Pauline is returning to the Donkey Kong universe in the upcoming Switch 2 game, Donkey Kong Bananza, but as a child. The game's developers clarified that her inclusion is due to how design concepts evolve during development instead of strict adherence to lore. Director Kazuya Takahashi and producer Kenta Motokura revealed that the decision to feature Pauline stemmed from an artist's concept art that inspired new gameplay elements. The creative process led to the idea of Pauline singing songs that enhanced her role in the game alongside Donkey Kong.
I think the moment we actually realized we would go in that direction came about as a result of an artist who created some concept art of the zebra transformation. We saw that image and thought it was really fun, so we immediately prototyped it to try it out in the game. And when our composer saw that, they decided to create specific music just for that transformation.
And the music for it was so good, we thought we could expand on this and turn it into a song and maybe Pauline would be a good choice to sing that song. And so we then asked the composer to create songs for each of the transformations and I think that's what really cemented Pauline's place.
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