Dishonored Dev Defends Palworld

A senior official at Arkane Lyon, the developer of the Dishonored franchise, has defended Palworld against its vocal critics, all the while offering an extremely insightful breakdown of the game. His detailed thoughts on PocketPair's latest title stand in stark contrast to the accusations that Palworld is a shameless ripoff of Pokemon.

The $30 survival game with monster taming mechanics has taken the world by storm since launching in early access on January 19. But its massive success has also invited a lot of scrutiny from some gamers who keep insisting Palworld is a lazy copy of Pokemon.

Dinga Bakaba, the studio director and co-creative director at Arkane Lyon, has now chimed in on the ongoing Palworld vs Pokemon controversy. Taking to Twitter, the industry veteran shared a detailed breakdown of the game spanning 21 tweets and over 2,000 words. The write-up begins with Bakaba pointing out that Palworld is first and foremost a survival game in the vein of Ark and Rust instead of a Pokemon clone. On the subject of its similarities with Game Freak's franchise, the Arkane official noted that PocketPair's title never pretended not to be a Pokemon parody, so some overlap isn't just understandable but par for the course.

Bakaba also praised the immense effort that went into seamlessly blending all of Palworld's many mechanics, noting that he was «baffled» to see some people label the game as «lazy.» Elaborating on that point, Arkane's studio director said that creating an experience that plays well and is accessible is no easy feat, especially when it comes to a project that's juggling with as many different elements as Palworld is. Bakaba also dismissed the allegations that the game's character designs might have been churned out with AI tools as baseless.

As a game designer, I'm baffled that some say [Palworld] is lazy.

Finally, the developer stated that while there's obviously no obligation for anyone to like Palworld or any other game, this does not justify bashing people