Paper Mario Team Has ‘Almost Complete’ Creative Control Over Franchise

While Paper Mario: The Origami King was well received both critically and commercially upon its launch in July, the game has done little to win over hardcore fans of the RPG series since the change in direction following Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. While improving on gameplay systems from Super Paper Mario, Paper Mario: Sticker Star, and Paper Mario: Color Splash, Origami King still continues the franchise’s shift in a direction away from the distinct RPGs on the Nintendo 64 and GameCube. This has lead people to assume that Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto has limited Intelligent Systems’ use of the IP when creating Paper Mario games, which series producer Kensuke Tanabe claims is false.

In an interview with Eurogamer, which has since been translated by Nintendo Everything, Tanabe claimed that while Miyamoto did limit the team during the development of the Nintendo 3DS’s Paper Mario: Sticker Star, restricting them from altering existing Mario character designs and pushing the series in a direction more similar to the 2D platforming titles, these restrictions have been lifted since the development of Paper Mario: Color Splash. “Ever since Paper Mario: Color Splash, we have almost complete control over the creative direction of the game.”

Commenting on Miyamoto’s involvement, Tanabe claims “Mr. Miyamoto checked in on development once or twice, but there were no specific requests to make changes. However, all character designs have to pass a check by our IP team, which is pretty strict. Nonetheless, we were allowed to change the outfits of some Toads in this game.” Tanabe’s claims regarding character designs needing to be checked by the IP team matches up with his claims back in July that the team cannot alter the designs of existing Mario characters following the release of Super Paper Mario.

Paper Mario: The Origami King director Masahiko Nagaya also chimed in during the interview, adding that “Mr. Tanabe is correct about us having complete creative control over the crucial elements of the game. We were constantly checking whether or not our approach was moving too far away from the Mario universe. During development, we were also careful not to disappoint the expectations of fans of the core Mario series. As mentioned, there are strict guidelines related to the use of characters. It’s a challenge to emphasize the unique aspects of the game while still adhering to the guidelines.”

While the team claims that Nintendo has not restricted its creative control over Paper Mario titles, it still sounds like there are a lot of restrictions that Intelligent Systems has when developing new Paper Mario titles. Despite this, during this interview Tanabe commented on how the team plans to continue experimenting with battle systems going forward, implying that it has no desire of returning to the RPG roots of the series any time soon.

Paper Mario: The Origami King is available now, exclusively on Nintendo Switch.

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Source: Nintendo Everything

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