Palworld's over zealous police are even worse than the cops in GTA right now

I'm still working my way through the grim realities of Steam mega-hit Palworld, but as developers Pocketpair begin working through their 50,000-strong pile of bug reports, I'd hazard to add one more to the pile: please, something must be done about this game's ruthless police force, who are so dogged in their pursuit of evildoers that they literally will not stop chasing you until you've been shot dead.

During my first 30 minutes of playing Palworld last week, around half that time was spent trying to hide from its damn police goons. Sure, I will fully admit to being at fault here. I shouldn't have whacked that NPC sitting by the opening campfire with my wooden club. Listen, I just wanted to see what would happen, all right? After all, this game has no qualms with putting your Pals to work in your sweatshop-like base, or shooting them with actual machineguns, so would it really care if I treated its NPCs the same way?

It was an honest experiment born from the same desires we all harbour when playing games like GTA - i.e: mess with the NPCs as much as possible - but it was one that turned out to have dire consequences. For as soon as my club collided with that NPC's shoulder, a big red eye appeared the centre of the screen with a blaring alarm noise, and an all-caps WANTED was stamped up in the corner. "Assault x1", it stated, trying to be all GTA without the star rating. "You've been spotted!" it continued, and then swarms of Lv.24 guards appeared from absolutely nowhere.

Since I was merely Lv.3 at the time, I didn't stand a chance fighting them, so naturally, I legged it, trying to find a spot to hide out of sight until the heat died down. But try as I might, they just kept coming, as if they had some sort of built-in X-ray vision that let them see exactly where I was. I jumped down cliffs, jumped into rivers, fast-travelled, all to no avail. At one point, I even hid in the sea, but they still made a beeline for me regardless, swimming out to continue shooting me with their assault rifles.

I spent so long trying to run away from them that the in-game timer turned from day into night. Clearly, they have night vision, too, as even the darkness didn't save me from their eternal pursuit. It was a distinctly un-fun 15 minutes or so, and the idea of basically being forced to die just because I grazed the shoulder of an NPC felt unncessarily grim and depressing. Even the cops in GTA aren't that bad (and GTA 6 better not get any ideas about what to do with their cops either). Eventually, I realised I just had to give up, so I resigned myself to an early death. To add insult to injury, the game then forced me to drop all my stuff, which I'd then have to go and collect again on a fresh respawn.

Really, I should have consulted the 'Crime' section in Palworld's built-in survival guide, as that lays out quite clearly that attacking friendly NPCs will instantly get you reported and labelled a criminal. "You will also be branded a criminal for sneaking into areas around the island where trespassing is forbidden," it continues, and "if someone sees you commit a crime, the Palpagos Islands Defense Force (PIDF) will come after you".

I'd suggest an addendum to this to say they'll come after you "and literally kill you where you stand", but I suspect the PIDF wouldn't take too kindly to that. Even if I was the same level as the PIDF guards, would ~150x Murders also get added to my rap sheet as I tried to defend myself? Would they ever stop coming for me as a result? Maybe there's a diary feature in 'Can I actually become a Palpagos Kingpin by staying alive for as long as possible and levelling up all my Pals trying to fend off its dumb guard force?'

Either way, it seems needlessly cruel - though that's hardly that surprising given how unfeeling the rest of the game is, I suppose. I wonder whether tempering the PIDF's relentlessness has made its way onto Pocketpair's giant to do list. I hope it has, because woe unto anyone who accidentally biffs an NPC fighting a Pal or Alpha. You might get way more than you bargained for.