I was stoked to boot it up and like…what? It’s such a stupid game on all fronts. I get that stealing mechanics works if you’re into that kind of gameplay, but there’s no way that anyone other than pokemon obsessed people enjoy this. Even then, it’s such a poor analog for actual pokemon games. I feel like it’s “success” is all media buzz. Every actual human in my life agrees it’s terrible. Even my partner who is actually pokemon obsessed lol. But the coverage on the internet would have you believe it’s goty contender. I have never felt more convinced that we are living in a simulation lol. I can’t be alone in this, am I? Is there where I learn that I’m that far out of touch? Like, truly, if you enjoy it, good for you. We all have things we love that others don’t get. But like, someone please tell me I’m not the only one lol.
Personally I can agree that Pokemon games have themselves been coasting on mediocrity for a long time now, but that doesn’t mean that Palworld isn’t also totally devoid of originality, creativity and artistic integrity. Both can be true, and I’d argue that both are true. There are a lot of ways that Pokemon could and should be better, but clearly they aren’t so bad that they didn’t inspire the Palworld dev team to rip and “remix” their art assets…
Having said that, you’ll probably never convince me that you or anyone else would have given Palworld the time of day had it not been “the game where you shoot pokemon with guns”. The bootleg pokemon art style is the entire reason for the game’s runaway success; it’s the killer feature. And as someone who values games as a creative medium and not just a product, that shit just rubs me the wrong way. If that makes me a hater too then so be it.
Something palworld didn’t do. The guy who got caught claiming that, eventually came clean and said he had morphed and touched up the models so they looked closer than they actually were. They didn’t rip any assets, they didn’t ‘copy’ pokemon. There was no AI gen being trained on pokemon models either. This was haters making up fake controversy. So now you’ve also allowed your ignorance surrounding the game, to affect your judgement of it.
No art is created in a vacuum. Every artist, every creation, stems from the inspiration of something else. Palworld and their studio just didn’t shy away from using mechanics that were popular. They know those mechanics are fun, so why try and reinvent them for the sake of trying to be unique?