Super Mario Odyssey In-Depth Preview
We visited Nintendo and explored three new kingdoms
October 27th is almost upon us; in just a few short weeks, Super Mario Odyssey launches around the world. Although I have been following the game closely since it was first revealed alongside the Switch at the beginning of the year, E3 2017 was the first time media were able to go hands-on; I spent about 20 minutes or so playing through the Metro Kingdom and Sand Kingdom. You can read my thoughts on the E3 demo right here.
Since E3, Nintendo have shown off more of Super Mario Odyssey. Mario’s new adventure was recently featured at Gamescom in Germany, and the latest Nintendo Direct revealed more locations that we hadn’t previously seen.
Arrival at the Mothership
A couple of weeks ago, I visited Nintendo’s Australian headquarters to spend a good hour and a half with a near-final build of Super Mario Odyssey. I was joined by my sister, Elizabeth, an all-star photographer who very kindly agreed to lend her considerable talents to this story.
I was excited about the visit partly because this was a good amount of time to get a better feel for the game (it can be tricky to get a true sense of how the game plays during a brief demo at Nintendo’s busy E3 media booth). Also, it helped Nintendo had set aside a private room for Super Jump to experience the game comfortably and with no distractions.
I’m going to pause for a moment here and comment on the surroundings: Nintendo has two dedicated spaces that act as mock living rooms — the idea being to simulate the experience of playing the game at home. Super Jump was housed in the Samus Room, while our colleagues at another publication set up in the Zelda Room next door (funnily enough, we could hear faint laughter and yelling coming from the other room and we were trying to guess where other guys might be up to by their reactions).
Elizabeth and I were joined in the Samus Room by Nintendo Australia’s Product Manager for Super Mario Odyssey. It’s worth mentioning that we played this build of the game quite early; the updated code had only just been distributed by NCL (Nintendo Co., Ltd. in Kyoto) a few days prior. This meant that, as we played, we were stumbling upon content that even our hosts at Nintendo hadn’t yet seen — this turned out to be wonderful, though, because it felt like we were exploring uncharted territory together. It also meant that we collaborated on guiding Mario through various weird and wonderful obstacles, often with hilarious results.
We played through sections of three kindgoms during our visit; none of which had previously been accessible to media. First up was the (very Tim Burton-esque) Cap Kingdom, which acts as a tutorial area of sorts. Then we moved onto the Luncheon Kingdom (you can see a detailed playthrough of this via Nintendo of Europe’s Gamescom presentation). Finally, we explored the Seaside Kingdom, which was only just revealed in the latest Nintendo Direct.
I’m going to break down my impressions by each separate kingdom, with a wrap-up at the end.
It should be noted that an embargo does apply to all previews of Super Mario Odyssey at this stage. With a couple of exceptions, we didn’t see anything that we can’t talk about here. I’m going to attempt to avoid any major spoilers, but be warned that there could be minor spoilers throughout this preview.
Cap Kingdom
A Miniature Garden
One of the defining features of Super Mario Odyssey is Mario’s ability to interact with the world by flicking his cap around — you can capture enemies in order to puppet them and take advantage of their unique abilities, but you can also play with elements of the world in numerous ways (from activating switches to popping stumps of wood out of the ground).
This may seem pretty straightforward at first, but as you explore, it can be really easy to forget the golden rule: try flicking your cap and see what happens.
This situation reminded me of when I first played Super Mario 64 — Mario had all these new moves to master, and Nintendo gave players a gentle pathway to uncover his new tricks by dropping them into the grounds of Peach’s castle right at the beginning. There were no particular dangers in sight, so you could run around, climb trees, learn how to swim, and practice long jumping and triple jumping to your heart’s content.
Nintendo applies the same principle in Super Mario Odyssey, but with even greater finesse. The Cap Kingdom appears to be the place where you’ll start your odyssey, both in terms of the game’s story (which I can’t speak about here) and getting to grips with Mario’s powerful new buddy, Cappy. As well as Cappy, though, Mario does appear to have access to all of the moves he had in Super Mario 64 — including the aforementioned long jump, triple jump, and even the cartwheel jump. For the record, I didn’t try the fabled backwards long jump.
The Cap Kingdom also prepares you for what’s to come in terms of the game’s aesthetic.
Imagine if the traditional Mushroom Kingdom were a real physical place. It has its own look and feel, its own climate, regions, and species. But what if you could travel outside the Mushroom Kingdom to other kingdoms? This idea of travel — of exploring entirely new lands — is central to Super Mario Odyssey and the Cap Kingdom gives you a taste of just how unique each location is.
Top Hat Towers and Confused Frogs
My first impressions of the Cap Kingdom were that it felt very Tim Burton-esque (with a gorgeous musical score that could easily have come from Danny Elfman). Apparently Cappy himself is a resident of the Cap Kingdom, a whimsically dark city populated by cap-like beings who have erected all manner of cap-like buildings (even the little street lights look like glowing top hats).
You’ll find yourself standing amid gently rolling fog that has settled between blackened hills. There are already all sorts of objects to interact with — stacks of crates to break, and wooden bollards that you can (rather satisfyingly) yank from the ground by flicking Cappy at them.
This opening area hints at a bigger, interconnected world, too. Once you’ve acquainted yourself with the basic controls, you can head up to Top-Hat Tower. What’s interesting to me is that within the larger kingdom itself are these smaller “levels” that each present a slightly different design thesis. Where the opening area is all about learning the basic controls, Top-Hat Tower is a highly vertical environment where you’ll learn more about the potential of the capture mechanic. Moving between these areas is utterly seamless, too; you won’t encounter a loading screen or some kind of invisible barrier.
Once inside Top-Hat Tower, you’ll capture an understandably confused frog. It may sound obvious, but when you capture a creature, you control them directly, and each creature moves completely differently. Half the fun of capturing a new creature is simply playing with them, and figuring out how they move and what their unique strengths and weaknesses are. In this case, the frog could jump incredibly high — many times higher than Mario — which enabled me to leap from platform to platform, making my way up to the top of the tower.
Upon reaching the top, I encountered my first boss, an oddly-dressed rabbit with murderous intent (actually, there are a few rabbit-based bosses in Super Mario Odyssey — is this at all a reference to Mario+Rabbids? Hm…) I won’t go into the details of the boss battle here (you can see a little of it in the video above), but I will say that I went up against a total of three bosses — each one was a joy to battle. Another thing to add is that there does appear to be different kinds of bosses; I’d describe them as mini-bosses versus major bosses.
Based on my time with the game, it seems that the mini-bosses tend to involve smaller battles that are contained within some sort of arena and where a specific mechanic is required to beat them.
The major bosses, though?
Whole different story. What if the whole kingdom was the boss arena? And what if actually defeating the boss involved using the kingdom itself as a weapon? Intrigued? Read on. ;-)
Luncheon Kingdom
Hot Soup, Corn, and the Goomba Stack
Our sessions with each kingdom were time boxed, but because we ran through Cap Kingdom a little faster than expected, it meant we had a bit more time available for the Luncheon and Seaside Kingdoms.
If you’ve seen the Gamescom footage of the Luncheon Kingdom, you’ll notice that it starts during a mission called Under the Cheese Rocks. While I did play that mission, my session actually began somewhere earlier than that — Nintendo loaded a save file that saw Mario standing on a piece of rock jutting out from a boiling hot pink liquid (which, from memory, is some sort of broth or soup).
Of the three kingdoms we played, Luncheon was definitely the weirdest. The entire kingdom is a tribute to food, especially the variety found in various European cuisines, according to Nintendo. Modelling worlds in Mario games after food isn’t entirely new, but Nintendo have really played with the idea here in ways that lend themselves beautifully to the kind of freedom that Super Mario Odyssey encourages.
Let me give you a quick idea of just how weird this game can get: as soon as I dropped into the world, I had to stand on a large corn cob and roll it through the pink soup to reach a Goomba (a Lady Goomba, or Goombette, if you will) standing on a high ledge. Since Mario was too short to reach her (and since she shyly disappeared whenever Mario got too close), I couldn’t initially figure out how to speak to her. It turns out that the answer was simple! Just go around the corner (towards a group of Goombas, one of whom was wearing a chef’s hat), capture one of the Goombas, have him and his buddies pile on top of each other (stacked three Goombas high), make our way back to the Lady Goomba (across the soup, via the corn); the Goomba at the top of the stack was high enough to speak to her face-to-face.
None of us in the Samus Room had actually seen this particular puzzle before, so we didn’t know how to solve it. After much conversation, innuendo, and laughter, we were all pretty happy with our Goomba Stack ™ solution.
Worlds Within Worlds
As we progressed, I began to learn more about how kingdoms are actually structured in Super Mario Odyssey. Although you could draw some parallels to Super Mario 64, I’d say that comparison can be a little misleading.
Our starting point in the Luncheon Kingdom seemed relatively small at first. It looked like we were surrounded by an unforgiving and impossible-to-pass sea of hot soup. That is, at least, until we realised we could capture a certain enemy and actually swim through the soup to access new areas. The way I’d describe the kingdoms is that they are basically large sandbox environments full of smaller, seamlessly connected “levels” — the neat trick is that there are literally no seams between these connected levels other than, in some instances, a pop-up title card announcing the name of the region you’ve entered.
What’s really cool about this is the way that the nature of the game can change radically from moment to moment.
For instance, when you do the mission Under the Cheese Rocks, you’ll find yourself platforming as Mario one moment, then platforming as 8-bit Mario (after entering a special warp pipe), then controlling a new kind of Hammer Bros. character who is dressed as a chef and who flings pans around — of course, you can use these pans to break huge blocks of cheese that uncover all sorts of things, including secret switches that help you earn Power Moons (I spoke about Power Moons in the previous article, but these are essentially Super Mario Odyssey’s equivalent of stars).
We were able to continue playing after this point, where things get considerably more interesting.
Salted Meat and Morphing Mountains
The next challenge we tackled was to climb up to the top of the huge mountain in the Luncheon Kingdom, where an enormous bowl of soup is perched on the peak (and which happens to be guarded by a giant, angry bird). You can’t initially reach the bowl of soup, but you can reach another peak in the kingdom, on top of which is perched a massive piece of meat. There’s a pile of salt near the meat, and if you’ve been paying attention to the Luncheon Kingdom’s residents, you’ll notice that several of them speak very highly of the importance of salting your meat before you cook it. Essentially, you can capture the meat and wiggle yourself into the pile of salt.
Yes, I just typed those words.
What’s really awesome here is that you’ll do something in the world (for example, capturing and salting the meat), which will then cause the physical world to change shape. I feel as though I can’t emphasise enough how cool this effect is, and it seems to happen pretty regularly in the game. In this case, the top of the mountain sort of breaks apart and re-configures itself dynamically — getting up the mountain is itself now a mini platforming level that didn’t actually exist until you triggered it with some other action in the world.
I noticed that this also happens when you collect certain Power Moons. The kingdoms are not static entities; they seem to morph and change based on what you’re actually doing. This also means that not all missions are available to you right away — some Power Moon missions may only emerge when the right world conditions exist.
This also speaks to another element that I haven’t mentioned yet; unlike Super Mario 64, where you had to choose a star before entering a level (and were then kicked out of the level when you got the star), Super Mario Odyssey doesn’t boot you out of the kingdom once you acquire a Power Moon. But even more importantly, there’s no concept here of choosing a mission and then doing it. You simply find Power Moons as you explore the world — this includes uncovering “missions” that will require specific puzzles to be solved to nab the Power Moon.
I almost reached the boss at the soup bowl, but unfortunately my platforming skills let me down as I got near the peak. Time was running out, so I decided to forfeit and move on to something completely different.
Seaside Kingdom
Tip of the Iceberg
Our final destination was the Seaside Kingdom — specifically, an area called Bubblaine (remember that within each kingdom there are many different locales — New Donk City, for example, sits within the Metro Kingdom). Bubblaine is a beautiful resort, or at least it was, before a malevolent octopus showed up and began greedily slurping up the area’s Sparkle Water (it turns out that the water here is actually fizzy). As with the Cap and Luncheon Kingdoms, Seaside Kingdom has its own native inhabitants. In this case, the breachfront is populated by colourfully-dressed snail people, who all seem to be deeply concerned about their new unwelcome guest.
At the start of this preview I talked about the idea that Super Mario Odyssey presents us with different kingdoms that are each radically different — both in terms of aesthetics, but also in terms of gameplay design. This is certainly true of Seaside Kingdom as well, and when you first arrive here, it definitely feels that Mario has travelled to another completely different, foreign land. Upon first arriving in Bubblaine, it may initially seem that there isn’t a whole lot going on — there’s a vast beach and some large glass objects protruding from the water, sure, but the sheer density of the environment isn’t immediately obvious. This is largely because only part of the environment is exposed — the part that sits above the water’s surface. But as you’ll soon discover, there are many secrets and hidden places to be uncovered when Mario dives beneath the waves.
Who Needs a Jet Ski?
Getting around Bubblaine was a ton of fun, largely thanks to a little white flower that really packs a punch. When you come across these flowers that pop up out of the sand here and there, just flick Cappy at them, and they’ll turn into a kind of outboard motor enabling you to fly across the water’s surface at breakneck speed. You can also capture a very odd enemy, which is basically a little octopus inside a sphere of water. When you capture these guys, you’ll actually be able to use the water sphere to fire a stream of water either vertically or horizontally — meaning you can rocket upwards and propel yourself forwards as well. Elizabeth mastered this technique by activating both the vertical and horizontal streams to actually fly around the kingdom quite quickly, which became crucial during the boss fight.
Swimming, also, felt great — admittedly, this can be a tricky mechanic to get right (even in Mario games). As we swam around a reef off the coast, we came across a little cave entrance that looked intriguing; unfortunately, it seemed that Mario probably wouldn’t be able to swim through what looked like a long, dark tunnel without drowning. And then we came across a nearby Cheep Cheep, who, having promptly been captured, allowed us to swim through the tunnel at our leisure (well, not quite; remember that massive eel from Super Mario 64? It’s back, and it’s got friends…)
Biggest Boss Battle
The most interesting aspect of Bubblaine that we played involved the boss. Now, I’m not allowed to tell you how to beat the boss (although you’ll get a small glimpse in the video above), but I can tell you a bit about why he is so unique.
As I mentioned earlier, upon arriving in Bubblaine, your attention is immediately drawn to the massive octopus sitting on top of the giant glass structure off the coast. He appears to be drinking up all of the Sparkle Water with what can only be described as the world’s longest straw. Beating him actually doesn’t involve direct confrontation at first — no, instead, you’ll have to undertake a mission that will send you to various locations in the region. As you do a certain activity at each location, the octopus will notice your shenanigans, and will become increasingly angry — as he does so, he’ll drop spikey metal balls into the water and will become so mad that a big patch of lava will appear on his head.
At a certain point, you’ll have frustrated him enough, and he’ll choose to go after you rather than continue slurping away at that sweet, fizzy water. Once Mario becomes the target, it’s on for young and old; this is the point where the entire area essentially becomes the boss arena. Like any good major boss battle, the encounter with giant-octopus-dude goes through several stages that become progressively more challenging and because he can follow you anywhere in the environment, you’ll really need to have mastered the techniques I mentioned earlier (capturing the flowers, and using the little octopi to fly around — did I mention that once you’ve used up all the water from their spheres, you’ll have to drop back into the ocean to re-fill it?)
Wrap Up
I have tried to convey something of what Super Mario Odyssey feels like to play, and what makes it so different to anything I’ve played before. But to be honest, I’ve also left a lot unsaid here; perhaps some of those things will come up in the next episode of the Super Jump Podcast, where I’ll be talking all about my Super Mario Odyssey experience.
For now, I’ll just say that after spending more time with the game since E3, the most succinct observation I can make is that Super Mario Odyssey feels a bit like the lovechild of Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Making the little plumber run around on screen with the Joy-Con feels sublime; it’s the beautifully tight, finessed control that I’d expect with a major Mario title. And with Cappy in hand, Mario’s abilities have increased exponentially. But then there are the kingdoms themselves; these unreal, multi-dimensional playgrounds that fold one great experience on top of another, all without ever feeling overwhelming or disjointed.
It’s funny; since March I’ve been thinking there’s absolutely no way that Nintendo (or anyone) could release a game in 2017 that matches Breath of the Wild’s genius. And yet, it definitely looks like Super Mario Odyssey could do just that. Bring on October 27th.
I’d like to give a special thanks to Elizabeth Burns for shooting and editing the photo and video in this piece, and to Nintendo Australia for their time and support.
