Super Mario Odyssey - Switch News Hint Art #1
16Switch News Hint Art #1
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With the update to Super Mario Odyssey, which adds Luigi's Balloon World to this game, new Snapshot Mode filters, and a bunch of outfits, are more pictures for you to solve. Data-mining indicates there are 23 in all, though as of when I'm typing this, only 2 have been shown so far. They are made available over various social media platforms, as well as Switch News if you don't pay attention to anything Mario-related over them.
For those of you unfamiliar with Hint Art, or Super Mario Odyssey in general, scattered throughout the game are framed pictures, in the form of either abstract illustrations or photographs (or a combination of both as collages). Each of these are hints to guide you toward a very specific point somewhere in the game. The 21 pieces of Hint Art found in Odyssey upon release each yield a Power Moon, though they belong to the kingdom in which the art was found rather than the Power Moon. (For instance, in the Metro Kingdom is a photograph on the side of a building of what is quite clearly the Lake Kingdom. The Power Moon found here is the beige color of those found in the Metro Kingdom instead of the pink of the Lake Kingdom, and it will be filled in under the Metro Kingdom's list of Power Moons.)
The post-release Hint Art locations will reveal not a Power Moon, but a Hidden Luigi, a power-up resembling an 8-bit Luigi that provides 200 Coins (20 Coins if Mario leaves the kingdom and returns to the location and summons the Hidden Luigi again). 200 Coins sounds like a lot, but it's chump change compared to the massive returns via Balloon World, so all in all, this is for a feeling of accomplishment. Then again, Luigi will not appear until you've beaten the game, so if you're still going through it, these Hidden Luigis can be pretty handy.
SPOILERS! THE REMAINDER OF THIS DESCRIPTION WILL EXPLAIN THE HINT ART AND ASSUMES YOU HAVE KNOWLEDGE OF THE GAME UP TO THE HIDDEN AREAS OF THE WOODED KINGDOM.
The first one is a mostly solid gray picture with a few while lines here and there and is about on par with the regular pieces of Hint Art. There is a horizontal line at the bottom, a small triangle on the left with a dotted line leading to an X, and on the upper right is a large triangle pointed downward.
If we assume the horizontal line is supposed to be the ground, then the large rectangle on the right is pretty clearly meant to be the Inverted Pyramid, meaning this Hidden Luigi is in the Sand Kingdom.
The trickier part is figuring out what the smaller triangle is supposed to be. I didn't realize the line was dotted (playing in SD resolution) and thought it was a Jaxi sign. Turns out you're supposed to find another floating structure shaped like an inverted pyramid, and while there are various floating platforms in Tostarena, there is only one out in the open that's over solid ground: The platform to the west of Tostarena Town, high above everything else in the area, that contains the portal painting leading to and from the Wooded Kingdom.
Good thing it uses the standard video game always-overhead lighting, because that means you can do a Ground Pound at the exact center of this platform's shadow to uncover the Hidden Luigi in the sand. Wonderful!
Hint Art #2 is also up--I'll be putting up the solution to that right after this one.