Initial Brainstorming

Prologue Idea:
Open on a sunny day in the Mushroom Kingdom, with everything as it should be. Mario is relaxing in front of his house, once again between adventures with nothing much to do (he certainly doesn’t get work as a plumber). Enter Parakarry with a package for Mario. He’s struggling to keep afloat and is incredibly relieved to finally deliver it. There’s no return address, or any distinguishing marks of any kind. Only: MARIO! Half exhausted, half curious, Parakarry hangs around to see what’s inside. Mario carefully opens the box, and our story begins.

Initial Concepts:
Mario’s House is bigger now, and serves as the main hub of the game. Different worlds are accessed from different objects in the rooms of the house; for instance you could roll under the refrigerator, or slip in between books in the bookcase. There are many seemingly mundane household objects that can be expanded into feature length worlds that mesh with the Paper Mario universe. Imagine Mario jumping into a flower vase, and arriving in a world with Dazees and Monty Moles. Or Mario slips into a pillowcase and finds himself in a feather world.

There are only a few rooms at the start, but builders can appear to add new rooms, a second floor, a shed out back, etc. This is the central plot of the game, maybe using the McGuffin item we were talking about, such as a magic hammer or other construction object. When Mario beats a world, the item gains the energy it needs to build another room. It would be interesting if the player is given the choice of where to put any particular room, making each player’s layout of Mario’s House slightly different. Building up Mario’s House from a small shack to a Luigi’s Mansion-esque property would give the player a great sense of accomplishment and motivate them to keep playing.

As the player progresses through the game different shops can open up in the house, guests can visit, minigames can be played, and partners relax around the place when not actively following Mario.

This highlights a new strategy with partners, where Mario can only take one partner into a world at a time (there could be an item or badge that allows switching in-world however). Certain partners are more suited for certain worlds, making progression easier, but all partners should be useful in all worlds. This includes battle as well as navigation.

Here is where we get to the crux of the Paper Mario series: the combat. The reason SPM and SS were not as highly regarded as PM1 and TTYD was because of their departure from the turn based battle system, which was simple enough for casual players but contained enough depth to satisfy hardcore players and multiple playthroughs. While the argument can be made that SPM has a refined and fluid combat system, it still felt lacking as a Paper Mario game. To me, it felt like a Super Mario Bros. game with a Paper Mario coat of paint. I have not played SS yet, but as I understand it combat was pointless and ultimately unsatisfying.

No matter how good the story is, if the gameplay is not fun, no one will want to play the game. Inversely, if the gameplay is fun, players will suffer through half-decent story as long as it isn’t shoved down their throats constantly. I’m reminded of how little you actually play in the first few hours of SPM.

I'm not sure I like the idea of navigating from the house. The house has served more as an opening in every game, even in super paper mario. Nothing more. I think it could be used to go to areas in previous games post-main-game though, but I've always much preferred the open world-adventurey aspect of the first two games.

The house is always a good jumping off point, and I like the idea of it having any other purpose beyond just visiting occasionally to read Luigi's diary and fappin to Mario's secret porn stash

Another idea I had was to highlight the theme of being in a play. In battle, Mario and the enemies are on stage right? So Mario & co. are trapped in a play being staged by the nefarious villain, who is placing obstacles in Mario's way to prevent him from finishing the final act and ending what is ultimately a childish power fantasy.

terribad wrote:The house is always a good jumping off point, and I like the idea of it having any other purpose beyond just visiting occasionally to read Luigi's diary and fappin to Mario's secret porn stash

Another idea I had was to highlight the theme of being in a play. In battle, Mario and the enemies are on stage right? So Mario & co. are trapped in a play being staged by the nefarious villain, who is placing obstacles in Mario's way to prevent him from finishing the final act and ending what is ultimately a childish power fantasy.

Hmm I definitely like the idea of emphasizing on the stage stuff, that seemed to be a more or less crucial part of TTYD and adding onto it would be nice.

Mario's house shouldn't be the hub-world, but I'm quite down with the idea of loading it up with secrets. That said, such things need to be done later on in development- right now, we should be focusing more on making sure basic systems are functional and get a proper World 0 (tutorial) finished.

It's funny that you'd mention that Mario doesn't get to go plumbing much- I was actually thinking that the earliest challenges (again, the tutorial) should be plumbing themed, lore-wise. That is, we oughta find an excuse to drop Mario off in a cardboard sewer and give him shit to jump on baddies to bop. I was thinking that instead of a typical fanservice Parakarry introduction, we could start off with Mario fixing his own damn water supply. I have a few ideas on how this could be implemented well, but I'm gonna plop those in another thread I intend to create (with plenty of design-doc'y stuff and even visual aids I may or may not throw together in Paint) about how we should handle puzzles and the first zone.

I like the idea of interacting with objects to get to new areas a la Mario 64 or the Shy Guy Toybox but I think most fans of the series would prefer a more open world-oriented approach and that we should maybe implement that idea on a more "abstract" or zoomed-out level. For example, we could take your idea of jumping into a vase to arbitrarily hit up a new zone and instead find a reason to shrink Mario down and have a zone take place in a greenhouse or garden with Mushroom Kingdom insects acting as monstrous... well, monsters.

I strongly disagree with the one-member-only rule and was actually thinking that quick change should be a standard ability for the sake of allowing us to come up with more creative and strategic enemy layouts. Combat should serve as a puzzle first and foremost, and making certain abilities necessary or super useful against certain enemies in certain situations even allows us to populate an area with enemies so they can act as a sort of metroidvania-style barrier and deter players from venturing where they shouldn't be yet.

i'll admit my ideas are certainly out there. but I hope that at best they can serve as a way to get the ball rolling, and I think that they have been successful in that regard

tragedian, you make great points here:
first, I agree that our focus right now should be on the basic systems and a world 0.
second, treating combat as a puzzle
third, I imagine the majority of players will already be familiar with paper mario games, and giving them quick change at the start will not only be welcome, it also allows us to make a slightly more difficult game from the get-go. in this way we highlight the necessity of switching partners constantly early on, which gives us the ability to provide a higher number of partners with varied abilities and gives the player more ways to play

In PM2, Mario had all sorts of badges for jumps and hammers, but all the partners had were "P" versions of pre-existing badges (ex. Defense Plus P, Feeling Fine P). I was thinking that it would be cool to have partner-specific badges (wherein each partner had their own BP). For example, if this game had a tanky partner, you could give them a specialized Defense Plus badge that only costs 3 BP (as opposed to it's usual 5 BP). Each partner would require their own BP stat for this to work so that the player doesn't put all their badges on a single person (which would probably be too OP). This would open up more doors for partners, and make them even more interesting.

Also, I've always thought it was a bit lame that if Mario dies, it's game over, but if a partner dies, Mario can just switch them out for anyone else.

Terribad: I like the idea of giving the players Quick Change from the get-go. It allows for more combos.