hi! i was watching a ttyd TAS, which inspired me to watch the full intro shadow queen cutscene, and i wanna talk about it. i don't like it. obvious reminder that art is subjective, and while i try to support my opinions with sound reasoning, other interpretations are totally valid and all even though i use some objective-tone language for convenience's sake. for reference, I have not played the game (SPM is my only paper mario), though I've watched like a full casual run's worth of footage. read: I have context but not as much context as some others.
you can see the cutscene for yourself
here, from 0:10 to to 6:00. i'll be providing screenshots for context.
I think this first impression is solid. I like the minimalist intent, with only the candles and red carpet giving decoration to the unadorned gray coffin in the flat gray room. Red being an accent here rather than the primary color is a great complement to the preceding Palace of Shadow. The austere minimalism and foreboding stoniness is a nice payoff to the "legendary treasure" not being much of a "treasure" at all.
There's a petty gripe, though. I wish the minimalism was committed too a little harder. The many floor tiles and wall reliefs distract a bit from the art direction's austerity. I think having a few big tiles and one or two reliefs would make less interrupting lines. This might seem really trivial and micro-management, but I watched the entire cutscene in real time and in full before writing analysis down, and "this room looks cool but a bit generic and not as cool as it could be" was something I thought about real-time. If art design wanted to commit to a "erratic crossing lines to echo how shadow will spread across and corrupt the whole world", and a perfectly featureless coffin would stand out among the metaphorical rot, I think that definitely could have worked. However, the lines are too regular and subtle here for me to buy that interpretation right now.
All that is still fairly minor, though. For more fundamental stuff, I think Grodus has a problem here that escalates as the cutscene continues. Specifically, his competence/threat level/"situational power level" are murky. There are plenty of stories that use unclear "power level" to great effect. A character can appear strong but turn out to be weak when facing true danger, and this can be played to dramatic effect: that's totally normal. But Grodus ends up all over the place in a way that feels unintentional and not additive. Let's talk about his mini-arc thus far.
Right before this cutscene, you fight Grodus. The Big Bad (as far as you know at that point) from a distance, Grodus makes a menacing entrance. From his throne by the chamber door, he comes down (height is important!) and brags to Mario about how easily he manipulated the party, and about how he will stop their "meddling" right now. Cool. Great. He's big and scary. You beat him in a fight, but he still demonstrates his competence and threat level, revealing he had Peach hostage as a contingency. He then summons the Shadow Queen without a hitch, but he is revealed to be out of his league when the Shadow Queen evaporates him for bossing her around. All of the above, as I've described it, is great. Grodus is good at being a villain and gets very far in his plan, but he doesn't get his information and competition quite right, shits his pants a bit, dramatically pays for it in a way that highlights just how strong and cruel the Shadow Queen is. All good. As I presented it, this mini-arc is great.
The problem is that
I haven't shown the full story. To show the full story, we'll have to go more in detail on to the cutscene before the cutscene of focus.
Link here.
Right after putting Peach "on the table" as a hostage, he immediately fries Mario with a lightning bolt. Two lightning bolts, actually. But, more importantly, WHY? WHY was this scene included? First, we already established Grodus as a powerful, legitimate, dangerous threat. Second, you–the player–just beat him in a battle, so this scene feels like a cheap way to negate your victory that's outside of your control. Third, why didn't Grodus use this murder lightning in the battle? Fourth, why BOTHER carefully setting up and unveiling a hostage situation if you INCINERATE your enemy right after doing that work?
After thinking for a couple of seconds, my best guess to the latter three questions was "He revealed Peach to make Mario lose his guard and nail him with this clean shot." That direction could have worked, but I saw is no clear implication to clue the player into this explanation. Grodus never mentions it being a distraction effort or a way to nail Mario when he's stationary and not ready. Maybe the clarifying dialogue got axed and the scene wasn't adjusted appropriately?
Even if the distraction explanation is true, it doesn't answer the first question. The later questions accuse the scene of being inconsistent, not sensible, or contradictory, but that first question, "We already established Grodus as a legitimate scary threat??" asks a different kind of question. It asks, even if the scene is logically consistent, what is the affirmative benefit to bother including it anyway? It looks cool? Sure, I guess, but given how poorly it was implemented, it feels like there would have been a more substantive motivation to include it.
If you haven't seen these cutscenes, you might think "Maybe Mario needed to be incapacitated for the following action and blocking to make sense?" Or maybe "This incapacitation sets up a novel situation of Mario's peril that creates compelling future scenes?" I will shoot down both guesses with one image.
I just don't get it, man. If we consider the cutscenes in a vacuum, I see no reason Bowser has to be involved at all. That aside, though, I see no reason he has to come into the cutscene in this manner. Look, I get it. Him falling on Grodus is very funny. You're right! But it deflates the tension and has no big-picture purpose. Bowser says he has no idea what's going on, you fight Bowser and KK, and then they're not relevant again for the rest of the action I describe.
Maybe you see the second image and think "Oh, the extremely convenient timing of Bowser's appearance gave Grodus a distraction to exit to the Shadow Queen's chamber, Princess Peach in tow." I've got a question for you, though. You know what pre-existing condition gave Grodus a prefect chance to exit securely? THE HOSTAGE SITUATION HE ALREADY SET UP. If he dragged Peach through the chamber with Mario watching in horror the whole way, holding the metaphorical knife to her neck to stop Mario from pursuing, that would have created much more taut and compelling drama than this... whole cluster.
Fuck, that was a long tangent. Now, though, we finally have the context to return to what I wanted to say.
Notice how Grodus's gear is cracked from him losing to Mario? If he's the dangerous and competent villain to make hostage contingencies and murder lightning, why did he let Mario beat up on him severely and long enough to crack his very important and life critical-looking gear? Alternatively, he could have magically repaired the cracks in front of Mario, taunting his futility and further demonstrating his power in a more unique way than scary yellow boom lines. If he's the bumbling joke who gets fallen on by Bowser and who gets his gear scuffed, why has he maintained this aura of power and demand for respect up until the Shadow Queen 1-Ups him? This bumblingness also would make the 1-Up less impactful.
I'm not trying to say Grodus can't simultaneously be competent in some ways and bumbling in other ways, or that competent people can't bungle things up now and again. But the tonal direction feels really messy and I'm not sure how I'm supposed to think of Grodus, which makes some beats in the Shadow Queen cutscene less impactful than they could have been.
Wow, almost 1500 words in and I've analyzed about 5 seconds of my 6
minute chosen clip. This is going just great. And we're still not done with Grodus.
Why would you include these lines of dialogue?? This seems like a real case of Show, Don't Tell. Everything you'd want to know from these lines is either shown by the image right now and by the actual Shadow Queen entrance/possession cutscenes themselves. Peach is slumped before the coffin, vulnerable, and Grodus stands before her and Mario. You don't need this line to tell you that Grodus will somehow sacrifice the vulnerable and innocent Peach to further his own power-seeking ends. The tomb is already centered, flanked by tons of candles, looms over Peach, and is the only object that could reasonably possibly center the following cutscenes. Further, these lines dampens the impact of the actual SQ cutscenes themselves, and it's not like Grodus takes advantage of the lines to really chew the scenery and/or taunt Mario for his helplessness as his princess is possessed by a demon. I don't remember how much of this information was unknown to the player until now, but if any of it was unknown, surprises and impacts have been ruined and blunted so Grodus can meaninglessly exposit and monologue.
I'll give you a break from him and turn to Peach, who demonstrates basically no agency in this scene. I'm not expecting her to fight Grodus or scream that he's a big meaniehead, but there's no apparent reason for her to stay slumped over and prone here. She could start prone and stand up. She could try and stand up and/or hide/make a break for it, and Grodus could shut her down. She could try and shut down her fear. I understand the cutscene context puts limits on her reasonable behavior, but there's still things to work with here, and this cutscene falls into the damsel-in-distress-as-an-object hackneyed stuff.
Thank God, he stopped talking. And this part is great. I love the subtle touch if having the candles stay unlit for a moment before turning to black flame: the action pauses enough for you to think "Oh he unlit the candles, rad" before "Black fire bois, get got." The darkening is also great, and the pale green light is a compelling accent to the dark black-and-purple color emphasis of the Shadows that highlights the unique and fell activity of her release. Representing her as just a raging tornado of currently-unformed shadowy malice is also super great, highlighting her strangeness, foreshadowing the difficulty of controlling her, preserving her true appearance as a surprise for a post-possession reveal. This tornado form also hints she is not at full "operating capacity" and self-control after being stuck in a tomb for a gazillion years. Maybe a tornado is a bit generic, and the Shadows could have also simultaneously flew and oozed through the chamber in ways that supplementing the broad darkening, but all in all I greatly support thi–
NOOOOOOOO
WHY would you reveal her form right now? All the praise I had towards the tornado approach is ruined: it's just a visual effect now! Why would you not wait just a handful of minutes to reveal this form until after you beat Possessed Peach?? Then, not just her design, but also the fact that she HAS a self-sufficient humanoid form at all, would make for much more impactful reveals. It's not even a great tease since her entire body is revealed, and you fight this form very soon anyway!!
Hey, speaking of timing, how about we shut off any catharsis from her reveal by IMMEDIATELY having a
90 second cutscene of game locations having darkened skies! The idea would have been great with either a more reasonable time length or more creativity, highlighting the Shadow Queen's power by having her mere appearance darken the world, but you spend a minute and a half seeing nearly the same "skies turn fairly dark and reduce light level by a solid amount" cutscene 4x in a row.
Besides the actual and admittedly cool visual of shadow sweeping over the land(s), we fill these 90 seconds with very basic dialogue like "What's going on?", "The sky, it's...", and "The sky... it's turning dark...". Way to narrate the obvious,
Jolene.
Then, we get 45 seconds of good Grodus and Shadow Queen action, where the Shadow Queen possesses Peach... before ANOTHER 60 second cutscene that turns away from the present action. In the past ~3 minutes of cutscene, about ¼ of the action has been on you/Peach/Grodus/SQ. The opposite of taut and tense action. I don't really understand how possessing a weaker life form than herself would cause or directly relate to sweeping darkness. But this time, there's... rumbling!! Yeah!
Please kill me.
The tension is kind of gone since you revealed your bigger scarier witch form, + we've been waiting around for a while, so this feels like an odd admission of weakness for no real end goal. Also, I again have to think of Show Not Tell; she could stumble a bit walking, or miss hitting Grodus the first time with lightning, or something to demonstrate her incomplete awakening. The "miss with lightning bolt" idea would also create more suspense and fear that her being unable to control her powers could lead to bad outcomes even beyond the bad outcomes she desires.
OK, there's other stuff I could talk about, but I almost lost this entire post once, this took the better part of two hours, and my eyes are starting to bleed, so I'm calling this quits for now.