There's a lot to explore in Palworld, but despite the amount of terrain, players have been hoping, praying for and asking about going underwater in the monster collector for years. Alas, a lead figure has gone on the record yet again to crush any expectation that such a thing may happen.
On the game's official Discord, John 'Bucky' Buckley, head of publishing and communications, comments about the prospect, and his words are definitive, to say the least. "I promise you, I absolutely promise you," he starts.
"Underwater is not happening," he says. "And I'm telling you that now to spare you the heartbreak later."
Just to remove any lingering potential one might have, he doubles down. "It literally is never happening in Palworld," Buckley adds. "Make your peace with that now." I've inserted the famous Dumb and Dumber clip of Jim Carrey's Lloyd naively pondering, "So you're telling me there's a chance?" as it's the first thing that came to mind.
But he really couldn't be clearer. Buckley actually told us here at GamesRadar+ why this is a complete pipe dream, and the answer is simply one of logistics. "You're talking about rewriting a lot of the game's bones to allow for that," he said. "And so, these ideas, these big ideas – that's what you get into. Is it worth that massive kind of restructuring?"
Palworld's structure, built in Unreal Engine 5, just isn't compatible with going into the ocean depths, or up to outer space, for that matter. He mentions it could be on the drawing board for a sequel, but that's extremely hypothetical.
"If, and it is a very big IF, we ever got to the point where we started to think about making a Palworld sequel," he says in another Discord comment. "Then maybe that would be considered from day one."
Time to take it off the wishlist for this game, and place it on the dream scenarios for the follow-up. I'm sure Palworld 1.0 will have plenty to enjoy regardless.
