In the latest Iwata Asks interview on Nintendo’s website, Kensuke Tanabe, software planning and development department for Paper Mario: Sticker Star revealed that the company’s star designer Shigeru Miyamoto asked them to remove story element from the 3DS game.
"With regard to the story, we did a survey over the Super Paper Mario game in Club Nintendo, and not even 1 percent said the story was interesting," Tanabe explained. "A lot of people said that the 'Flip' move for switching between the 3D and 2D dimensions was fun."
Taro Kudo, the game’s co-director of scenario design agrees noted that this doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t have any story at all. " Personally I think all we need is to have an objective to win the boss battle at the end of the game," he said.
"I didn't think we necessarily needed a lengthy story like in an RPG. Instead, we looked at the characteristics of a portable game that can be played little by little in small pieces and packed in lots of little episodes and ideas. I always did like putting in little ideas, so I actually enjoyed it."