Less than two months before the much anticipated release of Nintendo's "Super Mario Odyssey" for the Nintendo Switch, the game's producer, Yoshiaki Koizumi, talked about the creative process behind the game and some of its new themes.
The producer spoke at GamesCom in Cologne, Germany, and discussed the upcoming "Super Mario" game. One of the main concepts of the game is travelling to different kingdoms to collect different power moves.
Koizumi shared that right when the concept of the game was created, the team decided at the same time that it was going to be a Mario game. Koizumi himself has been involved in a number of Mario games, beginning his career as an illustrator in 1992's "Super Mario Kart." He was also the man behind the acclaimed, gravity-defying "Super Mario Galaxy," which was released for Nintendo Wii in 2007.
The same narrative thread from the original "Super Mario Bros." is still present in the new game, namely Mario rescuing Princess Peach from the evil Bowser. He says that while the story is not the central focus in Super Mario games, it created the two pillars which provided foundations for the games. First, it gave the players the motivation and emotional drive to beat the bad guy and finish the game.
"It had that emotional resonance of giving players greater motivation to actually go and try to complete the game," said the producer to The Verge.
Secondly, the story provided context for the game's mechanics and defined what actions can be done within the particular game.
Koizumi also spoke about the goal of surprising players and putting their characters in unfamiliar worlds. This ties up with the overall theme of travelling in "Super Mario Odyssey." The game achieved this by introducing out-of-place designs, like realistically proportioned humans and a giant dinosaur.
"The gap between what people are familiar with as a dinosaur that lived on this planet, the T-rex, and what you would normally expect to find in a Mario game is, for us, a way of achieving that sense of surprise that fits into the overall theme of travel," added the producer.
"Super Mario Odyssey" will be released worldwide on Oct. 27.
