After the huge success of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which continues to break sales records months after its release, Nintendo is getting ready to prop up another one of its long-running series for the Switch with Paper Mario: The Origami King. With the game about a week away from being released, Nintendo of America announced a Nintendo Treehouse Livestream today that will primarily feature gameplay for The Origami King starting Friday at 10:00 a.m. PT.
The Paper Mario franchise has had a rocky history, with many fans feeling it has gone too far from its roots on the Nintendo 64 and GameCube to be at the same level of quality, and The Origami King appears to be carrying on some of that by not including an experience points system — one hallmark of role-playing games as a genre. Instead, it seems the new game will be focusing more on turning battles into puzzles for Mario to solve, so tomorrow's stream should give players a better understanding of what this will entail.
Paper Mario is not all the Nintendo Treehouse stream will focus on, however. Nintendo of America also announced that it will be featuring the reveal and gameplay for a title in a franchise new to developer WayForward, arguably most famous for its Shantae series.
The main Tweet is vague enough to leave it open what game WayForward has been developing, but a follow-up message does confirm that the title is based on a third-party property rather than one of Nintendo's main series. It should still be an interesting reveal, especially considering Nintendo feels it appropriate to add that onto an event focused on Paper Mario, one of its more popular spin-off series in the Mario canon.
Paper Mario: The Origami King's surprise reveal and quick turn-around to release was a nice thing for fans, especially considering Nintendo has been oddly quiet about what its future release schedule holds. During a recent shareholder meeting, Nintendo's Shinya Takahashi confirmed the coronavirus pandemic has not affected Nintendo's first-party development, which begs the question of what the Switch's line-up will look like going forward.
For now, Paper Mario is the big title on everyone's mind. Early reviews have been positive, about on par with previous games in the series, and fans should be able to judge better for themselves following the Treehouse stream tomorrow.
Paper Mario: The Origami King will be available on July 17, exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.