It’s been over a month since the release of Mario & Luigi Brothership, and while we don’t have sales figures for the game just yet, it does appear to be yet another hit on the Nintendo Switch. It had been several years since the last games came out for the Nintendo DS & 3DS, including the remasters of older titles within the RPG series, so many were hopeful that this one would live up to the hype. One of the key things that the teams at Nintendo and Acquire did to help the game stand out was introduce new features, one of which was the “Luigi Logic,” or “Luigi Sense.”
In the game, Luigi would suddenly get inspiration to make certain Bros. Moves in the overworld to help with traversal elements, or in battle; he would come up with ways to do serious damage to bosses. In a chat with Famitsu, the game’s director noted the inspiration behind it:
“When I played the previous game, controlling both characters at the same time gave me a strong feeling of going on an adventure together, but I felt that it was difficult to control. So, I made it so that Luigi doesn’t have to be controlled, but to ensure that he has an opportunity to shine, I prepared a new highlight called Luigi Sense.”
That was one of many elements that helped Luigi stand out from Mario in the game, the other being the various animations that Luigi would do when he landed on the various islands of Concordia. In fact, the director also helped make the animations for the Luigi Sense reveals:
“I drew the storyboard for Luigi Sense, but I thought it would be boring if it was always like this. I asked them to create about 10 different versions based on my storyboard.”
It did help spice things up, and it’s something that took hold in other parts of the animation as well. The reason that the Mario Bros land on the islands differently is because the team realized it would also be boring for them to repeatedly land on them the same way all the time. Little details can go a long way for games like this.
Ironically, the Luigi Sense was supposed to be used in every battle within Mario & Luigi Brothership, but they instead reserved it for the boss fights, which made it feel more distinct and didn’t weigh down the typical battle players would have.
