The Worst Mario Sidequest
So you know how, when you're going for 100% in a video game, there's always that objective.
The one where fun goes to die and you're just left feeling miserable the whole way through. Like capturing Morty in Luigi's Mansion 3 or getting all the Sparkle Gems in Patissiรจre 2 in Princess Peach Showtime.
Well, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door has one sidequest (or trouble, as the game calls it) like that too.
And mamma mia, is it awful...
Now what character traits do you think of when you think of Mario?
Being a good brother to Luigi?
Being a humble sweetheart everyman?
Being the perfect hero who will help anyone in need?
Well this sidequest takes all of those traits... and tosses them straight into the trash.
The Trouble:
So this Toad girl wants to meet Luigi in person to give him cake?
Sounds like a simple enough problem to solve. And it'll feel good to do something nice for Luigi. Especially since all of Mario's interactions with him up until now have had...
...an overwhelming flavour of dismissive apathy.
Without a single moment of kindness from Mario's end.
Huh, that's weird. When I try to tell Luigi about what's going on, he just does his usual dialogue. I can't tell him about his biggest fan.
Is the game bugged or something? ...I'm going to ask around. Maybe someone has some hints on what to do.
[BTW, I will be transscribing most of the text because Tumblr has an image limit.]
You know, you and Luigi look a lot alike. If you swapped clothes, even I might have trouble telling you apart.
By the by, did you find the badge in Poshley Sanctum that changes your clothes? It was high up, deep in there.
Oh and by the way, there's some guy who uses a badge to pretend to be Luigi!
I know that green suit is dreamy, but come ON!
I would never fall for that, so don't even THINK about trying to trick me that way!
I really have no choice but to do this, do it?
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK! I can tell... I can totally tell! I've never met him before...
But I can ABSOLUTELY TELL! YOU'RE THE REAL LUIGI!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! I knew it! This is so cool! Omigosh! What should I say?
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! I'm totally freaking him out! I'm freaking out Luigi!
Oh nooo... What should I do? Oh! RIght! Duh! Duh! Duh! The cake!
The one I baked was a total loss... but Zess T. did a great job on this one!
Here you go, Mr. Luigi! Please take this!
Hey, Bro! Say, why are you dressed like me?
Hey! Who...who do you think you are! You filthy imposter! POLIIIIIIIIIIICE!
Whaaaaaat? I'm no impostor! I'm Luigi!
Hey, say something, Mario!
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK! EW! EW! EW! How DARE you speak to Luigi, you liar! You LIE-igi!
You'll NEVER be Luigi, no matter how many green hats you wear! Now stop interrupting our special time!
But...I'm pretty sure I'm me! This is a nightmare... A bad dream! I won't believe it! Wake up, Luigi!
The remake only made one change to this sidequest. And that change was to add the sound of Luigi crying.
UGH! Er, oh no... What have I done?! You've seen such a horrible side of meโthe worst side!
Don't... Don't worry about it? Oh thanks, really, Luigi. You're so sweet!
And thanks for coming today! I will always treasure these moments. Always!
So please... come see me again, OK?
If you speak to her again while wearing the L Badge:
Oh, wow! You came again!
Luigi remembers me! Luigi remembers me!
My Breakdown:
So that was an utterly miserable expierience from start to finish. Now I'm going to ramble out all the reasons I hate it.
First, there's the elephant in the room of Mario not only not standing up for Luigi, not only taking the side of Luigi's bullies, but actively enabling their bullying of his little bro.
Because that's a character trait Mario is well known for... *bitter sarcasm*
Now one might claim it's unfair compare this moment to media that came out later. Plus there's the technicalities of Paper Mario being a seperate version of Mario.
So from this point on, I'll only be discussing things from this game itself.
Note that this does not make the situation any better.
If anything, the rest of the game makes the trouble look even worse.
For starters... remember this line from Peach much earlier in the game?
When you love someone, you will do anything to help when that person is in trouble.
Well...
Luigi had directly asked for Mario's help, while he was suffering from a problem Mario caused, yet Mario chose to side with the people giving Luigi trouble.
Going by this game's definition of love, Mario feels the furthest thing from it towards Luigi.
If he did love his brother, or even show him the bare minimum amount of respect, he wouldn't have turned the head of the Luigi Fanclub against the man in green.
Wait... a person who steals someone else's identity... and turns people who would normally be on their side against them?
Where have I seen that before?
Oh yeah!!!
That's exactly what Doopliss did to Mario back in Chapter 4!!!
Mario had suffered the same exact thing. He knows just how much this hurts. And yet he willingly put his little brother through the same pain after the fact.
Why did they think it was a good idea to have the story's hero do the exact same thing as the villains, with no exonerating external circumstances? And to reward him for it on top of that??
If anything, what Mario did to Luigi is worse, because Luigi is terrible in social situations, something Mario knows, meaning he'd have an even harder time standing up for himself.
Oh... and speaking of Chapter 4...
The whole reason Vivian joined the party was because Mario showed her the kindness she never got from her abusive older sisters.
So why did they think it would be a good idea to have Mario treat his own younger brother so badly??
Paper Mario in this sidequest is at odds not only with Mario throughout the rest of the franchise, but with himself in the same game!!
And it's not like the writers didn't know what a healthy sibling relationship looks like.
After all, this game has Punio & Petuni, Jolene & Prince Mush, the two Toads from the harbour, heck even Hooktail and Gloomtail of the positive end VS Beldam and Marilyn & Vivian on the negative end.
And speaking of relationships, there's Mario and Toadia's.
Now, Toadia is an idiot and by no means a saint. But at the same time, she's also somewhat of a victim in this situation.
Her conduct makes it very clear that she hates people who pretend to be Luigi. Yet the game makes her fall for the kind of person she detests, turn against the one she admires, and treats this as a good thing.
Whatever she and Mario have going on isn't cute. It's creepy as all heck. It also takes this game's running gag of every girl having the hots for Mario to its worst possible conclusion.
By the by, what is the reward for completing this sidequest?
An item which restores 5 HP and 15 FP.
Which at this point in the game is... uh...
It's such a shame too. This sidequest could have easily been a pretty good one if they just had Mario do something nice for his brother by telling Luigi about his fangirl and let Toadia meet her actual idol.
The reward wouldn't even need to be changed, since you can't convince me that if someone gave Luigi a cake, he wouldn't willingly share some of it with Mario.
Instead, we got an absolute mess where I can't think of a sensible Watsonian motive for Mario's actions other than that he enjoys hurting Luigi.
Also...
Just who is this sidequest for??
It's not for fans of Luigi, since they hate all the overused jokes where he's hated by everyone and made to suffer despite having done nothing wrong.
It's not for fans of Mario, since they don't enjoy seeing him actually being written as an abusive older brother to Luigi. As a moral coward who would rather see his little brother be driven to tears than admidt he did something wrong, and doesn't regret those actions in the slightest. As a creep who can't permit the existence of even one female who loves his brother, but not him.
It's not for the Mario hating contrations, since the game expects the player to be on Mario's side and outright rewards him for being a bad brother.
It's not for fans of the Toads, since it's yet another instance of their only personality trait being hyping up Mario while belittling Luigi for no good reason.
It's not for the old Paper Mario fans, given how it completey bastardises the themes of Chapter 4, widely considered to have some of the best writing in this game.
It's not for parents, since they wouldn't appreciate video games telling their kids it's okay to lie and steal from their siblings.
There's only 3 nice things I have to say about this sidequest:
It doesn't have much in the way of gameplay requirements. So if you're going for 100%, this trouble is quick to clear by just mashing through the text.
It's an easy way to get the recipe for the Choco Cake added to the recipe list, if you somehow haven't done that already. Note that this only applies to the remake.
For how awfully Mario was written here, this sidequest did not cause the bad "Mario is a sociopath" takes... since nobody actually did this game's sidequests prior to the remake. Because you just know that people like Game Theory would have been all over this had they known it existed.
I could go on, but I think I've said enough. So I'll just leave this post off with this.
