So, I recently played through paper Mario
and the Origami King, and I really enjoyed it. The game is just great. The soundtrack is nothing short of brilliant,
there are many different and crazy set pieces that our two dimensional plumber has to survive,
the humor and the writing are top notch, definitely on par with the first two games, the whole
game is massive, yet it never becomes repetitive, it’s just a truly well made game. Yet there was this one question that I just
wasn’t able to get out of my head while playing the game. Why? Why does this game have a weird puzzle sudoku
style timer based combat system with no form of progression? Why do the weapons in this game break if we
use them too often? Why does the game give us buddies that waddle
around and talk to us, but doesn’t utilize them during gameplay? Basically, why does Nintendo refuse to reintroduce
all those features that fans of the first games, very very vocally, wanted to see return. So like, uhm, that is not a rhetorical question
for once? Like, literally, why? This question honestly started to kind of
haunt me. I ended up spending way waaay too much time
thinking about why Nintendo refuses to produce the Paper Mario game that so many people want
to see, and I believe I found the answer, or at least I have a theory. So today, we are going to explore this question. We are going to take a look at a couple of
Nintendo franchises and how they evolved , we will discuss a couple of brilliant design
decisions that nintendo recently made as well as chatter about a couple of incredible dumb
ones, we will find out how all of this is connected and why it is the reason for many
of nintendo’s more recent design desasters, at least according to my tiny catspiricy theory,
but most importantly of all, we are going to find out why the classic paper mario format
had to die. So are you ready? Let’s do this! /*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
! Part 1- 1: The part of the video that is actually about Paper Mario ! Alrightyright, so this video is basically
a huge search for the answer to the question why the wiggler nintendo refuses to take the
Paper Mario series back to its roots. But if we really want our journey for sense
and meaning to succeed, we probably should establish what exactly the roots of the series
are in the first place, and what it is exactly that Nintendo refuses to go back to. So let’s take a look at how the paper mario
formula looked like in the first two games. So, in the first two games Mario has several
partners that follow him around on his fantastic journey. Those partners often have small narrative
arcs tied to them, and each act of the game is focused on one of the partners. But those partners not only help structure
the story, but they also enhance the gameplay. Each one of them adds a new and unique ability
that our mario made out of paper is able to use as soon as the partner got unlocked. Abilities like kicking a shell to trigger
far away stuff, picking up mario to fly over spikes or my absolute personal favorite, illuminating
areas. *#wattforeva* Those abilities allow us to overcome previously
inaccessible areas, to solve previously unsolvable puzzles to find goodies and so on. It’s probably best to think about those
abilities like the items that Zelda usually finds in one of the dungeons in the game series
named after him. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Next there is the combat system. Combat in the first two Paper Mario games
works turn based. We always battle together with mario and one
of our partners against different types of enemies. After winning a battle we are rewarded with
experience points which we can use to level up mario. Finally there are badges in the game. The badge system in the first two paper mario
games is really interesting, and really brilliant. The badges are basically a skill tree that
got cut down into its different branches, and hidden throughout the world. They are items that we are able to find that
grant mario a bonus if he decides to equip them. Some are a minor passive buff, like raising
mario’s defense, while others are much more creative and much more impactful, like badges
that unlock new attacks for combat. Think of it like the brilliant charm system
in hollow knight, for those of you that played hollow knight. Finally, over the course of the game we find
upgrades to mario’s core ability set. That could be a new hammer upgrade that allows
us to demolish even bigger blocks, a jump boot upgrade that allows us to jump towards
higher places or something more simple, like paperplaneification. Hooray, that’s the gameplay of the first
two paper mario games in a nutshell. We arrive in a new place filled with many
different things to explore, puzzles to solve and secrets to uncover. We experience a small story there, befriend
a new partner that helps us overcome challenges, or allows us to grab a badge in an previously
unreachable area before we fight against dangerous foes, grow stronger and maybe even learn a
new ability, that allows us to explore previously unreachable places. It’s obviously a bit simplified, but basically
that’s the gameplay of the first two paper mario games. Games that were highly critically acclaimed,
and games that hundreds of thousands of people fell in love with. And nothing of this gameplay we just took
a look at is present in the modern Paper Mario games anymore. In origami king there are no partners anymore. There are sometimes companions that follow
us around for a chapter or two but disappear afterwards and aren’t really of any use
during combat. Combat in origami king isn’t the beloved
crazy turn based combat of the original games anymore, but instead a turn based sudoku like
puzzle minigame, mario doesn’t learn any new abilities over the course of the adventure
anymore, mario’s skillset at the beginning of the game is his skill set at the end of
it, there is much less focus on exploration, there are barely any things of value hidden
throughout the world, like the brilliant badges, but instead we find folded toads or brittle
weapons, which we can only use a couple of times before they break. There are no level ups, there are no new permanent
items, there are no cool partner abilities. There is nothing. Origami king ended up being a really good
game, at least in my opinion, but it managed to do so despite many many flaws. The combat isn’t really engaging, the lack
of progression makes exploring and fighting feel really pointless, the fact that the bunch
of partners that follow us throughout the game have no impact on combat or on normal
gameplay anymore just makes it harder to care about them and the brittle weapons just aren’t
a really replacement for the awesome badge system. It really speaks to the quality of the writing
and the different scenarios in Origami King that the game ended up being so great, because
the core gameplay is, at least in my dumble hominion far less enjoyable than what we had
in the original Paper Mario 20 years ago. Just to be super clear here, this video isn’t
about origami king thing bad. The thing is more like there is thing bad
in otherwise thing good so let’s identify thing bad so that thing bad isn’t present
in thing good next time and thing good might actually become thing great. So with all this fluff established, it’s
time to press the pause button here, and to take a detour through various other nintendo
franchises, and weird decisions they made that at first glance are all kind of unrelated,
but I promise everything is going to make sense once we come back in a bit. Hopefully. *click* /*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
!Part 1-2 : 380 moons for nothing. ! I unironically don’t know how many moons
there are in total in Super Mario Odyssey, without looking it up. I think it was 880 when the game came out,
but I believe they added a bunch of hint art moons with a patch, and then there are also
the moons that can be bought several times that make it possible to get the moon counter
up to 999. And I always thought that is such a weird
design choice. Just think about this for a second. They designed all those worlds, and all those
secrets, all the challenge rooms, the wonderful 2D sections and what not, and then they decided
to have a really weird, unintuitive number of total moons. Even stranger: they don’t really push us
towards collecting them all. The final number of moons the game pushes
us towards is 500, for unlocking the darkest side of the moon, and then the game just goes
on for, well for how long we feel like playing it. Once we found the 500drethest moon the game
no longer really rewards us for collecting more moons. It doesn’t even really acknowledge that
we are getting closer towards having found all of them. You know, Super Mario Galaxy for example has
this huge counter that slowly counts down how many stars we are missing until we found
120. And Super Mario Odyssey does the same thing,
until we reach the dark side of the moon, but then the game just doesn’t reward us
for picking up any of the missing 380 base moons. I always found that to be a really baffling
design decision, and it took me a while to come up with a tinfoil theory on why they
handle it that way. See the thing is the following. By not pushing us towards collecting all the
moons, nintendo opens up new possibilities to design moons. If we aren’t meant to collect everything,
then it becomes possible to include much much weirder and stranger stuff into the game. There is this weird moon in the deeper woods
that requires us to capture a rich money bag, and to spit out all it’s riches towards
a kind of random flower. For several minutes. That moon would be offensively bad in a game
like mario sunshine. Imagine for a second that sunshine expected
us at one point to mount our friend and dinosaur, yoshi, to ride him to a random spot a minute
away and then to vomit delicious fruit juice for several minutes until a shine, finally,
appears. That would be a catastrophe, wouldn’t it. Actually now that I come to think about it
they actually have a shine like that in the game and it is a catastrophe. Yet odyssey is able to get away with it simply
because odyssey does not expect anyone to actually complete all the moons. The moon is more of a small joke, or a little
super weird secret that the developers left in the game, but not a substantial part of
the game itself. Many of the 880 moons in odyssey are like
this. Some people may really like the walk the line
challenges, some may hate it, some players might love doing all the koopa races, some
may not enjoy it. Someone somewhere may enjoy collecting all
the seeds and bringing them to the corresponding pods for whatever reasons. I hate it. The same is true with the sheep moons, or
the hidden moon art moons, some of the challenge moons and so on. By deciding that not every player is expected
to collect every moon, by not pushing us towards collecting all the moons, Nintendo allows
themself to include weirder things into the game that maybe not everyone enjoys, but that
some people may greatly appreciate. Just as an example, I really enjoy doing all
the koopa races across all the kingdoms, but I’d rather do a full playthrough of sticker
star before I do all the seed moons, but I’m sure there is someone out there that prefers
to do the seeds over the races. This person is in my subjective opinion objectively
wrong, but she is probably out there. Not all the content in the game is for everyone,
but all the content is for someone, if this makes sense. If a person were to sit down, with the honorable
goal to binch through odyssey until they picked up each and every moon this lovely person
is probably about to have a horrible time, because the game isn’t meant to be played
like that. It’s meant to be played in a way where we
choose which content we find enjoyable for ourselves, and, as I see it, that’s the
reason why nintendo doesn’t push anyone to do any content they do not enjoy in odyssey. It’s not even necessary to complete all
of the main story bits in each kingdom in order to see the credits. Like if we wanted to we can just say, screw
the wooded kingdom, I don’t give a toad about flower theft, let Torkdrift vacuum flowers
in that silly tower for eternity, and let’s head on with the main story. All the game asks of us is to collect a certain
amount of moons in Wooded, but if we do that by playing the main story, or if we do it
by just exploring is up to us. The motivation to grab a moon should be because
we, as a player, want to, and enjoy grabbing the moon simply because it is fun to do so. If something in the game isn’t fun for us,
so be it, someone else might find it enjoyable, but the game doesn’t encourage us to do
anything we do not intrinsically find fun to do in any way. It’s what I like to call the no mushroom
on no stick principle. They don’t hang a mushroom on a stick in
the front of our faces, saying that, if we only collect enough moons we are finally able
to reach the delicious, and yum yum, mushroom, that tangles right in front of our face all
the time, they do the opposite. They simply say, here’s our game. There is no mushroom on no stick to be found,
the game is meant to be enjoyed for what it is, for as long as you enjoy it, and we are
confident that this is enough. In my reading, that is the reason why the
game stops to reward us for collecting moons after finding 500, on the one hand it allows
them to add stranger stuff to the game, while it prevents them from pushing anyone to interact
with the game in a way they do not enjoy on a moment to moment basis on the other hand. Another way to think about this, is that Nintendo
tried to subtract all forms of player progression from odyssey, until only the most necessary
progression systems were left in the game. Finding a certain amount of moons in any kingdom. Everything else in odyssey is optional, and
which moons we find is our choice as well. *click* /*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
! Part 2-1 Progress everywhere but there. ! I always wondered what breath of the wild
would look like if it were developed by a western developer. Like what does EA breath of the wild look
like, how do shrines work in Breath of the wild Bethesda edition and do our weapons break
in Breath of the Wild ubisoft version? And earlier this month I actually found it
out. Earlier this month Ubisoft released the catastrophically
named game Immortals: Fenyx Rising. And Fenyx rising is basically Breath of the
Wild, Ubisoft edition. The game takes place in ancient mythical greek,
there are dangerous evil minions to fight against all over the map, there is a gigantic
open world to explore, filled with small puzzles, and other challenges. Fenyx, our protagonist is able to climb almost
every surface in the game, as well as the proud owner of a pair of magical wings that
allows her to glide around. She is able to lift and carry heavy objects. There are dangerous shrines, called vaults
in the game that test fenyx platforming ability or her puzzle solving skills and so on. The game definitely set out to iterate upon
breath of the wild, and overall I’d say they succeeded in what they set out to do. I really enjoyed my time with the game, exploring
the world in Fenyx is a blast, but … funnily enough playing it didn’t feel like playing
breath of the wild to me. And I believe that this is, among other reasons,
to a huge part because of the way Fenyx rewards exploration. There are tons and tons of different things
that Fenyx Rising hands out as a reward for taking part in all the various activities
sprinkled over it’s beautiful world. There are hidden shards that can be used to
upgrade our lives, treasure chests that reward different colored shards that allow us to
upgrade our gear. Beating one of the many dangerous vaults rewards
us with a part of zeus lightning, which we in turn can use to upgrade our stamina bar. There is golden amber that allows us to permanently
enhance our potions using a skill tree, and most importantly there are coins which we
can use to teach fenyx new and exciting abilities. Wherever we go in the world, we will find
some of those resources that allow us to grow our character. It’s the core gameplay loop of fenyx. Explore the world, find some resources for
one of the several upgrade systems, return to the hub, level something up, explore the
world, find upgrade materials... and so on. You see where this is heading? All of those systems are mushrooms on a stick. We play the game so that our character gets
stronger so that we can play the game so that our character gets stronger and so on. There is always a new upgrade tangling in
front of our faces giving us an extrinsic, or arbitrary motivation to interact with the
content of the game. We are not only motivated to fight enemies
because we enjoy the simple act of doing so, but we are also motivated because we are really
close to a level up, we solve puzzles not only because the puzzles are enjoyable for
themselves, but because we are really close to a significant weapon upgrade, we don’t
only explore the different places of the world because they are a joy to explore, but also
because we are only two shards away from a health upgrade. That’s not a bad thing, by the way. Pretty much every triple A game nowadays has
systems like that in place. The honorable folk living in marketing departments
of tripple A publishers like to call such systems RPG systems, but I think progression
systems is the better term here. And that’s really fine, I really enjoyed
Fenxy rising, I really enjoyed God of War, or Horizon Zero Dawn, or every other major
3rd person action adventure game that features tons of tagged on progression systems. Incrementally levelling up a character just
feels really great and rewarding, and keeps people playing. The only problem I have with excessive progression
systems is that they can be abused to keep people playing a game which they stopped to
find enjoyable to play on a moment to moment basis a long time ago, but that’s a discussion
for another day. *catches pokemon* What? Pokemon Go has nothing to do with that !! The point that I am trying to make here isn’t
that progress systems are inherently bad or something, because they aren’t. What I am trying to establish here are two
things, first that most games have more progress systems than they really need to have, and
second that probably every game developer other than nintendo would have filled a game
like breath of the wild with tons and tons of different progressions systems, like we
can see in Fenyx rising. Every game developer but Nintendo, because
in a certain way Breath of the Wild is the antithesis to all of those different progression
systems. Breath of the wild is the no mushroom on no
Stick principle turned up to 11. Breath of the Wild’s progression systems
are turned down to the absolute minimum. There are only three forms of progression
systems in the game that I can think of, and they are all as minimalistically designed
as possible. There are the korok seeds, which are rewarded
for mindfully exploring the world and offer useful additional weapon stashes, there are
the shrine rewards that are the reward for almost all of the content in the game and
upgrade health or stamina and then there are the armor upgrades, that are fun to get, and
sometimes open up new interesting ways to play the game but are as optional as armor
upgrade systems get in games. That’s it. Not even the weapons that we find are a permanent
upgrade, since they famously tend to break. Just let’s take a look again at how many
different incremental progression systems Fenyx rising needs to keep players playing. Breath of the wild’s scope is much bigger
than fenyx rising is, yet they get away with only three minimal systems. It’s the same idea as with Mario Odysseys
moons. It’s the idea that we should feel motivated
to play the game because we intrinsically enjoy our time with the game, not because
there is a mushroom tangling in front of our face that we desperately want to eat. Breath of the Wild really turned this intrinsic
motivation idea up to its maximum volume. All areas in the game but the great plateau
are optional. All shrines are optional, not a single korok
seed is required to beat the game, even the four main dungeons of the game are by no means
required to see the credits. The whole idea of Breath of the Wild is to
explore all the fantastic things that are hidden all over the place in Hyrule just because
it is enjoyable to explore them, and once we have seen as much as we wanted to see we
can end the game by simply going to hyrule castle. Some people might go for all shrines, some
might not. Some might collect 600 korok seeds, I only
got around 300 during my first playthrough. You get the idea. This idea of designing games around people
intrinsically enjoying a game for what it is, instead of arbitrarily motivating them
is an idea that is present in almost every game that nintendo releases nowadays, but
nowhere is it stronger than in breath of the wild. It is what makes Breath of the Wild such an
exceptional game in my opinion. It is also a big part of what makes super
mario odyssey such an interesting game, it’s part of nintendo’s current design philosophy,
and it is present in almost every game they put out. But this focus on intrinsic motivation also
has a toxic side. An evil second side. An infectious side that corrupted many of
Nintendo's beloved franchises. A dangerous side. /*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
! Part 2-2 Losing Metroid ! There is this thing that video games often
do, and that probably every single one of you wonderful ladies and gentleman watching
is familiar with, but that I don’t really have a name for. You know, the classic metroid thing. There is an obstacle that our hero of choice
can only bypass by learning a new ability, or there is a cool optional item hidden somewhere
in plain sight, but the only way to obtain it is by obtaining a new skill first. The best example for what I am waffling about
might happen at the start of the original metroid on the NES. In this game the very first thing that our
brave hero called Metroid has to do is to run to his left, and to learn the ball transformation
ability, because further to the right is an obstacle that he can only bypass if he learned
about ballification previously. We are going to call something like that metroid
ability growth advancements or MAGA for sho … uhm we are going to call it metroid like
ability growth. So metroid-like ability growth is in tons
of Nintendo games during the N64 and the Gamecube days. It is present in every Zelda game since those
are obviously built around Link finding new and powerful weapons during his adventure. The pokemon games feature the, HM’s that
add new abilities like surfing, or moving rocks to our ability set over the course of
the game, the original Luigi’s mansion has luigi find three different elemental medals,
that act as upgrades to his vacuum cleaner and allow him to solve previously unsolvable
puzzles. Metroid-like ability growth happens in the
metroid prime trilogy ,obviously, it is a huge part of Donkey Kong 64, and the incredible
underrated game that Wario Land 3 is, heck, there is even metroid like ability growth
in mario 64. The three different caps in Mario 64 are unusable
at first, and have to be unlocked separately before we are able to use their unique abilities,
the same is true for the water nozzles and yoshi in sunshine. This concept that we learn new abilities over
the course of the game just was present in tons of beloved Nintendo franchises. So I know what at least one of you is currently
thinking, yeah uhm, ceave you alright?, Of course that’s everywhere, it’s the most
video gamey thingy ever. Tons of games, old and new, have systems like
that. It’s present in banjo kazooie, and in Sonic
Adventures 2, the same way it’s in 2018’s god of war game. Learning new abilities that allow us to overcome
previously unsolvable problems has always been part of video games, and it probably
will always be part of video games. And I tend to agree with you here, it’s
just, uhm, nintendo hasn’t really released a game like that in almost a decade. The Zelda series moved away from this concept
in breath of the wild, all abilities that link has at the end of the game are the abilities
he has at the end of the tutorial. They stopped making Metroid games, the Luigi’s
mansion series dropped the concept, so did the Mario series. Don’t get me wrong I don’t think that
the Mario series should have stuff like that, it’s just an observation. There are only three exceptions that I can
think off out of all the games released for the 3DS the Wii U and the Switch by Nintendo
and that’s first Pikmin 3, but that one was released in 2013 and we have no idea if
they plan on ever releasing a new one, it’s 2013’s a Link between Worlds and that game
is remarkable in that it actually tries to shake up the old formula where link gains
one new ability per dungeon, and instead makes most of the abilities available at once, and
Mario and Luigi, paper jam. Probably. Truth be told I still haven’t gotten around
to beat paper jam, but I assume that Mario and Luigi still learn new abilities and get
upgrades in this game the same way they did in the older titles. And that’s it. That’s the only three exceptions I can think
about, so, despite my honest and best efforts I did not manage to replay every single game
Nintendo published over the last decade for this video, so there are probably one or two
games that I missed, but that doesn’t really matter for the point I am trying to make. The point here is that around 2000 metroidvania-like
progression was present in almost every Nintendo game, but nowadays it’s a rarity, they removed
it from almost all their franchises. And I believe that’s not by accident, I
believe that is by design. And I believe that the reason nintendo hasn’t
really used metroid like ability growth in over a decade, is linked to why mario odyssey
has 380 moons more than the game pushes us to collect, and to the fact that everything
in breath of the wild is optional content but the final boss. But most importantly all of this is linked
to the baffling design decisions they made with the paper Mario series on the 3DS and
the Wii U. Ladies and Gentleman, that’s the point of
the video where it is finally time to put on our tinfoil hats and to go into full catspiracy
theory mode. *puts on tinfoil hat with cat ears* (Yes,
that’s what my tinfoil hat looks like, and my cat says that if you think that looks stupid
then that’s because you are jelous.) It’s time to take a look at all the different
evidence pieces we established over the course of this video and to try to piece them together. It’s time to come back to our mystery from
the beginning of the video. It’s time to crack our case. /*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
! Part 2 - Castle : It was Murder. ! Not a single nintendo console up until today
features a system wide achievement system. You know, those achievements that pop up in
steam when we manage to beat the first boss of a game, or on the ps4 if we, I don’t
know kill our onehundreths enemy or whatever. So to be honest, I never thought too much
about that, nintendo isn’t exactly famous for having all the state of the art features
when they launch their consoles, and I always thought the fact that they have no achievements
is simply because, well, because they sometimes are bit, uhm, behind the current innovation
curve. That is, I used to think that, until very
recently where I stumbled over a really interesting quote that the nintendo of america head of
marketing Bill Trinen made back in 2011 while watching one of Mark Brown's lovely Game Maker
Toolkit videos. In case someone is not familiar with Marks
videos I highestly recommend checking them out. So, Kotaku basically asked Trinen why the
3DS won’t have a system wide achievement system, and his answer was the following. "Basically, the way the games are designed
is they're designed for you to explore the game yourself and have this sense of discovery,"
… … “In my mind, that really encourages the sense of exploration rather than the sense
of 'If I do that, I'm going to get some sort of artificial point or score that's going
to make me feel better that I got this.' And that, to me, is I think more compelling." Allrightyright, so Nintendo actually knows
about system wide achievement systems, they just don’t want to have them in their games
because they feel that they are arbitrary. Instead of the game being rewarding to play
in and of itself, they reward us arbitrarily for playing the game. Bryce Holliday, the game director of Luigi’s
Mansion 3 said something similar when asked about why Luigi’s Mansion 3 doesn't feature
upgrades to Kotaku in 2020. Holliday: "Upgrades and skill trees aren’t
very Luigi. He is a reluctant hero who already has the
skills and bravery needed to tackle any problem. Players are helping Luigi overcome his nervousness
to expose his true talents. Cleaning, destroying and collecting are engaging,
Zen experiences that everyone is familiar with since childhood. It is compelling even if there is no other
reason than the act itself.” It’s once again the exact same idea of a
game being intrinsically rewarding to play instead of featuring arbitrary rewards that
keep us playing, even though I strongly disagree with the statement that cleaning is an engaging
zen like activity. This idea was present in Nintendo in 2011
when the 3DS launched, and this idea is still present today. This idea, I believe, is one of the absolute
core design principles with which Nintendo tackles every game they develop. It’s this idea that leads to them designing
Mario Odyssey with hundreds of moons more than the game rewards you to collect. It’s this idea that lead to them drop everything
that previously defined the gameplay of the Zelda series, like you know, linearity or
that link permanently finds new items, and lead to them design a gigantic open sandbox,
where nothing in the game is truly required to beat it, and everything is meant just to
be enjoyed for the simple sake of itself. It’s this design philosophy why nintendo
almost never uses traditional progression systems, like level ups, while the rest of
the entire industry plasters their games with them, it’s this idea why their games suddenly
started to cut all forms of metroid like ability growth, this design philosophy might even
be the part of the reason why we haven’t seen a new Metroid game in ages. And honestly, I respect that they are doing
that, actually I adore it. You know, video games are starting to be old
enough of a disziplin that we have something like certain principles of game design. Developers simply have figured out what to
do to make a gunshot feel impactful, or how to lead a player through environments using
light and colors or how to keep players engaged by permanently having a mushroom on a stick
tangle in front of their faces. But if every team uses the same toolkit to
solve all the same problems that game devs tend to face, then they end up all finding
the same solutions, which is the reason why it feels as if every second game features
the exact same skill tree. One way to not always fall back to the exact
same solutions when encountering problems, is to arbitrarily restrict oneself. Restrictions breed creativity, and I believe
Nintendo willfully restricts themselves to not use any forms of arbitrary reward systems
in all of their games in order to, you know, find more creative, and more “pure” solutions
for the problems they encounter when designing their games. More often than not this approach leads to
amazing titles, they really pushed the industry forward with some of their more recent games,
and most importantly millions of people are happily enjoying many of the experiences they
crafted. However… and this is where paper mario comes
back into the picture. Sometimes this idea just goes so fundamentally
against what a game tries to be that it simply does not work. At the beginning of the video we took a lot
of time to establish all the features that were present in the first two paper mario
games, but have vanished since. If we take a closer look at all the things
they refuse to reintroduce we can see that all of those are systems, in one way or another,
arbitrarily reward us for playing the game. We can’t have a turn based combat system
where mario levels up over the course of the game, because levelling up would be an arbitrary
form of progress, so we get either a stupid card combat without progression, or timed
sudoku puzzles. We can’t have mario befriend exciting partners
that add new abilities which allow us to overcome previously impossible to overcome obstacles
because that would be one of those metroid like ability progress systems that we are
trying to avoid, we can’t have badges hidden everywhere in the world anymore, because those
would provide an arbitrary reward for exploring the game, instead of just exploring the game
as an mean to its own end. Instead we get hundreds of fun to find but
ultimately meaningless toads, and weapon items that break after a while. We can’t have Mario learn cool new abilities,
like folding anymore, cause that would mean that the options to interact with the game
change over its course, and then our design wouldn’t be pure anymore, we either give
mario all the abilities we want him to have at the beginning or we can’t have it at
all. It’s a perfectly valid decision to decide
to cut out all the metroidvania elements, all the “mushroom on a stick” and all
the progression reward systems when developing a game. It breeds creativity, it can lead to incredible
games like breath of the wild or mario odyssey, but if they put that into every franchise,
every series and every game, then they forbid things to naturally grow into the direction
they try to grow. The reason why the changes made to the paper
mario series always felt so arbitrarily stupid to me, might actually be because they are
arbitrarily made decisions. I really enjoyed Origami King, but I can’t
stop to wonder what the same team would have been able to do, considering their talent,
if they were allowed to make a classic paper mario game. So just to be clear about this, that’s all
basically a catspiracy theory. I don’t have much to back this up, other
than a hat made out of foil and tin, a couple of observations, and a bunch of cats that
agree with me. *meow* yeah I know that you don’t believe
me, but the other cats are on my side. But the only way I can make sense of all the
things that happened to the paper mario series, is that Nintendo forcefully tried to remove
all rpg and progression systems from the game, until a collectible card game combat system
without partners was all that was left. Nintendo appears in a certain way to be addicted
to only developing games around an idea of intrinsic enjoyment. And as it is so often in life, that is not
only nintendo’s biggest strength, but also their biggest weakness. This idea allowed them to push some of their
franchises into really fascinating new directions, but I truly believe that it is time to drop
this idea for a couple of other franchises, because those franchises simply need a bunch
of arbitrary reward systems to work. So I hope you enjoyed this little video. Getting the differ ent pieces of this video
together was honestly the most difficult and exhausting thing I’ve ever written, and
I’ll probably take it a bit slower over the coming weeks because of that. Also did we really do a video of this length
about the paper mario series without a single paper pun. Wow, I honestly didn’t know that that was
legal. Anyway if you enjoyed the video, don’t forget
to leave me a thumbs up, and maybe you feel especially like hitting the subscribe button
today, for merley more reason than that you enjoy clicking the subscribe button as a means
to no ends, and want to hit the subscribe button as well. I hope that all of you have a wonderful day,
the paper pun isn’t coming, and to see you soon. Goodbye!
