I don’t know what made Easter the day for leaks, but I woke up Sunday morning to see a new surge of Persona 3 remake rumors.
A Persona 3 remake has been rumored for quite a while now, but the latest batch of rumors include footage claimed to be from a video shown at an internal Sega meeting in 2021.
The supposed leaked footage posted on Twitter contains a clip from the Persona 3 remake, a segment of Sonic Frontiers gameplay showing a boss that was cut from the game, and a clip from a Jet Set Radio game.
This ties back to Jet Set Radio reboot rumors from last April, and some people say they saw leaked images back then that match the footage in that video.
So if this is fake, that means someone not only made believable Persona 3 remake footage, but also footage based on a Sonic boss shown only in concept art, and Jet Set Radio footage that aligns with previous rumors as well. That’s an incredible amount of effort put into faking a leak.
(Although it’s not impossible. High-effort fake leaks have happened before.)
Meanwhile, Gematsu tweeted that they can’t verify the footage but understand a Persona 3 remake really has been in development.
The rumors further intensified when someone found a domain registration for “p3re.jp” (although keep in mind that Atlus has registered other potential Persona-related domain names without using them yet).
All of this together makes the Persona 3 remake rumors seem increasingly credible.
It might seem strange for them to release a port of Persona 3 Portable while a remake is in development, but then again, Atlus ported Catherine to PC within months of Catherine: Full Body being released for consoles. That’s one of the main reason the P3P port never entirely convinced me a remake couldn’t still happen, although I still might play through Persona 3 Portable in the meantime.
Persona 3 remake rumors dominated online discussions for a good portion of yesterday, but another rumor was right behind it… a claim on Famiboards that Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is being remastered.
This rumor has much less to support it than the Persona rumors. It basically comes down to one person claiming “sources” told them a Thousand-Year Door remaster is being worked on. Paper Mario rumors have cropped up in the past, so I won’t put too much stock in it. Then again, in a year when Ghost Trick and Baten Kaitos are being remastered, who knows?
Do you believe the Persona 3 remake rumors? What about the Thousand-Year Door remaster rumors? Are you hoping for either or both to be true?
Paper Mario: The Origami King is out today… although I didn’t get it yet.
When it was first announced, I considered getting it at launch, but after finally playing Color Splash and learning that Origami King is still definitely not an RPG, I decided to wait. I’ve heard enough interesting things to make me curious about it, but not enough to buy it at launch.
Anyway, with Origami King being another iteration of the “new” Paper Mario series and potentially another step toward having a solid Paper Mario story again, fans have continued to question if Paper Mario will ever return to its roots.
That answer is no, judging by a recent interview the producers and director had with VGC. The fan response to this interview has mainly involved complaints, arguments, and a lot of confusion, so let’s take a look at this strange and perplexing discussion of the Paper Mario series.
First, the interview addresses how gameplay continues to change with each game, and producer Risa Tabata explains how they want to change it every time to surprise players. Then she discusses the paper aspect:
The idea for origami came out of this process of challenging myself to try something new. The theme running through the Paper Mario series is paper, so I was working with Intelligent Systems to think up paper-based ideas that hadn’t yet been used. Intelligent Systems suggested the idea of confetti, and I suggested the idea of origami.”
So if you’re tired of the paper obsession in recent entries, it’s probably not going away. In fact, that sounds an awful lot like the first step in coming up with a new Paper Mario game nowadays is to think of a new paper theme. The emphasis on Mario’s paper world full of paper people who know they’re paper is here to stay.
Next up was the question of RPG elements, although the interviewer framed it as “hardcore” fans wanting RPG elements and “casual” fans wanting it to be “approachable.”
This view is flawed from the start, because there’s nothing about basic RPG elements that makes a game unapproachable. The original Paper Mario games were already “approachable” and playable by kids. Pokémon is another example of an RPG that is perfectly accessible.
Who is looking at the original Paper Mario as some hardcore, unapproachable game?
Producer Kensuke Tanabe handles that question by saying they don’t want to ignore casual fans, and that the puzzles are there for the hardcore fans. He goes on to say:
This is an adventure game after all, so it wouldn’t be right if the battles didn’t also have some kind of puzzle solving element! (Of course, we’ve also added in a system for casual players where they can use coins in battles to get help from the spectating Toads.)
“However, I do think it’s difficult to satisfy certain fans with the adventure game direction if they think of Paper Mario games as simply being RPGs. I hope that everyone will play this game with an open mind.”
In other words, Paper Mario will never be an RPG again. We can stop waiting for experience points and leveling up to return. It’s a puzzle-solving adventure series that for some reason kept turn-based combat and keeps trying to find new incentives for battling without bringing back exp.
(And from what I’ve read online about Origami King, some of the combat puzzles can get pretty difficult and complicated, so why is this considered more casual than if Mario leveled up?)
After some questions about the origami character models and comedy elements, they ask about creating Paper Mario stories… and Tanabe’s basic answer is that he likes games with stories, but Super Paper Mario’s story distanced it too much from the Mario universe, so they’ve avoided complicated stories since then. Instead, they aim for “memorable events.”
But it’s the next question that really stirred people up, as the interviewer asks about King Olly and character design, and Tanabe explains:
Since Paper Mario: Sticker Star, it’s no longer possible to modify Mario characters or to create original characters that touch on the Mario universe. That means that if we aren’t using Mario characters for bosses, we need to create original characters with designs that don’t involve the Mario universe at all, like we’ve done with Olly and the stationery bosses.”
What?
Really, what?
Yes, it’s an extension of what we already knew led to Sticker Star being… the way it was… and it’s once again spurred arguments about whether the blame lies with Miyamoto’s instruction to “complete it with only characters from the Super Mario world” or with Tanabe’s rigid interpretation of that instruction, but either way, it appears the Paper Mario team is under a mandate leading to the generic character designs of the modern games.
And that’s caused a lot of confusion, since you have entirely new characters like Olivia and King Olly.
Here’s my understanding of what they said in this interview: they can create wholly new characters, but they can’t alter established designs or create unique characters related to the Mario universe. In other words, Olly is fine because there are no existing origami people in the Mario world. Kammy Koopa would be unacceptable nowadays because she’s a uniquely-designed Magikoopa.
This seems to tie directly to my biggest complaint about the character designs in Color Splash – not that they were mostly Toads, but that they were all generic Toads in different colors, with no distinguishing features except maybe a hat. Origami King looks a little better in that regard, but still seems to go with the basic design + accessories.
It might even explain why Toadsworth hasn’t appeared in the newer Paper Mario games, because elderly Toads (along with visibly female Toads) are one of the things we’ve lost.
The rest of the interview just discusses hardware and the Samus helmet at the end of the first trailer, so the points mentioned above are the biggest things to take away from this perplexing interview.
Reading this was disheartening and confusing. I don’t know why they’ve made some of the decisions they have regarding Paper Mario. Some of them make no sense to me at all. I really don’t know what to think… except that we’ll probably never see a Paper Mario game that truly returns to its roots.
What did you think of the VGC Paper Mario interview?
Since most people say Color Splash is better than Sticker Star, I decided I’d eventually give it a try. I promised a friend I’d play Color Splash this year, and in light of Origami King coming out in less than a month, I finally set up my Wii U and dove into the highly paper-themed world of Paper Mario: Color Splash.
And you know what?
It is better than Sticker Star!
That ultimately encapsulates my feelings about this game. Did I like it more than the first three Paper Mario games? No. Did I like it more than Sticker Star? Absolutely. Unlike Sticker Star, which I consider completely un-fun and generally a bad game, Color Splash had moments where I was genuinely enjoying myself.
So let’s dig into the good and bad of Paper Mario: Color Splash.
When I say it’s better than Sticker Star, I mean that even in regards to the parts I dislike about it. In Color Splash, you still use consumable items as your attacks. However, your inventory is capped at 99 slots this time, so it’s not a huge deal. Similarly, you still need to use Thing cards to solve puzzles and defeat bosses, but it’s much more user-friendly because 1) there’s an NPC who will give you a hint about any upcoming Things you need, and 2) the large inventory means you can afford to carry a bunch of Things wherever you go.
Combat starts out incredibly tedious, since each attack requires you to select your card, power it up with paint, and then flick it off the screen before you can start using action commands (and that’s with the “advanced” option that streamlines the process), but once you’re able to play multiple cards in a turn and have access to cards with multiple attacks, it feels better.
You do get an incentive for battling this time, since enemies drop hammer fragments that power up your paint gauge once you get enough, allowing you to carry more paint.
Unfortunately, it’s just not fun. Color Splash’s combat is easily the worst part. I quickly began avoiding combat as much as possible, only fighting required battles and enemies I couldn’t get away from in time. (Despite this, I ended up with 9999 coins early on, which trivialized getting new cards and make combat even less worthwhile.)
Boss battles, on the other hand, are much more interesting. Even though each requires a special Thing card to win, several of the boss battles also include some unique mechanics that make them more fun than the normal combat slog.
Outside of combat, each level is filled with unpainted areas that you need to fill back in by hammering them with your paint hammer. As much as I complain about the obsession with paper and cringe at every line about being folded, crumpled, etc., I actually found this fun. It appealed to my sense of order to fill in all the unpainted spots.
Some of the levels had pretty good music, too.
There’s also a roshambo (rock paper scissors) mini-game. You play three matches in each tournament. For the first two, you’re given hints about what your opponents will use. Then the third match is just luck. If you lose a tournament more than once, all three rounds become luck, to punish you for having bad luck. (Fortunately, you can reload your save to undo that.) Then the final tournament is all luck-based, just to make it as unenjoyable as possible.
At least roshambo is optional. Color Splash has two other terrible gameplay mechanics we need to discuss. The first is the Shy Bandit.
Remember I mentioned filling in unpainted spots? Sometimes the Shy Bandit will appear on the world map and target a location. You need to reach that spot before he drains it of color. It’s possible for him to spawn in such a way that it’s impossible for you to reach him in time. Have fun redoing the level to paint it again.
Then there’s Kamek. Randomly, Kamek will appear in battle and take away your ability to flee or get more cards, then do something to your deck, like changing them all to a specific type of card or removing all but a few. At first, I actually liked this. At least it made the battles more interesting. But you know what? It’s possible for Kamek to trap you in a battle with cards that literally can’t defeat the enemy. Your only choice is to lose all your cards or reload your save.
But that’s enough about gameplay. Let’s talk about the “story.”
People are right when they say Color Splash has funny writing. There’s plenty of humor, and some lines really made me laugh. It almost felt over-done, though, like every NPC had a joke, which made them feel less like actual characters. The generic designs don’t help. Toads of the same color are pretty much interchangeable, even when they have a unique role.
Come on, you couldn’t give the scientist Toad a lab coat or glasses? At least the ship captain had a hat.
Color Splash is strangely self-aware when it comes to this, too. I’m not sure if the writers/localizers were forced to use generic designs and making the best of it by playing it for laughs or if they genuinely thought a world of identical paper people was hilarious, but there are multiple jokes about the Toads being generic, unnamed, and interchangeable.
Toads are portrayed as pretty much 100% incompetent, although the Rescue Squad Toads are so incompetent it’s pretty funny to watch them utterly fail at helping.
Now, for a while, I felt like this was all I was going to get: a world full of characters making jokes instead of having an actual story. The early levels felt more like set pieces rather than actual places with actual characters. However, this got much better as the game went on, with areas that actually did have their own small, self-contained stories.
In particular, helping the ghosts in the haunted hotel and traveling in search of Fortune Island were the highlights of Color Splash for me, because those areas really felt like I’d entered an actual story with actual characters.
Color Splash also has a couple side quests that feature the most heartwarming moments in the game, certainly better than anything in the main story.
And I use the term “main story” pretty loosely. Color Splash sets up its premise and sends you out to fix it, with barely any plot progression along the way aside from each Big Paint Star you rescue showing you a short flashback of what led up to the paint being drained. At least Huey is a better character than Kersti was in Sticker Star, because most interactions in the game are Huey talking to Mario or Huey talking to a character for Mario.
I didn’t think you could take a silent protagonist and make him more silent, but Mario’s inability to communicate disturbed me. In past Paper Mario games, he was still silent, but he’d nod or hold out his hands and the other character would respond as though he’d spoken.
This game has almost none of that. Huey speaks for Mario. Seeing one of the Koopalings and having Huey wonder out loud who that might be while Mario stares soullessly ahead just felt bizarre.
The story has huge missed opportunities, too, because it could have been really cool.
Click for Color Splash spoilers
When I first encountered the black paint, I was actually excited. It felt like a new threat, possibly a new gameplay mechanic, something that would raise the stakes – and then Huey got rid of it off-screen and it never came up again until the finale.
The black paint is just a missed opportunity all around, since the revelation that Bowser is possessed by it goes nowhere. They could have done so much interesting stuff with that.
Speaking of which, remember how the original Paper Mario games had short sections where you played as Peach? It would have been so cool if instead of just getting Peach’s holograms, you got to play as her for short segments and witness for yourself that there was something seriously wrong with Bowser.
(On that note, I felt like the ending was way too hard on Bowser, especially in contrast to something like Bowser’s Inside Story where he gets a cake in the end. All he wanted was a pretty shell. He had no way of knowing mixing paint was a bad thing!)
So, is Paper Mario: Color Splash a bad game? No, I wouldn’t say it is. Is Paper Mario: Color Splash a good game? It’s… a game with some enjoyable moments. As I said at the start, the strongest statement I can make about Color Splash is that it’s better than Sticker Star in every way.
I don’t know what made Easter the day for leaks, but I woke up Sunday morning to see a new surge of Persona 3 remake rumors.
