Mario + Rabbids Producer Talks About Sequel’s Character Selection Process

If you saw the most recent footage of Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope you might be wondering about the changes with the game’s hero lineup.

Nintendo Everything had the chance to speak with the game’s lead producer Xavier Manzanares and asked about the decision to exclude Yoshi from the main cast. It was explained how Ubisoft didn’t want to just do the “same thing again” and this meant also evolving the hero roster – with characters such as Bowser.

Here’s part of the response:

When we started to think about the team and the heroes, we didn’t want to go for, ‘Okay, we did it before, so we have to do the same thing again’ and trying to evolve what we had in Kingdom Battle. So it’s true as well for the heroes.

We decided early on to go for nine heroes. We didn’t know exactly which ones, and we didn’t want to go for ones that are in Kingdom Battle because that’s the rule. As it’s not a direct sequel, we talked and we still believe today that players would be more interested and think, ‘Okay, the choice they made for the heroes and what they put in the game are logical because of the archetypes and what they do in battle, and it’s cool, and the synergy is super cool.’

In the end, the team opted to go with new characters such as Rabbid Rosalina and even the Mario antagonist Bowser. There’s also the mysterious ‘Edge’ who will appear alongside Mario, Luigi, Peach and their Rabbid forms.

Nintendo Life also recently spoke with Xavier Manzanares, you can read about it in our own lengthy feature:

Are you looking forward to getting your hands on this game when it arrives on the Nintendo Switch this October? Leave a comment down below.