I quickly read through the article to check if anyone at Ubisoft Montreal or Quebec were being laid off… Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was one of the most amazing games I’ve ever played. Those devs are bloody brilliant. Luckily it seems not.

Hurt people hurt people.

There’s a relationship cheat code I use all the time. It usually stops everything in it’s tracks and sets you on a much more positive path, especially if they’re not used to you doing this. When you find yourself at that point in a conversation where you’re about to shout something like “OH FFS! WHAT’S THE MATTER NOW?!” instead… you pause, look at them, tilt your head a bit, narrow your eyes thoughtfully and say as calmly as you can “What do you need?”. No matter how mad they get after that you just keep asking that question until they respond to it. If you haven’t done that before it may take them a while to even notice you asked that question. Just keep going. Oh also top tip… when they tell you what they need don’t invalidate it. It’s hard for a lot of people to directly tell you what they actually need. If they do then they’re trusting you to listen. Breaking that trust will take you right back to square one.

I think the thing that’s the most confusing about this is why did they wait??

"The timing is particularly baffling: Nintendo did not strike when the iron was hot and everyone was talking about Palworld and Pokémon, and at this late date, why bother? The greatest heights of Palworld’s success were clearly driven by the memetic catchiness of its Pokémon parody, now it’s just another survival crafting game with a stable enough core community⁠—see also Valheim or Sons of the Forest. Palword has faded into the background, a brief curiosity overshadowed by 2024’s far more enduring megahit, Helldivers 2. Just in time for everyone to have largely forgotten about Palworld and moved on, Nintendo has swooped in to announce: “In case you’ve forgotten, they’re the little guy, and we are huge, awful bullies.”

Palworld has reportedly made nearly $500 million now (source - Simon Carless). Even if Nintendo win in some way won’t it cost them so much more to take Pocket Pair down now?

Thanks for that. I might give it another go. I have ADHD and I wonder if that also doesn’t help because remembering a lot of names and details is hard for me. My short term memory is really only reliable until I see any random shiny thing. I tried using the evidence board to track literally everything I saw but it quickly became way too ovewhelming. I’ll give it another go though I think.

I really, really wanted to like this game. I love the look and feel of it so much but I just needed a clearer bit of hand holding to figure out what I was supposed to do. It’s so open ended and I could never really tell if I was on the right track. I love the idea of crawling through vents, interrogating people, sneaking about and putting together pieces of evidence but it was just too overwhelming for me. I wish there was a guide that just explained simply how you’re supposed to play but I haven’t found one yet.