Paper Mario: The Origami King Coming July 17
There was no Nintendo Direct today, but we got an out-of-the-blue announcement regardless: there’s a new Paper Mario game coming, and very soon. “Two months” soon.
If you’re the paper version of Mario, you have more to worry about than just Bowser. Paper has many natural enemies: fire, wind, water. We don’t know where getting folded ranks, but it must be near the top of Paper Mario’s anxieties. It’s even worse when an origami-themed enemy shows up and transforms Peach into his minion.
The scene where Mario finds out what happened to Peach is what opens the trailer, and it is actually rather creepy. She comes out looking deformed, moving in a stilted manner, and asks him with slow, tinkling text if he will “crease himself and be reborn.” It doesn’t matter what Mario says, she throws him down a trap door either way, giving new meaning to “being dumped.”
Mario’s latest nemesis is King Olly, ruler of the Origami Kingdom, who’s invading with his hand-crafted army of terror! He’ll need some allies to win this one…including Bowser, who in an “enemy of my enemy” situation, has been folded neatly into a square and wants to kick Olly’s kiester over it.
The big unknown question surrounding Paper Mario: The Origami King is if it will satisfy fans of the series, who have expressed their displeasure with the last few installments released on 3DS and Wii U. In recent years it’s drifted from an emphasis on storylines and leaned hard into gimmicky battle mechanics (reportedly at Miyamoto’s insistence). People regard the Gamecube entry, The Thousand Year Door, as the height of the series’ quality and fear it may never come close again.
It’s too early to tell where Paper Mario: The Origami King will fall on the scale. But we won’t have to wait long to find out. The game releases for Nintendo Switch on July 17.