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Nintendo on changing the scope with Paper Mario: Sticker Star

by nintendaan
29 November 2012
GN Version 4.0
This bit comes from the Paper Mario: Sticker Star Iwata Asks...

Iwata: Miyamoto-san really persevered with Paper Mario this time. Exactly what was he particular about?

Tanabe: Aside from wanting us to change the atmosphere a lot, there were two main things that Miyamoto-san said from the start of the project--"It's fine without a story, so do we really need one?" and "As much as possible, complete it with only characters from the Super Mario world.

Iwata: Kudo-san, you were in charge of the script, so what did you think about whether a story was really necessary or not?

Kudo: I originally saw it in a way that's similar to Miyamoto-san. Personally I think all we need is to have an objective to win the boss battle at the end of the game. I didn't think we necessarily needed a lengthy story like in an RPG. Instead, we looked at the characteristics of a portable game that can be played little by little in small pieces and packed in lots of little episodes and ideas. I always did like putting in little ideas, so I actually enjoyed it.

Iwata: Creatively, restraints aren't necessarily a bad thing. A lot of new attractive features come out of that.

Tanabe: That's right. At first, we were making a lot of individual allies as in a regular RPG, but when we decided to focus on stickers, in order to make a clear change with previous games in the series, it was like we started all over again by throwing out the system--including those characters--that we had made up to that point.

Iwata: You purposefully threw out the basic RPG structure.

Tanabe: Yes. We decided to make it so that players would face stronger opponents by throwing out the whole concept of experience points and levels in favor of gradually gathering stronger stickers.

I had actually been thinking for a long time that I wanted to get rid of the RPG experience points. In the Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland28 game, which Kudo-san and I worked on together, the player-character didn't develop at all. We adopted a system whereby they solved everything with money.

This time, we decided to do everything with stickers. We decided on a system whereby in battle, instead of attack commands, you fight by using the stickers you have gathered in the field or bought in town.