Why the Paper Mario Series Keeps Changing
Channel: Video Game Story Time
Date: 2020-07-17

Paper Mario: The Origami King is here! We've played a few hours of it, and, well, it sure is a game that you can play on your Nintendo Switch. That's about all we have to say for now.

The game is the latest in a long line of Paper Mario games, a Nintendo series that doesn't seem to have a clue what it wants to be or how it wants to play. Every recent entry in the series, from Sticker Star onwards, plays in a fundamentally different way to the games before. Not only has the series long abandoned the detailed storytelling that made The Thousand Year Door such a cult classic; the series can't even agree on a single battle mechanic.

So why do the Paper Mario games seem so obsessed with reinvention and evolution? According to longtime series producer Kensuke Tanabe, the games endlessly change because the team is afraid of players ever getting bored.

Apparently, while developing Paper Mario: Sticker Star, the team showed Shigeru Miyamoto a series of prototypes, but he found them all to be dreadfully boring. He doesn't strike us as a fan of text in games in general!

So, in an effort to appease the creator of Mario, the team has made every subsequent Paper Mario game filled with unique gameplay twists and surprises. They focus on coming up with as many paper gimmicks as possible in the hopes of keeping the player's attention span, and they're specifically targeting a casual audience that they feel is in danger of getting bored unless they're constantly shown something new or original.

The result is a series that is fundamentally different with every new installment, for better or worse. Regardless of your opinion on The Origami King, it's hard to deny the effort and eagerness with which the Paper Mario developers fill their games with pleasant nonsense.

Anyway, hope you're staying safe!

Lots of love,
BretonStripes (http://twitter.com/bretonstriped) and Kotor (http://twitter.com/kotorcomics)

Sources:
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/features/interviews/paper-mario-origami-king/
http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/3ds/papermario/0/4