Brothership definitely seems like a much needed "back to basics." M&L sequels got bogged down in gimmicks and minigames.
I always felt they should get Bowser, Peach, Daisy & the like in on the action too for any new game in the series
Eh, that will depend on damage. The big problem with the 3DS games is that they kind of fell into a numbers trap where the combo nature of the bros attacks being infinite had them compensate by racking up the bosses HP (you see this hard in the remakes). M&L dealing thousands of damage in a turn kind of made it meaningless because of how much health the bosses had and the combo animation get dull when you have to do them 10-15 times a boss battle.
Oh, don't I WISH.Bring back Midbus! As a mid boss.
Me too, man. I told someone yesterday the next time they see Mario and Luigi is in the form of a remake haha.
New screens from the JP site:
that's true, but I'd still argue that the mandate got stricter over time. Paper Jam didn't have a single new character design afaik, it was only Koopas, Goombas, the Koopalings etc. Brothership seems to have at least many new original characters.
Paper Jam didn't have a single new character because, according to the staff themselves, the focus was on contrasting existing Mario characters in their paper and non-paper forms.
Sounds reasonable but then where were all the quirky M&L characters and enemies we’ve known before – why are these “existing Mario characters” Peach, Bowser, the Koopalings and like 30.000 red Toads? Call this a conspiracy if you want but I definitely see a correlation between this game and Sticker Star/Color Splash. And I find it equally suspicious that now, in the course of a year, we’re getting Mario RPG, TTYD and a new M&L with many new character designs. I do think there was a shift at Nintendo.
Their statement that the focus was on existing Mario characters in Paper and non-paper forms was quite literally made after someone did your exact same question of "where were the ML original characters?". In fact, the game still features Starlow, who is a ML Original. Combining both the context of their reply and the fact Starlow was right there the whole time should give you more than enough reason to not need to waste your time with conspiracy theories.
It's a pun on 'mothership' and 'brotherhood' and presumably references the idea the two brothers are sailing around on a big ship, which is probably a hub world for the game. You can see it clearly towards the end of the trailer.
I think regardless if there was a mandate or not, Nintendo noticed the growing perception of the Mario brand (as a whole, not just the RPGs) being artistically stale and are trying to counter it. Wonder spotlighting wackiness as a central theme in particular feels like a targeted response to criticisms of NSMB having boring art and mechanics.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Developers also felt the same, since 3D Mario was always unique, meanwhile other Mario property always played it safe.
no need for personal advice, thanks.
WAIT WHAT.
Mario is like a cartoon character. You can be very flexible with him and Nintendo is really leaning into.
Eh, given the numerous interviews, I think we need to accept that the Mario Mandate wasn't that strongly enforced by Nintendo but by Paper Mario director Tanabe. Multiple times we see that it's Tanabe enforcing and insisting to follow those rules to points that other games do not have. Even AlphaDream which did make some changes in SuperStar remake, kept most of the weird monsters (seriously, if you bring out that picture that isn't even a quarter of the weird enemies in that game stop pretending they removed every weird enemy) and for the Bowser's Inside Story remake, they even added more weird characters for the Bowser Jr mode. Brothership is its own game and it immediately goes back to its weird characters.
Oh wow, he's doing an awesome job then.
What is giving people the impression that it's Arzest here?
Don't you put that evil on us.
Yeah, the lack of Yoko Shimomura tweet has me really thinking she isn't involved. She's normally immediately on Twitter to announce her involvement but not this time...
Some staff from Alphadream now work there, plus they did work on the giant battles for the Mario & Luigi Bowser's Inside Story 3DS remake, so they already have experience working on the series.
Unyeah!
