It turns out the Rabbids have quite a bit to say in Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope, the sequel to 2017’s surprise squad-based tactics hit Mario+Rabbids: Kingdom Battle. Mario+Rabbids creative director David Soliani told IGN the rambunctious troublemakers will talk for the first time since their initial appearance in 2006’s Rayman: Raving Rabbids, but getting Ubisoft to allow the change in their behavior involved a years-long process of trust building.
Soliani said one of the mandates his team had to work within for Kindgom Battle was that the Rabbids couldn’t speak, ever. Soliani adhered to the requirements, but bent the rules for the game’s opera-loving Phantom boss because Ubisoft never said the Rabbids couldn’t sing.
The Phantom boss sings an opera of his own creation for the entire battle sequence, and whatever skepticism Ubisoft had about altering the Rabbids’ identity evaporated in the face of fans’ enthusiastic reception.
“I gained trust from Ubisoft to venture towards a new horizon,” Soliani told IGN. “Everything we are doing, it’s part of a process of evolution that will lead us somewhere else. I think that as a team, we really love experimenting and we will keep doing it in the DLC. And then, who knows in the future what will happen?”
For Sparks of Hope’s main campaign, Soliani said letting the Rabbids talk opened new opportunities to expand their expression and character development.
“With the production of the voices, we believe that we have been able to announce their psychological trait and their emotion and to bring it in the game in a way that in Kingdom Battle was not possible,” Soliani said. “We are evolving the cosmology around the Rabbids and this is giving us also the possibility to create a different kind of humor compared to the classical slapstick.”
And no, Chris Pratt won’t be voicing Rabbid Mario.
Mario+Rabbids: Sparks of Hope releases Oct. 20, 2022, for Nintendo Switch. FTW had a chance to check the game out early, sans speaking Rabbids, and while the puzzles and combat might not be revolutionary, it’s sure to please fans of the original.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF