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Discussion Paper Mario and the Kensuke Tanabe conundrum

I have been vocal here and there about my distaste of the current state of Final Fantasy, as well as the new direction of God of War. I loved classic FF, and I really liked the absurd, arcadey gameplay of the classic GoW games. But I have accepted that those series are not to my liking any more. I have accepted that the people working on them want to change things up, and as a result I moved on to other games that scratch the same itch.

I may not agree with what has become of those IPs, but I am not going around saying that the new games are shit, or uninspired, or a shadow of their former selves. And I certainly don't suggest their respective producers don't know what they are doing.
 
Hylianhero777 said:
To be fair Tanabe also was producing the version of Prime 4 which was apparently so bad it was cancelled. Now I think a lot of that had to do with the weird development style Prime 4 had at the time and the blame can't necessarily be put on Tanabe... but he also produced Federation Force, which was imo a waste of Next Level's talents on a game that was just not a very good idea on a conceptual level (4 player co-op FPS on the 3DS) and of course was announced/released at a pretty bad time for series fans. Tanabe has produced a lot of very good games but between this and the recent handling of Paper Mario being somewhat divisive he's certainly not got a flawless track record. Also... he's the one who (at least given what he's said in interviews and the post credits for Prime 3 and Federation Force) seems to keep pushing Stylux, which is imo a pretty terrible idea and I hope he doesn't show up in Retro's Prime 4, lol.

If you go through this thread I find a lot of people getting angry at old school paper mario fans to have a much more toxic attitude than those who are talking about how good TTYD was (get a grip is needlessly antagonistic). TOK's problems go beyond even the battle system which is pretty universally considered flawed even by those who like the game, imo. The recent 3 entries have also failed to reach the critical acclaim of the first few, with even Origami King just cracking an 80 on Metacritic and having a 77 Opencritic. That's a far cry from what the series is capable of critically, and far from what Intelligent Systems should be capable of. That's another thing that confuses me. IntSys... I mean they do WarioWare and some other experiments but other than that, they are the RPG studio for Nintendo, or at least they were between classic PM and Fire Emblem. These new games just do not seem to play to their strengths as developers at all, and I think that it makes the combat feel even more forced in these newer games than it otherwise would.
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MP4's development was rebooted because the studio that was chosen was not capable at handling it and considering Tanabe is the one responsible of the project, I would say it was his decision to hire Retro Studios for it once again (who were initially busy at the time because of another apparently cancelled project) and Federation Force is actually decent game, is just that people were angry it was announced when there was no main Metroid game in sight.

About the rest, TOK is only "divisive" because of TTYD fans, in fact the reason why it didn't score higher is because sadly some reviewers were TTYD fans and wanted the game to fail (When a site called frikking "Cubed" or something gives one of the lowest scores you kinda sense something suspicious). This is the reason why people dislike that section of the PM fanbase, they dislike and want others to dislike anything that is not their favorite game.

And yeah, that whole post is a bunch of farfetched takes to try to paint Tanabe on a bad light because he didn't make another TTYD. Why does that sound so familiar?
 
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I feel like anyone can look at the sales numbers of the Paper Mario games and can spin the numbers to fit their narrative. All of the games* have been modestly successful and their general success seems more relative to the success of the platform they're on then a general critical or fan consensus on the quality of the game. The * is because color splash clearly bombed, but even that one could be spun. Did Color Splash fail because it was Sticker Star 2 Electric Boogaloo? Or did it fail because it was on the WiiU and had it been the Switch's PM title would it have sold ToK numbers?

Also to push back on the whole "new direction of Paper Mario" narrative, what new direction? There have been 6 Paper Mario games with 4 fairly different styles. (Not counting the M&L cross over which was just a M&L game)

The "traditional" rpg style of 64 & TTYD
The platform rpg style of Super
The "card" rpg style of SS & CS
The puzzle rpg style ToK

Who knows what the next Paper Mario will look like. It's just as likely to go back to the classic style of PM 64 and TTYD as it is to be something completely new that doesn't play like any game that came before.
 
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Hylianhero777 said:
If you go through this thread I find a lot of people getting angry at old school paper mario fans to have a much more toxic attitude than those who are talking about how good TTYD was (get a grip is needlessly antagonistic). TOK's problems go beyond even the battle system which is pretty universally considered flawed even by those who like the game, imo. The recent 3 entries have also failed to reach the critical acclaim of the first few, with even Origami King just cracking an 80 on Metacritic and having a 77 Opencritic. That's a far cry from what the series is capable of critically, and far from what Intelligent Systems should be capable of. That's another thing that confuses me. IntSys... I mean they do WarioWare and some other experiments but other than that, they are the RPG studio for Nintendo, or at least they were between classic PM and Fire Emblem. These new games just do not seem to play to their strengths as developers at all, and I think that it makes the combat feel even more forced in these newer games than it otherwise would.
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I'd say Intelligent Systems is "the RPG studio" as much as it is "the puzzle game studio". They are the developers of Puzzle League / Panel de Pon, several good DSiWare puzzle games (Spotto! comes to mind) and Advance Wars "feels" a lot like a puzzle game (to a lesser extent, even some FE games). I think the battle system of Origami King is very "IntSys-like", and it would be quite good as the basis for a Panel de Pon RPG starring Paper Lip!
 
Comic Obsessed said:
MP4's development was rebooted because the studio that was chosen was not capable at handling it and considering Tanabe is the one responsible of the project, I would say it was his decision to hire Retro Studios for it once again (who were initially busy at the time because of another apparently cancelled project) and Federation Force is actually decent game, is just that people were angry it was announced when there was no main Metroid game in sight.

About the rest, TOK is only "divisive" because of TTYD fans, in fact the reason why it didn't score higher is because sadly some reviewers were TTYD fans and wanted the game to fail (When a site called frikking "Cubed" or something gives one of the lowest scores you kinda sense something suspicious). This is the reason why people dislike that section of the PM fanbase, they dislike and want others to dislike anything that is not their favorite game.

And yeah, that whole post is a bunch of farfetched takes to try to paint Tanabe on a bad light because he didn't make another TTYD. Why does that sound so familiar?
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The irony is not lost on me that you are the one telling people to get a grip and then decide to go on a rant about people whose job it is to review video games all being biased against the perfect Origami King.

You're saying that what I said is farfetched but the Stylux thing Tanabe has actually said in interviews and there is straight up no evidence that Tanabe was the one to make the decision to move the project over to Retro Studios. Again, I don't put the blame squarely on Tanabe for Prime 4's initial failure but by that same token I don't think we can say it is solely him saving the game (especially since we don't even know why Retro didn't get it in the first place, if Retro's version will even be good, etc.)

Federation Force sold terribly and also has a 64 Metacritic score. I suppose that those reviews are all biased too but just going off what metrics are available it'd be hard to call the game a success in any way. I don't dislike Tanabe dude, I think he's helped make some incredible games. I just think that criticism of the Paper Mario series as it is now is warranted as I personally think the newer games are markedly worse, and it's ok to discuss why this is and how they could possibly go about fixing it.
 
MissingNo. said:
I have been vocal here and there about my distaste of the current state of Final Fantasy, as well as the new direction of God of War. I loved classic FF, and I really liked the absurd, arcadey gameplay of the classic GoW games. But I have accepted that those series are not to my liking any more. I have accepted that the people working on them want to change things up, and as a result I moved on to other games that scratch the same itch.

I may not agree with what has become of those IPs, but I am not going around saying that the new games are shit, or uninspired, or a shadow of their former selves. And I certainly don't suggest their respective producers don't know what they are doing.
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That's your prerogative but frankly I would not take issue with anyone who called FFXV or GOW2018 uninspired and suggested Tabata/Square management and Cory Balrog didn't know what they were doing... because I think that's actually pretty warranted criticism in both cases, lol. Square mismanaged XV to hell and back and while I think Cory "knew what he was doing" I think his efforts to bring GOW in line with the rest of Sony's modern output (he's mentioned in several interviews how much he wanted to make GOW2018 more like The Last of Us) were somewhat cynical and yeah, uninspired.

Again I just think it's kind of wild to say that it's somehow unfair or overly critical to say that a series has gone downhill and that this is in part due to bad creative choices. That's just... having an opinion on the quality of something that goes beyond "it's not for me."
 
It's somewhat off topic, but I cannot comprehend how someone can say that PM64 has much better story/characters than TOK. I already said this on the Paper Mario subreddit months ago, but the original suffer from many of the writing criticisms we attribute to the modern games.

For the partners, many of them don't have a proper arc, just a case of "You helped me that one time, I'm gonna follow you on this journey now I guess". The worst offender of this has to be Parakarry, you help him to find three letters and that's it.

For the bosses, while they may have original design, most of them are pretty shallow character wise. The Koopa bros make for a great first impression, thanks to an effective build-up. But then, you have bosses like the crystal king who is so unremarkable that even the iced-themed boss from frigging Sticker Star is more fleshed-out.
 
Maronic03 said:
It's somewhat off topic, but I cannot comprehend how someone can say that PM64 has much better story/characters than TOK. I already said this on the Paper Mario subreddit months ago, but the original suffer from many of the writing criticisms we attribute to the modern games.

For the partners, many of them don't have a proper arc, just a case of "You helped me that one time, I'm gonna follow you on this journey now I guess". The worst offender of this has to be Parakarry, you help him to find three letters and that's it.

For the bosses, while they may have original design, most of them are pretty shallow character wise. The Koopa bros make for a great first impression, thanks to an effective build-up. But then, you have bosses like the crystal king who is so unremarkable that even the iced-themed boss from frigging Sticker Star is more fleshed-out.
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You say this, but you remembered the Crystal King's name, but called Mizzter Blizzard "the ice-themed boss", so I guess they weren't that memorable to you.
 
Hylianhero777 said:
That's your prerogative but frankly I would not take issue with anyone who called FFXV or GOW2018 uninspired and suggested Tabata/Square management and Cory Balrog didn't know what they were doing... because I think that's actually pretty warranted criticism in both cases, lol. Square mismanaged XV to hell and back and while I think Cory "knew what he was doing" I think his efforts to bring GOW in line with the rest of Sony's modern output (he's mentioned in several interviews how much he wanted to make GOW2018 more like The Last of Us) were somewhat cynical and yeah, uninspired.

Again I just think it's kind of wild to say that it's somehow unfair or overly critical to say that a series has gone downhill and that this is in part due to bad creative choices. That's just... having an opinion on the quality of something that goes beyond "it's not for me."
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Look, what I'm saying is it isn't worth my energy to continue to dwell on what might have been when there are so many other options out there for me, and I am leaving it at that.
 
BassForever said:
You say this, but you remembered the Crystal King's name, but called Mizzter Blizzard "the ice-themed boss", so I guess they weren't that memorable to you.
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You're probably joking, but the reason I remember him is because he is the epitome of a "nothing character". Decent design, very good theme, but an astounishly empty personality. I have played this game 3 times, and have seen a lot various playthough online, but I am uncapable to remember a single word he said.

He is just here because but the game needs a boss to be there. He is ice-themed because the chapter is ice-themed.
 
Irrespective of the qualities of the games themselves, I miss when Paper Mario went for a storybook aesthetic rather than a purely paper, arts and crafts style.

I won't argue that the new direction doesn't looks gorgeous. It's employed in lots of creative ways, and it's the basis for the mechanics introduced in the new titles, which is pretty cool regardless of their implementation. But I like the idea of these games being more like storybooks, telling these whimsical stories with bright, paper adjacent but not paper dominated looks. It's absolutely best shown in PM64, with "painted" backgrounds that look right out of a classic Disney film, but TTYD still has elements of this style. It's a shame that they were moving away from that idea as early as portions of TTYD. I absolutely see the mechanical advantages of paper, but still.

Ideally, I'd want a game that took the good aspects of PM64 (level design, whimsical storybook feel, music) and TTYD (more in-depth story/characters, deeper battle system), combined them together and expanded on them. But they're content exploring a new direction and I respect that.
 
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Comic Obsessed said:
MP4's development was rebooted because the studio that was chosen was not capable at handling it and considering Tanabe is the one responsible of the project, I would say it was his decision to hire Retro Studios for it once again (who were initially busy at the time because of another apparently cancelled project) and Federation Force is actually decent game, is just that people were angry it was announced when there was no main Metroid game in sight.

About the rest, TOK is only "divisive" because of TTYD fans, in fact the reason why it didn't score higher is because sadly some reviewers were TTYD fans and wanted the game to fail (When a site called frikking "Cubed" or something gives one of the lowest scores you kinda sense something suspicious). This is the reason why people dislike that section of the PM fanbase, they dislike and want others to dislike anything that is not their favorite game.

And yeah, that whole post is a bunch of farfetched takes to try to paint Tanabe on a bad light because he didn't make another TTYD. Why does that sound so familiar?
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LOL

Interesting how I've seen from multiple of your past posts is this narrative that you seem to LOVE spinning up, every SINGLE time a Paper Mario thread is made. and that is something along the lines of "The mean and biassed/delusional TTYD fans are the ONLY reason the newer games are divisive." Or something along those lines.

Talk about living rent-free in someone's head. Good grief...

But don't let me stop you, I love reading them, they do make me laugh every single time but I'm just letting you know that you aren't as slick with this as you think you are.
 
Maronic03 said:
You're probably joking, but the reason I remember him is because he is the epitome of a "nothing character". Decent design, very good theme, but an astounishly empty personality. I have played this game 3 times, and have seen a lot various playthough online, but I am uncapable to remember a single word he said.

He is just here because but the game needs a boss to be there. He is ice-themed because the chapter is ice-themed.
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I'm jokingly serious, when you're posting on social media sites like reddit or a message board, you should probably google the name of something you don't remember, especially if you're going to argue it's "more memorable" then the thing you do remember. I didn't remember Mizzter Blizzards name, but you certainly didn't help prove your point by calling him "the ice-themed boss".

And to be more serious, while I won't argue with you that the Crystal King is more of a "we need a boss for this zone" character then a memorable character for how he's written like a Tubba Blubba, I still find him memorable for everything else around him. I think his design his fun, I think his battle is really engaging, and I love the crystal palace dungeon with it's mirror mechanic. I don't need to remember anything the Crystal King himself said or did, I remember the various memorable scenes in his dungeon involving finding your real partner among the fakes.
 
BassForever said:
And to be more serious, while I won't argue with you that the Crystal King is more of a "we need a boss for this zone" character then a memorable character for how he's written like a Tubba Blubba, I still find him memorable for everything else around him. I think his design his fun, I think his battle is really engaging, and I love the crystal palace dungeon with it's mirror mechanic. I don't need to remember anything the Crystal King himself said or did, I remember the various memorable scenes in his dungeon involving finding your real partner among the fakes.
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I agree that the crystal king is a good boss battle, my point is that he is not a good character. He is barely a character period.

My original comment was about how the story/characters of PM64 can be just as shallow, if not more, than the modern games at times. Just to be clear, that doesn't mean I think Sticker Star is better than game than 64, not at all. I used this example because it's the most telling (I do prefer CS and TOK though).
 
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Brewster123 said:
I honestly don't get why some Paper Mario fans cling so adamantly to the old days. I love Paper Mario 64 & TTYD (I 100%'d the later), but it seems abundantly clear to me that the series has changed and has no intention of going back. Nintendo and IS simply don't want to make that type of Paper Mario game anymore. Paper Mario has spent more time as it is now than it has as a rpg series, even if you include SPM which I feel shouldn't be (Sticker Star (2012) - Origami King (2020) vs 64 (2000) - Super Paper Mario (2007)). If they were going to go back, then they probably would have by now. Would it not be better then to just move on and start supporting, similar game series that are carrying the torch so to speak?
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Tbh....the main complain is that modern paper Mario games are meh - ok.
I think there would be less complaining online is the games were fantastic (you know...87+ on MC like current FE titles)
 
I think Tanabe might be my favorite Nintendo Producer.

He seems pretty intent on the games he is in charge of changing things up entry to entry, especially game-play wise, and yeah, sometimes that just doesn't work out well. Chibi-Robo did literally die on the quest to find a genre and style the masses might accept, after all.

But I like several of the new DKC, Luigi's Mansion, Metroid, and Paper Mario games better than the originals that I grew up with, and to me these series diverging away into something different is... a good thing? Things should change over time imo.

That doesn't mean I don't like the old games or some of things they did better imo. Nor do I think these newer ones are perfect or something. Some aspects of them have been definite misses.

But I wouldn't revert too many of the changes personally. 🤷‍♂️
 
Maronic03 said:
It's somewhat off topic, but I cannot comprehend how someone can say that PM64 has much better story/characters than TOK. I already said this on the Paper Mario subreddit months ago, but the original suffer from many of the writing criticisms we attribute to the modern games.

For the partners, many of them don't have a proper arc, just a case of "You helped me that one time, I'm gonna follow you on this journey now I guess". The worst offender of this has to be Parakarry, you help him to find three letters and that's it.

For the bosses, while they may have original design, most of them are pretty shallow character wise. The Koopa bros make for a great first impression, thanks to an effective build-up. But then, you have bosses like the crystal king who is so unremarkable that even the iced-themed boss from frigging Sticker Star is more fleshed-out.
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I think the overarching story of PM64 is better just because I like the individual chapter scenarios more than what's on offer in TOK, but I agree that the characters in PM64 are not very fleshed out even if the designs are more charming. I will say I think the characters in TTYD are super fleshed out compared to TOK though imo.
 
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E.Gadd said:
I think Tanabe might be my favorite Nintendo Producer.

He seems pretty intent on the games he is in charge of changing things up entry to entry, especially game-play wise, and yeah, sometimes that just doesn't work out well. Chibi-Robo did literally die on the quest to find a genre and style the masses might accept, after all.

But I like several of the new DKC, Luigi's Mansion, Metroid, and Paper Mario games better than the originals that I grew up with, and to me these series diverging away into something different is... a good thing? Things should change over time imo.

That doesn't mean I don't like the old games or some of things they did better imo. Nor do I think these newer ones are perfect or something. Some aspects of them have been definite misses.

But I wouldn't revert too many of the changes personally. 🤷‍♂️
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Huh. I think that Paper Mario is actually the exception to the rule in terms of Tanabe produced series having drastically different gameplay from entry to entry? (Which I suppose you could actually use to argue that Tanabe himself is less to blame for the perceived faults of modern Paper Mario, though some of his interview answers make that a bit murkier). The Prime trilogy did not really feature any drastic gameplay changes from game to game besides the obvious motion controls of Prime 3 which were basically a necessity due to the Wii's controller. There were some structural changes in level design philosophy from game to game though. Same with Luigi's Mansion. 2 & 3 play very similar besides the addition of a few new moves and it's mostly the structure that changed. DKCR and DKCTF are pretty similar, etc.
 
Comic Obsessed said:
TOK is only "divisive" because of TTYD fans
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Wouldn’t agree on that. It’s apparent to most players, TTYD fans or not, that there are problems with the battle system, which doesn’t reward fighting but isn’t completely optional either. And people are not criticizing the story because some early Paper Mario games might’ve done that better, but because it’s a 20+ hours game that’s leaning on narration and characters, so I think it’s fair to expect a villain who appears more than three times over the whole course of the game.
Don’t interpret too much into my profile picture btw, I’m a general Paper Mario fan, not only a fan of the first two games. I enjoyed Sticker Star, Color Splash and TOK a lot but there’s also quite a lot of stuff you can criticize.
 
If I can make an enlightened centrist take on the matter, I just want a combat system that is fun and works regardless of whether it’s new or old or whatnot

I don’t think it’s a radical stance to say 3 games in, a turn based combat system with no xp that gives you virtually nothing for battles is a bad system and feels like a waste of time. And it’s hard to overlook or ignore when that is like 50% of the game.

I want the series to go either backwards or forwards at light-speed either way, any direction from where it currently is.
 
Hylianhero777 said:
Huh. I think that Paper Mario is actually the exception to the rule in terms of Tanabe produced series having drastically different gameplay from entry to entry? (Which I suppose you could actually use to argue that Tanabe himself is less to blame for the perceived faults of modern Paper Mario, though some of his interview answers make that a bit murkier). The Prime trilogy did not really feature any drastic gameplay changes from game to game besides the obvious motion controls of Prime 3 which were basically a necessity due to the Wii's controller. There were some structural changes in level design philosophy from game to game though. Same with Luigi's Mansion. 2 & 3 play very similar besides the addition of a few new moves and it's mostly the structure that changed. DKCR and DKCTF are pretty similar, etc.
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I don't know, the Chibi-Robo series(RIP) in particular famously had drastically different gameplay, game to game.

But I find the new DKC games to feel very different in gameplay from the Rare ones, same with NLG Luigi's Mansion to the first game(though not as dramatically). Maybe that's just me as a fan hyper focusing on all the changes made tho, and to most people none of these things stand out.

I do wonder how divergent Metroid Prime 4 is tho.
 
E.Gadd said:
I don't know, the Chibi-Robo series(RIP) in particular famously had drastically different gameplay, game to game.

But I find the new DKC games to feel very different in gameplay from the Rare ones, same with NLG Luigi's Mansion to the first game(though not as dramatically). Maybe that's just me as a fan hyper focusing on all the changes made tho, and to most people none of these things stand out.

I do wonder how divergent Metroid Prime 4 is tho.
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Oh for sure DKCR and LM2 were decently different from their prior entries, but the previous entries in both series were made both by different teams and didn't have Tanabe on as producer. But once Retro and NLG got their hands on each of them I didn't think the changes were too drastic from game to game.
 
Why can't Tanabe be the issue here? Saying he's stuffing up on making a decent game here doesn't mean that he only drops stinkers.

He and other leadership are trying to get by without leaning on typical RPG mainstays, and that's a fine goal, but they aren't seeing major success. I don't think for a second they aren't aware of the feedback the games get from fans - they simply don't agree with the direction being asked of them. Unless Tanabe has a change of heart, or Nintendo steps in and demands it, Paper Mario is probably going to remain amorphous and experimental.
 
karmitt said:
Why can't Tanabe be the issue here? Saying he's stuffing up on making a decent game here doesn't mean that he only drops stinkers.

He and other leadership are trying to get by without leaning on typical RPG mainstays, and that's a fine goal, but they aren't seeing major success. I don't think for a second they aren't aware of the feedback the games get from fans - they simply don't agree with the direction being asked of them. Unless Tanabe has a change of heart, or Nintendo steps in and demands it, Paper Mario is probably going to remain amorphous and experimental.
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I didn't say Tanabe doesn't deserve some of the blame. I'm just saying the overall problem is the fact that Paper Mario is in this awkward place at the moment and Tanabe and IS don't know what to do with it.

The only way forward for Mario RPGs is honestly putting Paper Mario on ice and make a new Mario RPG series.
 
MissingNo. said:
I have been vocal here and there about my distaste of the current state of Final Fantasy, as well as the new direction of God of War. I loved classic FF, and I really liked the absurd, arcadey gameplay of the classic GoW games. But I have accepted that those series are not to my liking any more. I have accepted that the people working on them want to change things up, and as a result I moved on to other games that scratch the same itch.

I may not agree with what has become of those IPs, but I am not going around saying that the new games are shit, or uninspired, or a shadow of their former selves. And I certainly don't suggest their respective producers don't know what they are doing.
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Preach.

I also don't understand what's supposedly wrong with your comment. I guess you had your opinions in the moment, perhaps even verbalized them, but you moved on. Good. You didn't even say to not voice your opinion or something.
 
anyway, finally a serious post on this topic from me

While saying that Tanabe doesn't know what he's doing is silly and obviously false, I think speculation on authorial intent can be valuable and interesting, especially as it pertains to where a team's work may go next. A corollary of this is that sometimes people disagree with the perceived intent and vision, and I think that's good too.
 
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MagiCarbo said:
I didn't say Tanabe doesn't deserve some of the blame. I'm just saying the overall problem is the fact that Paper Mario is in this awkward place at the moment and Tanabe and IS don't know what to do with it.

The only way forward for Mario RPGs is honestly putting Paper Mario on ice and make a new Mario RPG series.
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Tanabe and IS absolutely know what they are doing with the series. They have been pretty vocal about it. And, no it really isn’t in this awkward place that honor belongs to M&L. It’s safe to say that Tanabe & IS will continue experimenting with the battle system, to the chagrin of many, while at the same time cotinue the path they set upon with CS & OK. The only things that possibly needs work is their creativity within the limitation of established Mario characters while their more recent original characters have been pretty good.

And, that is beyond silly to even think Paper Mario should be on ice. For what reason? Because it isn’t a Mario RPG? This latest entry is pretty well liked and sold pretty well. You would replace it with a new Mario RPG that may not sell as well, review as well, or even do the things that some want. M&L still exists but that is the series on ice due to stagnant gameplay and uninteresting stories. It may comeback with another dev but that is the series is unfocused and has a conundrum about it.
 
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MagiCarbo said:
I didn't say Tanabe doesn't deserve some of the blame. I'm just saying the overall problem is the fact that Paper Mario is in this awkward place at the moment and Tanabe and IS don't know what to do with it.

The only way forward for Mario RPGs is honestly putting Paper Mario on ice and make a new Mario RPG series.
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I really don't understand the argument here. "Paper Mario" has been a long series of experimenting with gameplay ideas (some RPG-lite, some otherwise), and it's clear that repeating a successful formula isn't what they're after. Super Paper Mario remains the best selling in the franchise (?) and they didn't bother making a second. The team isn't lost on the franchise direction - this is just what they want to do.

If we replaced Paper Mario with something else, why would we expect anything different? I'd have to assume the reason Tanabe has not made it an RPG is because he simply does not want to keep making them. He's tenured enough that if he's expressed a disinterest in developing that type of game, telling him that he can use "Clay Mario RPG" instead isn't going to change that.
 
MagiCarbo said:
Tanabe and IS don't know what to do with it.
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I don't believe you can fumble you're way to a touchdown so many times in a row. you don't like their experiments, that's fine. but you can't say they don't know what they're doing when they do. you're just coming off as salty
 
EddyZacianLand said:
Let's say they returned to Super Paper Mario's battle system but kept everything else as it is now, how would you feel?
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I feel like the Mario RPG/Adventure franchise needs to be moved out of IS/Nintendo and to an RPG developer like Asano's Bravely/Octopath team or another team at Square-Enix. Imagine an HD-2D styled Paper Mario or Mario & Luigi title.

Nintendo should structure a co-development deal with SE similar to what they have with NamcoBandai and crank out RPGs that way.
 
The idea that they don't know what to do with the series makes no sense in 2022. They know exactly what they want the series to be, you just don't like it.
 
Dekuman said:
I feel like the Mario RPG/Adventure franchise needs to be moved out of IS/Nintendo and to an RPG developer like Asano's Bravely/Octopath team or another team at Square-Enix. Imagine an HD-2D styled Paper Mario or Mario & Luigi title.

Nintendo should structure a co-development deal with SE similar to what they have with NamcoBandai and crank out RPGs that way.
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Why even do this? They already have Asano cranking out rpgs for them on the regular. There is no point in giving them Mario RPG. Outside of Asano who really is left to create a game like that. And, IS really has nothing to do with Mario RPG that was AlphaDream but they died because of their own doing. Maybe the people who made those games are at Nintendo, maybe not. Mario RPG just needs a major rethink in multiple categories to get with & appeal to the times.

Now if IS still had the Project X team then I would ask them to make a Mario RPG to see what could be done there but alas the leads left after PxZ2.
 
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ILikeFeet said:
I don't believe you can fumble you're way to a touchdown so many times in a row. you don't like their experiments, that's fine. but you can't say they don't know what they're doing when they do. you're just coming off as salty
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dyle said:
The idea that they don't know what to do with the series makes no sense in 2022. They know exactly what they want the series to be, you just don't like it.
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Define success. The Sticker Star trilogy is 2/3 for commercial success and 1/3 for critical success. Comparatively the RPG trilogy is 3/3 on both counts and achieved greater relative success on worse performing hardware (N64-NGC-Wii vs 3DS-Wii U-Switch)
 
I basically view the paper mario series the same way I view the simpsons at this point

there's a zombie version of it shuffling around and eventually you just kinda get used to it and stop caring
 
Catalyst said:
This argument does have merit when specifically talking about the battle systems. The fact that the battle system changes every game and none are well received does indicate that IS and Tanabe don’t really know what to do with that part of the game.

Of course TOK was well received, but what was the one thing critics and fans universally disliked? Its battle system. And that’s one thing the Mario Committee has no influence over, so it’s all Tanabe and IS’ fault. They need to work on making combat that resonates with people.
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it's amazing the sheer number of people i've seen that love TOK and even while actively trying to convince people to play it still say some variant of "the battle system sucks but"
 
Raccoon said:
Paper Mario and the Kensuke Tanabe Conundrum folds onto Nintendo Switch this fall.
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The Tanabe Conundrum sounds like the subtitle to a detective mystery VN.

Famicom Detective Club: The Tanabe Conundrum
Famicom Detective Club: The Non-Story of Miyamoto
Famicom Detective Club: Sakamoto and the Weak Lady
Famicom Detective Club: Masuda's Incompetence

Internet talking points about game devs make for good subtitles.
 
Speaking as someone who barely has any previous experience with the older titles other than SPM, Color Splash was as dull as watching paint dry, its battle system being one of the main reasons why I felt that way about it. It didn't seem as Origami King replaced it with something more engaging, so I just skipped that one. From the outside, they look like comfy games (all of them) with aesthetics as their main (and only) strength, which is why it's so weird to me the fanbase can get as heated as I've seen.
 
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