetization opportunities.
It's easy to see in gacha games. Even the best of them have to have to obstruct fun to make money, from the way they limit gameplay options so that people will gamble for them to the way that they gate progression behind repetitive daily grind so that people will keep coming back out of habit and FOMO.
Even beyond the monetization itself, great games require a willingness to take time experimenting and polishing, time which would seem like wasted wages to more money oriented companies. Sometimes it pays off, like Larian, but sometimes it doesn't, like the old Clover Studio.