Hey. I had a whole more in-depth post planned, concerning my thoughts and responses to... well, everything that's gone down for Mario RPGs recently. But then I got sidetracked by other stuff, including my birthday, and I was honestly just caught off-guard by TTYD getting a remake. Even though I'd been keeping an eye on the rumors for months, I was expecting it to not even be revealed until late next year if it was real. Guess Nintendo proved me wrong.
So, considering I'm not sure when I'll get to writing that in-depth post, I figured I'd just pop in and see what's been going on here, at least.
People are talking about whether or not the script regarding Vivian will be updated or changed? Honestly... while I can understand why some people would be upset if it stayed the same as the original English script, I wouldn't be too bothered, myself. I mean...
You'd think I'd be the one to push for more representation, right? But, personally, I feel that whether Vivian is treated as trans or cis isn't actually very important for her overall story and character arc. It's about her self worth and standing up for herself, and whether Beldam misgenders her or not doesn't add or remove anything from that. Vivian was still being abused either way, and I think that was communicated well enough with the localisation. But then again... that's just my take on it.
I'm honestly just happy that Vivian is back at all. I'm happily surprised that we're getting such varied character designs in a modern Paper Mario - and, yes, it is just a remake, but that hasn't stopped design changes from happening in the past, like with the Mario and Luigi series. If this really was just an upscaled port of the Gamecube original like the rumors suggested, I'd be willing to believe that it could be brushed off, but this being a full remake with from-the-ground-up reworked visuals tells me that Nintendo put both thought and money into maintaining the original designs for the party members and NPCs.
Which, of course, obviously also includes the Goombas and Koopas and such. They likely could've just reused the character assets from Origami King and gotten away with it. But, to me... this remake means that they're counting on thick-eyebrowed Goombas and Toads with hair to sell. Sure, you could say that they're banking on old-school Paper Mario fans to make up a sizable portion of the sales, but they're still taking this risk with reverting the design changes they made for brand consistency, whether it was an in-house idea or just something they approved. This is an important turning point for the aesthetics of Mario spinoffs, I feel, and Nintendo has to have at least a decent amount of faith in this paying off.
Me? I'm buying two because I saw a Toad with a mustache, and I'm not afraid to admit that.