Palworld has brought back a Pandora's Box that Pokemon let open in Black/White: Does Team Plasma have a point? Is the player in Pokemon/Palworld an evil entity just for playing?
Some preliminary context for those unaware. Pokemon Black/White's version of an evil team was Team Plasma, which argued that Pokemon trainers were evil for capturing Pokemon and forcing them to fight alongside them. While the game gave us the character of N, who is honest and sincere in his ideas and intentions, Team Plasma is presented as an hypocritical boogeyman that wants to force all other trainers to free their Pokemon, but secretly this is only a ploy to make sure no one can oppose them when they attempt to grab power for themselves.
Palworld has its own take on the idea: out of the different hostile factions, we find early on the Free Pal Alliance, which similarly argues that capturing pals and forcing them to do your bidding is evil, and we find again that their leader really commits to the idea, but her underlings are constantly attacking pals in the wild and sometimes even putting them in cages.
Perhaps surprisingly, the Pokemon fanbase was very defensive of this idea, often repeating the arguments provided by the games that captured Pokemon like the companionship anyway, dismissing the fact that wild Pokemon violently resist being captured unless you force them into submission to accept the Pokeball. The fact that you forcibly push them into a situation where their previous freedom to choose not to associate with you gets overwritten by a newfound willingness to obey means that they're being effectively brainwashed - if we were to apply our real life standards to this situation we would say without a doubt that the situation is exploitative and we're wiping our ass with the idea of consent. Palworld is even more "in your face" about this, given that the brainwashing mechanic of Pokeballs/spheres does not only work on the mons, but on humans as well. The general reaction of the Palworld community seems to be acknowledging that it's fucked up, but nonetheless jumping straight to the fact that the Free Pal Alliance are hypocrites as a whole or even calling them a parody of PETA.
My position here is: should these games even address the ethical dilemma? Once you put the ethics into the game's narrative, the designers are basically forced into going to "Yes, but" territory, since acknowledging the ethical issue leads you to the conclusion that the game only allows you to play as a morally dubious character at best, but given that that would be unwise from a marketing pov (at least for Game Freak), the narrative ultimately has to twist the argument into some sort of fallacy (The Pokemon actually want to be captured/The Free Pal Alliance is full of hypocrites anyway), which in my opinion is actually the heinous design decision, since you're pushing the player into twisting the moral dilemma in a way, thus training moral hypocrisy, rather than the much healthier position "Yes, capturing Pokemon/Pals is evil, but it's a game so no actual sentient creature is being harmed".
Both Pokemon Black/White and Palworld hint at the idea of human-Pokemon/Pal association out of free will through the character of N and the Free Pal Alliance, who do not capture their creatures, but rather they choose to cooperate with them out of real free will, but this option is mechanically impossible for the player (save, arguably, for rare exceptions where Pokemon freely join you through through scripted events). This ends up cementing the ludonarrative dissonance where the player has to justify themselves into thinking that what they're doing is morally acceptable, despite being presented with actually ethical in-lore alternatives that they just do not have access to. It is understandable that, from a game design perspective, the Pokemon/Palworld developers do not want to spend significant effort into reworking the mechanics of Pokeballs/spheres, which are already effectively fun for their gameplay loops, but that leads them into the position where Team Plasma and the Free Pal Alliance have to become caricatures of their actual ideas, which on the other hand is a waste for their respective lores.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my rambling. My Chikipis have already laid all the eggs I need for baking cakes, so I'm off to butchering them for meat, bye.
Pokemon black/white is definitely an interesting game while still bringing it in to a satisfying return to status quo. You're initially introduced to team plasma right after you get your first pokemon, and have not only had a chance to catch some early game mons, but are even encouraged to catch as many as you can by your friends. Team plasma, then, provides a stark contrast, the proposal that pokemon should be free from humans, and humans are just oppressing them. You then bump into N, who sees your bond with your pokemon, and has his own worldview challenged, that maybe humans and pokemon are strongest together.
Further into the game, you discover that team plasma is just a farce to separate people from their pokemon in order to make it easy for ghetsis to take over, and that he carefully manipulated N's gift to be able to talk to pokemon in order to make him truly believe in the cause of pokemon liberation. And this is displayed through the gameplay as well. N doesn't have a permanent team. Rather, he uses pokemon from the nearby routes whenever you battle him, and he lets them go afterwards.
The conclusion of the story is that there is no one right answer, that neither truth nor ideals are the way forward on their own. N is convinced by you through your efforts that pokemon and people are truly capable of achieving greater heights together, while still accepting that there are pokemon being abused that are deserving of help.
Insert b2w2. It's a few years later, and team plasma has split. There's the faction who follows ghetsis, neo plasma, and the traditionalists who still follow N. While the latter is focused on righting the wrongs of plasma's past, neo plasma has moved to be more extreme, with ghetsis still seeking power.
Fun side note, the climax with ghetsis and kyurem is the only time in the series where the antagonist tries to kill the player. Not beat you in a battle. Kill you. Directly and personally.