Y’know I’m starting to think the lack of unique individual characters that belong to an existing race/species in the newer Paper Mario games is due to Tanabe or someone higherup in the team.
Yeah there’s that rumor of Nintendo being hypocritical and overly paranoid in keeping brand recognizability/consistency that they don’t realize how making entirely new characters just does the same frickin’ thing if not worse, and I’m still kinda worried about that too, but you look at other Mario games including those that came after the supposed time the Mario Quality Assurance team was formed (which may have even just been after SMRPG due to enemies having the wrong names and stuff, according to a reddit post that was shared in here not long ago (not by me; Theguy123 found and shared it + AceAttorney9000 found a comment from the Reddit poster in it), the reddit dude seeming to have done his research though didn’t provide sources so eh but stuff seemed to line up), and they don’t seem to have this problem.
Dream Team still used characters like Private Goomp and the other two enemy characters who join him + the generic Toad NPCs were kept more in line with the usual Toads like the Reddit dude talked about (plus Popple appears and there are some variations of existing enemies even if not much); the M&L remakes still had unique, important Toad characters and such and had Private Goomp etc. even in Bowser Jr.’s Journey; Odyssey has that girl Goomba and they even had concepts of Glydon being a unique Waddlewing individual before they decided to make him a dinosaur thing; 3D World has those cat goombas; King Bob-omb returned in Super Mario Party and Mario Kart Tour; Toadette still exists; Miyamoto was cool with if not even in love with all the unique stuff in Odyssey and he himself likes bringing back some old characters like the Koopalings even if he likes to see new as well...
Heck, there’s even the fact Tanabe thought there weren’t many friendly races besides the Toads. Um, what? What about the Piantas and Nokis? The penguins from SM64 and Galaxy? The bees and maybe others I forgot from Galaxy? The rabbits? All the new ones from Odyssey? Those fairy girls in 3D World? Other humans if SMB3’s multiple kings are anything to go by? What about friendlier Wigglers etc., some of those enemies y’all aren’t using? Where the frick are the Yoshis?! It’s just weird, man.
So, yeah, I’m thinking Nintendo may be alright with unique individuals as long it’s clear they’re their own individual character of a species (with their own name and such) and not like a new redesign + the normal species they’re a part of appears in the game too maybe. Seems Paper Mario’s situation may just be due to Tanabe or some dumb Chief Creative Officer above him.
Also here’s the Reddit post I mentioned + a comment from the poster if anyone is curious; again, Theguy123 shared it here originally and AceAttorney9000 saw the comment:
https://www.reddit.com/r/papermario...?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3