Mario + Rabbids Sparks Of Hope interview – ‘we put guns in the hand of Mario’
GameCentral talks to the man who convinced Nintendo to let Mario wield a gun and about what Italians really think of gaming’s biggest star.
If Davide Soliani, creative director of Ubisoft Milan, is embarrassed about being best known for crying at E3, after getting an on-stage shoutout about his collaboration with Nintendo, he doesn’t let on. After all, his lifelong dream has come true, as he’s not only been able to make a career working on tactical strategy games but he has also ended up working directly with Mario and Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto.
The fact that he’s been able to combine the two is the most unlikely part of his story though, with 2017’s Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle proving to be a major critical and commercial success and enough to ensure a sequel named Sparks Of Hope. We’ve alreadyplayed the game during previews, and it’s due to launch in just a week’s time, but we were recently afforded the chance to talk to Soliani about the sequel and his career.
Nintendo rarely works with any Western developer, least of all one to which they hand over the keys to the whole Mushroom Kingdom. On top of that the Mario + Rabbids games are not only turn-based strategy games but they involve Mario and co. using guns, which may be the most unlikely thing they’ve ever been made to do in a video game.
What’s interesting about Sparks Of Hope though is that it’s not a straightforward sequel and a surprising amount has changed, from the non-linear exploration elements to the fact that characters no longer move on a grid. In both cases you get to control the characters more like a traditional action game, which is an interesting evolution for the genre as a whole.
Nintendo is seemingly so enamoured with Ubisoft Milan’s work that
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