Palworld is the Premier Little Guy™ Simulator

sometimes I consider a game great because a singular element within its repertoire of mechanics is the best I've ever experienced sometimes a game is great because it forces me to confront myself as a person what that means and how I interact with not just the world I live in but the worlds I might come to inhabit and the ones I might leave to those who come out after me and sometimes the game is great cuz I can pick up a little fox and give it a squeeze to make it shoot fire at members of a private military company Fox Parks is just such a good little guy like that and I love little guys perhaps my favorite design choice in any game is when it lets me just have a little guy when I play Skyrim I play conjuration even though the things you can conjure are mostly trash but they're still just little guys in balers Gate 3 if I don't go for monk I'll go for beastmas Ranger because it lets me summon a bunch of animals some of whom can can summon even more animals and I want as many animals as I can possibly have when I play Minecraft I go Bonkers and Yonkers for the LA and the dogs because I mean look at them it's nice when my little guys do stuff but honestly I'm also okay if they just hang out with me something about just having a little guy activates all of my basic apan neurons and I just instantly pack bond to them I was literally designed to like dogs okay this isn't my fault I just I love them all so much and I don't think I'm alone in my love for little guys because I'm currently sharing pal world with 1.5 million other people pal world is at its core a game about collecting more specifically it's a game about collecting a bunch of little guys called Pals in a big open world hence the name of course if the game was just collecting little friends that would be fine it would be completely totally fine but it wouldn't be 1.5 million players on a Monday morning at 6:00 a.m. fine rather pal world's entire Vibe seems to be that of observing the very best of other games and absorbing those elements into its own design and we'll talk about that but for the moment I really just want to establish this game as a blank slate in the truest sense the game opens with you Awakening on a beach left mostly to your own devices with the basic tutorial of becoming stronger to survive the world and the basic story lead of clearing the rain Syndicate Tower this Survivor says that the Syndicate is dangerous and that they've already killed a bunch of the survivors friends which is both very sad and also a very clear objective for for me clear the tower beat up The Syndicate and to do that I'll need to make friends with some Pals and develop a solid base of operations the point of the game at least at this stage is seemingly to defeat the bad guys hanging out at all five I think there's five of the big towers spread throughout the game in between those fights you'll build out your base get help from your pals to progress your technology and collect dozens of the same pal to all be reduced into a genetic soup to make one of them into a super powerful Mega pal that feels a little [ __ ] up if you ask me but so is giving a gun to this monkey that's the kind of world you're in you're going to need to get used to that kind of thing the game never really explicitly states that there are these other towers and that maybe you should go to them and I think that's okay because part of the PLL of the game is the base building and the exploration combined there is a certain value to just hanging out at home with all of your pals and there is a certain amount of fun in building up a base but with the fun and ease of the exploration it's not insane to assume that players will eventually notice all of the other Towers especially given the vantage point you get after clearing the first one so get your base of operations set up with all of the different various crafting stations and different aesthetic choices and get to exploring when you can it's a big world out there and there's a lot to see and a lot of Pals to collect in fact the world is so big that even though I'm currently 12 hours into the game I still haven't even come close to clearing a tower beyond the first and I'll probably have more time spent in the game by the time this video comes out but I don't really see a world where I beat the whole game before this video is made the scope and scale is just far too big for that and that's awesome I don't know if I'll be playing pal World in a year I mean it's rare for a game to have that kind of staying power in the global internet culture but I will say for certain that for a game I picked up for $26 or so I'm incredibly happy with what I've got my hands on and the main reason for that besides the Fulfillment of my love for little guys is because this game absolutely Works pal world is not the first game to try and mix and match so many different elements into a single game the problem of course is that the more systems and mechanics a game has the less time you get to spend with each one and the more complications that come with those mechanics interacting with each other typically it just doesn't work well but I think it works very well here and that's honestly kind of weird because there's a lot of different things mashed up in this game po world is super obvious about its inspiration it wears them on not just its sleeve but really on every possible scrap of fabric can attach to its body the glider feels like breath of the wild the climbing and the swimming do too the base building feels like I mean take your pick of any Survival game the automation feels a bit like a simpler version of what something like satisfactory might bring to the table these little guys and how you use them are functionally inspired from Arc at least as far as I'm told I've I've never played Arc the designs for all of the little guys are all totally unique though I think obviously this game pulls a great deal of its inspiration for creature design from another game and we'll talk about that but I really want to focus for the moment on how all of these systems work together because it's that co-mingling of mechanics that I feel really sells the game starting at random because I have no idea how to list these things you can make crafting benches because it's a survival game each of these benches however in fact everything you can build for the purpose of production comes with its own aspect as you catch Pals around the world you'll note that these Pals also share some of these aspects and it means that that pal is capable of working on a production space with the same aspect in fact some production spaces can only be manned by Pals if parmesan isn't working on the this Forge it doesn't do any forging but this means that you can either automate a certain process by employing the correct pal or Pals or you can enjoy having those Pals help you when you are crafting and the game really pushes you to have Pals help by making the crafting times for items and production spaces maybe just a little bit longer than is comfortable by yourself only to have those times be slashed by having Pals help you and this is one of my favorite things I love sitting down to craft 300 arrows only to see this adorable little penguin come waddling over to help me but the pals also influence the other systems within the game too the game has a glider system for example which I love it comes in a few different tiers but I think the winning tier is building the saddle upgrade for celer which lets you use that pal as a glider or how about you can use all sorts of different Pals as Mounds to Traverse the world the design called to let me ride a giant dog is basically all you need to get a glowing review from me but the fact that dire howl is so fast means that pal World quickly approaches the same design point that cyberpunk 2077 nailed in that just traveling around the city via bike is easy engaging and fun so like my time in cyberpunk 2077 I rarely use the Fast Travel locations within the game and because travel is so fun it means I deeply engage with the exploration design points of the game it has not been uncommon for me to end up in areas that I'm seriously not supposed to be in yet because just running around on dire howl is so easy and fun that I don't notice how far from home I've made it and while you could always climb to reach a new height I'd like to try and sell you on just having a Nightwing and throwing a saddle on it because flying is always going to be way cooler and most importantly you'll also be using these Pals to fight and that's a fairly standard thing in these kinds of games in your time in pal World you'll fight other Pals other people and occasionally a combination of the two and while the game does technically give you all of the tools you need to do that alone the game will also laugh in your face for not bringing a friend to these encounters and mechanically these encounters are I mean am I going to get laughed at for saying that they're the Dark Souls of little guy games there's just a fair amount going on and the game expects you to respond quickly to those things the game also expects you to bring Pals to these encounters and it shows this in a few different ways first of all a lot of Pals have special abilities to be used in the open world and in combat direwolf of course can be ridden as a mount but while you do so you're able to use dire House's combat abilities as well as your own weapons which means I can shoot from a distance or I can use her speed to close the gap fast it's also a good idea to bring multiple Pals on an adventure with you because they can get hurt but they recover health while in your inventory so if you're in a rough battle pulling a hurt pal back swapping out for a fresh one and inst stalling while the injured ones recover is a perfectly valid combat strategy that requires you to think quick make calls on the Fly and engage with all of the different mechanics including the passive ones maybe your team has a lead like I do with mozzarella well then maybe you'll also want to pick up Ruby whose passive increases the damage of fire typed Pals while it's in the party and these passives are are neat but the actives are the really fun part like how mozzarella can be given a harness so that I can pick her up and use her as a flamethrower which is totally okay because Geneva and thereby their conventions don't exist in this world I will use that as a transition however to talk about the theme of the meme around this game is it really just a Lambo forced Work Camp simulator why are my pals always upset they're upset because you're not taking care of them are you stupid beds Hot Springs cooked berries easy peasy you've got a whole Camp of Happy pal all working together if you're wondering why the game is an experience about overworking unhappy Pals all I can say is my brother in Christ you designed the camp the most interesting thing about this game I think is that I never once thought about it as being unfair or mean to the pals in my base or my party until I saw people meming about it I had envisioned it as this glorious Union of man and nature coming together to each be greater than they could be on their own I cannot fight this Beast by myself and tany cannot use a gun unless I get him one and he wants that gun but the real culmination of all of this is that the game has a strong core central theme that being pals and the utility and ability they bring to a party and then they built the rest of the systems around that idea of Pals being useful to the systems and the pals as this core binding agent are what makes an otherwise Mish mashed assortment of mechanics feel like a smooth cohesive hole but it is perhaps impossible to talk about pal world the premier little guy simulator without talking about the other little guy simulator I grew up on Pokémon I've told the story before at the start of my ODST video about how I started playing Pokémon before I could read but that means that I belong to a generation that has seen Pokémon Fall From Grace in a way that I really don't think we've seen another series do no I'm not a child anymore and the games are made for children I do understand that but is it really so wrong that just once I'd like the thing I grew up with to grow up with me even just for a moment failing that can we as people accept that just because a thing is made for kids it doesn't excuse it also being a subpar product and of course it's not just that Pokemon didn't grow up with me it's that Nintendo Nintendo has some problems there's a reason why you're not seeing anything more than still frames when I mentioned the studio and its games and it's because I simply cannot respect the studio not just for the lackluster effort of their modern game design but the way they treat the communities that do love their games still the lengths that Nintendo will go to to shut down their own community is just too much for me whether that be smash tournaments or any number of fan projects inspired by a genuine love of the Medias even as I write this there are stories about modders for pal World being hit with seasoned assist orders from Nintendo and the standard modding website Nexus has had to release a statement that they won't be allowing people to host Pokémon related mods for pal world out of fear of retaliation from Nintendo there's this element that I refer to as the court of public opinion which is really just a fancy way of saying public perception but it's how I mentally understand things that do not necessarily have clear ramifications from a purely objective lens Skyrim for example has won in the court of public opinion because even for all of bethesda's I mean quite frankly everything we all still love Skyrim and while there's yet to be any sort of clear-cut legality surrounding AI art it's clear that the notion has lost in the court of public opinion even if it ends up with full legal clearance it's hard to operate a successful business when everyone hates your model and your product and I kind of hate both Nintendo's model and their product which means to me that pal world is an incredible success not just because it's a fun game but also because it shows that what Nintendo has failed or refused to do over the last decade is both entirely possible and a valid idea let's be real for a second this game rips off Pokemon and I don't give a [ __ ] and Nintendo can't do anything about that even if they wanted to contrary to what your own attention might indicate this game has been in the works for a number number of years and the studio has been very public if you've cared to pay attention about the nature and design of the game if Nintendo the people that routinely shut down fan games and Community tournaments had any legal ground to stand on here they'd be standing on it but they don't so they aren't as far as I'm concerned they could have put Pikachu in the game they could have made Pikachu the final boss or the tutorial pal [ __ ] me man they could have made Pikachu the player character and I don't think I'd care at all Nintendo is a scumbag company and the a that I'm supposed to defend them when they actively move against the communities that still try to appreciate their games is some Dog waterer ideology can I share some stuff with you to maybe help establish perspective on where I'm at here this is the person behind the Jaden's animation Channel her name is Jaden and she's a perfectly nice creator that I've been following for a handful of years now she plays a lot of Pokémon and tells engaging stories around her experiences with those games she really likes Pokémon and it seems that Pokémon really likes her too she made a video rating the Pokémon designs in these sitting cuties lineup and she says in her video that they sent her 174 Pokémon plushies to keep for free these plushies range from the retail $10.99 to $699 USD but even if we assume that they were all the 1099 ones that still means that Jaden has such a significant relationship with Pokémon and Nintendo to receive $1,912 126 of free merch and honestly [ __ ] yeah dude get that bag if I had the chance to get almost $2,000 in free 40K merch I'd take it Jaden's relationship with Pokémon is so solid that she has a guy and you know what she had to say about the most recent games the only thing positive thing I have to say about this game is that the colors are nice but let's be honest it does not look good but it's also like Pokémon games have not been looking good so when do I when should I just cope I think at this point you don't buy a Pokémon game because it looks good you just buy it because it's a Pokemon game it is important to note that Jaden did play a lot of this game and what I'm showing are just two clips from two massive streams but I really do want to drive home the notion that even a person who loves Pokémon enough to have a guy at the company to send her free merch is pretty eh on the design of modern Pokémon games I hope you feel that that's a fair statement I do not have a guy nor do I like Pokémon enough to want one I am however a person that would tell you that the Pokémon franchise coasted for a very very long time on the Goodwill accumulated through releasing more than a few very very good games but that the company has long since spent that Goodwill Nintendo or game freak or creatures literally anyone with her hand in the Pokemon cookie jar could have made this game and they didn't they purposefully chose to leave a desired Niche open and a different company capitalized on that opening and look I want to be very clear it is perfectly fine to like Pokémon it is perfectly okay to enjoy Nintendo's games all I've said here is that I don't like modern Pokémon and I dislike Nintendo for the way they conduct their business especially in regards to Fan content all I've said is my opinion and my opinion only matters as much as you decide it does if you like Pokémon and Nintendo that is valid but one notion that I do think is important to consider here is that this aggressive negative reaction feels incredibly unique to Pokémon as a medium if a game is made that plays like Dark Souls we call it a Souls like if a game comes out that plays like Rogue we call it a Rog like if a game comes out that plays like Pokémon a bunch of children on the internet absolutely must scream and shout and let it all out and send personal emails to Nintendo's lawyers and if you come into my comment section screeching about how I'm not being fair to your favorite Corporation I'm going to hit you with a real car quite frankly I don't have any concern at all if Nintendo a massive 135-year-old corporation who's long since spent its Goodwill gets ripped off this is after all the channel That cyberpunk Built I do however have a great deal of concern if individuals are getting ripped off at this point writing this portion of the script on January 23rd of 2024 5 days into the life of pal world I am aware of two separate instances where there has been discussion around this the first is with hangu who I would tell you I love and has never done anything wrong there was an accusation by members of the reset era Forum that this little pal was stolen yes stolen by palor and taken from its rightful owner because this piece right here was made by the Sprite artist puppe whose name I do hope I'm getting correct as you can tell pal World clearly ripped off this design for hangu which they showed off in a video from uh oh from from before puppe made their piece that's that's not how blindly accusing the studio is supposed to work the the accusation is a little more up in the air with wixen however wixen seen here is said to be suspiciously close to this fan piece by atherial Hayes which is a non-official artwork of the Pokemon Del Fox who looks like this obviously hazes looks a little different but that's the point the purpose of the piece is to reimagine the character personally I think I see a bit more connection to wixen in this piece from subjectively though I believe this piece is done to give Del Fox a Mega Evolution but I think therein lies the problem it's a magical Fox man its hidden ability is literally called magician it carries a wand or a staff depending on how you interpret it between ethereal haes and subjectively we've got two people coming out with two functionally identical designs for how to show a concept that's basically gotten it all written out already is it really so crazy to think that maybe a third person had a similar idea Vixen to wixen makes perfect sense for a fox that does Fire magic both because wixen sounds like wicking but also because it includes the word wick the part of the candle that burns that holds fire and it's clear that how world is riffing off of Del Fox but so are ethereal Hazen subjectively They're all playing around the same prompt and they all came up with similar ideas I don't want to say for certain that pocket pair didn't pull from a fan design because I can't know for certain but if this hasn't been enough do me a favor just Google Del Fox with hat and please Christ alive make sure you have your safe search on a lot of people have had the idea to give a magical Firefox a wizard hat all a Gandalf or Big Hat Logan just in that alone you should recognize the Trope of wizards in comically large hats to say that pal World blatantly stole from a small Creator when it's clear that the idea is in no way owned by that small Creator in the first place feels disingenuous in a way that just doesn't sit well with me but maybe that's not enough still maybe we do need to dig deep into these two pieces specifically maybe you're one of my incredible patrons who's given me the feedback on the early release of this essay that this part deserved more attention and you know what just for that I'll do it I'll record a patch and splice in some new footage the day before this releases which is why the audio for my voice might suddenly sound a bit different one of the problems here perhaps is that all I've had up to this point has been the still images of arduo and while I can't do anything about ethereal haz's piece being confined to 2D only I can do something about wixen so I grabbed my Nightwing cake and we headed to Mount obsidian to meet a wixen in the wild and as we go I will freely say that I do see the similarities between the two pieces the frilly dangles from the Hat the long red sleeves and the puffy orange chest but for me that's kind of where the similarities end the staff or the wand is gone for wixen the face has a different shade and a different angle and model the eyes are different colors and the contrast shading on the eyes is done differently too wixen also looks to have ears underneath its fur hat and that orange chest ascends into bright Peaks on the shoulders while the long sleeves end with dangerous looking claws that are unique to wixen the cut of the outfit implied with a first coat is also unique while ethereals Del fox has a cut more in line with what I would consider some sort of like I don't know perhaps Forest witch archetype with the long flowy robes wixen is cut a bit more tight and constrained in a style that reads to me is more of a suit with a Long Jacket I'd perhaps even go so far as to say that the presented gender or the body style of each of these pieces is different because while I do read ethereal haz's piece to possess a bit of a feminine lean wixon strikes me as a more masculine lean now I did intend to capture this wixen to try and get the best look possible but instead I totally ate [ __ ] turns out there's a 10 level difference between wixen and I and I uh I can't do anything about that because I'm writing these words roughly 17 hours before you hear them but even with this shot of wixen I just don't see it being a copy or a ripoff of ethereals piece it still just looks like two things sharing a prompt to me and if you don't like that that's okay you're allowed to disagree with me me and I'm honestly not trying to change your mind I'm just trying to explain in the best detail I can why I think wixon is plenty unique given the shared prompt of Del Fox Okay uh full on editor aside here I do think it's also important to mention that this person making these claims is not the artist and I do not think they're speaking on behalf of the artist I've done a lot of poking around to try and pin ethereal down but as far as I've been able to find they're just not around right now so I don't think this person is talking with any sort of authority towards ethereals work could be wrong but here at the end of like four full minutes talking about this piece I just feel it's important to mention that as far as I'm aware ethereal Haze themselves has not said anything about any connection okay as we were failing clear valid plagiarism claims from small independent creators however there's accusations that pal World used AI art to create its creature designs and you know what the moment there's any evidence to support that claim I will talk about about it because that is a heavy claim with nothing to soundly back it up and I'm just not willing to speculate towards that regard now look I'm no h bomber guy I'm not a guy spending 6 weeks digging into the nitty-gritty and I'm not a guy with the team employed to double check my research in fact I'm not really a research guy at all I've tried my hand at it a few times for different projects and I've never really been thrilled with those final products I much more so just enjoy finding a thing that I like doing my best to identify why I like it and then telling you guys about those elements but with that in mind I have tried to do my best to be informed about what things people are saying against pal world and I have tried my best to really be fair towards people who might feel slighted by this game but more and more what I'm feeling is that the discourse around the game is largely this style of sentiment from Naughty Dog developer Dell Walker I have no proof I have no evidence but I'm going to insinuate and make claims anyways people who just cannot help but be upset that some someone else made something good I'm sorry if I'm being rude or if I'm being childish I don't I don't want to be but there's an undeniable part of me that has been waiting for this exact game since I was a child and it's hard not to feel that excitement the game isn't perfect it still has flaws but it's still the thing I've been waiting for and I can't even try to hide my bias towards it and maybe I'm wrong maybe they did straight up copy ethereal haz's artwork into blender or whatever I don't I don't know if that's possible I'm not that smart maybe they did use an AI model to commit copyright infringement for every pal in the game but I don't think they did and I really hope they didn't because the worst part of that reality is that I don't know how I'd feel what I would think and do about that it's hard to look away from something you've wanted for this long only to have accepted that it would never be a thing because the studio you were looking to to deliver it never wanted to cater to you or capitalize on the idea because I think pal World success comes from how much people like me have wanted a game exactly like this I've read plenty of posts about how pal world is unoriginal how it doesn't have a single creative idea rolling around in it and all I can think is finally someone finally just made the game we all wanted someone finally made the survival Pokemon game idea that we all talked about during lunch at high school a decade ago someone finally combined Base building and automation with the ability to just have a little guy someone finally put the ability to swim and climb a rock in the same game that lets me also have a crossbow pocket pair finally did all that and it's all I've been asking for I'm not totally sure the best way to close this one out this isn't the video I was planning on making for this round but I also wasn't planning to have the game I'd been wanting for a decade to just suddenly exist as I'm writing this I have a whole big day of work plann to try and get this video out as soon as possible both to move on to the actual things I'm intending to work on but also because look man I'm trying to grow a channel here and this game is hot right now it's not often that I get hit with a double category of things I love and also hyper popular and this is the part where I thank my incredible patrons who are the very best people in the world and have been generously supporting me and my work as I move to try and make this a stable option for my lifelong term if you want to see your name and the credits for my work get access to my work early shatter with us in the community Discord or just enjoy the feeling of supporting work you enjoy then you can follow the link and see if there's a spot with your name on it thank [Music] you

Channel: Thane Bishop

Views: 36,129

Keywords: Palworld, Video Essay, Palworld Review, Palworld Art, Palworld AI, Palworld Pokémon, Palworld analysis

Id: t6JpjwycRwI

Length: 26min 59sec (1619 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 04 2024