Topic: Paper Mario: Color Splash - OT

We still got Mario Kart and Mario Maker...for now anyways.

I'd love to see the Nokis make a return though.

I agree that this "Toads as main NPCs" doesn't make sense anymore - the Minecraft Mash-Up pack only uses existing characters from the Mario universe, yet it has quite some characters' variety in it. Even Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam, the Mario JRPG that managed not to introduce any new character - worse than Sticker Star and Color Splash in this sense - had some Yoshis in the Toad Villages.
I can see the reason why Sticker Star had mainly Toads as NPCs: the development team was new (it is part of Intelligent Systems, but the Iwata Asks revelaed that it has little to do with the team that made the first two Paper Mario games), the game was scrapped after being announced at E3 and the developers had to rebuild it from scratch; designing new NPCs would have been too time consuming, so they ended up reusing the generic Toad design as much as possible.
But now? Did they really think that people liked this aspect of Sticker Star and wanted it to become one of the main points of the renewed Paper Mario series? I mean, new series need their own distinctive aspects, but I find this one odd at best.

I think the generic toads are more a product of this game being rushed out like Ultra Smash and Amiibo Festival.

IS literally said they are trying to give each one a personality, so the only logical reason for them to make them all look the same is time.

@iKhan Nah, I don't think so. A few variety here and there wouldn't take much time at all to implement. It's a conscious decision.

@DarthNocturnal Sarasaland has declared war with the Mushroom Kingdom under orders of Princess Daisy, will Paper Mario fight alongside Peach or try and infiltrate Sarasaland from the inside? For only £5.29, unlock the true path where Paper Mario joins Smash with the Twilight Town DLC stage based on the location in TTYD!

@iKhan Yeah...they apparently have been working on this since after Sticker Star ended development, so I don't think it was rushed. As @Octane said, it's a conscious decision. If they REALLY wanted to put in something different, they had about 3 years to do so.

@NintendoFan64 Well either conscious decision or HD development issues. Let's not forget that the first Wii U "system seller" launched 1 and a half years after the console came out.

What do you mean, Color Splash still hasn't launched lol jk. Also I think ZombiU was a really good system seller, just sad so many reviewers didn't like it and gave Wii U a bad rep.

@DefHalan I feel the first system seller was Mario Kart 8. Yes there were great games before it but not really system sellers as such.

I have an important information on this regard.

The retail price for this game is not Italian full price (€ 60.99), but mid price (€ 50.99), like Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. This might mean that Paper Mario: Color Splash isn't a high budget game.

At this point, since the new Paper Mario team has many young people, I think they are more or less testing or even teaching them using mid budget titles. If this was true, it would raise one question, though: why the Paper Mario series?

Because they have another Mario RPG series that is doing rather successful, so they can use Paper Mario to experiment more, especially with the whole Paper idea.

That sounds like a much more interesting story x3

@Mister_Wu
The game is $90 in Canada (Most Wii U games are $80 there) and $60 in America (which is normal Wii U pricing)

This is all over the place.

I heard some currencies went crazy after what happened in Europe.

Maybe that's simply the new price of WiiU games in Canadian dollars.

Or maybe it's just a placeholder.

On a light hearted note, someone at a site I visit made this image to sum up Paper Mario Color Splash:

It's perfect for this title!

Why don't they just change the name to Treasure Tracker 2 and take Mario out of it??

I still think it looks like a fun game!

Why ruin Treasure Tracker series, when they already have a Mario spin-off series they can drag through the mud (I actually think this will be a lot of fun)

@Yellowkoopa Perhaps they're just experimenting with the gameplay? Not every Paper Mario game has the same type of gameplay, you know?

I think this process was outlined in the Iwata Asks:

http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/3ds/papermario/0/2

They started with an RPG like the first two as a base and then started removing elements. So, in the end, turn-based battles were maintained. After all, I personally don't know how easy it would be to implement stickers in a Super Paper Mario-like game. Since Color Splash is based on Sticker Star, and the development team seems to be the same as well, we end up with these odd design decisions leading to JRPG-but-not-fully-JRPG continuing even though now we can see alternative routes - maybe the paint hammer would be compatible with a 3D Super Paper Mario-like game.