KageJuin
Smash Journeyman
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2008
- Messages
- 328
- 3DS FC
- 1349-7001-8814
Due to a lot of debate recently about how Sakurai makes choices regarding character inclusion, I will post some information for those who seem to be behind on general information available to the public.
CHARACTER SELECTION
Sakurai picks characters he likes and characters who are demanded by (especially japanese) players through surveys.
That decision-making process starts with Sakurai forming his own thoughts, but also factors in various surveys, he said. From there, a list of candidates is refined by evaluating their contribution to the game's roster: "What is the uniqueness of this character? What does this character bring into the Smash Bros. universe? What do they have that other characters don't? How do they complement or contrast other characters?"
After he has made his choices, he further refines them to make them unique as possible. AFTER HE DECIDED ON THE POSSIBLE CANDIDATES. This means, character choice stems from POPULARITY and HIS own choices.
Let's look at another excerpt:
Sakurai: The first thing is to take an idea. For example, imagine a game and characters within that game. Take a character such as the villager in Animal Crossing. The next process is think about that character’s role in their game and then the structure of the game we’re making. How do those work together with each other? What kind of interesting things can you do within the structure of the game? And then if you were to actually implement that character, how would the end result be, how it works with other elements of the game?
An important thing is that the characters stand out from one another — for instance, we might wanna be able to take characters that aren’t typically combat-based characters. So you might have a sword-based character, but other characters are not necessarily going to [have swords]. You’re not gonna wanna focus on that sort of element, just so there’s a distinction between all of the other combat-based characters.
They have to have something really unique that makes them stand apart from other characters in the game, and not limit yourself to characters that are just combat-based.
It seems that Sakurai picks a character and tries imagining them first. After using what they offer he tries to make them as unique as possible. interesting. Inherent uniqueness isn't a prerequisite.
let's continue.
Kotaku: I know that you can’t talk too much about the characters that will be in the next game, but for previous Smash Bros. games, have there ever been characters that you wanted to include but couldn’t figure out a good mechanic for them, like a way to fit them into the game?
Sakurai: Yeah, there’s been a lot of instances like that. For example, there are places where we planned to have a character but then implementing that character just didn’t work out. Or we wanted to implement some character but there was too much overlap with other characters from the same title, and it didn’t work out. Or there’s places when I wanted to implement some character, but the image for how it works in the game just never comes to fruition.
Well. I suppose Chrom falls into this category. Miis fell into this category last time.
Isn't this interesting?
CHARACTER REMOVAL
Sakurai has stated some information that explains the process of deciding whether or not characters are cut from the game
“So we’re not going to cut characters out of the way, we’re going to put in as many characters as we can, we really want to do that, because it’s good for the fans and good for all of us. But in the event that we do have to cut some characters, I’d like to apologise in advance to those fans.”
If everything is on schedule then they will put in all of the veterans. If not.. well..
This proves that Brawl's Forbidden (Forgotten) 7 were cut due to time-constraints.
ROSTER SLOTS
Sakurai has revealed that before production, he creates a roster for internal use. This roster includes all (ALL) characters that are being considered to be put into the game. ALL of them
"All of the characters to consider were on our internal roster from the beginning of development. We had a slot for a new Pokemon reserved, but did not way for X and Y. We decided to use Greninja well before X/Y came out, based on early reference drawings."
This is highly interesting as it proves 2 things:
1. An internal roster is created that includes all characters that are being considered. This means it included Chrom and in this particular case A slot was reserved for a new pokemon.
2. Character slots ARE allocated based on series. Most probably influenced by popularity and prominence of said series.
This is critical information as it proves that the chances of a character getting in are also influenced by the series, as limited slots of a series naturally lead to a conclusion where two highly popular characters from the same series must compete with each other for that spot.
This raises the question about the need series representation, and whether it was impossible to add another pokemon character without also adding a Mario and Zelda rep to keep things in balance.
Is it also possible that Lucina was added because they had such a bad time making Chrom unique that he would be a clone and thus decided to just make Marth's alt a clone, since she pretty much was pretending to be Marth in the actual game she hails from? This also hints heavily at the exclusion of Roy, sadly.
CONCLUSION
Thanks for going with me on this journey. It seems we have unearthed the mystery of how Sakurai goes through his character screening process. All that is missing is his own criteria. I will look those up and add them to the original post when I have time.
This means that the initial character choice is based on Sakurai's on preference and character or series popularity. After this fact an initial draft roster is built which has limited character slots for each series. Sakurai attempts to make every single choice a unique character in looks and gameplay. After this fact he tries to put all in while balancing the game. Sadly, this is where a ton of characters are cut.
Sakurai IS a hardworking man and puts his all into his games, otherwise the Smash series would never have this high a quality.
/debate
CHARACTER SELECTION
Sakurai picks characters he likes and characters who are demanded by (especially japanese) players through surveys.
That decision-making process starts with Sakurai forming his own thoughts, but also factors in various surveys, he said. From there, a list of candidates is refined by evaluating their contribution to the game's roster: "What is the uniqueness of this character? What does this character bring into the Smash Bros. universe? What do they have that other characters don't? How do they complement or contrast other characters?"
After he has made his choices, he further refines them to make them unique as possible. AFTER HE DECIDED ON THE POSSIBLE CANDIDATES. This means, character choice stems from POPULARITY and HIS own choices.
Let's look at another excerpt:
Sakurai: The first thing is to take an idea. For example, imagine a game and characters within that game. Take a character such as the villager in Animal Crossing. The next process is think about that character’s role in their game and then the structure of the game we’re making. How do those work together with each other? What kind of interesting things can you do within the structure of the game? And then if you were to actually implement that character, how would the end result be, how it works with other elements of the game?
An important thing is that the characters stand out from one another — for instance, we might wanna be able to take characters that aren’t typically combat-based characters. So you might have a sword-based character, but other characters are not necessarily going to [have swords]. You’re not gonna wanna focus on that sort of element, just so there’s a distinction between all of the other combat-based characters.
They have to have something really unique that makes them stand apart from other characters in the game, and not limit yourself to characters that are just combat-based.
It seems that Sakurai picks a character and tries imagining them first. After using what they offer he tries to make them as unique as possible. interesting. Inherent uniqueness isn't a prerequisite.
let's continue.
Kotaku: I know that you can’t talk too much about the characters that will be in the next game, but for previous Smash Bros. games, have there ever been characters that you wanted to include but couldn’t figure out a good mechanic for them, like a way to fit them into the game?
Sakurai: Yeah, there’s been a lot of instances like that. For example, there are places where we planned to have a character but then implementing that character just didn’t work out. Or we wanted to implement some character but there was too much overlap with other characters from the same title, and it didn’t work out. Or there’s places when I wanted to implement some character, but the image for how it works in the game just never comes to fruition.
Well. I suppose Chrom falls into this category. Miis fell into this category last time.
Isn't this interesting?
CHARACTER REMOVAL
Sakurai has stated some information that explains the process of deciding whether or not characters are cut from the game
“So we’re not going to cut characters out of the way, we’re going to put in as many characters as we can, we really want to do that, because it’s good for the fans and good for all of us. But in the event that we do have to cut some characters, I’d like to apologise in advance to those fans.”
If everything is on schedule then they will put in all of the veterans. If not.. well..
This proves that Brawl's Forbidden (Forgotten) 7 were cut due to time-constraints.
ROSTER SLOTS
Sakurai has revealed that before production, he creates a roster for internal use. This roster includes all (ALL) characters that are being considered to be put into the game. ALL of them
"All of the characters to consider were on our internal roster from the beginning of development. We had a slot for a new Pokemon reserved, but did not way for X and Y. We decided to use Greninja well before X/Y came out, based on early reference drawings."
This is highly interesting as it proves 2 things:
1. An internal roster is created that includes all characters that are being considered. This means it included Chrom and in this particular case A slot was reserved for a new pokemon.
2. Character slots ARE allocated based on series. Most probably influenced by popularity and prominence of said series.
This is critical information as it proves that the chances of a character getting in are also influenced by the series, as limited slots of a series naturally lead to a conclusion where two highly popular characters from the same series must compete with each other for that spot.
This raises the question about the need series representation, and whether it was impossible to add another pokemon character without also adding a Mario and Zelda rep to keep things in balance.
Is it also possible that Lucina was added because they had such a bad time making Chrom unique that he would be a clone and thus decided to just make Marth's alt a clone, since she pretty much was pretending to be Marth in the actual game she hails from? This also hints heavily at the exclusion of Roy, sadly.
CONCLUSION
Thanks for going with me on this journey. It seems we have unearthed the mystery of how Sakurai goes through his character screening process. All that is missing is his own criteria. I will look those up and add them to the original post when I have time.
This means that the initial character choice is based on Sakurai's on preference and character or series popularity. After this fact an initial draft roster is built which has limited character slots for each series. Sakurai attempts to make every single choice a unique character in looks and gameplay. After this fact he tries to put all in while balancing the game. Sadly, this is where a ton of characters are cut.
Sakurai IS a hardworking man and puts his all into his games, otherwise the Smash series would never have this high a quality.
/debate
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