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Pre-Release Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (2024) — Pre-release Discussion Thread
- Thread starter mazi
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isaacmaltes
Octorok
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This thread gives me those vibes of those reviewers who said Super Mario RPG was “more of a remaster” because it didn’t change the entire game like FF7 did. 
Superstarxalien
pfp by @ShiiNoctua
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are the sonic origins versions of sega genesis sonic games remakes or remasters in your eyes
JazzyFuture
Koopa
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The way I see it, a remaster is when the game is built directly on top of the code and animations of the original. You can still have visual improvements and even design tweaks like this (See OoT 3D and Prime Remastered for some excellent examples), but it's still largely the same game.
A remake, as seen here, is when they're rebuilding the whole thing from scratch, it doesn't matter how faithful it is, it can be super faithful, or be a reimagining and basically a different game entirely. This definitely seems to be a faithful remake, but the redone animations and everything that makes it impossible to just be the Gamecube game running on modern hardware with some assets and lighting replaced do not make it a remaster.
But then again, everyone's definition of a remaster is different, Activision called the Crash trilogy "remasters" when they're definitely more remakes. It's all semantics anyways.
A remake, as seen here, is when they're rebuilding the whole thing from scratch, it doesn't matter how faithful it is, it can be super faithful, or be a reimagining and basically a different game entirely. This definitely seems to be a faithful remake, but the redone animations and everything that makes it impossible to just be the Gamecube game running on modern hardware with some assets and lighting replaced do not make it a remaster.
But then again, everyone's definition of a remaster is different, Activision called the Crash trilogy "remasters" when they're definitely more remakes. It's all semantics anyways.
JazzyFuture
Koopa
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For that, I feel like it provides another layer of "what makes a remaster vs a remake". Technically, the Retro Engine games use all new code for their engine, reverse engineering the feel of classic Sonic. But the way they just use the old assets (with some new ones in a few cases where needed, mostly S3&K) makes me feel more comfortable in calling them remasters. Similar to Half-Life Source. It's not actually running in an updated GoldSrc, it's running on Source, Half-Life 2's engine. You could call this a remake, but it still has so much of original version's skeleton in other ways (mainly assets) that I think it fits the term remaster better.
rickyson33
Koopa
I feel like much like stuff like the silly arguments people have about the term JRPG or whatever this remake vs remaster stuff really misses the point
like not to sound too harsh but much like genre terms the entire point of these terms is to differentiate things for consumers and no potential consumer is ever going to be helped by your ultra pedantic take that it's a remake not a remaster because technically the games graphical assets got remade or whatever, if anything in practice by muddying the waters from how people actually use these terms colloquially you're just outright confusing people that just want to know how different the game actually is from the original
like not to sound too harsh but much like genre terms the entire point of these terms is to differentiate things for consumers and no potential consumer is ever going to be helped by your ultra pedantic take that it's a remake not a remaster because technically the games graphical assets got remade or whatever, if anything in practice by muddying the waters from how people actually use these terms colloquially you're just outright confusing people that just want to know how different the game actually is from the original
JazzyFuture
Koopa
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Remake isn't even a genre term. It doesn't even originate from video games.
Some random person isn't really gonna care what counts as a remake or remaster. It's just a discussion between nerds.
Hailinel
Musou Mania!
We really don't know how much of the old GameCube game code is under the hood.
T-Hell
Tektite
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How are our takes ultra pedantic? We are just.. explaining it?
soundchaser
DA CHEAT
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The remake/remaster debate always gets mystifyingly heated, and I still don’t understand why. (The term “remaster” shouldn’t even apply to video games anyway, because it’s about a specific finishing process in other forms of media.)
VintoWin
Moblin
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Fair. None of us know the exact specifics of what is going on. I'm sure they didn't start from absolute scratch but here's the thing. They obviously recoded battles to have like a start up section where the stage sets itself up. That's just one example. Other examples are certain overworld actions being slower, newer animations all across the board for the activation of buttons... back sprites.... etc etc. Extensive work has been done to the graphics. Maps have been rearranged.
It's kinda like...at what point do we call it a remake lol. In my eyes if they just redo the textures and stuff sure, but the whole entire map geometry has been redone along with extensive work to the animations of everything.
Also, Nintendo seems to let us know when it's just a remaster by putting something in the title of the game to make it obvious.
In comparison it seems like minimal work has been done to Luigi's Mansion 2 HD?
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rickyson33
Koopa
because nobody outside of weird internet arguments actually uses those terms in that sort of way
they're colloquial terms, when people say remake what they actually mean is is the game substantially different from the original in a consumer facing way, not from a code perspective or whatever but stuff like are there major gameplay changes? is the art style radically different like turning an old 2D game into say a 2.5D or 3D game? stuff like that
people can argue about technical meanings or whatever but when people get upset about people using terms like this in the colloquial way that most people actually use them in they're really missing the point
VintoWin
Moblin
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No one would call Luigi's Mansion 2 HD or Metroid Prime Remastered a remake. Which gives us our practical answer.
Yeah, anyone that wants to argue "well the game still uses 10% of the code from the original" is really pushing it.
Bargo
Rattata
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if she was single-handedly like, 10% of the reason for the more conservative designs in Sticker Star onwards lol.
Of course, I'd rather they take a swing at making interesting characters, even if they occasionally miss, than never really try at all.
Marce-chan
Magical Girls <3
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And that's exactly where the trick is, imho.
Luigi's Mansion 2 HD clearly has geometry touched up and new models at least for Luigi, ghosts, some scenarios have been heavily reworked (and some made from "scratch" but with an skeleton, if that makes sense).
Luigi's Mansion for 3DS is, by all accounts, a visual remake. It looks like everything was rebuild, while probably using the same code or at least animations or something. Like Metroid Prime Remastered. And we even go down to call that a "port".
Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition is the caveat that is indeed middle ground. It replaced character models, most assets, all textures, etc. But it does reuse the terrain as foundation, but makes up for it by adding foliage and stuff.
I believe the jump from N64 to 3DS back when Ocarina of Time 3D released was just super high and they did remake from scratch everything that "matters" as in all character models, houses, etc. I'm not completely certain if they didn't just heavily rework some of the original models or the terrain and added stuff to make it look all new like Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition did. So either mid ground like XBCDE or faithful remake like Metroid Prime Remastered. Back when it released it was considered a remake, nowadays we look at it as a remaster.
Wind Waker HD was a case where the new lighting and the art style made it look accurate as a Wii U game because it's beautiful. But it didn't remake anything from scratch and tbh it looks like it was all well done texture and shading work and it didn't touch up geometry.
The, imo, useless criteria of "the code", would make one game an actual remake. Xenoblade Chronicles for New 3DS. The game had to redo the code from scratch to get it running on the New 3DS. BUT, everything else is the same. They had to redo the code but could reuse all assets, textures, world building and everything.
I think the producers said Resident Evil Remake(!) was "80% new". They used the original as a foundation, and remade everything else. Just like... Metroid Prime Remastered.
The "Wii U ports"... Well. Early on the PS4 generation we had a bunch of games that were ported from PS3, now at 1080p, which we called... Yes, remasters. At that point the line between one and the other in my vision was "remaster: reworks textures, higher resolution" "remake: remakes all assets". I mean Super Mario 64 remade a lot of textures, bumped resolution, touched up some models(Mario's mustache and eyes being modeled) and etc. But it was made in a so subtle way and literally looking the same as the original so we all call that a "rom dump" when it did... Well, what The Last of Us Remastered did, but aiming to look much prettier.
Again the criteria is super confusing now. The Last of Us Remastered would be a port using "port" as we use for Wii U(and even very touched up remasters of PS360 for Switch that go even beyond PS3-PS4 ones) games, since it was mostly higher resolution and some higher resolution textures(not all tho since GoW III is literally just a resolution bump like MK8 DX, but without new content). The Last of Us Part I would be a remaster because it's literally the same thing TTYD and MPR are, with the difference that the latter are more different from the originals than the former because it's a 20 year difference instead of 8.
I'd say that "visual remake" is a good fit for games that, literally, remake everything from scratch despite running on the same code and reusing the animations(Metroid Prime Remastered, TTYD maybe, Crash N Sane Trilogy, OoT 3D). And it's also ok not to refer to those as remakes commercially so people don't expect Resident Evil 2 or Final Fantasy VII trilogy type of rebuilding even gameplay from scratch.
AstroOhHey
Shriekbat
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It's a remake in the same way FFVII Remake is in that it lulls you into a false-security that it's a straight remaster but then the plot starts to veer into new directions and the ghosts of the old versions of Paper Mario keep popping into existence to warn you about future discourse to come.
We really arguing over which undefined bucket a game falls into again, huh
Yes, for you. That's kinda the whole thing though, you can assert what the word means to you, and no one can really argue back, because there's no agreed upon definition. By the same logic, it doesn't make the person you're arguing against incorrect either.
Terms without concrete definitions are subjective by default.
"Remaster" is an audio world term that refers to the process of mastering; taking the original recordings and applying EQs, careful leveling, etc. During the mastering process, no new sounds are recorded; existing songs are just touched up and lightly modified. "Remastering" is just going back to the original source recordings and doing that again, normally to accomplish some specific goal or address a flaw. This is the only industry in which the word is clearly defined.
The word then eventually gained traction in the film industry, but it has no real meaning there as much as it is marketing speak. Its most common application is to films that are rescanned for home release in a higher resolution than was previously available, but it can mean more than that.
Video game marketing picked up on the same thing and used it to mean all sorts of things, because there's so many ways to improve a video game. It's been used for ports of prior gen games that are just rendering in a higher definition, which fits the traditional film definition. But people complain about calling those remasters, because they're "just ports". It's been used for things like Metroid Prime Remastered, even though that's a hard break from the "no new art" rule from other industries.
People try to apply rules about the code underneath, but this is a fool's errand; we get little insight to this, and chunks can be ripped out while others remain relatively intact. Is there a percentage of code that needs to be the same? Why would that matter when we can't measure a percentage anyway? Skyward Sword HD makes more gameplay changes than Metroid Prime Remastered. Is it closer to a remake? Not to mention the fact that engine shifts primarily for new graphics often require what's commonly referred to as the "game logic" to be overhauled too, even if the goal is for it to feel exactly the same.
And I'd posit that it doesn't matter (though I'd wager the answer is very little; Metroid Prime arguably made more work for itself with how extensively they went to make wrappers for the GameCube stuff to work in a modern engine). What if the answer is 50%? What would that mean?
People have said MPR isn't a remaster in this very thread and I don't really disagree.
Look, when it comes to games, we're dealing with grey areas inside of grey areas. You can make significant gameplay changes and barely touch the presentation. You can completely overhaul the presentation without touching the gameplay. You can do both at once. You can gently make touch ups to both. You can overhaul part of the presentation; see OoT 3D or Xenoblade DE, where many models were remade entirely while others were outright moved over with no changes. (I also recall a time when OoT 3D was frequently called a remake, but it seems that's contentious now?) Trying to put all of this cleanly into three or four buckets on a linear scale is daunting enough. Expecting the general Internet to then agree on it is ludicrous.
Of course, this is a discussion board. I've no problem with people expressing their views on these things. But I don't think anyone is objectively right; if the argument could be won, it wouldn't spring up every time a game walks the line. Go on and argue for the definitions you like, but don't act like anyone is stupid for disagreeing. At present, these words are little more than marketing jargon.
VintoWin
Moblin
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Oh boy. Metroid Prime Remastered...not a remaster?
I think I'm good on this topic. lol
It sounds like we need to just stop using the remaster word and start saying remake as a blanket term and then say "they changed a lot!" or "they changed...so little booo.."
shrug
Sounds like a failure of our language to me.
Some people want to define it in a scientific way. Which would come down to "what percentage of this code is the same?"
But do we really want to do that? lol
Others want to be very liberal with the definitions. "Oh I mean...they changed the plot...so it's a remake!" "Nothing changed! Just all the visuals....def a remaster"
You just can't find an answer to this conversation. And that's why it never ends.
I don't care what anyone thinks Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (Switch) is. Just buy it please. Show your support.
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Changing the subject.
Would hard mode going to be "just unequip badges" (as it is now - self imposed lol)?
-or- a new badge you get as an option?
-or- an option from file creation?
I think I'm good on this topic. lol
It sounds like we need to just stop using the remaster word and start saying remake as a blanket term and then say "they changed a lot!" or "they changed...so little booo.."
shrug
Sounds like a failure of our language to me.
Some people want to define it in a scientific way. Which would come down to "what percentage of this code is the same?"
But do we really want to do that? lol
Others want to be very liberal with the definitions. "Oh I mean...they changed the plot...so it's a remake!" "Nothing changed! Just all the visuals....def a remaster"
You just can't find an answer to this conversation. And that's why it never ends.
I don't care what anyone thinks Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (Switch) is. Just buy it please. Show your support.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Changing the subject.
Would hard mode going to be "just unequip badges" (as it is now - self imposed lol)?
-or- a new badge you get as an option?
-or- an option from file creation?
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ziggyrivers
thunder
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Wait, there's a hard more?
The funny thing is we're basically already there, except we still argue over the word meanings anyway. No one's really arguing over how changed TTYD on the Switch is - it's largely graphical, but with very extensive work done (and some unknown extra features) - just what we're actually calling that.
It is and it isn't. Again, the spectrum of improved re-releases is just so broad and nonlinear that it's not really a surprise trying to use two or three words (that different marketing branches apply differently, no less) hasn't worked as a way of differentiating between different types of re-releases. The reality is much more fluid than that.
And even if we successfully did have definitions everyone agreed on... it still wouldn't help much, lol. Just look at the differences in scope of Dark Souls Remastered, Metroid Prime Remastered, and Xenoblade DE. They're pretty wildly different in how they've been changed, but you won't have to search long to find someone who says they're all remasters. At the the of the day, you still have to describe how changed the game actually is to get the point across.
In that sense, it's only a language failure if you can call the issue being too nuanced for singular words a language failure.
Truno
Koopa
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Nothing confirmed yet, but the evidence so far points to the contrary. The game description states that there are new features. It then goes on to say the following:
AstroOhHey
Shriekbat
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The Pit of 100 Trials I guess? That's more a test of endurance than anything else though.
SiG
Chain Chomp
All of them all just uprezzed ports!
They're essentially the same game.Exactly. And then you have something like Black Mesa (Source), which would initially be considered a remaster of Half-Life 1 (at least that's how it started), but the project balooned into overhauling a bunch of different things, and then you get to Xen..."Yeah, I don't recall the original Half-Life 1's Xen being this, uh, invested..."
It's basically cosmetic/presentation overhaul vs gameplay overhaul.
People would play it just because of the music. Not to mention x30 more side-quests.
Then it will be followed up by Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door Rebirth: The X-Nauts Saga.
Heck, would the future of Paper Mario turn it into an Action RPG? Oh wait, that was what Super Paper Mario was about...
YES! This times a million!
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Clov
An ethernet cable girlfriend
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That's why I'll end it now! People keep getting this wrong for some reason, even though it's like, really easy.
When it comes to re-releases of old games, it can go like this:
ROM Dump: The most noble of re-releases. The game is tossed in an emulator and is pretty much exactly the same. Sometimes little things get changed, like reducing flashing, or taking out product placement, but in general, this is the same thing! See Mario 3D All Stars, NSO stuff, etc.
Port: Most people call these "remasters" when the game is old enough because they're cowards. This is the same game, but now the original code is running natively on whatever system you're using. Sometimes new features can be added! Sometimes textures are replaced here and there, sometimes EVERY texture is replaced and it looks shiny and chrome! Metroid Prime Remastered is a good example of this.
Remake: The one that reeks of effort. You go and just make the whole game again! You're not using the old code. You might look at old design documents or something, but you're actually putting the whole thing together again from scratch. These can be really faithful, like Advance Wars 1+2 and Famicom Detective Club 1+2 on Switch, or totally different while hitting the same beats, like Another Code.
Some people might say that there's some weird exceptions, but none of those are actually important. As for TTYD, I think they just put the whole game back together using the Origami King engine or something, so I think it's a remake in the vein of Link's Awakening. Looks pretty cute too!
Mekanos
300 Years Of Gyudon
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SMRPG got an easy mode so at this point I assume Nintendo just wants their Mario games to be beatable by even the smallest of children.
AstroOhHey
Shriekbat
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I'm not a sales guy but Luigi's Mansion 3 was an unprecedented enormous seller and seemingly everything with Mario in the title on the Switch has sold a minimum of a couple million units so yeah it'd be weird if Nintendo underestimated how well TTYD/LM2HD would sell.
Supreme Overlord
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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Not that I couldn't see it, but it strikes me that the game kind of already has that on offer in a way. Beyond simply leveling up and buying items -- as one is wont to do when trying to make an RPG less difficult -- the badge system adds an additional layer to proceedings. I suppose, though, it's not quite as easy as selecting an easy difficulty.
On that note, I do think leaning into the badge system for a new game's RPG element could work really well. The game revolves around this strategic element of badge loadouts. Perhaps you could even create a selection of loadouts to quickly swap among.
SiG
Chain Chomp
I guess Amazon underestimate TTYD demand.
"Oh, it's just a remaster of a cult-classic GameCube game, a system that everyone igno-"
stock sells out
"-I guess I was wrong!"
Cheetah6442
Bob-omb
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Stilt Village
GBA
When I was a kid I got stuck at the end of the game because I didn't really understand how to use the badge system effectively. You can break Paper Mario with badges, but I doubt a little kid is going to know how.
ziggyrivers
thunder
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The game being sold out on Amazon doesn't mean much for potential sales numbers.
When will we know official numbers? In July?
When will we know official numbers? In July?
N75
Like Like
Late July/Early August
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I want a full new trailer so badly, but the reality is we will probably be waiting until late April for that!
Been wanting that overview trailer lol
ziggyrivers
thunder
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The game not receiving a proper marketing campaign makes me think we’ll def get an April General Direct, which may happen in the last weeks of April to match up with the game’s release in a month.
Or they could go the Twitter drop route
Or they could go the Twitter drop route
Truno
Koopa
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The proper marketing campaign will begin once Peach's is over. Nintendo has always operated like this
MusicProposition
Bob-omb
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I don't know why, maybe it's wishful thinking, but I think there's stuff they've deliberately not shown yet. A side story, Bowser's-Fury-type. I expect a blow-out in April or even next week.
ziggyrivers
thunder
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It’s not just you. An unique Toad was seen in the Glitz Pit outside area. Of course there’s stuff we haven’t seen. Everything has been a preview trailer.
I’m not expecting a side story. It’ll be a remake with some extras and that’s that.
Tho I could be wrong, who knows.
