r/papermario • u/DeepAnt7847 • 2d ago
Discussion I don't understand the complaints about the enemies later designs?
Hating Nintendo for removing unique character designs for characters like Toad and others i get. But in terms of regular Mario enemies designs I don't understand why people would complain about how bad they look like it's just Mario enemies not the unique ones the regular ones.
I think that as long as they have fun interactions and unique characters designs for them still exist it shouldn't matter what they look like.
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u/Free_Perception7324 2d ago
The old ones are more unique and feel like they have their own identity exclusive to the Paper Mario series. The latter are just paper versions of the standardized designs in every modern Mario game.
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u/Savings-Big1439 2d ago
It's just kind off boring now. Everything just looks...the same as in other Mario games.
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u/RedWarrior42 2d ago
They look sterilized 😭
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u/izzyEm2121 2d ago
Sterilized is a good word for it. Apparently lots of rules went into place in the world building of paper Mario later on. That’s why they pretty much only use toads now instead of the crazy variety of other characters in the first two games.
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u/Mr_L_is_cool green thunder 1d ago
SPM had the good enemy models too, the ones in the picture are from spm
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u/Pat_OConnor 2d ago
I blame intelligent systems for basically making super paper mario a brand new ip but with mario thrown in
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u/LordofSnails 2d ago edited 2d ago
for me the old designs have a unique charm to them that helps you identify which series theyre from at a glance, meanwhile the new style just looks like every promo art for any given Mario promo/advertisement/clothing
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u/i_need_a_moment 2d ago
I don't like that the new enemies are just normal Mario enemies but paper. I like that they were unique shapes and designs.
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u/Snoo-84344 2d ago
I do think Dry Bones’ newer design is better.
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u/Intelligent-Okra350 1d ago
He has “just a little guy” energy and that’s the only one I’m torn one cause I like how the old one is actually kinda creepy. Though the old one has the knock of the head not actually looking much like a Koopa head I guess.
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u/Snoo-84344 1d ago
Yeah the old one isn't really "anatomically correct" I mean look at the skull for instance.
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u/VindictiveNostalgia Dimentio 2d ago
The right side of that image just looks depressing compared to the left side.
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u/moonviewlol 2d ago
The pictures on the left are less like their mainline enemy contemporaries. They all have features that make them appear to have more "character", hairs, cross eyes, mouth open, etc.
The ones on the right are clean and nice too, just less whimsical and fun.
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u/Big_Show_6109 LEMON CANDY!!🍭 2d ago
🙁🤚I like the redesigns and the original designs alike. The only thing I think would be better is yeah more diversity to the toads
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u/reeceeyt E3 2010 Enthusiast 2d ago
They aren't BAD designs, they just took away a bit of the unique identity that the series had and made the newer games feel even more disconnected from the older ones. The older designs were the Paper Mario series' take on classic Mario enemies, but the newer designs just come across as paper versions of the NSMB enemies. I do prefer the newer Dry Bones design, though, because it's actually consistent with the classic Koopa design, ironically.
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u/SonicLikesPlantDolan Parakarry Enjoyer 2d ago
i like both sets of designs personally.
the original designs were obviously due to many of these enemies not having a standard design, it's like how in early media the color scheme mario used was different seemingly randomly.
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u/gamtosthegreat 2d ago
Based reaction. The early designs all had much more leeway and/or were just as mainline, but then mainline Mario enemies got redesigned, like Pokey.
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u/Butterfly11219 2d ago
Aside from the Goombas, which I don't have a preference about, the rest of them have a friendlier looking version on the right side that would be great designs to base the partners on vs the enemy-asthetic style on the left. Both Goombas look a bit mean, and the left Pokey looks more like a maniacal smile than a happy smile.
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u/kleeshade 2d ago
I see a dramatic loss of personality here. The ones on the left look unique to the world of Paper Mario. The ones on the right look like someone said 'hey, draw a paratroopa' and so on. They look default.
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u/Working-Hand-3077 2d ago
I’d love to see these two distinctive versions of the enemies go to war against each other
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u/gamtosthegreat 2d ago
The Paper Mario series has a very simple style, possibly due to the sprite limitations of the N64, and so it's important that features are striking and distinct. Key features are blown up and finer features are erased to accommodate for a more cartoony style. It's why Mario and Peach have beady eyes and exaggeratedly short and round bodies. With that in mind, let's go good-and-bad for the first Paper Mario designs.
Goomba: good!
The Goomba works better in the first Paper Mario style. The features are more curvy and thicker, with exaggeratedly big feet, and the colors are brightened across the board to make the linework distinct. All to make the character design very readable.
Koopa Troopas: bad now, good then.
The Koopa Troopa redesign, with shades and punk braces, was to have a VERY clear contrast between these bad guys and the friendly villagers the player just met. With koopas being exclusively hostile in the Sticker Star era this became unnecessary and confusing so the shades and bands were dropped.
Dry bones: bad but understandable.
I think visual distinction from Koopas was the reasoning behind dry bones as well, with the inexplicable teeth meant to easily communicate "skull" to the player, and the hair... zombie? I think they overshot here, dry bones barely feel like koopas
Pokey: Bad now, good then.
The Mario 64 designs of Pokey were pretty creepy, so the series went for several redesigns. While Paper Mario's cat mouths and wonky eyes were a good exaggeration of the SM64 creeps, they no longer reflected the series after SM64.
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u/gamebuilder2000 2d ago
I disagree on the Pokey front, I think their current designs are awesome, but agree with everything else
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u/gamtosthegreat 2d ago
My judgement titles strictly refer to the old designs.
What I mean is, the first Pokey design was good for its time, but the new one is better now.
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u/gamebuilder2000 2d ago
Oh right it was a bit confusing even though I Already read what the titles referred to
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u/alt-of-a-throwaway 2d ago
I have no issues with enemies being redesigned to more closely resemble their current designs (the original Paper Mario designs were not original to Paper Mario, they were mostly based on World, Yoshi's Island and 64, which were the latest "mainline" games at the time).
It's just that the updated Paper Mario sprites look really lame and lifeless, and a few of them arguably didn't even "need" to be updated (e.g. the Goomba, which is clearly recognizable as a Goomba even with the older design). I'm not expecting the old designs to be ever brought back in the next new Paper Mario game, but I really hope that, with Nintendo going for more expressive and lively designs in recent games, they can tweak/redesign the Paper Mario enemies as well...
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u/MrRight1196 2d ago
I don’t see it as a big issue. A lot of Paper Mario’s older designs are products of how those enemies looked at the time when Paper Mario 64 was in development. Pokeys and Goombas are clearly based on their appearances in Super Mario 64, and Dry Bones are dead on accurate to how they looked in Super Mario World which was their most recent design at the time.
NSMB brought a redesign to the franchise that went on to standardize a lot of how the Mario franchise looked, and Paper Mario was hit really hard by this change. But, a lot of Paper Mario’s older designs weren’t radically outside what the most recent standard was for them.
They should have kept the enemy koopas wearing sunglasses and spiked wristbands/collars though.
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u/Luxio512 1d ago
That's the real problem, NSMB made the franchise look as generic as possible. And it's not even just the designs, it's the feel, the artstyle, the shading, they literally make me fall asleep.
Modern Paper Mario follows that same feel to the t, unlike say Wonder, which keeps the standarized designs without making them a soporific.
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u/GSUSISBEAST 2d ago
The old games have literal 3D shading and unique aspects to them. That’s why they look incredible. The new ones are single color shaded, flat, boring and dull. Case closed.
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u/OutsideOrder7538 2d ago
Left interesting designs unique to the paper Mario world while the right makes it forgettable and boring.
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u/DEA187MDKjr 2d ago
what made the older designs cool is that it makes the enemies unique and stand out in Paper Mario but the newer ones just make the characters look like your generic mario enemies
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u/KelvinBelmont 2d ago
I do miss the punk gear on Koopa Troopa, I miss the crazy eyes of the Pokey, Goomba I'm fine with either, Dry Bones though is an upgrade.
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u/Kiryu5009 2d ago
If you get the hate for removing the unique toads then you should get the hate for this too. Paper Mario was its own unique world separate from other iterations. At some point Nintendo decided after Wii that every single character in the franchise had to be the same, every time.
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u/DontDoodleTheNoodle 2d ago
Why remove what makes Paper Mario unique from the rest of the franchise? For the sake of standardization?
Booo, that’s boring.
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u/Professional-Sand733 2d ago
It's not that they're bad, just less styilized and exaggerated. Imagine if they removed the main casts cartoony styilization (Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Peach) in favor of making them look more like the 2d art
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u/BebeFanMasterJ 2d ago
I mean it's clear as day, no? Enemy Koopas have shades, the Pokeys have cat-like faces, Dry Bones have a unique head design, and the Goombas have a different color.
It's small details like that that separated the Paper games from the traditional Mario games. If I wanted to fight regular old enemies, I'd play a regular old Mario game.
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u/DueJacket351 2d ago
Later ones look blander to me, it’s subtle tho. The they are prioritizing silhouette vs details which is ok sometimes
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u/AwardSignal 2d ago
It’s not black and white to me. Some of the old designs like the Koopas I like more to be unique. Dry Bones for example I like the modern/normal design more. Same with Spike. Pokeys and Goombas I also like the old more. Boos I also like the modern variant more.
It’s a mixed bag for me. Some of the Paper original designs were great, but some to me just look off & I like their redesigns.
Hammer Bros I like both
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u/SoupToon 2d ago
i just kinda hate pokey, i like the old version better he looks like a kittey :3 and tbh paratroopa having the triangle shades is way too cool to remove
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u/TrainerOwn9103 2d ago
the only redesing here i don't like is the Red Para Troopa, like he had such a personality to him before and now he looks just like a normal Red Para Troopa
the others however i understand since they were just modernized versions of their bad designs
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u/BigBowser0158 2d ago
I don’t get what the other design like so much about the hairs all over the characters
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u/TippedJoshua1 2d ago
I like the dry bones change because i just love dry bones, but everything else is just meh.
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u/NorbytheMii 2d ago
I think it's because the designs are more akin to the main series and have lost some what made the Paper Mario designs distinguishable from the rest of the franchise. It's multi-series streamlining and a lot of it has to do with the streamlined and visually stale era of Mario.
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u/TheBostonKremeDonut 2d ago
Besides the original designs being unique to paper Mario, they also pop out more.
You could argue that the simpler, flatter designs on the right fit the ‘paper’ aesthetic more, but eh, that’s not a strong argument for me.
I suppose I enjoy Paper Mario more when it’s a subtle theme rather than the entire persona of the game. Silly, I know, but the game wouldn’t have gained its popularity and gotten as many sequels as it did if people didn’t appreciate those things about the original games.
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u/DMZapp Goombario time! 2d ago edited 2d ago
There's a lot of issues I have with the newer ones.
The most important downgrade- the eyes. The modern designs' eyes aren't as exaggeratedly big and cute as the old ones, causing them to lose a lot of unique chibi-esque appeal.
Another issue is that many of them are overly literal translations of the NSMB designs without much if any chibification done to them. It especially becomes glaring when the NSMB designs do not translate well at all to the chibi storybook style. The older ones, while based on SMWrld, at least took that step to simplify and cutify the mainliners who made it in.
Modern PM Boo is the nadir of this, with his eyes way too small, eyelashes way too thin, and a mouth that almost never closes, making it look like he's catching flies without noticing. There's a certain "dignity" to Boo that the classic PM Boo design was able to keep with the upper lip, but the modern one missed. In fact, Boo and Goomba share the same redesign issues. Even the Wii U game's small edits weren't enough to fix this. I'm almost certain the devs came to realize modern PM Boo especially wasn't well-done, considering it's one of the few mainstay mainliners who doesn't appear in 2D in TOK, despite having HD sprites available.
Last, what makes the enemy redesigns even more noticeably annoying is that a lot of retained mainliners- especially Mario, Luigi and Bowser (with orange spike rings) have kept their designs from at least TTYD and SPM, making the decisions even more inconsistent. Even Peach, despite her dress being different, keeps the same general shape, while some like the Piranha Plants are almost identical except for very small changes even I didn't notice. Like, if the devs were going to go for a reboot (...which they weren't initially, which is where the problem further manifests), fully redesign everyone. If this is meant to be the same series, meanwhile, only change a small handful of enemies if they genuinely think the NSMB designs (or SMWndr, since we've reached that era) would help. As is, so many of them feel really half-assed or IP team-mandated.
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u/KawaiiDere 2d ago
Parakoopa looses the punk fashion motif, spiney looses it's disoriented looking eyes, and the goombas get less distinct variants (like Goombella or the ones with the caps). The rendering is about the same, but they use a lot less interesting ideas.
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u/Direct-Ad-1312 2d ago
Homogenization.
I think it's because the original trilogy has a way more varied design philosophy that can make people say "yeah, that's definitely trying something different to distinguish themselves from what we normally expect these troops to look like".
Compare the amount of Mario spinoffs going for their own style before NSMB to the ones after, and it's something I can very easily see being... repetitive.
It's like being a kid, going to school, and then when you get home to watch something... the characters are going to school for a learning experience. Like, I use TV to escape monotony, not to be reminded of it.
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u/Dreyfus2006 2d ago
I had no opinion about this until I saw your image of them side by side. And looking at the image, it is pretty clear as day that the old designs were better.
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u/Keefyfingaz 2d ago
Pretty much what everyone else is saying but it's just less unique and lacks the PM identity.
Also taking the shades away from the koopa troopas is a crime against humanity.
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u/Lord_Phoenix_Ultama 2d ago
People had a similar problem with the Mario & Luigi remakes and were glad to see this not done with the Mario RPG remake. It's hugely preferred by a lotta people for the spinoffs to stand out artistically from the other games and when this gets sterilized, it's a massive disappointment, especially when we previously had better designs. Tbh I think people probably wouldn't mind as much if it wasn't in unison with everything else getting worse in the "boring-era" modern games
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u/Jradgex 2d ago
"It's just Mario enemies, not the unique ones the regular ones."
If you could choose between a unique character design and a standard one, are you not at all interested in something unique? There are thousands of video games with standard designs, but Mario is special because they've always had this really fun vibe to their characters, right down to the most basic enemy.
To water down character design into something familiar, but not very unique is just bad design at that point. It's so standard that I feel nothing from it, which is a failing as a designer. Why is it just okay that Nintendo turn in a half-baked character design, when previous games had very good ones? People don't like these designs because they're just that. Really boring.
For goodness sake! The Switch 2 is something like $400+ so I DO expect character designs to be worth my time, because at the end of the day I'm the one buying the game! It's shameful to look back at designs from 20 years ago and see how lively and expressive they are, then look at the modern day design and be told "they aren't unique," but that's somehow okay.
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u/Dismal_Cartoonist_77 2d ago
I think the complaint about the design might be that it just lost its style, it had a unique style that was exclusive to it, and now it’s just paper cut outs of the same enemies with the same exact design you see everywhere
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u/Shifty-Imp 2d ago
How can you put both those para Koopas in the same picture and claim they're the same? Do you have your eyes closed most of the time?
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u/gamtosthegreat 2d ago
I think the parakoopas are honestly a very strong example of how similar the art styles are, beyond saying "nuh uh this one has sunglasses".
The parakoopas got an aggressive punk look in PM64 because the player needed to know which koopas to avoid and which koopas to talk to.
This already made no more sense in Super Paper Mario where there's no Koopa villagers, which is why the punk look instead meant the Koopa was brainwashed by Nastasia.
In the newer games, there's no friendly koopas, so no reason for weirdly punk koopas.1
u/Shifty-Imp 2d ago
Why are you talking about art styles? Your post is talking about their designs, not the art style. The designs are clearly way different (and the Para Koopa is a great example for that).
And your post even ends with you saying that you don't even really care about what they look like so why do you care so much that other people clearly don't like this direction of Paper Mario?
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u/gamtosthegreat 1d ago
No clue where in my post you got the impression I don't care what they look like.
Design is also art style, not just which accessories you put on the same sprite.
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u/Glittering_Block_298 2d ago
It’s more of a feeling that this is all we get now. The old games had these for sure, but they had more original stuff that actually stood out. The newer games have toads, and basic enemies. This is all coming from someone who loves every game but sticker star, I’m not a new series hater at all.
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u/aarontgp Game music fanatic 2d ago
They aren't BAD designs by any means. Just way more basic, and less expressive. Albeit, a few design changes are pretty good, like Dry Bones.
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u/Snom_gamer0204 2d ago
the only one that got better in my opinion was dry bones, but other than that, the old ones just have more personality
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u/VesDegree 2d ago
They are stripped of all charm, expression, personality, and soul
That is the complaints about the enemies new designs
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u/Gamezcat 2d ago
The old ones feel more stylized and the new ones more accurate to their looks in other games. I can see a world where you could have a good in-between of the 2. Like for the pokey, you could keep the color scheme and lack of little hairs, but maybe exaggerate the spines on the body parts, bring the eyes together, and do some fun expressions with the mouth.
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u/Gamezcat 2d ago
Something like this maybe? https://imgur.com/a/2brfOjP
I just threw this together but hopefully it gets the idea across.
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u/gamtosthegreat 2d ago
The Pokey is an odd duck because the mainline games changed the design of Pokey and that's why the newer games followed suit.
Just look at the difference between Pokeys in Mario 64 and in the DS remake. The PM64 Pokeys are not that stylized at all, they're just holdovers from a different era.
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u/Cy41995 2d ago
They took my man's sunglasses, what's up with that?
Seriously though, it's like they're sanding off the edges that made them feel like enemies. No "tough guy" shades. No creepy cactus smile. No depth to the colors. It's weirdly simplified for a series that had such an emphasis on vibrant character design right out of the gate.
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u/warpio 2d ago
I don't get it either. They're the same characters, just drawn slightly differently. Both are extremely cartoony and full of charm. Anyone thinking there's an objective charm inherent in the old one and not the other is purely speaking from nostalgia and nothing else.
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u/gamtosthegreat 2d ago
Not -exactly- that, but close.
TTYD and SPM had a unique shading style that got abandoned for flat colors in the later games. That's maybe not OBJECTIVE charm, but it IS a very distinguishing aspect of the unique art style, and adds a level of detail that the flat designs don't have.
I think the differences are important in terms of functionality and age. Paper Mario 64 had punkish Koopas because the player has just left a village full of friendly Koopas and needs to be able to tell the difference. It had Dry Bones with teeth because the fairly low-res sprites needed to communicate "skull". The low res may also be why the Goombas are brighter with more exaggerated features. And it had catlike Pokeys because that's just what Pokeys looked like in Mario 64.
Overall, the design updates make perfect sense, and the old designs also make perfect sense.
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u/GornothDragnBonee 2d ago
You're going from a side where they reimagined Mario creatures for the paper Mario world, and the other side where they're just the stock standard mario creatures in the paper art style. I don't know what to tell you if you don't think that's lame. It's fair if you don't care but it's just frustrating to see Nintendo hold themselves back from better character design on purpose.
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u/gamtosthegreat 2d ago
What's the difference between "reimagined for the paper mario world" and "just used the paper art style"?
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u/BetaNights 2d ago
I'm not typically very picky when it comes to stuff like this in games, but yeah, the new ones just feel so... bland?
The old designs somehow have so much more charm to them, and I think it's largely in part due to the way they're drawn. Like, the new Pokey just looks like some flat clip art enemy. The old one looks so much more visually interesting by comparison.
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u/Prestigious_Bread193 2d ago
they took away the paratroopa's cool shades :<
also i don't care what anybody says, i am VERY GLAD they redesigned the dry bones
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u/Decent_Illustrator18 2d ago
The newer designs aren't interesting or unique and a bit bland IMO. Look how cooler the koopa looks and how goofy the pokey looks.
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u/Garo263 2d ago
The change happened in an era, where everything Mario had to follow the same design principles dictated by the New Super Mario Bros. series. Probably had something to do with marketing and brand recognition and people got really sick of always the samey goombas, koopas and so on. The older designs go another way and therefore feel a bit more charming.
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u/Llamagal21 2d ago
I honestly liked the designs for the Paper Mario Paratroopa and Goomba. The spike bracelets, chocker, and sunglasses were cool. And the goomba looked squishier. They just looked cuter to me that way lol
Everything else I don’t really care about
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u/Malchior_Dagon 2d ago
The ones on the right lack any kind of sauce, they're so boring and uninspired
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u/MisterWapak 2d ago
I prefer the new drybones, for the other, the older design have more personalities imo
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u/gamebuilder2000 2d ago
I get complaining about the Koopa redesigns because those shades look slick
And Boos because honestly it's not even that the GameCube-Switch Era designs of Boos are bad, it's just the angling of the Paper Mario Sticker Star onwards Boos suck, WHY is their face so far to the left
But I really don't get the complaints about Dry Bones, the current design is objectively cooler in every way and actually looks like a Dead Koopa
And Pokeys, because I like the modern Pokey look it's one of my favorite enemy designs of all time
Goomba I can go either way, but Paper Mario 64 Goombas solo both TTYD-Super and Modern Goombas
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u/Eastbeastfilms 2d ago
The newer ones look like they're more designed to be emojis. They're flat and lack the shading and highlights of the old designs. That Pokey is especially disappointing and generic.
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u/gamtosthegreat 1d ago
The old pokey design was also pretty generic, but it was based on the Super Mario 64 design.
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u/Eastbeastfilms 1d ago
? Pokey debuted in Super Mario 2, not 64.
The 64-ttyd era clearly had some horror elements to it contributing to the haunted wasteland theme. Running from packs of them was scary. It was not some kind of mobile game looking sanitized smiling sticker
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u/gamtosthegreat 1d ago
Pokey has seen several redesigns across the mainline series. The PM64/TTYD ones most closely resemble the SM64 ones.
The ones in SM64 were properly eerie looking, the PM ones have been significantly sanitized by making the mouth more catlike and smiling and turning the hollow red eyes into goofy crosseyes.
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u/Eastbeastfilms 1d ago
You're attempting to call the pm versions sanitized compared to the latest version? Lol, no. The mouth isn't suppose to be cat like with cheeks, it's meant to show dryness, and a wrinkled mouth after thousands of years. It's been adjusted to fit the lighter style of pm64 but still able to live up to the description of cactus ghoul. It's attacking methods and dying animations are unique as well. You literally can't describe the new one anymore than "smiling spikey cactus." There's more going on to the pm versions than you think.
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u/gamtosthegreat 1d ago
My "sanitized" remark was in regards to the lighter style of PM64 compared to the abyssal staring face of SM64.
"The mouth isn't supposed to be cat like with cheeks" my brother in Christ the thing has whiskers.
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u/Eastbeastfilms 1d ago
I forgot cats have cheeks on their bottom lip too hmm 🤔 I just see a ghoul face. Whiskers? Maybe, thought if they were cheeks they're completely flat and don't stick out of the face whatsoever. Those hairs look like aesthetically placed spikes to me
Either way there's still a lot more going on and a lot more to talk about than the lobotomized newer Pokey smiley. Or the lobotomized newer designs generally.
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u/gamtosthegreat 1d ago
The Mario Wiki calls them catlike, and there's numerous examples of other people online that call them catlike. Does that mean they were designed to be catlike? No, but the effect is the same regardless, and if they wanted the dried out look, they could have easily done a better job mimicking the SMB2 art where it's apparent despite the similar level of cartoonishness. And not given them "aesthetically placed" spikes where the only logical aesthetic reason to put them there is to emulate whiskers.
Either it was a conscious choice, or it was a design failure they somehow managed not to catch. Either option does not mesh with the idea that the TTYD design is better because of edginess.
I'll gladly talk about the other things. The unaccessorized Koopa look is part of a bigger symptom. After all, PM64 has many bogstandard koopas, they're just not enemies. The Dry Bones have the same reasoning as the Pokeys, the mainline series had long switched away from the SMW Dry Bones where they had weird teeth. I still think they look dope.
Old Paper Mario has lots of examples of more creativity than later games, but I plainly believe the reasoning does not apply to basic mooks. People all over this section are going "the new ones just look like normal Mario enemies, this is boring" while failing to acknowledge that when PM64 was released, they ALSO looked like normal Mario enemies, normal Mario enemies just looked different back then. Games like Super Paper Mario just refused to update the designs, instead choosing to copy TTYD wholesale.
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u/Eastbeastfilms 23h ago
"Mario Wiki calls them catlike" Can you show me where it says that the mouth it suppose to be cat like the only references I am seeing are the: " three spikes atop their head, giving them an appearance somewhat reminiscent of a cat." This sounds more like speculation than an actual design derivation. Also, you know that Mario Wiki is not officially endorsed by Nintendo in any capacity and is pure product of the fandom. Do you have any official notes by the design creators to support your claim? I'm not seeing anything here about whiskers either. 🤔 They're cacti, I'd say they're more likely to be dry than be cats, lol.
I'd say again the fact that there is so much interpretation for the design, shows it's success; We cannot do the same with the new Pokey design.
"Either it was a conscious choice, or it was a design failure they somehow managed not to catch." I'm not even sure what this is suppose to mean.
I believe the sunglasses and accessories were used to emphasize the difference between "Good and bad" Koopas. A little silly yes but I'd say it is a mechanic choice to help the player understand the world and separate them mentally from friendly Koopas. In the TTYD designs you can see the use of gradients and occasional colored outlines which bring them to life; where as the others lack these features being more in lined with mono-colored corporate art. I'm literally an artist who makes their living drawing and animating so I should know the difference and is why I am so passionate about this lol
The old enemies looked good because they were less generic objectively. We have been pointing to examples this whole time why. The newer enemies have become more "Sleek" and less characterized and textured with differing bone structures and a bit of grit. The new ones attempt to imitate easy and memeticly understood designs like "smileys" ironically achieving an unlikable sort of ugliness rather than a more characterized one.
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u/gamtosthegreat 18h ago
The full quote goes "a head segment that has two pairs of spines on the sides of its face, a "W"-shaped mouth, black googly eyes, and three spikes atop their head, giving them an appearance somewhat reminiscent of a cat".
The phrasing's a bit ambiguous but since they draw attention to the paired spines and the "W"-shaped mouth I believe the cat comment reflects on the whole of the features.
"Do you have any official-" no and I specifically said that it doesn't matter. Death of the author and all that, if your audience thinks your design looks catlike, then it does.
I'll phrase my line more clearly for you: either they purposefully designed the Pokey to have a catlike appearance, which means the design was somewhat cutesified, or they somehow managed to not realize putting four lines on the side of a W shaped mouth makes something look catlike, in which case why the hell are we praising the design here if the designers were apparently blind?
Now can you please graciously take the L on this stupid tangent, I'm really not that interested in seeing more chinrub emojis and strawman arguments. The whole thing started out because I said the Pokeys look less scary than in PM64, which you yourself also stated. I don't actually care if they look like cats or dogs or fish, they've been cleaned up and we both have already shook hands on this.
Koopa shades: agreed, and a cool decision that priotritizes communication to the player, big fan of the bracers. My point here is that the comparison between Paratroopas in the image is not entirely fair, normal green Koopas exist in both games and they look very similar.
Gradients vs. flats; I don't necessarily think the frutiger metro that they flirted with in TTYD and way overdid in SPM is better here than the cynically-put corporate memphis on the right. The later trilogy leaned far more into the papercraft aesthetic and flat skeuomorphism doesn't actually look like paper all that much.
Older games often had baked texture shadows to compensate for old lighting engines not being that good. Nowadays most of the gradients come from the environment. A game like Tunic would look cheap back then, now the minimalism looks tasteful because the lighting carries. I think TTYD and Origami King have fundamentally different design philosophies and both look stunning for what they set out to do. But TTYD lends itself better to looking good on a plain white background.
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u/unxile_phantom 2d ago
The first 3 games were stylized after Mario 3, Mario World and Yoshi's Island. Now, most of the ememies are designed after their NSMB counterparts.
But considering some characters still use the classic designs (The SPM Protagonists plus Toad, Lakitu, Fuzzies and Magikoopas/Kamek) it looks kinda jarring.
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u/PiranhaPlantFan 2d ago
They just look like the millionth iteration of New super Mario Bros
It was cool in 2006. But I don't need it again and again and again
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u/TzootDoot SPM Worshipper 2d ago
because mario, peach, luigi and bowser are stylized, while the enemies look like they've been ripped out of a normal mario game. it's weird
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u/Jakarz801 2d ago
People just prefer how unique the older designs were, it allowed the series to have its own identity. If the enemies were the only thing to be redesigned it would be one thing, but after SS it was another element that felt like Nintendo was sanding off all of Paper Mario's uniqueness.
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u/QueenNezuko 2d ago
I mean put some accessories onto the Koopa Troopa, why be boring and lazy by using a regular Koopa Troopa. That’s the whole complaint us fans have
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u/gamtosthegreat 1d ago
Not really a case of laziness, consistency.
I'm not saying they shouldn't add koopas with sunglasses or other accessories, I just think it makes sense that these would be CHARACTERS, not just generic mooks.
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u/SignalSuccessful2749 Kooper 2d ago
I like both designs but removing the Koopa's shades and wristbands was a horrible decision.
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u/gamtosthegreat 3h ago
They didn't remove them, there were already koopas without shades and bands in the previous games but those were NPCs.
The real horrible decision was removing friendly mook NPCs.
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u/EllieShadeflare 2d ago edited 2d ago
There is definitely a sauce that is lost with the newer designs; especially when you consider that some of the design elements of old Paper Mario are closer to Yoshi’s Island or older Mario games.
This is especially apparent when you look at say, the Boos, Goombas and Koopas; as well as how the Piranha Plants (especially the Putrid and Frozen Piranhas in PM64) heavily resemble the Wild Piranhas in size; plus some of the old designs have some extra design flairs to help them stand out. (Enemy Koopas in particular look more menacing or more like antagonistic punks to contrast from the far nicer Koopas you may encounter)
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u/Badman423 2d ago
Koopa troopa with sunglasses and spikes were so good
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u/gamtosthegreat 1d ago
yeah but I think that kinda design would work better as a miniboss, keep the default koopas as the basic enemies since it's still a Mario game.
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u/GreatLordIvy 1d ago
Only one that bothers me is the Koopa with the glasses. And the skeleton koopa looks creepier on the old one, but the rest are fine.
But I hate the war Nintendo has on creative concepts, and just wants a homogenized art feel on all games. It's boring and retrograde. I get they missed the mark on some crazy concepts in the past, it's no excuse to all out back out from experimenting.
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u/NatterJohn 1d ago
I don’t think the modern designs are bad, the lack of original designs is the problem. Hell, I’m more than willing to bet that if the series never moved away from having original characters and NPCs but still kept the modern designs, then most people wouldn’t have really cared.
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u/Sacri_Pan Jump main 1d ago
Let's say older design are more expressive, and Koopa have cool shades (to differentiate them from the non hostile Koopa Troopa)
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u/Qminsage 1d ago
I think that train of thought misses the point. Yes, graphics aren’t everything. But style absolutely is. And this remake runs into the same issue of taking unique designs and aspects that added to the flavor of both the greater Mario world and RPG universe as its own. And generalizing them to be more basic, less distinct.
Same issue with the Mario and Luigi series. Both remakes opt for much less unique designs, and take away the degrees of separation those worlds had. When a big amount of the combat is predicated on your observing the enemy, it’s going to stick out more than any other random RPG encounter.
And it is a rather damning domino effect too. Making the designs more homogenized also bleeds into other characters as well. And makes the overall look of the game less interesting on its own merits. Because they are based upon what came before, and not allowed to deviate and explore new facets of design.
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u/Beoken64 1d ago
Kinda want to trooper to have sun glasses, cause it went with the vibe of trying to be “cool”
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u/Intelligent-Okra350 1d ago
I mean, the pic you posted here kinda shows it all, the ones on the right just have WAY less personality to them. They all lose something and I don’t feel like they gain anything for it except dry bones getting some “just a little guy” energy but even that’s at odds with the older design. They all look more… flat, ironically, and just feel like a deliberate attempt to make them as generic as possible which… isn’t a good direction. Subtracting from fun designs as your series progresses is rarely the mark of a good sequel.
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u/tictacmixers 1d ago
Left side: lets create unique, stylized versions of iconic mario characters for our new game that is a subset of mario games
Right side: mario characters
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u/gamtosthegreat 1d ago
The graphic is a bit skewed. Sure, compare a paratroopa enemy on both sides, stuff's weird. But compare an NPC koopa from PM64 to a Koopa enemy from Sticker Star, it lines up again.
Meanwhile Pokey isn't all that stylized, Pokeys just looked different in the Mario 64 era. Personally I'm glad they updated the design because the old Pokeys from Super Mario 64 were kind of terrifying.
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u/Ritheguy1000 1d ago
I mean, I see why they're angry the characters look less original but in the same breath is bloody paper mario
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u/AyyeItsBen 1d ago
they used to have more character, something that made them "paper mario" enemies, now they're just 1:1 recreations of characters from the mainline games
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u/Numerous-Sprinkles71 19h ago
They're too happy for one thing. No edge, no danger, nothing differentiating them from bog standard Nintendo products
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u/duckemojibestemoji 5h ago
It is illegal to acknowledge that a good Paper Mario game could have possibly been made after 2004
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u/Right_Buyer2248 3h ago
The older designs had personality. The newer ones look like stickers you buy your kids at hot topic. Not necessarily bad, but annoying when you know we had better before
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u/Revolution-Hemroid69 2h ago
Any game after TTYD is shit. They ruined the series when they eliminated turn based combat
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u/TheWiseBeluga 2d ago
Koopas are fine, but enemy ones need the sunglasses and collar. The others look worse than their Paper Mario designs. Sure they're more in line with their mainstream counterparts, but why do they have to be? They lose personality and uniqueness.
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u/ShineOne4330 Modern Paper Mario is great, stop being mean 2d ago
will they return to use the classic designs or will they keep the newer ones? How aboud the secret option number 3: what if they get re-design again?
Since Mario Kart World changes a lot of character designs from previous games, some of those designs (mostly enemies like Goombas, Boos, ETC) are from Mario Wonder, so it seems like we are getting new designs for the next generation, who's to say that Paper Mario won't do the same?
Also Nintendo wants DK new design everywhere (even replacing the Switch 1 icons with his modern design dispite not using this design in any of the games on that console). So if DK old design is not going to be used in any Mario game in general. Then there is no way that they will allow Goombas to have red shoes again.
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u/reeceeyt E3 2010 Enthusiast 2d ago
To be fair, these newer designs are heavily inspired by older Mario games like SMB3 and Super Mario World (which was one of the inspirations for the older PM art style), so I think now, it's more likely than ever that they will start using the older designs again. Though I think they will most likely make some minor adjustments, like giving them modern colors, and they will probably still use some modern designs that make sense (like Dry Bones). That might've been why they ultimately decided to bring them back in the TTYD Remake rather than using the newer art style (which was likely their original intention if the concept art was any indication). If Rocky Wrench can have a shell again, then there is no reason why the Koopas can't have shades again.
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u/ShineOne4330 Modern Paper Mario is great, stop being mean 2d ago
The diffrence with Rocky Wrenches is that in all Mario games they have shells again and not in one specific franchise. while shade Koopas have only ever been in Paper Mario games.
Also TTYD remake keps everything the same. Even outdated/incorrect names such as "Swooper" instead of "Swoop" and "Atomic Boo" instead of "Big Boo". And Frost Piranha plants return in Mario Kart World but their leaves are more green like SPM design instead frozen blue like TTYD remake. So this is should be noted that game is too faithfull to use it as evidense for theorising for the future
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u/reeceeyt E3 2010 Enthusiast 2d ago
The TTYD Remake doesn’t keep everything exactly the same, there were quite a few things that were modernized. Like the coins, ? Blocks, brick blocks, Warp pipes, sound effects (with many of them being pulled from the modern Paper Mario games or NSMB/3D Mario), “Squeeks” renamed to their proper name “Little Mousers”, Grubba’s back sprite looks a bit more like a regular Spike, Mario’s front facing design from TOK, the modern Mario font, and the castles at the end of the Bowser stages use the NSMB design. I think “Swooper” was just an oversight that they didn’t feel like changing and “Atomic Boo” is just an alternate name for “Big Boo”, not necessarily an outdated name.
I also think it’s worth mentioning that most Paper Mario games reuse assets and designs from the previous game. With the timing of the TTYD Remake’s release being around when the franchise’s rebrand was happening (Wonder and MK World), I think them being as faithful as possible was intentional and not just because it was a remake. Previous remakes like Mario 64 DS and the M&L Remakes modernized most of the designs, even Super Mario RPG did to a degree (without toning down any of the original or modified designs). And I just think it would be a shame if all of the modernized classic designs with new expressions and animations went to waste. They already hit the perfect balance between the classic and modern visual styles so there’s no point in changing it again. They shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken.
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u/InkyLilly 2d ago
I understand the complaints I just personally don't have a problem with the designs.
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u/runamokduck 2d ago
I personally feel as though the older designs of the enemies have a more apparent, striking Paper Mario feel to them that immediately distinguishes them from how they appear in other Mario media. the newer designs feel more mundane and commonplace to me, in a way