Traditionally, Japanese RPGs have been a serious business for all concerned. As a group they're renowned for tackling grand and often sombre themes, and weaving vast, intricate tales through sympathetic characters, believable (or rather, to make an important distinction, not unbelievable) scenarios, sweeping musical accompaniment, considerable exploration, questions of morality and humanity, and advancement through tactical proficiency, amongst a great many other things. And yet Paper Mario and its new sequel reject much of that, arguably proving that you don't have to join the choir to raise the rafters; all it takes is a bit of imagination and a lot of heart.
Or a bulbous retired actress with the ability to blow the paper off the walls.
Nintendo's latest Mario role-player, designed by the phenomenally bankable Intelligent Systems, has a lot of both imagination and heart. It plays on its characters' origins in two dimensions, and the fact that traditional Mario storylines have been at best one-dimensional, through a mixture of stylistic, flourishing visuals and self-deprecation. It rejects the need for technical opulence, chess-like rules of engagement and a weighty narrative, and manages to concoct something closer to Finding Nemo than Final Fantasy, which is very much a compliment. Here screen wipes reminiscent of paper being scrumpled up, and 2D characters falling comically through gaps in the scenery, are more important than blitzing the player with mere polygons. Here battles are as much about timing and execution as they are about basic statistical superiority, and you would have to be a turtle-guzzling, double-crossing dragon to actually get yourself killed off and stripped from the overall yarn through your actions. And here, most significantly, the overarching drama is not the single most compelling factor.