Palworld 1.0 quietly redesigns four Pals to look less like Pokémon

Palworld's 1.0 launch brought hundreds of documented changes, but Pocketpair slipped in a few more that never made the patch notes — several Pal designs have been visibly altered, and players are only now noticing.

Four Pals have been confirmed as redesigned: Verdash, Robinquill, Fengallop, and Grintale. Verdash is now more squirrel-like and less reminiscent of the soccer-playing rabbit Pokémon Cinderace. Robinquill has lost its red cape, which had made its silhouette immediately recognizable to Pokémon fans familiar with Decidueye. Fengallop has been recolored and made more deer-like to distance it from Cobalion. Grintale's mouth has been redesigned so its face reads as more original rather than echoing Galarian Meowth. None of these changes appear in the official patch notes — players spotted them by comparing old and new screenshots.

The redesigns land in the middle of ongoing legal pressure. Nintendo and The Pokémon Company filed a patent dispute against Pocketpair over gameplay similarities, initially seeking 5 million yen (roughly $30,000) each plus late-payment damages and an injunction that would have blocked Palworld's release. A judgement is still expected later this year. Pocketpair has already made changes to game mechanics believed to be a response to that lawsuit, and these visual tweaks fit the same pattern — quietly distancing Palworld from its most obvious Pokémon parallels without drawing attention to the fact.

Community reaction is split along predictable lines. On the Palworld subreddit, the response is largely positive — many players say the updated models actually look better, and several admit they avoided using Verdash and Robinquill specifically because the designs felt too derivative. On ResetEra the tone is more critical, with users arguing the Pals should never have looked so similar in the first place, and reading the unannounced changes as an implicit admission that the original designs crossed a line. Pocketpair has not commented publicly on the redesigns.