About Pyra/Mythra and NOT Rex

[Perkilator]

The separation of the Blade from her Driver is no doubt bizarre, but I think the whole "Pyra and not Rex" thing came to be because of two factors:

1. Mii Costumes truly can't be promoted to DLC
2. Doing Rex and Pyra/Mythra would've been more of a challenge than necessary (even when you consider waht had to be done to make Steve work), so they focused efforts on just Pyra and Mythra.

Of course, this is just speculation on my end.

 

[DarkFalcon]

Blades have always been able to fight by themselves. Torna especially showed it when Mythra fought by herself using her weapon. Maybe lore wise it's not incredibly optimal but they're still absurdly strong by themselves.

Rex with Pyra/Mythra would have been really hard to do in a satisfactory way IMO. Rex's specials would probably be his own arts, and even if you swap between the two girls it isn't like his own moveset changes. Figuring out how to use blade arts along with his own arts is too much of a problem. There's too many moves. The other issue is Rex doesn't even use the blade arts of Pyra/Mythra. He gives them their weapon and they do it.

 

[AnEasterEgg]

Yeah, my guess is they experimented with several ideas and settled on this as working best. Given it's a first party so licensing isn't an issue, I imagine Nintendo just told the Smash devs to make a Xenoblade 2 rep and let them and Monolith Soft work out the details.

As for Mii costumes, I think they deconfirm, but only for a limited time. If they were already planning on adding a fighter from a series, it wouldn't make sense to add a Mii costume. But given time, it's very possible they could change their mind, and they wouldn't let the mere existence of a costume stop them. So fighters that weren't already planned when the Mii costume was made could still be them, though it might not be likely.

 

[Sean Wheeler]

It's more like the second thing. There are already Mii costumes of fighters in the base game, so they can't truly deconfirm. We only got the idea that they deconfirm by the way Rex's Mii costume was announced. Spirits used to deconfirm until Min Min showed up, and Fighters Pass 2 was thought up in the middle of Fighters Pass 1. After seeing a few bits of gameplay footage of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, I get why it would be so hard to work Rex and Pyra's team up. Pyra is just standing around for most of the fight with a stream of energy connecting her to Rex. And they are both too tall for an Ice Climber mechanic.

 

[Technomage]

Plus, Pyra and Mythra are hot. <3

 

[Chaosmaster8753]

Or could they have wanted to avoid redundancy and confusion with selling a character they already implemented as a Mii Fighters costume?

 

[Bobert]

It's simple. The combination of Pyra/Mythra as a team is more unique and engaging gameplay wise. Also the fact that it's just blatantly cooler to use the blades themselves. You can also play as the blades and not even touch the drivers in the Torna DLC. I mean honestly though. I wanted Rex but I think this is a better outcome considering how much more interesting their abilities are compared to Rex's, and them just being essentially elemental swaps for Rex's attacks besides some kind of chargeable special move like how it works in game.

Mii Costumes not being playable is a dumb made up rule by the community like the rest of the made up rules that continue to get deconfirmed, because Ribbon Girl and Spring Man were still teased at being playable as the Arms representative, and we have costumes for characters who are playable already like Chrom, Falcon, Fox, etc.

 

[Golden Icarus]

While I’m not expecting any Miis to get promoted in this Fighters Pass, I still don’t find this to be evidence that Miis are solid deconfirmations. Sakurai very clearly considered Spring Man as a playable character, despite being both a Mii costume and assist trophy. If Sakurai wants a character in Smash, he’ll add that character. The man added Chrom without even bothering to change Robin’s final smash.

I’m definitely in the camp that believes Sakurai genuinely felt that Pyra/Mythra was simply the better choice. A blade without a driver is no stranger than a Pokemon without a trainer. Sure they’re stronger when they have a trainer, but they are still perfectly competent on their own. It’s the same thing with the blades. From a gameplay standpoint, it seems to be way less convoluted than a Rex/Pyra moveset. And from a character standpoint, Rex doesn’t exactly steal the show in Xenobalde 2. The blades were always the more memorable characters. In general, sometimes the main protagonist just doesn’t do a game justice. There’s a reason Sakurai almost added Morgana instead of Joker and there’s a reason we got Pikachu instead of Red.

 

[Arthur97]

I don't really like how it's made Rex seemingly more of a punching bag. He's just not that bad, and replaying the final boss, that was his fight. Pyra and Mythra didn't really weigh in much during that. Sure, they powered him up, but it was his fight through and through. At least we got something, but...poor Rex.

The idea that they are more of a the protagonists than him doesn't really fit either. Just like the plot doesn't really start without them, the plot doesn't end (in a good way) without him. It kind of sours the hype with how he gets shafted.

 

[Blackwolf666]

Personally, I think Sakurai had an idea to use Rex with Pyra/Mythra in a more complex version of ice climbers using the swap mechanic but as time went on throughout the smash Ultimate's life cycle his ideas changed. He probably looked at the roster and said "... I havent made many swappable characters feels like a waste to bring back that mechanic and go as far to make it usable in mid-air for just " sure he could swap out the partner character but in the end it feels more like or than what he was going for with the swap mechanic. Plus, Torna: the Golden Country came out so... he saw less incentive to go the swappable iceclimber route.

 

[DarkFalcon]

Personally, I think Sakurai had an idea to use Rex with Pyra/Mythra in a more complex version of ice climbers using the swap mechanic but as time went on throughout the smash Ultimate's life cycle his ideas changed. He probably looked at the roster and said "... I havent made many swappable characters feels like a waste to bring back that mechanic and go as far to make it usable in mid-air for just " sure he could swap out the partner character but in the end it feels more like or than what he was going for with the swap mechanic. Plus, Torna: the Golden Country came out so... he saw less incentive to go the swappable iceclimber route.

I think the biggest problem with Rex and Pyra/Mythra is there's just too many moves to fit in a moveset. Rex has his own arts, but then you have blade arts. That is also a major problem. Rex does not use blade arts. He lets Pyra and Mythra do them. Even swapping between the two girl's forms does not fix this problem for Rex as his own moveset does not change. Not to mention the whole affinity mechanic which is pretty important in XC2 would be difficult to implement along with every other mechanic. Not to say it can't be done, but all that stuff could make it feel convoluted.

Shulk with his monado arts is already too much to manage for me to enjoy playing him. I think Sakurai made the right decision here. It's not like it is canonically inaccurate that they can fight by themselves. They're just stronger with a driver, and we already know from Torna Mythra is plennnnnty strong by herself.

 

[Diddy Kong]

I think the reason is quite simple, Pyra and Mytrha are more popular than Rex, and the mechanic of Driver and Blade would probably be way too complex for its own good. The switching mechanic basically already represents a great deal of the functions of Blades.

So they just went for the simple and more popular option. Which isn't bad at all.

Brought the game because of their reveal. And I see exactly why they did what they did.

 

[Nihilem]

I think at the end it will be a combination of multiple factors that made this final decision. Rex beeing Mii (is he actually still buyable?) might be one of them. But I think the technical reasons were the more severe ones. And unlike Steve were there character basically needs to represent minecraft, they had an alternativ here.

 

[Chaosmaster8753]

So having Rex fight alongside them proved too much for the devs to handle or something. Now we know why.