Could Palworld teach Pokémon and Game Freak something?

Palworld is moving towards 10 million copies sold in the space of a week or so, a phenomenon that goes far beyond simple curiosity for a strange game featuring “Pokémon with guns”, demonstrating how behind its structure and mechanics there are appreciable choices and solutions in the design field. Thinking about these, there is something that Pokémon could learn from Palworld? It is natural to associate the two titles due to the presence and appearance of the “Pal”, the creatures which obviously closely resemble those present in the famous series of The Pokémon Company and which are also at the center of the various controversies and disquisitions on possible plagiarism. To tell the truth, if you look at the two games closely you realize how different they are from each other, starting from the reference genre, given that the Pocketpair title can easily be attributed to actual survival games, which certainly isn't it can be said of Pokémon.

However, there are also points in common and elements that could be studied by Game Freak to understand how to evolve their series, or if nothing else to see what the public appreciated so much in Palworld and possibly integrate it into their own projects. It is essential to point out that we are talking about two substantially different gamestherefore the many comparisons that are made can be considered misleading, but there is no doubt that there may also be points of convergence and it is reasonable to think that both products are aimed at at least partially overlapping audiences.

Some food for thought for Game Freak

The first features that could be looked at with interest by Game Freak are the technical implementation and the openness of the game world: Pocketpair is a relatively small team but has managed to reach a notable level of quality in graphic terms, thanks to the exploitation of Unreal Engine 5 which proved to be decidedly efficient for a title of this kind.

Linked to this aspect, the fact that Palworld presents a open world and freely explorable could provide some ideas to the Pokémon authors, but here we are talking about design rather than technical possibilities. In the new game you can access any area while the Game Freak titles, despite having definitely opened up recently, always follow a path underlying the player's progression, so it would possibly be a matter of reviewing this system to give greater freedom of initiative to the player. The presence of very extensive and deep crafting is typical of survival and is less logically comparable to a game like Pokémon, but it is certainly a feature loved by the public which has also found some glimmer of hope in the Nintendo series, therefore a possible evolution of this aspect.

The most interesting features for Pokémon

Perhaps the most appropriate characteristic to draw on is probably the degree of interaction with the creatures we find in Palworld: leaving aside the strangest and most questionable derivatives, such as the fact of being able to arm them to fight or to be able to butcher them to obtain food, things that are decidedly difficult to see transferred to Pokémon, many other aspects are interesting and potentially enriching for the series. Already the latest chapters such as Scarlet and Violet have introduced some types of specific mounts, but what we saw in Palworld is certainly more advanced and complex, with a greater quantity of creatures that can be used for movement with different effects and ideas that could be transferred into Pokémon. Even the possibility of exploit skills more widely it is an intelligent element, which could open up various avenues in the gameplay field: in the Pocketpair game, for example, creatures that breathe fire or water can see their abilities used in various ways even outside of combat, significantly expanding the gameplay possibilities , just as it is possible to put various other skills at the service of crafting and more.

Finally, the pervasive presence of multiplayer of Palworld is something that we have not yet seen in Pokémon, at least at these levels and how it should be structured also through the next updates. Servers on PC allow up to 32 players to be within the same server and therefore share the game world (only 4 on Xbox at the moment), generating situations that are not found in Pokémon chapters, but this also applies for interactions between players, who can collaborate on multiple levels in the gameplay. Various types of PvP, arenas and more are coming soon which could be more similar to the typical structure of Game Freak's multiplayer, but it is clear that in this area there may be room for maneuver for the team linked to Nintendo.