Super Mario Odyssey

Super Mario Odyssey is an upcoming open-world, platform game for the Nintendo Switch set to release Holiday 2017. It is the sixteenth title in the Super Mario series, the seventh original 3D Mario title, the eighth 3D Mario title overall, and the sixth 3D Mario title on a home console after Super Mario 3D World. The game has Mario leaving the Mushroom Kingdom to reach an unknown open world-like setting, like Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine. Mario will be wearing a different cap in this game, which has eyes, implying it may be alive. A new mechanic in the game allows Mario to throw this cap as if it was a boomerang and he can also jump off of the cap in midair like a platform. Judging by posters seen in the announcement trailer, it seems that the game's story will involve, at least in part, Mario preventing a forced marriage of Princess Peach to Bowser.

Characters

 * Mario

Supporting

 * Princess Peach
 * Mario's Cap
 * A golden lion sculpture Mario can ride on

Villains

 * Bowser
 * A quartet of rabbit characters in formal clothing

Non-playable characters

 * Humans
 * Fork creatures in chef attire
 * Skull-headed coco-like creatures in ponchos and sombreros
 * Rabbits

Enemies

 * Goombas wearing hard hats
 * Goomba Towers
 * Piranha Plants
 * Spinies
 * Bullet Bills and Bill Blasters
 * Hammer Bros that wear chef hats and throw frying pans
 * Flower pots with stretching bramble legs
 * Small purple creatures with star eyes
 * Small tanks that wear top hats and spit bullets
 * Sentry Beam- or Ring Burner-like robots
 * A robotic caterpillar

Other

 * A pink Wingo-like bird in chef attire
 * Yellow, spinning plant-watering machines
 * Cars

Items and objects

 * Purple triangular collectibles
 * Purple bolt-like collectibles
 * Boom boxes
 * Beanstalks
 * Checkpoint Flags
 * Coins
 * Coin Rings
 * Crates
 * Doors
 * ? Blocks
 * P Switches
 * Purple Coins
 * Treasure chests
 * Warp Pipes
 * A globe of an -like planet on Mario's transportation ship

Locations

 * New Donk City, a city with many references to the Donkey Kong series
 * A cold desert, with several glaciers
 * A colorful town inhabited by the skull characters
 * Ruins where the golden lion is found
 * An area with an upside-down floating pyramid
 * A forest
 * A waterfall and stream
 * An area with a lake and metallic structures
 * A circular area with flowers where one of the rabbit characters is fought
 * A reddish metallic tower
 * A colorful area filled with crystal-like food and produce inhabited by the fork creatures

Development
As part of the "Treehouse Live" event on January 13, 2017, Shigeru Miyamoto was hosted as a special guest, and interviewed for the Super Mario Odyssey segment. When asked about "coming home" to the Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine style of gameplay, Miyamoto explained that when he was developing Super Mario 64 with Yoshiaki Koizumi, they realized that the title would be more directed towards the "core gamer", rather than the casual, pick-up-and-go gamer. After Super Mario Sunshine, their focus reshifted to more accessible, casual gamers. This is why they chose to make Super Mario Galaxy.

Then in recent years, we made Super Mario 3D World and even though that's a 3D game, it's a little more accessible to everybody. And so speaking of casual gamers, we have Super Mario Maker out, and we also have Super Mario Run. So when we thought about making a Mario for Switch, we wanted to make it [...] something a little bit more on the core side, that people who like action games can really get into.

Miyamoto discussed how the 3D camera in Super Mario 64 worked very well, as it had the joystick as well as the C buttons to adjust the automatic camera. Super Mario Sunshine had the C stick in order to "control the camera freely", although they received feedback that the camera control was "a little bit difficult". With later 3D titles such as Super Mario Galaxy, the minimal control of the camera also attracted some negative feedback. Miyamoto added that it's "very difficult to find the right balance". With Super Mario Odyssey, we made sure that the camera controls are really really smooth and easy to use, and the Switch controllers can really serve to that. [We] really made a sandbox-style game that's really easy and feels good to control.

With all the different ideas that Miyamoto received from other, "younger" developers and programmers, some actually worried him about how well Mario would "fit in" to these different worlds, although he is "open minded" to all ideas that are presented. Miyamoto also sought more senior staff teams who had been involved in past 3D Mario titles, such as Yoshiaki Koizumi, in order to really "go back to the roots" of Super Mario Sunshine.

References to other games

 * Donkey Kong: The location New Donk City looks to be a throwback to Mario's early origins as Jumpman. There are steel girders that resemble the ones seen in this game, and the taxi cabs have license plates reading "1981-ND", referencing the year Mario and Donkey Kong made their debut. The name New Donk City is also a reference to Donkey Kong himself.
 * Donkey Kong Country series: Characters' names from this series appear as street signs all over New Donk City such as Diddy Kong, Cranky Kong, Rambi the Rhino, Expresso the Ostrich, Squawks the Parrot, Dixie Kong, and King K. Rool.