>>747544307
Miyamato got upset that it was getting too complex and took all the personality off with a fucking sandblaster

>>747544307
Super Paper Mario dropped and it tried to do this Platformer RPG hybrid thing that didn't really work.

>>747544445
Shut the fuck up Tanabe.

>>747544307
If I remember right, they wanted to make a side game instead of trying (and failing) to get a game out early in a console's life cycle for the third time in the series. Ironically, this game wound up positioned to be one of the Wii's early first party titles, and this was its downfall. People who didn't know what paper Mario was up to previously were confused by the writing, even if it wasn't because they'd missed part of the story per se, because the tone would only make sense coming from the first couple games. Paper Mario fans weren't super happy because the setting was even further removed from anything "Mario-like" than TTYD's and the gameplay was no longer based on turn based RPG mechanics.
This, paired with a survey with an incredibly limited audience, mostly general "Mario" or "Nintendo" fans, rating SPM's story poorly, led to the internal view that Paper Mario needed to undergo some radical change. This happened to come around a time when a lot of other games in the Mario franchise were undergoing a wave of standardization in their presentation and character design. Whatever it looked like on Nintendo's end, Tanabe took it as a chance to reinvent the series to better serve his ego.
Making memorable and fun character designs is hard. The dialog can be delivered by standard character models from the early 10s. If you need to tell them apart, paste accessories on to some, but for the love of god, DON'T change the base character model. Too much work!
The point of RPG stats is numbers. Growth is important only in that you see bigger numbers when you're later in the game. Growth actually sucks to give the player in any real sense, because it's hard to balance. So make all growth temporary, disposable even! Now the player does bigger numbers when they're in an area with bigger enemies, because bigger enemies drop shinier shoes, and that's literally all that affects damage.
See the problem? Tanabe's a fucking hack.

>>747544869
YOU WANT CAST OF MEMORABURU AND UNIQUE CHARACTERS
FUCK YOU
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