Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the hotly anticipated GameCube remake releasing on the Nintendo Switch next month, has been getting some flack online recently, as it has been revealed that the game will run at 30fps, as oppose to the original that ran at 60.

Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon is a well received prequel to the Bayonetta series released last year on the Nintendo Switch. Director of Bayonetta Origins, Abebe Tinari, took to Twitter to share his thoughts as to why the developers of the upcoming Thousand-Year Door may have had to come to the decision of making the title run at 30fps, and gives a glimpse into some of the challenges their team faced when developing for the system:

I can empathize with the devs of Paper Mario: TTYD on Switch [with regards to] the whole 30fps vs 60fps situation. We tried for a long time to get Cereza and the Lost Demon running at a stable 60fps.

We were able to maintain 60fps inside the Tír na nÓg stages, but it just wasn't possible to keep the same visual fidelity and hold 60fps in the forest. My choice was either to have an unlocked framerate with frequent dips to 30~50 fps, or cap it and hold a stable 30fps.

The most difficult part of game development is making choices about what to prioritize. Everything has a cost, both in terms of dev time to implement it, and in terms of processing time when the game is running… ultimately you simply cannot have everything.

Cereza and the Lost Demon may not look visually complex, but there is actually a ton of post-processing going on under the hood: the colours fading in like ink as you move through the world, the shading patterns on objects, the way the world curves to allow you to see further into the distance.

All these visual effects have a processing cost. I felt the picture book look was integral to the overall experience, so it was not worth throwing it away to hit 60fps. I imagine the team making Paper Mario faced a similar dilemma.

It would be one thing if this were an enhanced port of the original game (i.e. the version of Pikmin 1/2 for Switch), but this is a full rebuild of the game. I am sure they wanted to use modern techniques to really make the paper aesthetic shine… and these have a cost.

All I can say for certain is that the team made the choice that they felt would lead to the best overall experience for players. I promise you, it was not a decision made lightly or out of "laziness". I missed out on the original, so I'm looking forward to playing it on Switch!

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door launches on Nintendo Switch on May 23rd! We recently revealed a new overview trailer with over 5 minutes of new footage, which you can check out here.