Super Smash Bros: Ultimate - Living up to the subtitle.

[darkdragoon]

Thing is, Fire Emblem is actually a Nintendo IP while XC2 isn't, so Sakurai would've known about Three Houses characters from their earliest design stages (meaning months/years before the public heard anything), while Rex would've been mostly an unknown until much later.

Heck, we already had Roy coming out in super smash brothers before his own actual game was released! So clearly they can plan quite ahead when working with their own IPs.

This is not even wrong.

Monolith Soft is a wholly owned subsidiary. In fact, the "Xenoblade Chronicles" names comes from the late Satoru Iwata.

[deuterio12]

That's a cute way of saying "company that can break away as soon as things go sour as they already did with Namco and are also physically quite away from anything owned by Nintendo." Monolith Soft ain't gonna share any early drafts of anything with Nintendo, never know when they may want to jump ship again.

While Intelligent Systems has both a much older and more trusted record of working with Nintendo, including having even moved their stuff near to Nintendo Headquarters in Japan so Sakurai can do stuff like personally drop by to check things during lunch (or the other way around). That alone makes all the difference.

[Magic_Hat]

Possibly a stupid question so pardon the ignorance: what's a spirit?

[GloatingSwine]

Possibly a stupid question so pardon the ignorance: what's a spirit?

Equippable buff items for the World of Light mode that let you power up characters. Themed after things from represented or related series.

You can do all sorts of things to get new ones, feed them combine them and power them up.

That's a cute way of saying "company that can break away as soon as things go sour as they already did with Namco and are also physically quite away from anything owned by Nintendo." Monolith Soft ain't gonna share any early drafts of anything with Nintendo, never know when they may want to jump ship again.

They can break away if they can find someone to buy the majority of their shares, which Nintendo own 80% of.

And yes, they do closely collaborate with Nintendo, even on games they aren't otherwise directly involved in (they had a hand in Breath of the Wild's world design).

[DiscipleofBob]

If we assume that characters who are stuck as assist trophies or spirits aren’t going to be DLC characters (I know there’s nothing that says the two are mutually exclusive, but I’m just trying to narrow down possibilities for guesses), I think Geno might still have a chance. I didn’t see him in any of the Direct footage, and he made it as a DLC Mii Outfit last game (that I have yet to see this game), so it’s not like he’s too obscure to be referenced. And he’s one of the consistent headliners in the polls.

I also assume any DLC characters will be legit new and not echo fighters and older than at least Xenoblade Chronicles 2 just based on what Sakurai said in the Direct. Who else might fit that criteria?

Geno’s been kind of my one wishlist character, so maybe I’m just holding onto false hope. Especially since with Incineroar I’m assuming Decidueye is probably no longer a real possibility.

[Rodin]

My initial thought on Piranha Plant after reading this thread: Meh.

My thought after watching the video: SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!

The moveset looks truly distinct and exciting, and it's definitely a way to break away from the "dude that does punches and kicks" vs. "dude that uses swords". I was planning on pre-ordering anyway, but this pretty much seals it.

I'm also very excited for the World of Light mode. Subspace Emissary was always my favorite part of Brawl, and this looks to be just as big and in-depth. The Spirits look very cool, kind of like the Event mode from previous games but themed into what you unlock for beating it. Fighting "Bullet Bill" as a speedy character that runs around and spams Bullet Bills at you is a neat idea, and several of the others they highlighted looked just as good.

I'm hyped for this game in a way I really wasn't for Smash 4 - there it was mostly "ooh, Smash on mobile!". This time, it looks like they've actually put in the work to flesh out both the single-player and multi-player content to make it a massive game, and the fact that I never bought any DLC for Smash 4 means that a lot of the existing characters will be new for me.

I also really like that your Global Smash ranking is separated out by character - as a super casual player who doesn't really have a main, it's nice to get different ranked matches depending on whether you have any talent with said character. The ability to set proper match settings will also be nice.

[Flying Turtle]

That's a cute way of saying "company that can break away as soon as things go sour as they already did with Namco and are also physically quite away from anything owned by Nintendo." Monolith Soft ain't gonna share any early drafts of anything with Nintendo, never know when they may want to jump ship again.

While Intelligent Systems has both a much older and more trusted record of working with Nintendo, including having even moved their stuff near to Nintendo Headquarters in Japan so Sakurai can do stuff like personally drop by to check things during lunch (or the other way around). That alone makes all the difference.

Not really. Monolith Soft didn't break away from Namco, Nintendo bought a majority of Monolith Soft's shares from Namco. Granted they did so with Monolith Soft's blessing but the fact remains that Monolith Soft can't just leave if the get sick of Nintendo. They are a part of Nintendo and to leave they would need to get Nintendo to sell their shares, either to Monolith Soft themselves or another company. Them not telling Nintendo what they're working on would be like Pixar refusing to tell Disney what they're working on. Also Monolith's Kyoto branch has worked pretty closely with Nintendo EAD on quite a few projects, most notably Breath of the Wild where their influence is quite clear.

[Zevox]

Possibly a stupid question so pardon the ignorance: what's a spirit?

Character artwork with stats attached, basically. Think the Stickers from Brawl's Subspace Emissary, except, from the look of things, a lot more of them and with more in-depth mechanics to it. Plus they're functioning as a replacement for trophies as a general collectible.

Marketing alone is the reason why I think that FE three house rep is a given, given also that FE is one nitendos big IPs now.

Right, but my point was that given what they said about Rex, I don't think marketing will get a character into the DLC lineup this time around, just because of how long the roster has apparently been planned.

Thing is, Fire Emblem is actually a Nintendo IP while XC2 isn't, so Sakurai would've known about Three Houses characters from their earliest design stages (meaning months/years before the public heard anything), while Rex would've been mostly an unknown until much later.

Admittedly I don't know for sure how close the relationship of Xenoblade Chronicles' developer to Nintendo is, but given nobody has ever referred to Shulk as a third-party character in Smash I'd assume it to be about the same as Fire Emblem's, since that's a second-party series.

In any case, Xenoblade Chronicles 2's announcement to the public was back in January 2017, so we're talking about a lineup decided at least a couple of years ago. Maybe Three Houses was in development by then, since Fates had come out in 2016, but maybe not since Echoes and FE Warriors were also things Intelligent Systems would have on their plates at the time, and even if it was it would presumably be very early stages. With XC2 being developed substantially earlier I would definitely expect that it would be the one of the two more likely to have been known to the Smash team first.

If we assume that characters who are stuck as assist trophies or spirits aren’t going to be DLC characters (I know there’s nothing that says the two are mutually exclusive, but I’m just trying to narrow down possibilities for guesses), I think Geno might still have a chance. I didn’t see him in any of the Direct footage, and he made it as a DLC Mii Outfit last game (that I have yet to see this game), so it’s not like he’s too obscure to be referenced. And he’s one of the consistent headliners in the polls.

I also assume any DLC characters will be legit new and not echo fighters and older than at least Xenoblade Chronicles 2 just based on what Sakurai said in the Direct. Who else might fit that criteria?

Geno’s been kind of my one wishlist character, so maybe I’m just holding onto false hope. Especially since with Incineroar I’m assuming Decidueye is probably no longer a real possibility.

Well, things that we know: DLC characters will not be echoes, because they specifically said as much in the Direct. Also, Assist Trophies definitely won't be DLC - they made it very explicit back when those were first added in Brawl that characters would not be both an Assist Trophy and playable, and we've never been given any reason to believe that's changed.

Spirits on the other hand probably aren't excluded, since they're more like trophies or stickers. Mewtwo having a trophy in Smash 4 on launch didn't stop him from being the first DLC character the game got. ...also, just glancing back at the Direct just now to see if there were any Spirits of playable characters, I quickly spotted one of the male Wii Fit Trainer (10 minutes and 4 seconds), so yeah, there you go. (Also, random thing I noticed doing that: there's a Spirit for Alexandra Roivas, from Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem [15 minutes and 7 seconds]. Holy cow - I'm pretty sure she's 3rd party, and that is a game that barely anyone even talks about anymore. Very surprised they bothered to get the rights to pull her into this.)

As for Geno, I think we'll actually have a good idea of his likely fate as soon as the game comes out, specifically because of that Mii Fighter costume you mentioned. Is it still in? If not, it was probably removed for a reason, which may be that he's planned to be DLC. If it is, the question becomes whether the other characters who had costumes but are now playable, like Chrom, still have their costumes in. If not, Geno probably won't be DLC. (Obviously if the other costumes are still there too we can't make any assumptions since they're just leaving them all in for the heck of it, but I think that's the least likely outcome.)

[deuterio12]

(Also, random thing I noticed doing that: there's a Spirit for Alexandra Roivas, from Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem [15 minutes and 7 seconds]. Holy cow - I'm pretty sure she's 3rd party, and that is a game that barely anyone even talks about anymore. Very surprised they bothered to get the rights to pull her into this.)

That's nothing compared to there being a spirit for Aisya from 3rd party ASH:_Archaic_Sealed_Heat , a Japan-only release for the DS that I had no idea it even existed before. At least Eternal Darkness got a western release and is relatively well known.

Although at this point SSB is so popular that if Nintendo asks to use somebody else's game rights to use their characters, they'll probably just say "yes thank you".

[Zevox]

That's nothing compared to there being a spirit for Aisya from 3rd party ASH:_Archaic_Sealed_Heat , a Japan-only release for the DS that I had no idea it even existed before. At least Eternal Darkness got a western release and is relatively well known.

Although at this point SSB is so popular that if Nintendo asks to use somebody else's game rights to use their characters, they'll probably just say "yes thank you".

Wow, yeah. Haven't heard of that one either - and I only even know the developer from Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. Did not even notice this character.

And granted, probably true by and large. Aside from maybe Sony and Microsoft, who wouldn't want their characters on a Nintendo-exclusive game, most would probably see it as great advertising. Still surprising though that Nintendo themselves would see it as worth their time to get the rights to such obscure things, especially to just use them in as minor a way as spirits.

[Qwertystop]

Character artwork with stats attached, basically. Think the Stickers from Brawl's Subspace Emissary, except, from the look of things, a lot more of them and with more in-depth mechanics to it. Plus they're functioning as a replacement for trophies as a general collectible.


As for Geno, I think we'll actually have a good idea of his likely fate as soon as the game comes out, specifically because of that Mii Fighter costume you mentioned. Is it still in? If not, it was probably removed for a reason, which may be that he's planned to be DLC. If it is, the question becomes whether the other characters who had costumes but are now playable, like Chrom, still have their costumes in. If not, Geno probably won't be DLC. (Obviously if the other costumes are still there too we can't make any assumptions since they're just leaving them all in for the heck of it, but I think that's the least likely outcome.)

The mechanics for Spirits are a bit closer to Equipment from Smash 4 than Stickers – the ability to train and dispose of them indicates that there's more than one possible stat-set for a given character.

And there were a lot of stickers, and they'd be a lot lower-effort to develop than Spirits (because each Spirit comes with an event match, where stickers were random collectibles); I'm not sure that there's more spirits than there were stickers.

The Direct showed Inkling costumes for Mii Gunners. Presence or absence of a Geno costume tells us nothing.

[Zevox]

The mechanics for Spirits are a bit closer to Equipment from Smash 4 than Stickers – the ability to train and dispose of them indicates that there's more than one possible stat-set for a given character.

And there were a lot of stickers, and they'd be a lot lower-effort to develop than Spirits (because each Spirit comes with an event match, where stickers were random collectibles); I'm not sure that there's more spirits than there were stickers.

I get the impression that the event match spirits are just the "primary" spirits, not all of them. Remember that you can also summon them with those cores from leveling up other spirits.

The Direct showed Inkling costumes for Mii Gunners. Presence or absence of a Geno costume tells us nothing.

The direct showed the "Splatoon 2" set specifically, not the same one that was in Smash 4 and is now the playable Inkling design.

[Qwertystop]

I get the impression that the event match spirits are just the "primary" spirits, not all of them. Remember that you can also summon them with those cores from leveling up other spirits.


The direct showed the "Splatoon 2" set specifically, not the same one that was in Smash 4 and is now the playable Inkling design.

Did it look significantly different? I haven't done a direct comparison, but the Inkling's designs didn't particularly change from one Splatoon to the other – new hairstyles and clothes and weapons, but I'm pretty sure all the old hairstyles, most of the weapons, and at least the plainer clothes stuck around.

[deuterio12]

Still surprising though that Nintendo themselves would see it as worth their time to get the rights to such obscure things, especially to just use them in as minor a way as spirits.

Would be fascinating to know how things went behind the scenes yes.

I get the impression that the event match spirits are just the "primary" spirits, not all of them. Remember that you can also summon them with those cores from leveling up other spirits.

Aisya is an event match spirit possessing Lucina. If they bothered to make an event match for such an obscure one-shot character, I strongly believe every spirit will have their event match too.

[Mando Knight]

Did it look significantly different? I haven't done a direct comparison, but the Inkling's designs didn't particularly change from one Splatoon to the other – new hairstyles and clothes and weapons, but I'm pretty sure all the old hairstyles, most of the weapons, and at least the plainer clothes stuck around.

The "Splatoon 2" set is specifically a pair of outfit designs not used by any of the 8 Inkling alts and have a visually distinct color palette as well.

[Zevox]

Did it look significantly different? I haven't done a direct comparison, but the Inkling's designs didn't particularly change from one Splatoon to the other – new hairstyles and clothes and weapons, but I'm pretty sure all the old hairstyles, most of the weapons, and at least the plainer clothes stuck around.

It did to me at least. A little googling gets me this for the Smash 4 costume:

Spoiler: Smash 4 Inkling Costume

Show

A screenshot of the new one doesn't seem to be readily findable via google yet, but here's a link to where it shows up in the direct. They even initially show up fighting the actual Inklings, which helps make for convenient comparison too. Definitely seem rather different to my eyes.

Aisya is an event match spirit possessing Lucina. If they bothered to make an event match for such an obscure one-shot character, I strongly believe every spirit will have their event match too.

Huh. Weird, but what I meant by "primary" spirits isn't in how major the character/franchise is, but in how they work mechanically - they outlined that the "primary" ones are the ones that provide the most direct stat boost and get equipped to the characters, while "support" spirits get equipped to the primary spirits and provide miscellaneous bonuses, such as starting with certain items, or immunity to some things (there was a Medli spirit that offered immunity to wind, not sure whether that means an elemental attack type or a stage hazard).

I don't know, they never explicitly said that it was only the primary spirits getting those events, but they also never said it was all of them. Given how many there seemed to be, I'd be surprised if it was all of them, but if it is, cool I guess.

[Qwertystop]

It did to me at least. A little googling gets me this for the Smash 4 costume:

Spoiler: Smash 4 Inkling Costume

Show

A screenshot of the new one doesn't seem to be readily findable via google yet, but here's a link to where it shows up in the direct. They even initially show up fighting the actual Inklings, which helps make for convenient comparison too. Definitely seem rather different to my eyes.


Huh. Weird, but what I meant by "primary" spirits isn't in how major the character/franchise is, but in how they work mechanically - they outlined that the "primary" ones are the ones that provide the most direct stat boost and get equipped to the characters, while "support" spirits get equipped to the primary spirits and provide miscellaneous bonuses, such as starting with certain items, or immunity to some things (there was a Medli spirit that offered immunity to wind, not sure whether that means an elemental attack type or a stage hazard).

I don't know, they never explicitly said that it was only the primary spirits getting those events, but they also never said it was all of them. Given how many there seemed to be, I'd be surprised if it was all of them, but if it is, cool I guess.

Fair, that is pretty distinct. My major focus was the gun and ink-tank.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Yiga clan is from Zelda Breath of the Wild.

Anyway, here's to hoping that Alexandra Roivas becomes one of those DLC characters. Although I wouldn't bet on it.

Piranha Plant? I am pleased. Duck Hunt has been topped in sheer wtf-ness.

[DaOldeWolf]

If anyone is interested. Here is a video with all costumes:



Enjoy!

[Zevox]

If anyone is interested. Here is a video with all costumes:

Slightly annoyingly, some of the poses the characters are in make it hard to tell how their alternate color schemes look in those previews. Chrom, for instance - you can most clearly see his head and bare right arm, while most of the details of his clothes are obscured by the little icons that tell you which color scheme of the bunch you're on. Or Ike, where you can mostly just see the color change of his scarf and the different way his shoulders look in his Path of Radiance versus Radiant Dawn outfits, but can't see the color scheme of the majority of his outfit at all. Or King Dedede, whose pose somehow manages to show off only tiny slivers of the main, outside portion of his robe.

Also, minor point of disappointment: red Robin is a blonde rather than a redhead now . That was my favorite Robin alt...

[DaOldeWolf]

Slightly annoyingly, some of the poses the characters are in make it hard to tell how their alternate color schemes look in those previews. Chrom, for instance - you can most clearly see his head and bare right arm, while most of the details of his clothes are obscured by the little icons that tell you which color scheme of the bunch you're on. Or Ike, where you can mostly just see the color change of his scarf and the different way his shoulders look in his Path of Radiance versus Radiant Dawn outfits, but can't see the color scheme of the majority of his outfit at all. Or King Dedede, whose pose somehow manages to show off only tiny slivers of the main, outside portion of his robe.

Also, minor point of disappointment: red Robin is a blonde rather than a redhead now . That was my favorite Robin alt...

Fire Flower Mario and Black Yoshi have also been removed. Ridley lost two of the costumes from the demo. Mac lost half of his costumes too.

There have also been changes to Luigi´s Waluigi costume and overalls Wario.

[Zevox]

Interesting article about Sakurai showing off some more details of the game's single-player modes. Apparently they're doing heavily-themed Classic modes for each character. My favorite example being what they apparently did for Ryu (and I'd presume Ken): every fight that he has will be a one-on-one stamina mode match with items off and on omega (Final Destination) stages, and the opponents will be Ken plus a bunch who work as stand-ins for Street Fighter characters, including Zero Suit Samus standing in for Chun-Li and from the sounds of it Incineroar standing in for Zangief. That's actually a very cool touch, and I wish they'd shown it off during the direct at some point. Makes me curious what we might see for, say, the Fire Emblem characters, or oddballs like Mr. Game & Watch.

There's also some stuff about Spirits mode, though little that wasn't in the direct. Probably the biggest part there is confirmation that there are spirits for the playable characters, but they're just collectables with descriptions you can look at (ala trophies of old), not equippable like other spirits.

[chainer1216]

I wish they'd shown it off during the direct at some point.

They did a little bit, i remember them showing King K Rool standing in for a Zelda: Skyward Sword boss.

[Resileaf]

Can this game release already?! I can't wait, it looks so good!

[aimlessPolymath]

I needed to see the lyrics to the Spirits of Light song before I realized that "a pastel unnamed" was "a past still unnamed". I kept wondering why Kirby didn't have a name for some reason.

[Zevox]

They did a little bit, i remember them showing King K Rool standing in for a Zelda: Skyward Sword boss.

That was a Spirit Battle, not Classic Mode. They didn't talk about Classic Mode at all in the direct.

Can this game release already?! I can't wait, it looks so good!

I know the feeling. Just a month to go. I've started playing Mario Odyssey in the meantime - want to get that in before Smash so I have some familiarity with some of the new Mario stuff that's in Ultimate, like the New Donk City stage.

[chainer1216]

Im also waiting impatiently for the games release, i picked up the smash ultimate switch bundle last week and now its just starring at me from the entertainment center, mocking me with its uselessness until next month.

[Bartmanhomer]

How many fighters are in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate?

[Zevox]

How many fighters are in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate?

Playable characters? Depends on how you count them.

Officially, at launch, it's 74, 76 if you count Pokémon Trainer as 3 (which you probably should, since he's Squirtle, Ivysaur, and Charizard in one). Then there will be 6 more as DLC, starting with Pirranah Plant sometime within a couple of months of launch, to bring the final total to 80/82.

If you don't count Echo characters, that number goes down by 7 (Lucina, Dark Pit, Daisy, Chrom, Dark Samus, Richter, Ken). If you don't count characters that probably should be considered Echoes but aren't, that's another 3-4 down (Dr. Mario, Pichu, Young Link, maybe Roy). And depending on your view of partial clones you might knock off some others, but personally I'm not even going to get into trying to count those since I don't remotely subscribe to that view at this point.

In any case though, quite a lot at the end of the day. More than any other fighting game I know of, that's for sure, even if you don't count the Echoes. (I think the largest roster on a non-Smash fighting game that I'm aware of is Marvel vs Capcom 2, at 56, and that game was basically a giant asset dump of a lot of Capcom's earlier work.)

[huttj509]

I needed to see the lyrics to the Spirits of Light song before I realized that "a pastel unnamed" was "a past still unnamed". I kept wondering why Kirby didn't have a name for some reason.

Why should I bear this Torchic in the cold of the night? I mean, fire pokemon, but still.