Makes sense now why Color Splash was turned away from being a turn-based RPG early on. Nintendo doesn't want all of the Mario non-sports spin-offs to all be turn-based JRPGs. So M&L is a light RPG with many action elements, Paper Mario is essentially no longer an RPG at all, and people that really want a true Mario RPG can be satisfied with this.
It seems like a really neat idea. I do wonder how it will turn out, if it's being internally developed at Ubisoft and not at IS or Nintendo EAD. Is it the Child of Light team? Is it a team with little RPG experience but Nintendo is helping them out with that? Or is it another team altogether? Nintendo must have a lot of faith in the development to let it be a finalized game, and not merely a prospective game in early demo form.
January Switch presentation will be extremely interesting.