Super Mario Odyssey will ‘go back to the roots of Super Mario Sunshine’, according to series creator Shigeru Miyamoto.
During an interview broadcast as part of Nintendo’s Treehouse Live with Nintendo Switch live stream earlier today, the iconic developer stated: “We’ve been making Mario games for over 30 years, and throughout that time we’ve made changes to the series: some games tended to be a little bit harder to play, and we’ve also gone back to making games more accessible to all kinds of gamers. It’s been give-and-take in that way…
“When we thought about making Mario for the Switch, we wanted to make something a little bit more for the core side, so people who like action games can really get into it.”
Miyamoto talked about previous criticisms of the camera controls in 3D Mario titles, stating that: “With Odyssey we made sure the camera controls are really smooth and simple to use, and the Switch controller is really conducive to that. We’ve made a sandbox-style game that is easy to, and feels good to, control.”
He added that although the game’s development team contains a number of young programmers who have brought new, innovative ideas to the table, its core team is made up of those who have worked on all of the 3D Mario titles, who have “gone back to the roots of [popular Gamecube title] Mario Sunshine” in creating Odyssey.
On the game’s varied locations, Miyamoto added: “As you’ll see, there’s a lot of different locations; some that feel like you’ve seen them before and some that feel they have been made up specific to Mario.
“Is Mario going to fit in in this place? That’s part of the appeal.”