User:Shokora/Odyssey development

Development


When asked about "coming home" to the Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine style of gameplay, Shigeru 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 re-shifted to more accessible, casual gamers, hence encouraging them 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. [...] 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.

Development for Super Mario Odyssey began right after Super Mario 3D World was released in late 2013. Miyamoto sought more senior developers and staff teams who had been involved in past 3D Mario titles, in order to really "go back to the roots" of Super Mario Sunshine. In result, Yoshiaki Koizumi was made the game's producer, and Super Mario 3D World director Kenta Motokura again took on the role of director. Motokura revealed that early stages of development involved creating a "huge" amount of gameplay prototypes with numerous ideas, and the capture ability was one of them.

It was just one of the ideas that came up, but we worked on it for two or three days, and it just instantly turned into something that was really fun, and we decided [that it should be] the center of this game.

Many of the other different prototype ideas were still included, providing for the diversity in game mechanics throughout the game's stages. Super Mario Odyssey ' s theme was highly focused on "surprises" and travel, and the developers incorporated many of their travel experiences around the world. For instance, elements of the Sand Kingdom was derived from Kenta Motokura's experiences during a trip to Mexico, and the Luncheon Kingdom's food aesthetics was inspired by Italy and other European countries.

Buying with coing: Alike to going to foreign lands, something that really has an impact on you when travelling. Therefore they wanted to have Mario use different currency when travelling to kingdoms.

Motokura, inspired by trip to Mexico. Architecture and aesthetic. Developers incorporated a lot of their experiences travelling in the game. A lot of places which could be used for Mario action.

T-Rex inspiration. Theme is surprises. Looked back at Dinosaur Land in Super Mario World, wanted to give a different design, something unseen in a Mario game.

Art-direction inspiration - Leaving the Mushroom Kingdom, wanted to bring out the same feeling in visiting a foreign land. Different and exciting. A lot of time was spent with art direction in getting the balance right between familiar mushroom kingdom elements and new concepts.

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 was "open minded" to all ideas that were presented. [involvement of Miyamoto]