Nintendo takes the innovative online multiplayer of the Souls games and makes it all about the vibes
Nintendo is a one-of-a-kind game developer, to say the least. Much of its genius, and the timeless brilliance of its games, has rested over the years on the fact that it operates in a bubble, designing games unlike any others and influencing only itself. It is resistant to fashion and can be very innovative in its own, outlandish ways. However, it has occasionally been left behind by seismic shifts in gaming that barely made a ripple within the serene white box of its Kyoto headquarters.
However, there is a sense that this is changing. Slowly, and with enough delicacy not to disrupt Nintendo’s secretive design teams’ mysterious, alchemical processes, but changing nonetheless. There is evidence of a new generation of designers rising through the ranks at Nintendo EPD (Entertainment and Planning Division, the in-house software development arm) who are more open to outside ideas and trends and have been able to incorporate them into their work in unexpected and uniquely Nintendo ways.
And it’s working, really, really well. With its paint-the-map concept, the Splatoon series, which began as a skunkworks project for younger Nintendo designers, reinvented online team-deathmatch shooters, of all things, both stylistically and mechanically. It’s been a big success. And, of course, the Legend of Zelda series has been catapulted to new heights by the way Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom incorporate everything from Skyrim to Halo to Minecraft into their daring reinvention of open-world games.
It’s now Mario’s turn. The majority of Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s inventiveness is the old kind of Nintendo inventiveness, a flood of subversive ideas that turn the design of a 2D Mario game inside out and upside down, but that only work in reference to themselves. That is not true of its fascinating online mode, which uses ideas from a completely different studio and genre to make online multiplayer work in a space where it should not.
That source of inspiration is FromSoftware and its Soulsbornes: Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, and Elden Ring series of hardcore dark fantasy action role-playing games. These games (and a few others they’ve influenced most notably Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding) take an asymmetrical and asynchronous approach to online gaming, in which the experience is mostly solo, but other players leave traces of themselves in the world around you in the form of signs, which can be helpful, humorous, or neither. When another player enters your game, whether as an ally or foe, they do so as a ghost, visiting from their own version of the same world.
Nintendo has taken From’s novel thinking about online gaming and twisted it into something unexpectedly chill, and even uplifting. When you enable online multiplayer in Wonder, your game will be populated with the shadows of other players, scampering around the world map and leaping around the stages, each playing their own game alongside yours.
Because other players are intangible to you, they will not interfere with your platforming, but that doesn’t mean they can’t help you. If you die, you have a few seconds to guide your floating spirit to another player or the standees that can be placed around levels, which will resurrect you.
A well-placed standee before a difficult section can save your life. Whereas Standees can be dropped to indicate the location of hidden platforms or nudge you toward a puzzle solution, watching how other players navigate the stages can reveal the location of hidden platforms or nudge you toward a puzzle solution, especially useful on the special Search Party puzzle stages.
There’s something wonderfully but casually collaborative about it — a sense that Mario Wonder players are all in it together, and that just by playing the game in our own way, we’re helping each other progress.
Aside from that, the game develops an enveloping, ambient sense of community that, to my surprise, reminded me most of playing a massively multiplayer game like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy 14. The bustling avatars, all going about their business as you go about yours, give the game life, putting you in touch with everyone else who is playing it at the same time.
Surprisingly, for a mode inspired by FromSoftware’s demanding masterpieces, Wonder’s online multiplayer is really all about the vibes. It makes the game more lively, but also more relaxing, inviting, joyful, and meaningfully easier. And it creates the kind of atmosphere that can only be created by a group of like-minded people doing something they enjoy together. It’s a great time, a true Mario party. For decades, playing games online appeared to be more intense and intimidating than doing so alone. What if it was the other way around, wonders Super Mario Bros.