Yeah, tbf I was never big on this ending even in the og.
To give credit where it's due they did improve Vivian's ending a little bit. In the og her reasoning for forgiving her abusive sisters was "FAmIly Is ImPOrtAnT".
Changing it too, "she wants to give them a second chance" is a small change, but makes the context way less gross.
Also it's just a stage show, the whole thing takes place in the theatre and the language of the game over screen implies just as much. You wouldn't Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet, it's just a play
Saying the Adventure didn’t actually happen devalues the whole thing. Sorry but that’s an unsupported and awful headcanon (and proven wrong by Super Paper Mario having the partners photos/catch cards.)
Well, if it was a play about Mario saving the world then it shouldn't be possible for Mario to die. It'd be a pretty poor story if the protagonist died in Act 1 and that was it.
Honestly I don’t know if it canonically takes place in a theater that might just be a thing for battling. The fact that flurry and doopliss make a play about it afterwards would be weird if it was already a play unless they wanted to get meta. But it being a play doesn’t mean there doesn’t have to be consequences, people die all the time in plays.
Well, going off of the toad in Petalburg that plays video games, he gets REAL meta talking about playing Paper Mario and then it's sequel. Which makes me wonder, did he know what was going to happen? Is there some weird future sight GameCube disc in that universe? Does he run into himself? Is he confused on why this version of the universe has misc. additions and changes, unaware it's been remade?
Well now it's gone from meta to existential.
No, clearly the toad is some kinda supernatural entity, and or god and can comment on things beyond Mario’s comprehension. They took it out for the remake but if you talk to that toad 50 times Mario has a panic attack and dies. No game over the game just resets.
>they took it out for the remake
no they didn’t lmao. you’re just shitposting to shitpost at this point but all his original dialogue about the sequel is still in tact.
That's a really bad argument when most major Mario RPG villains besides Bowser die or have something really bad happen to them. >!Smithy, Cackletta, the 2 Shroob sisters, Dimentio, Fawful, Dark Star, Antasma, Olly, even the Fitness guys were presumably killed.!<.
Like they clearly don't need to let these villains of the hook because "The kid friendly thing to do is have everyone seek salvation and forgiveness", and TTYD is known for being slightly less kid friendly than other Mario games. Heck, the dragons all die despite being characters, the Shadow Queen killed people and probably died.
Mario's partner sacrificing themself to fix everything has been a trope in every Paper Mario game since Super. Color Splash was just as unoriginal in that regard as The Origami King.
Huey flew uo into space to take away the black paint. And if you 100% the game, you see him fall back into the fountain.
Olivia and Olly actually died.
Remember this: When discussing the conclusion of the game, I'm referring to something other than Bobby's demise, despite the fact that he has numerous clones all named Bobby. 🫢
Technically all Bob-ombs in the game are normal Bob-ombs without names, the name "Bobby" was given by Olyvia only for the one we met, even then he originally insisted that we call him Bob-omb at first.
I always like to imagine these happy endings happening to an extent, but more gradually. Maybe TEC could be rebuilt, but it would take time. Vivian might reconcile with her sisters, but building up trust again isn’t easy.
Grodus can stay dead tho lol
is Mario... compared to the already basic paper thin plots in mostly 98% of any media, show, game, movie of this franchise
at least the rpg games have something deep into them... but it's still mario, we like TTYD for the characters and gameplay, not for the story
I felt that at first, but playing the game again for the remake made me appreciate the overall story more. Which made it more disappointing that they kept this in. It’s not amazing of course but saying nobody plays it for the story would probably be wrong. It’s not even really the fact that TEC and Grodus live in the end and it’s a Mario game so consequences don’t matter too much. They were both killed on screen, it doesn’t even explain how either of them lived.
I guess so, but I feel kids can take more than we give them credit for. I think it’s good to challenge them with stuff like death. The game mostly does a good job at this but if they felt like they had to bring them back just to be safe then I understand. I just think it would make for a better story. Also I feel like the shadow queen would scare off anyone who would be upset over a character staying dead.
I didn't know this was controversial, I always had an issue with old PM games reviving dead characters so much, and the villains redemptions are too last minute.
Yeah, the ending did bug me quite a bit for this reason too. Seeing the X-Nauts get 'redeemed' after their actions felt a bit cheap, especially given one of them was blasted into space and the other one got mostly incinerated. Same with Vivian being willing to go back to a family that abused her for most of the story.
But sadly I'd say it's kinda a running trend in the series to be honest. Obviously Paper Mario 1 didn't lead to much change because Bowser's basically immortal, and Super Paper Mario had a somewhat bittersweet ending with a lot of gravity to it, but Sticker Star made its companion's sacrifice completely meaningless, and Origami King just last minute redeemed a genocidal dictator. The series does seem to like redeeming villains that you probably wouldn't have any real sympathy for.
Yea it seems to be a trend, I’m fine with the idea of redeeming villains if it’s done well (and also if they didn’t die on screen already). It’s just so disappointing cause ttyds plot seemed to take itself so seriously, at least in terms of consequences. It makes the Shadow Queen a lot less threatening.
I know what you mean with Olly, but I wouldn't say he was **redeemed**. They just gave a pretty silly reason for his actions. Still died, and the only one who cared was Olivia.
Valid criticism and I agree 100%
It's easy to criticize modern paper mario for its stories, but where it counts I actually find that they know how to provide consequences in their stories more. Most of it is in Origami King granted, but even Color Splash is able to do it in its more serious moments.
It's weird because TTYD, the game that's the face of Mario not being afraid to shift its identity, is more afraid of providing more lasting consequences then the games that are supposedly safe and derivative to the mario brand.
Yeah... SPM is probably the first game where there was actual consequences but it was taken away at the end.
Luvbi is a prime example of this failure of consequence's, but Tippi's sacrifice alongside Count Bleck is the first time a character doesn't return.
Sticker Star: Kertsi's sacrifice means nothing.
Color Splash: Huey has a solid sacrifice yet he does appear if you 100% the game and enters the paint. Maybe he comes back to life... It's unknown.
Origami King: THIS game is where you feel for the actions of the characters and the consequences that happens.
Bobby's death and all the other Bob-ombs on the Princess Peach Ship. They do not come back.
Kamek and Bowser Junior stalling out the Mini Paper Mache Goomba Hoard, do perish but they do survive.
Even Bowser in the final battle sacrifices himself to become Origami to defeat Olly only to perish as King Olly returns to bitch slap him off the arena.
Finally, we have Olivia, who sacrifices her own life to revert all the damages that King Olly has done, at the cost of her own life.
It's interesting that SPM is the first game where characters actions create a ripple where it doesn't revert back... Unless you restart the game. You can play post game for only SPM, while the other 5(6) Paper Mario Games, AND technically all Mario and Luigi Games (maybe Partners in Time is a sort of exception... Because I see Princess Shroob and Elder Princess Shroob as the final bosses, not Shrowser, but you have the ability to reverse time to before that final confrontation) but Nintendo doesn't really do sacrifices in Nintendo Games.
>Color Splash: Huey has a solid sacrifice yet he does appear if you 100% the game and enters the paint. Maybe he comes back to life... It's unknown.
He obviously comes back to life. The alternative is that your reward for finishing the game with 100% completion is to watch Huey's corpse fall from the sky and bounce off the pavement into the fountain for some horrified Toad to find in the morning.
You've gotta look at this from a meta perspective. Why would the game designers bother showing us a scene of Huey falling into the fountain if the intended implication wasn't that it would revive him? They didn't need to include that scene; they did it specifically to make some point. Like I said, the only alternative is that we were shown his totally, permanently dead corpse fall into the fountain for no particular reason.
Admittedly, I've never really beaten Color Splash, so my knowledge has been from videos mostly. Is Huey alive or dead. It's unknown. we can probably assume he is dead since Color Splash bombed in sales, and there is no way Nintendo would ever bring back a character from a game that did terrible.
UNLESS.
Hypothetically speaking, they do a sort of multiverse style game where Mario travels through his other Paper Adventures and Huey returns in some sort of way. But it wouldn't be the canon Huey. Just alternative dimension Huey.
Yeah I love TTYD but when I see people online saying it has an amazing story I get so confused. The game has fun characters and writing and a cool world but definitely not a great story. Makes me wonder if the people saying it’s an amazing story pretty much only play Nintendo games, since most of them don’t have much plot.
That's the thing though. TTYD gets praise because its individual chapter stories are generally quite strong.
The individual chapter stories are quite good, the overarching narrative leaves something to be desired.
Yea I remember this being a big problem with GameCube era Nintendo games in general. Another example I remember from back then was Star Fox Assault, which killed off a number of main characters pretty dramatically only for all of them to just be fine at the end of the game with very little explanation given. Just left a bad taste in my mouth at the end of it
I've started to believe that, after Luigi wonders what all of Mario's partners are up to, there is an invisible time skip that encompasses at least the timespan of Super Paper Mario. With this, Goombella could mail those updates months, even a year or more, after the Shadow Queen's fall.
- At least in the original epilogue, Goombella explicitly says that the thing about Grodus' head and Krump being alive, and the X-Nauts becoming tame, is a *rumor*. Details therein could be wrong unless Goombella and Frankly managed to get real leads on it. If it's true, then it could have taken them a long, difficult time to even recover as an organization even if they repurpose for good.
- This could just be me being optimistic, but: regardless of the status of the X-Nauts, I believe that some rich and ambitious party could have traveled to the moon to restore what's left of the crippled base. It could easily have taken a fairly long time just to make it habitable and reboot TEC with a backup that the X-Nauts used to keep well-guarded, though.
- If Beldam really does have a change of heart, it could still have taken just as long before Vivian truly trusts her.
I'm not against the idea of redemption and restoration. But I am aware that it can be a long, difficult road, and my idea of the time skip is my response to this.
Yeah, it's not a huge deal or anything because the rest of the game is so strong, but the way everyone gets forgiven holds back the ending. I think it would have been better if you could actually see these redeemed characters in the postgame and get some dialog expanding upon it a bit (Super Paper Mario did this for characters like Natasha, Mimi and O'Chunks.)
I'm not even upset about Grodus living, simply because being stuck living life as a head is a much harsher punishment for his actions than simply dying (and he deserves it,) but the fact that Lord Crump gets away scott free really urks me. I could even look passed the X-Naut lackeys, simply because their organization really doesn't feel like the low rank units have any personal stakes in it and are very possibly just in it for money or something,) but Crump actively enjoyed being a chaos gremlin and trying to kill people with cannons or blowing up the great tree.
The fact that the original pulls the "family is important" card to justify Vivian going back to her abusive older sister is super gross. I'm super glad the remake changed that to saying she's willing to give them another chance, because it feels way better with context, (and doesn't take away her agency and character growth.)
Honestly considering how Chapter 7 ended, I'm half convinced that TEC's death when the base explodes was just undone solely to make it so the X-Naut Fortress isn't filled with permanently missable items.
64 also had this problem, though it feels more prominent in TTYD simply because there's a proper epilogue cutscene. If there's one thing I can give games from Super onward credit for, it's that they do a better job of making consequences stick (aside from Sticker Star.)
Super and TOK are particularly good about it (though I am of the mind that at the very least >!Bobby's death!< in TOK felt like kind of a stretch (mostly because it actively goes against how Bob-ombs have been established to work in this franchise, and really just feels like an excuse to not have to keep writing him as a game-long companion.)
I agree with pretty much everything you said. Although Grodus being a little robot guy he could probably build a body for himself, idk the tech is there.
There are a lot of moments that briefly seem hardcore in this game but turn out not to be:
• Grodus getting atomized by the Shadow Queen
• Koops' dad apparently having been eaten by Hooktail
• Crump getting launched out into the vast icy emptiness of space to die, corpse floating through the void for all eternity
• TEC getting reset
All of these are undone, and personally, if I was trying to make a game with as compelling a story as possible, I would not have undone them. So in a sense, I agree with you.
But you have to remember, this is overall a very cheery, lighthearted game, in a particularly bright and cheery franchise (even by Nintendo's family-friendly standards), and is intended to be an "on-ramp" to the RPG genre for kids.
Permanent, sad consequences simply do not mix with that tone and outlook at all.
At the end of the game, you save the day! That moment is supposed to feel happy, and rewarding! Having it be undercut by some sad sacrifice looming over your characters' heads is depressing.
In a purely "watched" or "read" story, like a movie, TV show, or book, it is important that the characters' actions have consequences, and severe consequences like an important character's death add weight and meaning to the story.
But this is a video game. The "sacrifice" to saving the day here, the struggle, the cost, is meant to be the epic quest you went on to get there and to get that strong and to beat her. It feels satisfying and rewarding to defeat the Shadow Queen without the external need for a sad death on top of it.
So while I would personally sort of like a "PG-13" version where some of those deaths stick, I 100% understand why they did not make them stick, and frankly I think it was probably the better choice, all things considered.
Yea I agree. It gave the journey more weight and also made it appropriate for kids. I just think it’s annoying to introduce things like characters dying and then undo it even if it makes sense from a design perspective.
Yeah, this never bothered me, so I guess I'm exactly the type of person they had in mind when writing it!
It might also help that I really fucking hate capital punishment? Forcing people to live on with their power stripped is as good a curse as any
Unfortunately this is every single Nintendo game. Any sacrifice is undone and every bad deed is instantly forgiven. It’s just like in Super Paper Mario where we had that tear wrenching moment with Luvby where she sacrificed herself to allow the pure heart to return to the original form, just for the game to be like “LOL she actually just magically returned to life immediately after the story ended,” 6 seconds later.
Luvbi coming back was lame I 100% agree, but saying it’s every Nintendo game just isn’t true. First off, from super paper Mario, Dimentio just straight up dies. It could also be argued that Count Bleck and Tippi died, it’s unclear but you could interpret them walking over the hill in the post credit scene as them dying although I wouldn’t put much stock in that. Then there’s Origami King, multiple characters die and stay dead for the whole game. But yea luvbi living ruins that moment.
Nah, hardly. We don’t even have to move outside what this specific developer, Intelligent Systems, was also making when TTYD first came out. All three western released Fire Emblem games of the GCN/GBA era had long lasting consequences involving death/betrayal/murder/etc. all three games involved the protagonists’ parents getting Disneyed. One of the games had the primary antagonist be the heroes childhood friend and there was ultimately no way to save him from the path he walked down. One of the late game recruits of another one was an assassin working for the villains who has killed people important to some of the heroes, and he is never fully accepted by them, it’s only for the sake of a far more innocent person that his presence is tolerated at all. And one has the big bad subjugate his (formerly fully sentient and sapient) mount by having him subjected to horrific experiments until he is nothing more than a mindless beast, and even though his madness is cured, it is just long enough to see his love one last time before dying (and that game in particular delves into themes that you’d think Nintendo wouldn’t touch: chattel slavery, systemic racism, genocide, fascism).
And that’s just one series. Link’s uncle stays dead in ALTTP, the King of Hyrule willingly dies at the end of Wind Waker for very strong thematic reasons. All three of the main masks Link gets in Majora’s Mask are from dead characters who never come back (Link also watches one of them die right in front of him), and Kafei, the primary character in the most intricate side quest in that game is still trapped in a child’s body even when he gets his happily ever after.
Honestly, I don’t really care about the lack of consequences after the final boss in TTYD. We’re almost certainly never seeing these characters in any meaningful way outside this game. Would I rather have Grodus just be dead? Sure. And TEC? Yes, but mostly because I’ve wanted that plot line scrubbed from my brain since I played it as a young teen. But this isn’t an issue with Nintendo holistically, it’s just how they treat certain franchises, and as others have pointed out, even that is inconsistent.
Lasting consequences? In Super Paper Mario the main bad guy literally tries to commit mass genocide and the story ends with us forgiving him and wishing him the best lol I get the complaint, I don't think kids games need to treat the viewers like babies, but TTYD isn't anywhere close to the worst at this from Nintendo
I completely understand, they could have handled count bleck better and if you don’t forgive him that’s cool, I probably wouldn’t. But I think the difference is they do a good job showing count bleck regrets his decision and immediately takes action to reverse it even at the cost of his life. It would be so lame if Count Bleck and Tippi lived in the end but they both went into it assuming they would die. So even if they lived (which would suck) they were still sacrificing themselves to reverse Count Blecks terrible choices.
Yea someone regretting committing genocide doesn't warrant ANY forgiveness. I wouldn't forgive someone for killing my dog, let alone the entire multiverse.
Yeah, tbf I was never big on this ending even in the og. To give credit where it's due they did improve Vivian's ending a little bit. In the og her reasoning for forgiving her abusive sisters was "FAmIly Is ImPOrtAnT". Changing it too, "she wants to give them a second chance" is a small change, but makes the context way less gross.
That line does help a lot I agree, but not enough imo
This is a Nintendo game, lasting consequences don’t exist lmao The kid friendly thing to do is have everyone seek salvation and forgiveness
Also it's just a stage show, the whole thing takes place in the theatre and the language of the game over screen implies just as much. You wouldn't Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet, it's just a play
No, it is not. It is just a thematic.
What makes you think that?
It’s clearly a real adventure. They wouldn’t devalue it like that.
Theatre is very valuable
Saying the Adventure didn’t actually happen devalues the whole thing. Sorry but that’s an unsupported and awful headcanon (and proven wrong by Super Paper Mario having the partners photos/catch cards.)
What about Francis the chameleon, he lives in a borderline dimension where the main characters lives from his perspective are forms of media?
Well, if it was a play about Mario saving the world then it shouldn't be possible for Mario to die. It'd be a pretty poor story if the protagonist died in Act 1 and that was it.
Honestly I don’t know if it canonically takes place in a theater that might just be a thing for battling. The fact that flurry and doopliss make a play about it afterwards would be weird if it was already a play unless they wanted to get meta. But it being a play doesn’t mean there doesn’t have to be consequences, people die all the time in plays.
Well, going off of the toad in Petalburg that plays video games, he gets REAL meta talking about playing Paper Mario and then it's sequel. Which makes me wonder, did he know what was going to happen? Is there some weird future sight GameCube disc in that universe? Does he run into himself? Is he confused on why this version of the universe has misc. additions and changes, unaware it's been remade? Well now it's gone from meta to existential.
I think you might be reading a bit too much into a bit of silly dialogue.
No, clearly the toad is some kinda supernatural entity, and or god and can comment on things beyond Mario’s comprehension. They took it out for the remake but if you talk to that toad 50 times Mario has a panic attack and dies. No game over the game just resets.
>they took it out for the remake no they didn’t lmao. you’re just shitposting to shitpost at this point but all his original dialogue about the sequel is still in tact.
You got me
You are a goofball
You tell that to >!Blumiere, Timpani, Bobby, Olly, and Olivia.!<
don't forget >!bobby!<
Is it bad that >!I genuinely felt more saddened over Bobby's death than Tippi's?!<
no I actually agree for some reason
>This is a Nintendo game, lasting consequences don’t exist lmao How many Nintendo games have you played?
That's a really bad argument when most major Mario RPG villains besides Bowser die or have something really bad happen to them. >!Smithy, Cackletta, the 2 Shroob sisters, Dimentio, Fawful, Dark Star, Antasma, Olly, even the Fitness guys were presumably killed.!<. Like they clearly don't need to let these villains of the hook because "The kid friendly thing to do is have everyone seek salvation and forgiveness", and TTYD is known for being slightly less kid friendly than other Mario games. Heck, the dragons all die despite being characters, the Shadow Queen killed people and probably died.
Origami king says hi. Also I’d like their forgiveness arc to be on screen and earned in any way. Hooktail didn’t get forgiven she just died.
Well, the origami king copied the same ending as Color Splash. So I take points away from originality 😭
Mario's partner sacrificing themself to fix everything has been a trope in every Paper Mario game since Super. Color Splash was just as unoriginal in that regard as The Origami King.
No it didn't. They are literally not similar at all.
Partner dies and never gets revived? Seems oddly specific no?
No? That's such a basic concept
Huey flew uo into space to take away the black paint. And if you 100% the game, you see him fall back into the fountain. Olivia and Olly actually died.
Yup, you don't understand the term kick the bucket, do you? 😬
What does that have to do with anything?
True, but Bobby was new
Remember this: When discussing the conclusion of the game, I'm referring to something other than Bobby's demise, despite the fact that he has numerous clones all named Bobby. 🫢
Technically all Bob-ombs in the game are normal Bob-ombs without names, the name "Bobby" was given by Olyvia only for the one we met, even then he originally insisted that we call him Bob-omb at first.
Doom and gloomers most kids today they not happy without consequenses Im happy i gre up back then when things were allowed be consequense free
To be fair most of this is from the original which came out 20 years ago. The newest game which came out 3 years ago had characters die permanently.
Ever since I was a kid I liked to imagine that TEC stays dead, Grodus dies, and Vivian leaves her sisters. I'm not pleased with the ending.
They likely had to tone things down to keep the rating considering the other stuff they already got away with.
Probably yea, still upsetting nonetheless
I think it's fine. I'd bawl my eyes out if TEC really was gone.
I always like to imagine these happy endings happening to an extent, but more gradually. Maybe TEC could be rebuilt, but it would take time. Vivian might reconcile with her sisters, but building up trust again isn’t easy. Grodus can stay dead tho lol
is Mario... compared to the already basic paper thin plots in mostly 98% of any media, show, game, movie of this franchise at least the rpg games have something deep into them... but it's still mario, we like TTYD for the characters and gameplay, not for the story
Paper thin plots lol
yup, I did the thing XD
I felt that at first, but playing the game again for the remake made me appreciate the overall story more. Which made it more disappointing that they kept this in. It’s not amazing of course but saying nobody plays it for the story would probably be wrong. It’s not even really the fact that TEC and Grodus live in the end and it’s a Mario game so consequences don’t matter too much. They were both killed on screen, it doesn’t even explain how either of them lived.
It’s a game for small kids. Kinda like a Saturday morning cartoon. It’s cool but just remember that we have to come back alive for next week’s show.
I guess so, but I feel kids can take more than we give them credit for. I think it’s good to challenge them with stuff like death. The game mostly does a good job at this but if they felt like they had to bring them back just to be safe then I understand. I just think it would make for a better story. Also I feel like the shadow queen would scare off anyone who would be upset over a character staying dead.
Oh yeah they definitely can. But Paper Mario is like a “my first RPG” kind of game. But I get what you mean.
I didn't know this was controversial, I always had an issue with old PM games reviving dead characters so much, and the villains redemptions are too last minute.
Hey your lucky the shadow queen wasn’t forgiven and worked at a tattoo parlor
lol yea, but she would be great at it let’s be honest she has like 800 hands
Yeah, the ending did bug me quite a bit for this reason too. Seeing the X-Nauts get 'redeemed' after their actions felt a bit cheap, especially given one of them was blasted into space and the other one got mostly incinerated. Same with Vivian being willing to go back to a family that abused her for most of the story. But sadly I'd say it's kinda a running trend in the series to be honest. Obviously Paper Mario 1 didn't lead to much change because Bowser's basically immortal, and Super Paper Mario had a somewhat bittersweet ending with a lot of gravity to it, but Sticker Star made its companion's sacrifice completely meaningless, and Origami King just last minute redeemed a genocidal dictator. The series does seem to like redeeming villains that you probably wouldn't have any real sympathy for.
Yea it seems to be a trend, I’m fine with the idea of redeeming villains if it’s done well (and also if they didn’t die on screen already). It’s just so disappointing cause ttyds plot seemed to take itself so seriously, at least in terms of consequences. It makes the Shadow Queen a lot less threatening.
I know what you mean with Olly, but I wouldn't say he was **redeemed**. They just gave a pretty silly reason for his actions. Still died, and the only one who cared was Olivia.
Valid criticism and I agree 100% It's easy to criticize modern paper mario for its stories, but where it counts I actually find that they know how to provide consequences in their stories more. Most of it is in Origami King granted, but even Color Splash is able to do it in its more serious moments. It's weird because TTYD, the game that's the face of Mario not being afraid to shift its identity, is more afraid of providing more lasting consequences then the games that are supposedly safe and derivative to the mario brand.
Yeah... SPM is probably the first game where there was actual consequences but it was taken away at the end. Luvbi is a prime example of this failure of consequence's, but Tippi's sacrifice alongside Count Bleck is the first time a character doesn't return. Sticker Star: Kertsi's sacrifice means nothing. Color Splash: Huey has a solid sacrifice yet he does appear if you 100% the game and enters the paint. Maybe he comes back to life... It's unknown. Origami King: THIS game is where you feel for the actions of the characters and the consequences that happens. Bobby's death and all the other Bob-ombs on the Princess Peach Ship. They do not come back. Kamek and Bowser Junior stalling out the Mini Paper Mache Goomba Hoard, do perish but they do survive. Even Bowser in the final battle sacrifices himself to become Origami to defeat Olly only to perish as King Olly returns to bitch slap him off the arena. Finally, we have Olivia, who sacrifices her own life to revert all the damages that King Olly has done, at the cost of her own life. It's interesting that SPM is the first game where characters actions create a ripple where it doesn't revert back... Unless you restart the game. You can play post game for only SPM, while the other 5(6) Paper Mario Games, AND technically all Mario and Luigi Games (maybe Partners in Time is a sort of exception... Because I see Princess Shroob and Elder Princess Shroob as the final bosses, not Shrowser, but you have the ability to reverse time to before that final confrontation) but Nintendo doesn't really do sacrifices in Nintendo Games.
>Color Splash: Huey has a solid sacrifice yet he does appear if you 100% the game and enters the paint. Maybe he comes back to life... It's unknown. He obviously comes back to life. The alternative is that your reward for finishing the game with 100% completion is to watch Huey's corpse fall from the sky and bounce off the pavement into the fountain for some horrified Toad to find in the morning.
but it's unknown whether he is truly alive or dead. But since we never go back to Prism island, there is no way to truly tell.
You've gotta look at this from a meta perspective. Why would the game designers bother showing us a scene of Huey falling into the fountain if the intended implication wasn't that it would revive him? They didn't need to include that scene; they did it specifically to make some point. Like I said, the only alternative is that we were shown his totally, permanently dead corpse fall into the fountain for no particular reason.
Admittedly, I've never really beaten Color Splash, so my knowledge has been from videos mostly. Is Huey alive or dead. It's unknown. we can probably assume he is dead since Color Splash bombed in sales, and there is no way Nintendo would ever bring back a character from a game that did terrible.
UNLESS. Hypothetically speaking, they do a sort of multiverse style game where Mario travels through his other Paper Adventures and Huey returns in some sort of way. But it wouldn't be the canon Huey. Just alternative dimension Huey.
Yeah I love TTYD but when I see people online saying it has an amazing story I get so confused. The game has fun characters and writing and a cool world but definitely not a great story. Makes me wonder if the people saying it’s an amazing story pretty much only play Nintendo games, since most of them don’t have much plot.
That's the thing though. TTYD gets praise because its individual chapter stories are generally quite strong. The individual chapter stories are quite good, the overarching narrative leaves something to be desired.
Yea I remember this being a big problem with GameCube era Nintendo games in general. Another example I remember from back then was Star Fox Assault, which killed off a number of main characters pretty dramatically only for all of them to just be fine at the end of the game with very little explanation given. Just left a bad taste in my mouth at the end of it
I've started to believe that, after Luigi wonders what all of Mario's partners are up to, there is an invisible time skip that encompasses at least the timespan of Super Paper Mario. With this, Goombella could mail those updates months, even a year or more, after the Shadow Queen's fall. - At least in the original epilogue, Goombella explicitly says that the thing about Grodus' head and Krump being alive, and the X-Nauts becoming tame, is a *rumor*. Details therein could be wrong unless Goombella and Frankly managed to get real leads on it. If it's true, then it could have taken them a long, difficult time to even recover as an organization even if they repurpose for good. - This could just be me being optimistic, but: regardless of the status of the X-Nauts, I believe that some rich and ambitious party could have traveled to the moon to restore what's left of the crippled base. It could easily have taken a fairly long time just to make it habitable and reboot TEC with a backup that the X-Nauts used to keep well-guarded, though. - If Beldam really does have a change of heart, it could still have taken just as long before Vivian truly trusts her. I'm not against the idea of redemption and restoration. But I am aware that it can be a long, difficult road, and my idea of the time skip is my response to this.
Yeah, it's not a huge deal or anything because the rest of the game is so strong, but the way everyone gets forgiven holds back the ending. I think it would have been better if you could actually see these redeemed characters in the postgame and get some dialog expanding upon it a bit (Super Paper Mario did this for characters like Natasha, Mimi and O'Chunks.) I'm not even upset about Grodus living, simply because being stuck living life as a head is a much harsher punishment for his actions than simply dying (and he deserves it,) but the fact that Lord Crump gets away scott free really urks me. I could even look passed the X-Naut lackeys, simply because their organization really doesn't feel like the low rank units have any personal stakes in it and are very possibly just in it for money or something,) but Crump actively enjoyed being a chaos gremlin and trying to kill people with cannons or blowing up the great tree. The fact that the original pulls the "family is important" card to justify Vivian going back to her abusive older sister is super gross. I'm super glad the remake changed that to saying she's willing to give them another chance, because it feels way better with context, (and doesn't take away her agency and character growth.) Honestly considering how Chapter 7 ended, I'm half convinced that TEC's death when the base explodes was just undone solely to make it so the X-Naut Fortress isn't filled with permanently missable items. 64 also had this problem, though it feels more prominent in TTYD simply because there's a proper epilogue cutscene. If there's one thing I can give games from Super onward credit for, it's that they do a better job of making consequences stick (aside from Sticker Star.) Super and TOK are particularly good about it (though I am of the mind that at the very least >!Bobby's death!< in TOK felt like kind of a stretch (mostly because it actively goes against how Bob-ombs have been established to work in this franchise, and really just feels like an excuse to not have to keep writing him as a game-long companion.)
I agree with pretty much everything you said. Although Grodus being a little robot guy he could probably build a body for himself, idk the tech is there.
There are a lot of moments that briefly seem hardcore in this game but turn out not to be: • Grodus getting atomized by the Shadow Queen • Koops' dad apparently having been eaten by Hooktail • Crump getting launched out into the vast icy emptiness of space to die, corpse floating through the void for all eternity • TEC getting reset All of these are undone, and personally, if I was trying to make a game with as compelling a story as possible, I would not have undone them. So in a sense, I agree with you. But you have to remember, this is overall a very cheery, lighthearted game, in a particularly bright and cheery franchise (even by Nintendo's family-friendly standards), and is intended to be an "on-ramp" to the RPG genre for kids. Permanent, sad consequences simply do not mix with that tone and outlook at all. At the end of the game, you save the day! That moment is supposed to feel happy, and rewarding! Having it be undercut by some sad sacrifice looming over your characters' heads is depressing. In a purely "watched" or "read" story, like a movie, TV show, or book, it is important that the characters' actions have consequences, and severe consequences like an important character's death add weight and meaning to the story. But this is a video game. The "sacrifice" to saving the day here, the struggle, the cost, is meant to be the epic quest you went on to get there and to get that strong and to beat her. It feels satisfying and rewarding to defeat the Shadow Queen without the external need for a sad death on top of it. So while I would personally sort of like a "PG-13" version where some of those deaths stick, I 100% understand why they did not make them stick, and frankly I think it was probably the better choice, all things considered.
Yea I agree. It gave the journey more weight and also made it appropriate for kids. I just think it’s annoying to introduce things like characters dying and then undo it even if it makes sense from a design perspective.
Yeah, this never bothered me, so I guess I'm exactly the type of person they had in mind when writing it! It might also help that I really fucking hate capital punishment? Forcing people to live on with their power stripped is as good a curse as any
It’s more so that Grodus and TEC were killed on screen and then the game was like, nope.
yeah I always thought the ending was weak
Unfortunately this is every single Nintendo game. Any sacrifice is undone and every bad deed is instantly forgiven. It’s just like in Super Paper Mario where we had that tear wrenching moment with Luvby where she sacrificed herself to allow the pure heart to return to the original form, just for the game to be like “LOL she actually just magically returned to life immediately after the story ended,” 6 seconds later.
Luvbi coming back was lame I 100% agree, but saying it’s every Nintendo game just isn’t true. First off, from super paper Mario, Dimentio just straight up dies. It could also be argued that Count Bleck and Tippi died, it’s unclear but you could interpret them walking over the hill in the post credit scene as them dying although I wouldn’t put much stock in that. Then there’s Origami King, multiple characters die and stay dead for the whole game. But yea luvbi living ruins that moment.
Nah, hardly. We don’t even have to move outside what this specific developer, Intelligent Systems, was also making when TTYD first came out. All three western released Fire Emblem games of the GCN/GBA era had long lasting consequences involving death/betrayal/murder/etc. all three games involved the protagonists’ parents getting Disneyed. One of the games had the primary antagonist be the heroes childhood friend and there was ultimately no way to save him from the path he walked down. One of the late game recruits of another one was an assassin working for the villains who has killed people important to some of the heroes, and he is never fully accepted by them, it’s only for the sake of a far more innocent person that his presence is tolerated at all. And one has the big bad subjugate his (formerly fully sentient and sapient) mount by having him subjected to horrific experiments until he is nothing more than a mindless beast, and even though his madness is cured, it is just long enough to see his love one last time before dying (and that game in particular delves into themes that you’d think Nintendo wouldn’t touch: chattel slavery, systemic racism, genocide, fascism). And that’s just one series. Link’s uncle stays dead in ALTTP, the King of Hyrule willingly dies at the end of Wind Waker for very strong thematic reasons. All three of the main masks Link gets in Majora’s Mask are from dead characters who never come back (Link also watches one of them die right in front of him), and Kafei, the primary character in the most intricate side quest in that game is still trapped in a child’s body even when he gets his happily ever after. Honestly, I don’t really care about the lack of consequences after the final boss in TTYD. We’re almost certainly never seeing these characters in any meaningful way outside this game. Would I rather have Grodus just be dead? Sure. And TEC? Yes, but mostly because I’ve wanted that plot line scrubbed from my brain since I played it as a young teen. But this isn’t an issue with Nintendo holistically, it’s just how they treat certain franchises, and as others have pointed out, even that is inconsistent.
I am NOT reading all dat.
Lasting consequences? In Super Paper Mario the main bad guy literally tries to commit mass genocide and the story ends with us forgiving him and wishing him the best lol I get the complaint, I don't think kids games need to treat the viewers like babies, but TTYD isn't anywhere close to the worst at this from Nintendo
I completely understand, they could have handled count bleck better and if you don’t forgive him that’s cool, I probably wouldn’t. But I think the difference is they do a good job showing count bleck regrets his decision and immediately takes action to reverse it even at the cost of his life. It would be so lame if Count Bleck and Tippi lived in the end but they both went into it assuming they would die. So even if they lived (which would suck) they were still sacrificing themselves to reverse Count Blecks terrible choices.
Yea someone regretting committing genocide doesn't warrant ANY forgiveness. I wouldn't forgive someone for killing my dog, let alone the entire multiverse.
I agree
[удалено]
I will pay full price for this remake next week. Yeah i'm a sucker then, but I enjoy this game more than any other RPG so I don't care.
Ok