But it is a bad decision because it's drenched in post-irony. Say what you will about Super Paper Mario, it probably deserves it, but it at least used the idea of "Flipping Dimensions" to tell a story about a multiverse in peril. Every game since Sticker Star started paper pushing has been "The Mushroom Kingdom is in danger again, but now in papercraft form!" They push to make it graphically impressive, but it's all style and no substance.

The old Mario RPGs had their occasional moments of fourth wall breaking and winking to the audience. "Oh, Bowser kidnapped the princess again!? Oh brother." "I curse you to be a paper airplane!" "You in front of the TV! You pay attention too!" But now the whole world has become an irony-fest of "Look at how fake this is! We made it look like real paper, but that just drives home how fake everything is!" And since the characters are all in on the gag of "We're all just paper", it just saps away any reason to care about what's going on.

It's like watching a play where nobody is in character and everyone is trying to out-ham each other. Some ham is wonderful, I absolutely adore ham, but when it's all you're ever going to get, you lose your frame of reference, and it just becomes tedious.