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.
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):
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.