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Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle

Ubisoft shared a new video today for Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. Below, creative director Davide Soliani and lead producer Xavier Manzanares walk you through characters’ unique abilities, diverse weapons, and advanced tactics in co-op.

Just a few weeks before the start of E3, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle suffered from some significant leaks. Key art was posted online as well as extensive marketing plans with quite a few details. Many were initially skeptical about Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, but that all changed once we got a good look at the game at E3.

Eurogamer recently chatted with creative director Davide Soliani and composer Grant Kirkhope about the leaks. Hear what they have to say below.

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is not your typical game. It makes sense then that during early development, Ubisoft considered a few different genres for the title.

Creative director Davide Soliani told Glixel that Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle was initially considered as a musical, or even a first-person shooter. He said:

“We started to scratch them out, one after the other. We went through a musical game, a first-person shooter game; but really the team is composed of mainly tactical fans.”

Soliani had also mentioned that, early on, a group of five people came up with 13 ideas. Most of these are a mystery.

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It’s been a busy day for Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle interviews, and another one has surfaced from ntower. The site spoke with Andrea Babich, lead narrative designer at Ubisoft Milan.

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle will be the first Switch game to make use of Ubisoft’s Snowdrop engine. Despite that, there were no issues along the way.

When asked if the team encountered any problems while developing for Switch, Babich noted:

“Actually we were really surprised about how easy the development for this system is. I don’t want to sound like a Ubisoft or Nintendo fan, but when we got the Dev-Kit and put the Snowdrop-Engine onto the Switch, these two perfectly fit together. The Snowdrop-Engine, which is our engine for almost everything and which we used for the last South Park game is so versatile that we quickly lost our worries about the development.”

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Not every idea developers come up with makes it into the final game. With Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, this was the case as well.

One mechanic Ubisoft scrapped early on was “Fumble”. This would have players missing attacks. Rather than successfully shooting an enemy, the gun would explore in your face as well.

Ubisoft talked with Nintendo about the idea, and the feature was ultimately cut. Nintendo felt it was a bit too chaotic and random for it to be accessible.

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle lead producer Xavier Manzanares told USgamer:

“We thought it was like Rabbids. Even if it sounded cool on paper, when you play it you say, ‘awww man I was about to defeat the enemy but I got this fumble.’ It’s funny one time, but not funny the second time.”

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Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle takes inspiration from all sorts of games and sources. Among these was actually Mario Kart. Although the two are in completely different genres, creative director Davide Soliani mentioned to Game Informer that the team wanted to translate that action into the Switch game.

Davide said the following when asked how Mario + Rabbids sets itself apart from other strategy titles:

“Since the very beginning, when we started to brainstorm this game, we wanted to come up with something that was totally new. If we were going to propose to Nintendo, we knew we had to have something that they were not used to or that they weren’t already doing. So, we started with the intention of saying we should renew the genre a little bit. We thought that tactical games are known to be slow paced and they tend to be a little niche, so why not try to have something very dynamic and colorful and fast paced. That’s why our first reference was Mario Kart. How cool would it be to try to translate that kind of action into the combat of our game? Compared to a lot of other tactical games, you see enemies taking cover and the heroes are doing the same, and they’re both shooting at each other, but they’re not moving much. In our game, the A.I. is coming towards you, so you must react to the situation, and the action is focused on moving around the battlefield.”

Along with today’s new trailer, Ubisoft published a second video for Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. It features some talk with the developers about the hidden secrets and loot in the Spooky Trails area. Watch the video below.

With Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle launching in about a month, a new set of previews have now been published online with details and footage. We’ve rounded up everything below.

Ubisoft has just gone live with a brand new trailer for Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. We’ve included it below.

IGN featured Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle during its Comic-Con live stream yesterday with associate producer Cristina Nava. Watch some footage below, along with commentary from Nava.


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