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Pal World and the Phases of Art

Earlier in January I was fortunate enough to see the release of a certain video game titled Pal World. Now to start this off let's go through a synopsis of the game itself. In an epic fantasy world, the player must capture, befriend, or enslave these unique creatures called pals. The player can use their pals to survive and thrive on their quest for justice, treasure, and glory. Now if this sounds familiar it's because it is eerily similar to the worldwide phenomenon game called Pokémon. Now as a lifelong fan of Pokémon I became interested in pal world from the get-go. Now when pal world was announced it caused major controversy by being so similar to Pokémon. It almost has grounds for a lawsuit. But that's not what I really want to talk about. There have been other Pokémon clones over the years. Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh, metabots, yo kai watch, bakugan, Beyblade. Anyway, I think the real key to Pal World's success comes from its differences and not its similarities. In Pal world you can mine and craft different materials including structures, much like the other popular game Minecraft. Also, the player can fight the pals using a multitude of weapons including guns as well as killing the pals. Also, once the player kills the pals they can cook and eat the pals. Once the player captures the pals, they can put them to work planting fields or mining resources essentially making them do slave labor. The enslaved pals can then not like the working conditions and revolt at which time you could kill the revolting pals, cook the pals, and then feed them to your other enslaved pals. The player can find other human characters and kill them with weapons including guns. The player can capture other human characters in poke balls or in this world pal spheres and force these other humans into slave labor. The player can give their pals weapons including guns and rocket launchers. The player can use their pals as weapons themselves like flame throwers or grenade launchers. It is for all these reasons that I have to contend that playing pal world is very different from playing Pokémon. So, pal world is a game that wears its influences on its sleeve. But the sum of its parts has created something truly unique. Also, I think the dichotomy between these two games is a good expression of different ideologies. You see in the eastern countries like Japan their ideological framework promotes a Buddhist view of man's relationship to nature specially that man and nature must live in harmony and balance. That balance is something that must be maintained looked after. That's something that Pokémon embodies to a tee. The main characters of Pokémon fight to maintain the balance between humans and Pokémon and any antagonist is someone who comes in and upsets that balance. While in the west and especially in the U.S.A we follow a biblical approach to nature. Where God has given man dominion over nature and animals, and we may do whit them whatever we want for we are their masters. That is what Pal World embodies. The relationship between the player and the pals is constant antagonism with the player using the pals and the pals attacking the player. The player must become the master of these pals and use them in every way imaginable. So, Pokémon is all about maintaining balance and Pal World is all about dominion and mastery. So, Pal World sets itself up to go in completely different directions while only changing one idealistic structure. Here's what I'm talking about. When I was in film school I learned that art mediums go through eras. There are four distinct eras that film or any other art can go through. They are primitive, classicistic, revisionist and parodic. In the primitive phase the art comes into its beginning forms really just trying to figure out what works for it and what it could possibly look like. For a movie example think of the 1966 Adam West batman movie. In the classicistic phase the art form really comes into its own and establishes the genres tropes innerworkings and what really makes this genre itself. A movie example would be the 1989 Micheal Keaton Batman. In the revisionist phase all those tropes established in the classicistic phase are amped up and pushed to their limits. Also, some new tropes are added and the genre really expands it's scope into a fuller and richer experience. For a movie example think of the Dark Knight from 2008. And finally there's the parodic stage where all of these tropes are pushed to their extremes to a point where it's goofy and silly. Most parodic movies are comedies. A good movie example would be the 2017 Lego Batman movie. As time goes on the phases become new with a neo classicistic and neo revisionist phase then back to parodic. To the best of my knowledge there's no such thing as neo parodic. So what does this have to do with pal world? I put it to you that pal world is not a rip off of Pokémon but instead just an evolution in the genre. This game is in fact neo revisionist. It pushes the genre to new highs and explores in new directions. While some might say this game is parodic I like to give it a little more credit and say it it's neo revisionist. While this game can be as controversial as it wants it forces us to admit something. As the years go on we can't just play the same kinds of games forever. Art is made to evolve and video games are no exception. This game does make me feel happy to see all the echoes from the past Pokémon games as well as plenty of other new innovations that have made games more enjoyable and palatable. So maybe there's some hope for the future in the game of pal world. But what do you guys think? Is pal world a shameless rip off or the greatest game of all time? Let me know in the comments.