Ok so after re-watching the 3DS Conference trailers in 3D (on the eShop now, under "Nintendo Previews") I noticed something in the Paper Mario 3DS trailer.
At 54 seconds you can see a floating crown with eyes, in the visual style of the Pixls.
*screenshot of Paper Mario 3DS Trailer at 3DS Conference*
*Pixl, "Tippi" from Super Paper Mario*
Alhough this is brief, and there's no real confirmation, it looks as if Pixls may be making a return... which would be unfortunate. The reason why pixls were so hated were for numerous reasons. The main reason being their design doesn't fit at all with the Paper Mario style... which makes them look stupid, and they have no personality (although no one cared by that point). If they're going to stick with partners at all, they might as do the same thing as before and use enemies from the Mario universe. There's a ton of different characters they could use so they wouldn't really run out of ideas, and it would be pretty easy to make specialized attacks for each character, seeing as you know what they're like already.
I know they had shown a Chain-chomp and green toad in a previous trailer,
but who knows if they changed their decision since then.
None of the trailers so far have felt like it's shown that the game is anywhere near completion with no new title, no storyline, or even villains/bosses, so again this could go either way. But, an interesting thing to note would be that it could support my "citizens" theory where you can ask certain people in the game for your help and they'll help you for a limited time, or until you ask someone else to help you out, switching the last member for the new one. All the characters shown could be citizens of the town, hence why there's no differences between their regular enemy counterparts and themselves. An example, in Paper Mario or TTYD, partners usually wear some article of clothing, or something to differentiate that they're one of Mario's partners versus just a regular NPC. Although I hope my theory isn't the case and that the game just isn't near completion yet or we haven't seen all there is to see just yet.
Just thought I'd point it out seeing as how Pixls were so dreaded in the last game in the series, and I didn't actually notice until re-watching the trailer. Do you think Pixls will return? Do you want them to? Does my theory of the townsfolk make sense or am I just crazy? Do you want the game to go back to the way it was in TTYD? Spew your thoughts in the comments below.