I started playing Palworld when it was pretty early in its development cycle of early access, but I bounced off it as I was getting into the higher levels because I had a feeling that I’d wind up repeating work and I wanted to let it iron out some of its issues early. But from the start of its existence, the game has been compared to Pokemon because… well, how could it not be? If you called the game “that Pokemon clone but with realistic guns and a lot of horny designs,” you’d be reductive, but not entirely wrong.

Now, I could explain to you why there’s more going on in Palworld than that, and there is. But I honestly don’t want to because what’s most interesting about Palworld is the way in which it actually leans into exactly that perception. In many ways, Palworld is providing something people have wanted for years: a more “mature” Pokemon game. And a lot of its downstream effects – including the cognitive dissonance of “why did you just shoot the cute anime critter with a realistic shotgun” – are a direct result of that.

See, on a fundamental level, Pokemon has always had the potential to say a fair bit about the state of the world that the creatures and characters occupy. It’s a world in which every living thing other than human beings belongs to a specific class of entity, and a huge chunk of society revolves around capturing those entities and making them compete with one another. Potential questions about the ethics there are just the tip of the iceberg.

What does a society look like when you can generate electricity from a handful of organisms instead of any other reaction? What does the ecosystem look like? How does this influence culture on a whole? What are the ethics of turning every non-human living species into some kind of industrial product? For that matter, what influence does all this have on diet, warfare, politics…

All of these are questions that can be asked and might have some potentially dark answers. They are not questions the series is interested in acknowledging at all, and there are good reasons for that. One of those reasons is that Pokemon is a franchise that is meant to be enjoyed by and available for kids, and the fact of the matter is that while it is entirely appropriate to have media that engages with kids on serious topics, “should we industrialize warfare with Pokemon” is not really something that works there.

But Palworld does engage with it. Or, more accurately, it engages with all of this by showing why not engaging with it is perhaps a smarter decision.

The basic conceit of Palworld is that you are stranded on an archipelago which is covered in Pals. You are not the only human being there, and it’s somewhat unclear whether Pals exist in the larger world or are mostly unique to this area. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Here, human society revolves around Pals because they are the most ubiquitous source of food, labor, and companionship on the island. And yes, I meant what I said. They are non-human creatures that are treated the way human beings typically treat animals.

As a result, people like being friends with Pals. But they also industrialize them, and they are also more than willing to use them as food sources. This is not some shocking or bizarre decision; some of the Pals are really just very normal animals, albeit looking more cartoony than the average real chicken or boar or whatever that we have in real life.

Where Pokemon raises the questions but isn’t interested in answering them, Palworld dives into it. And that means that there’s an immediate sense of friction. You’re looking at a cute, stylized chicken. Why is there an option for me to butcher it for its meat? Why can I shoot it with a normal real-looking handgun? If you don’t look closely, you could imagine that someone cheaply mashed assets together and didn’t think about the implications.

But then you start marinating in the game and it makes sense. Both of these games do, on a fundamental level, posit a world that is at least basically recognizable to us as humans in a modern society. It makes sense that there would be guns, and we already have animals that provide security like guard dogs. If those dogs could hold a gun, we would make them guns.

In real life, I do not make my cat take a pickaxe to mine ore for me. This is because my cat does not have hands and also I do not require ore in my day-to-day life. Cattiva has hands and you need ore, and it’s willing to do what you tell it to do. If that makes you feel a little weird when you think you’re sending a pet to the mines… well, that’s the game’s point.

Let’s be clear, my point here is not that Palworld rewards you for being a heartless, cruel slavedriver. It does not do that. In fact, it actually rewards you more for being good to your Pals and obtaining the maximum benefit from them. But even that is a (deliberately) weird framing because it really shines a light on the fact that your relationship is purely transactional. These creatures are there to provide you with labor, combat aid, transportation, and survival necessities. Serving their needs is something you are incentivized to do because it benefits you, not just because it’s the right thing to do.

That friction is intentional. In many ways, Palworld is doing exactly what people have asked to get for years in a more “mature” Pokemon game. You might feel kind of bad killing the cute critter with a realistic handgun. How many more realistic critters have you opened fire on in video games? Why does that feel less weird? How are you going to industrialize these cute animals in the most efficient way?

And if that feels a little odd – if you find yourself feeling like it’s a genuine mashup of things that never sit quite right – it’s deliberate. I have no doubt that the artists working on the game could have made the guns or other weapons look less realistic (and indeed, the more high-end weapons look appropriately futuristic despite also looking appropriately like real hardware). The game’s actual survival and progression systems are well-balanced and well-managed. You could be bopping the cute cartoon animals with cute cartoon guns and it would have been easier to swallow.

But instead? Palworld asks you to engage with this on a somewhat more mature level. It asks whether or not you really want to see a more mature world wherein you have a villain who has been explicitly experimenting on Pals without any thought for ethics, something human beings have done to animals more than once in our history. And if it makes you a little skeeved out in the process… maybe you should think a little more about what you were asking for along the way.

There’s an MMO born every day, and every game is someone’s favorite. Why I Play is the column in which the Massively OP staff members kick back and reminisce about all their favorite MMOs. Whether it’s the new hotness or an old fan favorite loaded with nostalgia, each title we cover here tugs at our heartstrings and keeps us coming back for more.