This article was originally written for TheNintendoVillage.com, a website I founded and ran from 2018 to 2021.

We’re now in Paper Mario: The Origami King’s launch month, with the game arriving in just a little over two weeks. Ahead of the Switch’s next big launch, Game Informer have a new preview up which reveals some interesting details about the flatter Mario’s latest adventure.

Most interestingly, the game is eschewing the chapter-based approach seen in more recent titles in favour of an explorable open world. The game’s Director, Masahiko Magaya, told Game Informer that:

“One major feature that makes the world where this adventure takes place special is that there are huge maps to explore at every turn. Because the game is laid out this way, we were careful during the design phase to make sure there is always something in the player’s field of vision to catch their attention.”

There’ll also be “lots of one-off activities and miscellaneous diversions” to distract players from the main quest of tackling the various stationary-based bosses across the world.

There’s some interesting tidbits about those boss battles within the piece, as well as the game’s combat system as a whole. As we’ve seen from the trailers, it features a number of concentric rings which players can rotate and slide about during a time-limited period at the beginning of each turn. The idea for this apparently came to Nintendo’s Kensuke Tanabe whilst he was in the shower.

Mario’s companions will come and go throughout the various stages of the game, rather than forming a party like they did in the early Paper Mario games (as we suspected).

Check out the full feature for the details, and let us know if you’re as excited by the open-world approach as we are!

Source: Game Informer