Thanks, now I get it.It's not about choice of words. I try to argue against the basic assumption: "Cartoon style was good for Mario in the Mushroom Kingdom. But in a city, a realistic style is more fitting, so it matches the atmosphere."
No, it doesn't. Realistic style matches the atmosphere in every situation because that's what humans look like in, well, reality.
But if they already chose cartoon style, they should have kept it that way. Cartoon style in a big city is no more or less out of place than in a kingdom surrounding.
The degree in how far each style fits to the surroundings is exactly the same: If you already have big-nosed cartoon characters in the kingdom surroundings, they also fit to the city surroundings.
The idea that the cartoon style matches well with the kingdom locations while the realistic style matches more with the city environment is incorrect. In a "Super Mario" setting, even city folk should look like the Mario bunch.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you and realism may have many meanings, but don't try to deny that realism isn't a widely accepted discipline of art.
Also you can't really say this and that is incorrect on a subjective matter like this. It's just a matter of opinions.
I want to clarify that my opinion isn't that the realistic characters are necessarily fitting better in a realistic urban environment like this, on the contrary I think mixing styles wildly works very well here. My opinion on this matter is only that I think the liberties Nintendo took in their choices of style is still within what I'd consider tasteful. In other words, I have no problem that the characters are depicted in a different way from Mario, and I don't think it necessarily means Mario isn't considered human.
I fully agree with you that making other characters and objects smaller is a good way to depict Mario as a giant. But on the other hand they might not have wanted to emphasize on that. Especially since the Super power up was added in later. And if making other characters smaller would mean they have to redraw them and therefore also loose detail, it probably isn't a very good idea. By video game logic I mean that if you can make something look better you do it, even if you have to sacrifice realistic proportions. You may think it's a retarded choice, but I think it's perfectly good choice considering the circumstances. In the end the only thing that matters is that it looks good and is interesting to look at, not that everything makes perfect sense.But if the whole point is to depict Super Mario as a giant, an inflated version of a normal human, then depicting all the other characters in this inflated version makes no sense.
This has nothing to do with video game logic, it has to do with common sense:
If you want to depict your character as a giant, but literally every single other human character is exactly the same size, then people will never even get the idea that your character is supposed to be a giant.
It wouldn't be ridiculous in the real world, if something only has benefits with no side effects, of course everyone would use it, that just makes logical sense. But it normally doesn't make sense for an author of a fictional work to implement something like that. In fiction, if there is a power up it usually comes with some limitation that makes it not possible to use it all the time, because if that was possible everything fantastic about it would disappear. Of course there are exceptions, but in general I think it's a bad idea.It's not ridiculous if these mushrooms are a common occurence in that world and if this means it protects you from any harm.
Don't you think if using a certain creme would prevent your skin from any impact for exactly one time, including car crashes, and that you don't need to re-apply the creme until it is actually needed, that people would use them by default, constantly?
Yes, superheroes only transform when they fight. But apart from being able to smash bricks, the Super Mushroom is something for protection. It doesn't make Mario faster or jump higher, it only acts as a life bar.
The exact effects of the Super Mushroom is irrelevant to the discussion I think, what matters is that it increases your abilities.