We Should Be Cautious About Paper Mario: The Origami King
Nintendo, as Nintendo does, suddenly dropped a trailer for a new Paper Mario game on us earlier in the week, and we collectively lost it.
Even though it’s only been four years, it feels like it has been forever since the last entry in the role-playing spin-off series, so excitement is at a fever pitch. Established fans and those who had never touched a Paper Mario before have become immediately invested thanks to that trailer and rightly so. It’s a good trailer. I myself as a long-time fan was hooked quite easily.
But as I watched the trailer, my excitement gave way to concern and anxiousness. The memories of the last couple of Paper Mario games flooded back in and, now, I can’t help but be incredibly cautious. And frankly, so should you.
There is still so little that we actually know about The Origami King and although it was rumoured as early as January that Nintendo was working on a more ‘traditional’ Paper Mario, this game looks anything but. It is giving off similar vibes to the previous two games, Sticker Star and Colour Splash, prerelease. This is concerning as these are the entries barely any Paper Mario fan likes (apologies to those who legitimately enjoy those games).
For starters, there’s the overall aesthetic. Ironically, despite being called Paper Mario, the first few games merely used it as a distinct art-style to help the series stand out against other RPGs, like the Mario & Luigi series. Rarely did the characters acknowledge that everything was made of paper; it was simply the world they lived in. This conceit was only taken advantage of for the sake of a quick visual gag or an ability, like folding Mario into a paper airplane to fly over gaps.
From Sticker Star onwards, though, suddenly everyone was talking about how they were paper. Every character had a white outline to make sure the player was constantly being reminded that they were made of paper. The environments were designed in such a way that it was more obvious than ever that, yes, this world was made of paper.
This diorama-look is cute but is it me or does everything looks a little… manufactured?
This level of self-awareness oddly makes the series less… enriching. Less engaging. Less interesting. It was as if Nintendo believed that what made the series popular was the visual aesthetic and not the actual gameplay or writing.
Speaking of gameplay, when I heard those initial rumours about the series returning to its roots, I naturally assumed that the combat would resemble that of the first two games. Mario and a partner would stand opposite enemies and take turns to perform moves. Super Paper Mario admittedly was the first to drop this in favour of a 2D platformer with RPG elements, but Sticker Star and Colour Splash were much more maligned for having turn-based battles that were dependent on items.
In those games, if you didn’t have the items, you couldn’t fight. Not only that, but there was no leveling system either. The games gave you no incentive to fight enemies, since your only rewards would be items to replace the ones you used in the battle and money to buy more of those items.
The hope was these changes would make these games more accessible to those unfamiliar with the RPG genre. RPGs can admittedly be difficult to get into for some people, but the decisions behind Sticker Star and Colour Splash felt more like pandering than anything. Why play a game that ultimately doesn’t encourage you to, well, play it?
Seeing this wacky battle system is what made me nervous.
We still haven’t seen enough of The Origami King’s battle system and, while it does seem closer to the classic style that people loved, it’s clear that Nintendo couldn’t help but do something different with it. I want to give this new ring-based system the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it’ll actually be fun, but after both Sticker Star and Colour Splash seemed to arbitrarily change the battle system just so they’d be ‘different,’ I can’t help but doubt it.
Nintendo has always prioritised innovation. It’s rarely content with making a follow-up/sequel that’s mostly the same as what came before it. But that desire to innovate is arguably one of the company’s biggest weaknesses and has backfired multiple times (*cough* Wii U *cough*).
Many are unsure if the item-based combat is gone. However, partners, which the last two games were widely criticised for excluding, do seem to be back but will they contribute anything meaningful in battle at all? Is experience a thing again? Maybe I’m getting worried for nothing but, at this point, you must understand why I’m somewhat doubtful.
I can’t deny this game is Yoshi’s Woolly World/Kirby’s Epic Yarn levels of pretty.
Part of the reason why GameCube title, The Thousand-Year Door, is so beloved is because it took us to places outside of the Mushroom Kingdom; locations we’d never see in a mainline game. The seedy town of Rogueport was bursting with personality thanks to its grungy setting and criminal locals. Super Paper Mario had Mario straight up visiting other dimensions, which allowed us to explore bizarre-looking areas with their own unique inhabitants.
In the maligned Sticker Star, it was the usual Mushroom Kingdom locales– a forest, a desert, a snowy region. Colour Splash was a little better in that regard, but not much. Both these games suffered from consisting of the characters we had met a billion times before in other Mario titles – Toads, Goombas, Shy Guys et al. with very little to distinguish them.
The first two games were filled to the brim with Toads too, but they had radically different designs to one another. The glamorous socialite wore fancy jewelry. The grouchy chef wore a perpetual scowl and apron. The Toads in Sticker Star and Colour Splash were copy-and paste characters with only a change in colour to differentiate them.
Origami King, unfortunately, seems to be going the blander route. It doesn’t look like we’ll be going outside the safe confines of the Mushroom Kingdom and the only wholly original character designs so far are main villain King Olly, his sister Olivia, and a couple of what could be the bosses.
Even the partners appear to be incredibly basic. Sure, it’s great to see them return and having Mario working alongside his enemies is a treat, but they’re so uninteresting visually.
We have yet to see what the partners' personalities are like but this is certainly no Admiral Bobbery!
For example, one party member appears to be a standard Bob-omb. Compared to Thousand-Year Door’s Admiral Bobbery, a grizzled former sailor with a thick moustache and sailor hat, it just feels lacking.
I don’t blame you for reading this far and thinking I’m just mad that The Origami King isn’t catering to my specific wants and that I think it’s bad just because it’s not Thousand-Year Door, so I’ll quickly share some things that I legitimately like.
The overall atmosphere and tone of the trailer are legitimately creepy at points, with that oddly disturbing opening of Origami Peach emerging from the darkness, complete with some unsettling dialogue. The tension of that scene would’ve fit right at home in one of the earlier titles.
In fact, the implication of origami, in the context of this world, being akin to body horror and twisting peoples’ minds helps make King Olly intimidating, along with his reach extending to so much of the Mushroom Kingdom and its inhabitants so that nowhere feels safe.
Bowser being forced to work with Mario, while not original, is always a joy to witness. If anything, the team-up goes a step further with Mario seeming to be working alongside the remnants of Bowser’s army, including Bowser Jr. which is a first. Hopefully, Bowser actually has a developed personality this time.
Peach's vacant stare is actually kind of terrifying.
Olivia is already more appealing than the previous game’s helper characters by virtue of being related to the main villain, and having Peach be not only kidnapped but apparently brainwashed could lead to some interesting moments. I’d like to see her get directly involved as an antagonist as opposed to just sitting in her castle the whole game.
The Origami King could very well be a decent game and my worries could be mitigated once we get more concrete details, but I still recommend that we keep our expectations in check.
Everything we’ve seen so far feels like Nintendo is trying to compromise. Rather than actually take the series back to its roots, it looks to be continuing to treat the Paper Mario games like a playground to experiment with and come up with ‘unique’ ideas, while incorporating what fans have wanted to see be brought back but at a very basic level.
Imagine there is a restaurant you visit because you love the pasta, especially the Bolognese sauce they put on it. Then one day, you find they no longer do the Bolognese sauce and have replaced it with squid ink. You don’t like squid ink and neither do most of the other patrons but, despite the complaints, the restaurant chooses to stick with the squid ink because it’s ‘different,’ and they don’t want to keep just selling the same pasta. Years later, you revisit the restaurant and are delighted to see that they’ve brought back the Bolognese sauce. You order the pasta, but you then realise that not only is there barely any sauce on your pasta, the squid ink is still there.
That’s how I fear The Origami King will turn out. Some seem to believe that it could be the first step to the Paper Mario series returning to form, but it could easily be another reminder that the series as we knew it is gone and Nintendo has no intention of bringing it back.
