Steam, lemmy and reddit are currently creaming themselves over a game which devs makes multiple really cringe "jokes" about slavery and exploitation. Read the steam page descriptions.
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Those "pals" are clearly antropomorphised creatures being dogwhistle for humans. And if you read the game reviews, even the g*mers are not lost on that fact (just they love that):
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You can also capture and sell human NPCs.
Supposedly in the game's lore Pals were also originally humans (somehow...), which is why you can capture both with the same pokeball.