The first trailer for Bowser’s Fury has arrived, and it’s certainly a change of
pace.
Where Super Mario 3D World, now coming to the Nintendo Switch, is an adorably cute game
about cats, Bowser’s Fury looks to be a dark, atmospheric affair, as the huge, angry,
out of control Bowser threatens to destroy the world.
While the tonal shift between these two packaged games may seem strange, it follows a design
philosophy that the Mario series has adhered to for over ten years.
Speaking about making Mario games, Shigeru Miyamoto once said:
“Unless you're careful, there's a tendency for games like Mario that can be played by
children to gradually become childish.
Those making the game tend to unconsciously make them that way…
“When someone in their fifties like me hears their player-character speak childishly like
that, it doesn't quite sit right.
After all, Mario wasn't a game only for children in the first place.
As I make a game, I try to keep in mind that guys in their fifties will play it, too.”
The new Bowser’s Fury looks to be an example of a design principle that Miyamoto calls
Resonance; the process by which developers make sure that a character, a level, or a
game make a lasting impact on the player.
In the past, we’ve noted that Miyamoto isn’t a fan of overly complicated stories in Mario
games – even in story-rich games like the Paper Mario series.
This hasn’t always sat well with Yoshiaki Koizumi, who often serves as a producer on
the Mario games, and who injected a lot of storytelling into titles such as Super Mario
Sunshine, wherein Bowser has some awkward but oddly beautiful moments with his son,
Bowser Jr, as they discuss their family and their relationship to Princess Peach.
As we noted in our video on Super Mario Galaxy 2 last year, Koizumi and Miyamoto eventually
had an enormous…erm… “discussion” about how much concrete narrative should appear
in Mario games.
The result of this lengthy conversation was the concept of Resonance.
Said Miyamoto: “When it comes to whether a game should
be childish or less childish or Mario should talk or he shouldn't…
“I realized when I talked to Koizumi-san that those things aren't essential.
Whether or not the game world resonates with you as you're playing the game is what's most
important.
For example, when you watch a big-budget movie, you may be amazed by all the pyrotechnics,
but at the same time, something isn't quite striking home with you.”
So, moving forward, the decision was made to steer away from traditional storytelling
in Mario games to instead focus on atmosphere and emotion.
Miyamoto went on to say: “When enemies resonate with you, you willingly
engage with them.
You notice things like how a certain enemy wasn't scary, but the next time a similar
one appears, its colour is a little different and it spits out two rocks instead of one,
so you think it must be tougher.
You reason things out for yourself and put them to the test.
This kind of interaction is interesting.
The more of it there is, the more a game will resonate.”
This philosophy of resonance has been interpreted differently by various members of the Mario
development team.
Super Mario 3D World director Kenta Motokura said of developing the game:
“The whole team shared ‘resonance’ as a keyword, but personally, I focused on cuteness
that resonates, so I asked everyone ‘What is cuteness?’ until they were sick of it…
“I thought that viewing it in terms of the feeling you get from design, rather than directly
in terms of design itself, would lead to greater resonance.”
Motokura spoke to every single member of the development team to get their idea of what
would feel cute.
He got a variety of different answers, and from this, the adorable direction for 3D World
took shape.
So why shift from this to a dark and gritty Bowser-focused adventure with Mario teaming
up with Bowser Jr?
Well, this change in tone and focus plays into resonance as well.
Speaking recently in an interview with the New Yorker, Shigeru Miyamoto said:
“Even monsters have a motive, and a reason for why they are the way they are.
This is something I have thought about a lot.
Say you have a scene in which a battleship sinks.
When you look at it from the outside, it might be a symbol of victory in battle.
But a filmmaker or writer might shift perspective to the people on the ship, to enable the viewer
to see, close up, the human impact of the action.
It would be great if video-game makers took more steps to shift the perspective, instead
of always viewing a scene from the most obvious angle.”
Miyamoto is fairly hands-off with the Mario game series as a whole at the moment, so it
wouldn’t be fair to attribute Bowser’s Fury solely to his imagination, but it’s
clear to see that the new game builds on this design idea, showing a new side of a familiar
Mario vs Bowser dynamic.
Plus, there’s no denying, even with the short time since the first trailer was published,
that seeing a giant Giga Cat Mario square off against Fury Bowser in a moody, rain-soaked
one-on-one fight, that this game definitely leaves an impression.