Byleth Revealed as Final Character in First Fighters Pass

Nintendo finished off Fighters Pass #1 with Byleth, the main protagonist of Fire Emblem: Three Houses! Byleth releases January 28th alongside a host of content.

Byleth brings Garreg Mach Monastery to the battle. Garreg Mach Monastery operates in the same vein as Castle Siege, with multiple portions of the stage taking place in castles or civilian-populated areas, and flashy transitions to the next portion. We don’t expect Garreg to be tournament legal in any capacity.

Byleth’s moveset centers around the various weapons original to Three Houses, with each weapon corresponding to a different direction:

• The Sword of the Creator is used for up tilt, smash attack and special, with a whiplike extending blade like Ivy from Soul Calibur.
• Side attacks are represented by the long-reaching Areadbhar spear which has a tipper just like Marth.
• Down is the Aymr staff whose down b can be charged up like Dedede’s for massive damage at full charge and super armor.
• Neutral corresponds to the Failnaught bow whose incredibly fast arrows can only be fired only after a slight charge that can be shield canceled. It also has a powered-up version with no cancel but much more power.

Byleth also brings along eleven new music tracks! New remixes are denoted by an asterisk, while OSTs are unmarked. They are:

• *Fire Emblem: Three Houses Main Theme (JP)
• *Fire Emblem: Three Houses Main THeme
• Fodlan Winds Blue Skies and a Battle
• Tearing Through Heaven
• Chasing Daybreak
• Between Heaven and Earth
• Paths That Will Never Cross
• The Apex of the World
• The Edge of Dawn
• The Edge of Dawn (JP)

In addition to Byleth, Sakurai included five new Mii Fighter costumes! They are:

• Altair, from Assassin’s Creed
• Rabbid, from Rabbids
• X, from Mega Man X
• Megaman.EXE, from Mega Man
• Cuphead, from Cuphead

Finally, Sakurai wraps up the Direct with a follow-up to his previous announcement. While this is the end of the original Fighters Pass, there will be a Fighters Pass Volume 2 consisting of six characters! This Fighters Pass will be available for pre-purchase when Byleth releases on January 28th, though the contents have already been determined.

 

Nintendo gave Sakurai a list of characters to pick from, and then Sakurai got the final say in them. Nintendo didn't just tell Sakurai which characters to make, which is good, since it means we probably wouldn't have gotten Joker or Terry, which are characters from games/series that Sakurai is a fan of.

 

All this and still no God Shattering Star

 

Good Sass Gawdess above, six new characters after Byleth? I wonder if they'll just stunt on every fighting game ever by having the most unique characters/stages/etc.

I mean, they already did...

But sis, stop!

They're already dead!!!

Just like Zelda's viability.

 

So, at first glance its easy to see that you can fit 4 more characters at the bottom. However, if you add 4 characters to the bottom and the push all the characters as far as you can to the right or left then there is a blank vertical row depending on which way you pushed the characters. In this blank vertical row there is enough room for 7 more characters. This gives us a total of 11 more characters. We already know 6 of them are coming from challenger pack 2.

 

Is anybody actually genuinely shocked about Byleth? After Marth and Roy in Melee and the growing support for Fire Emblem games in the west we had Ike in Brawl, Lucina and Robin added in Sm4sh with Roy returning as DLC. Then we had Corrin as DLC. The switch has a new Fire Emblem game and that protagonist is a DLC character. I know there are a lot of swordies already but a lot of people (myself included) genuinely like playing as them.

Wow. Forget Sabi and Vergeben, guys. Move over Batman. We have the world's greatest detective right here. Tell me, do your impeccable powers of deduction work beyond armchair quarterbacking or are they only manifest in the face of hindsight?

"Shocked that an FE character is in Pass 1" and "shocked that an FE character is in at all" are two different things, by the way. I'm sure many expected an FE character at some point. Did they expect one to close out a pass with Joker, Hero, Banjo, and Terry? No. But they're obviously not Hercule Poirot like you.

Next thing people will be shocked that we get another pokemon in the 2nd DLC pack. Brawl added Lucario and PT and Sm4sh added Greninja and Ult added Incineroar and they just released pokemon sword and shield. Even though we have lots of pokemon characters don't be shocked if we get another.

Frankly, both FE and Pokemon seemed more likely in Pass 2.

It made me sad to see the tens of thousands of downvotes on the youtube vid of the Direct already. We already have sooo many characters we want and many we thought we'd never get and several nobody ever wanted. Nobody was trying to get characters like Piranha Plant, G&W, Ice Climbers, Duck Hunt or Pichu in Smash before they were added. A lot of people wanted Byleth. I'd venture to guess more people want Byleth than people who wanted Joker or Terry. You can't ever please everyone but it seems like there is an unnecessary amount of negativity.

That tends to happen when people pay money for something in good faith and get something they not only didn't want, but actively asked not to get. IMO, anyone who bought a pass has a right to be as upset or as pleased as they see fit. It's their money that was spent, after all.

Sorry they didn't add in Geno or battle Disney to get Sora in I guess.

Why make a huge fan request the final fighter in the pass when you can toss in yet another representative from an over-represented, somewhat homogenous series? Brilliant marketing, that. Nothing breeds confidence in a second pass like a disappointing finish to the first one and asking people to trust when buying the second.

I will say this from what we have seen of Byleth's moveset thus far: at least he isn't another Marth/Lucina/Roy/Chrom/Ike. His down B isn't a counter which shows they are trying to mix things up a little bit. His Up B, while some might just compare it to Joker's, is very different from any of the other Fire Emblem characters. He has a projectile. My first impression is that even with greater disjoint range than Marth his slow movement and seemingly high endlag will probably keep him from being a powerhouse. Maybe he is just Robin/Corrin with Link's B and Richter's nair and Joker's Up B but he seems more unique than most of the other FE characters upon their release. I don't think Corrin got nearly as much hate and I feel confident Byleth was more requested than Corrin. Maybe it's just bc it was the last Fighter Pack character and people got their hopes up. It could be a long while before we get any other DLC characters. Would people be less upset if Byleth was released in Fighter Pass 2 alongside some other character as a dual release? It kinda feels that way. Good or bad most of us are gonna get all the DLC characters regardless.

That's certainly the gamble Nintendo is taking. I don't know if it will pay off. Personally, I would have put Byleth as Fighter 1 of Pass 2. You can recover from a lackluster start, but not so much from a mediocre finish.

Nintendo gave Sakurai a list of characters to pick from, and then Sakurai got the final say in them. Nintendo didn't just tell Sakurai which characters to make, which is good, since it means we probably wouldn't have gotten Joker or Terry, which are characters from games/series that Sakurai is a fan of.

That's a great point, actually. The blame for this falls squarely upon Sakurai.

 

there was an article somewhere that said sakurai personally felt there were too many fire emblem characters after corrin got in. Maybe he was done with them for all we know, but what probably happened is that nintendo was breathing down his neck to put Byleth in since they were the ones who chose the dlc characters this time around. so maybe it was outside sakurais control

Corrin, Piranha Plant, Byleth... am I supposed to care anymore?

Sakurai needs to have a pack completely devoted to western characters. We literally only have 1.

What do you guys think about a contra character? I personally don't want one, but it is popular in japan

Could we get a Contra character?

 

That's a great point, actually. The blame for this falls squarely upon Sakurai.

There's nothing to "blame" Sakurai for. But even then, the fact that Nintendo put Byleth on the list in the first place naturally means that Nintendo is just as responsible (if not, more so) for his inclusion.

 

I so desperately want Scorpion & Lara Croft. Others that I want can wait for a later game, like Urshifu or a PvZ Peashooter.

Lara Croft seems like she could happen earlier, since she is more recognized in the gaming community in most places. But I'd be glad with both!

 

I welcome Byleth. I hold no hatred for fire emblem characters (if you’ve seen me saying no more from that series) I just dislike seeing 4 characters with a similar moveset and aesthetics. As long as the character has enough differences to not look like a Marth Clone from just looking at their moveset then I’m fine with more fire emblem characters.

 

Sakurai has played and praised Nier Automata. Could it be that the reason we are getting the 2nd challenger pack in 2021 be because Sakurai needs more time to work on 2b's 'E' rating outfit?

 

Not a huge FE fan, but at the end of the day, I already got two of my most wanted newcomers in a single game. Anything extra is just prolonging the lifespan of this amazing iteration of Smash Bros IMO.

That being said, he looks like he really brings something new to the table, and that's exciting. Like Robin, and one could argue Corrin, this new character really appears to break the FE immersion, and that's all I really care about in a game with this many fighters. "Can this character provide a player with something new?" The answer for Byleth here is "yes" I think.

Congrats to those who supported him/her.

 

Byleth seems cool. I'm glad that the moveset is unique and that they aren't fast characters. It would've been too much to ask for all three house leaders to make it into the game and they weren't going to pick one and ignore the others. In all honesty, I felt that since we didnt get a big reveal at the Game Awards, and Sakurai said the reveal was recorded in November, we weren't going to get a huge crossover character. Byleth wasn't as much as a low note as people make them out to be. Three Houses sold really well and even got best strategy game at the VGAs. Can't wait to see what we get in the second pass, going in knowing that the characters are already decided makes me feel like they used Fighter Pass 1 to get a feel for what people really wanted. Keep the faith Geno and Waluigi fans!

 

There's nothing to "blame" Sakurai for. But even then, the fact that Nintendo put Byleth on the list in the first place naturally means that Nintendo is just as responsible (if not, more so) for his inclusion.

So Nintendo puts him on a list, and Sakurai picks him directly...and Nintendo is more responsible? Hm. Not sure that makes any sort of sense, but okay.

 

Byleth has opened a possibility for more characters!

then i am talking about characters like the Octolings, Rex and/or Pyra, KOS-MOS, Shantae (yeah there are more but these are the first coming to mind lol)

there is also a upcoming game coming called Ninjala i wouldn't be surprised if they decided to add these characters in the future since the characters do have a unique way of fighting.

 

Mixed feelings about this, but largely it was on the side of disappointment.

One of the issues with Smash is the current incarnation and culture gets this idea that if Nintendo wants an outside character in the game then they'll get it. I think this is a fallacy. We got a lot of third party characters, but it takes negotiations and $$$ to achieve this. So many different characters were being tossed about during speculation, but how many of these speculations were actually feasible? Nintendo at some point needed to return to its own library if it wanted to continue adding characters without it costing an arm and a leg.

However, Nintendo also said during the Game Awards in 2018 that they were adding characters from franchises not yet in the game. Or, at the least, that's what it sounded like. Byleth is certainly NOT that. It makes me wonder if talks with another company fell apart at some point, but early enough that they could switch gears without causing a noticeable delay?

It was a poor choice any which way. I've nothing against Fire Emblem. I've nothing against sword characters. I've nothing against the smash character Byleth in general and I'm sure he will be fun to play ... but it was another Fire Emblem character, and they knew that a majority were tired of Fire Emblem characters. (Shout out to the minority, I know you're happy! Congrats!) The FE games are fine! I don't want to knock down people who enjoy Fire Emblem! But it's just *over saturated* with representation now.

If they had to do this, and I am completely okay with it being something they HAD to do, then it should've been one of two options: 1) Byleth should've been third or fourth and the fifth reserved for Joker. 2) Byleth is instead available on its own outside the fighter's pass as a promotion for the game. Leaving the Figher's Pass alone for more unique characters.

 

Mixed feelings about this, but largely it was on the side of disappointment.

One of the issues with Smash is the current incarnation and culture gets this idea that if Nintendo wants an outside character in the game then they'll get it. I think this is a fallacy. We got a lot of third party characters, but it takes negotiations and $$$ to achieve this. So many different characters were being tossed about during speculation, but how many of these speculations were actually feasible? Nintendo at some point needed to return to its own library if it wanted to continue adding characters without it costing an arm and a leg.

However, Nintendo also said during the Game Awards in 2018 that they were adding characters from franchises not yet in the game. Or, at the least, that's what it sounded like. Byleth is certainly NOT that. It makes me wonder if talks with another company fell apart at some point, but early enough that they could switch gears without causing a noticeable delay?

It was a poor choice any which way. I've nothing against Fire Emblem. I've nothing against sword characters. I've nothing against the smash character Byleth in general and I'm sure he will be fun to play ... but it was another Fire Emblem character, and they knew that a majority were tired of Fire Emblem characters. (Shout out to the minority, I know you're happy! Congrats!) The FE games are fine! I don't want to knock down people who enjoy Fire Emblem! But it's just *over saturated* with representation now.

If they had to do this, and I am completely okay with it being something they HAD to do, then it should've been one of two options: 1) Byleth should've been third or fourth and the fifth reserved for Joker. 2) Byleth is instead available on its own outside the fighter's pass as a promotion for the game. Leaving the Figher's Pass alone for more unique characters.

This is a good point: Corrin was salt but it was exciting salt; Byleth is meh/boring salt... it's probably cause we've been down this road before, and I'd actually say thrice counting the Kencineroar/Plant fiasco.

My opinion is that this was just a poor Fighters Pass for the people who look forward to, speculate and obsess over it, and changing the order of reveals can't fix it.

Even after Plant and Corrin I still get disappointed, but I'm sort of numb to it at the same time. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Ok, so my thoughts on .... Byleth..


To me it was both surprising and predictable at the same time.

The MAIN reason why I was so excited with 3rd party DLC, or what it was shaping up to be a 3rd party Fighter Pass, was because there was absolutely no way a Fire Emblem character could be included in one.
I obviously got overconfident. By the time Hero was announced, not only did I get one of my 2 most wanted characters, but I was also sure this pass was going to be 100% 3rd party, and I loved it. As someone who has jumped from console to console, it was pure bliss.

But a Fire Emblem character from Three Houses was also predictable. There was no way they wouldn't parade the success its had on the Switch by not including him/her in Smash. And that's alright. The day Sakurai announced that there would be more fighters beyond Fighter Pass 1, I KNEW it had something to do with a Fire Emblem character.

For Smash, it's become both a norm and a meme at this point.
I already got my most wanted, so I could care less what came after him, right?
Well I still found it to be a **** move to shoehorn such a controversial character on a pretty solid DLC roster.
Like they couldn't just wait to make him/her the initial one for the 2nd pass? And the most, spectacular memetastic fail of this is that by including a Nintendo character in what seemed a wholesome 3rd party DLC pass... of ALL Nintendo IPs they couldn't just NOT choose Fire Emblem.

I luckily got the pass on a discount, so at any rate, I didn't pay for Byleth. And I chose wisely.
Now I'm gonna be real, I'm not boycotting the pass, nor cherry pick my next characters. As much as I would love to join the "I'm not buying another FE character" crowd, I want to have them all this time (didn't bought Roy nor Corrin last time). But I'm gonna wait for a discount once more so that it serves as a pillow to the inevitable 2nd Fire Emblem DLC character.


All that said...

I'm not that bitter about Byleth. It's still my least liked DLC character. Fire Emblem is just bottom tier Nintendo IPs to me. But at least EXPECTING IT helped me cushion the blow tremendously. To the point where I range from mildly disappointed to just glad its out of the picture now.

As for the good.
Well back when I liked Fire Emblem, I loved 3 ideas for a Fire Emblem character.
- The Tactician type which could use both swords and especially Magic.
- A lord character which can control sprite units. (Fire Emblem takes itself way too seriously for this to be a possibility)
- A character who can switch between weapon types.

It's cool that 2 of these came true. So some part of me, of my past self, liked this inclusion. It's just the time and way it was introduced that I HATED.
Like what was the point of all this buildup by Sakurai at the beginning. What was the point of all the secrecy. The point of saying that Nintendo employees
couldn't BELIEVE it was true!

Just for it to be another Fire Emblem character.

*sigh*

Well, at least it's out of the way now. And I'm still prepared for yet ANOTHER Fire Emblem character next pass. As well as a SwSh Pokemon, and maybe another Mario (which by now I wouldn't mind, tbh).
Although the fact that we're getting 6 more DLC characters, made things right in the end, even though byleth still feels like a stain in the pass (like any Nintendo character would have been).

I'm happy for the ones who wanted Byleth. I wouldn't have minded him/her if they didn't made such a weird fuzz about it, and used him/her to end what I thought to be a very entertaining 3RD PARTY Pass. For those asking, I would have been neutral if he had been a Pass 2 reveal.
But how it was done makes me feel like Nintendo did me dirty.


tl;dr:
Character = Meh
Timing = godawful

 

Corrin2.0

After match taunt message
“Cool!”...

 

So Nintendo puts him on a list, and Sakurai picks him directly...and Nintendo is more responsible? Hm. Not sure that makes any sort of sense, but okay.

I mean, it isn't difficult to comprehend. Nintendo has complete control over the list, if they never added Byleth to it, the option wouldn't have been made available in the first place. Cause and effect.

 

I mean, it isn't difficult to comprehend. Nintendo has complete control over the list, if they never added Byleth to it, the option wouldn't have been made available in the first place. Cause and effect.

It is difficult to comprehend because Sakurai could have just...not chosen Byleth.

 

Wow this guy called it months ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cuzots2r2FA

 

That tends to happen when people pay money for something in good faith and get something they not only didn't want, but actively asked not to get. IMO, anyone who bought a pass has a right to be as upset or as pleased as they see fit. It's their money that was spent, after all.

Honestly, those people only have themselves to blame for choosing to purchase the Fighter's Pass and just so happened to dislike the characters in it. Like Sakurai said: "Only those who are confident enough in it's value should purchase it", otherwise just buy them seperately.

 

I didn't realize how much 2B had going for her.

-She is one of the most requested characters in both Japan and America

-Sakurai has played and praised her game

-Nier Automata is still a popular game in japan

The only thing going against her is her outfit. Could sakurai keep her kid friendly?

 

I don’t play Fire Emblem.

I don’t main Fire Emblem.

I don’t like Fire Emblem.

I think Fire Emblem is over-saturated in Smash.

But....

The devs worked hard on this content and worked together with Intelligent Systems to bring the charqcter into Smash. There are fans who greatly enjoyed seeing this character and Three Houses content included. I’m happy when people are happy and seeing Fire Emblem fans get there Lord of the Month made me happy. Three Houses is, to date, one of the most successful it not the most in the series. Byleth getting in at some point was an obvious conclusion and I find it silly people question it. I personally think the character looks good and the stage also looks really nice. I was digging the whole Hogwarts vibe before and still digging it now. And on the bright side, at least we didn’t get Byleth as the last character of Season 2 lol.

So yeah, I will never play Fire Emblem (last one was Awakening and I only played it for an hour and then sold it to the used game store) and Smash can’t get me to like the series. However, I am totally cool with Byleth and Three Houses content in Smash for the above reasons.

 

It is difficult to comprehend because Sakurai could have just...not chosen Byleth.

Just like how Nintendo could have... not put him on the list.

 

I expected to be disappointed and I was still disappointed.

 

However, Nintendo also said during the Game Awards in 2018 that they were adding characters from franchises not yet in the game.

No, that's what people misappropriated Reggie saying. What he said was that all the characters were going to be new to Smash (which didn't really need to be said, but whatever Reg'). People just took that to meant that they'd all be from new Franchises - he even brought this up when questioned about it.

 

The reason why fans were salty about Byleth is due to them wanting Dante from DmC.

 

As long as the character has a unique moveset or playstyle to the rest of the cast and is for good boys and girls then I'm fine with nearly every pick.
Female Byleth is slightly suspect, with that one costume in particular but overall is fine. Bayo's inclusion was the one that baffled me and the only character inclusion I've ever truly disliked as a whole.

 

I didn't realize how much 2B had going for her.

-She is one of the most requested characters in both Japan and America

-Sakurai has played and praised her game

-Nier Automata is still a popular game in japan

The only thing going against her is her outfit. Could sakurai keep her kid friendly?
View attachment 258224

and why are we taking this poll as official or meaningful in any capacity? Cause there's quite a few things wrong with this:

1) They never cite their sources or amount of votes anywhere not even the original twitter post.
2) From what people found out at most there were only a couple hundred "votes" gathered on this when in actuality those "votes" are just responses to one of the fighters pass characters twitter post replies which accounts for things like bots and whatnot.
3) they have a Gundam in it... A freaking Gundam that should be suspicious but I guess not.

Literally no reason to trust this at all.



Anyways uh yeah Byleth is pretty cool I'm not disappointed with them and they definitely standout compared to the rest of the FE cast not to mention this is the first real (non-echo fighter) FE Newcomer this game so I don't really mind FE getting a new character. They're cool and FE:TH is a great game.

 

Thank god its not geno, only 2 characters I want are king boo and heavy, but geno is so ****ing overhyped it’s obnoxious.

 

I'm the only one who doesn't mind Byleth in Smash.^-^

 

I'm the only one who doesn't mind Byleth in Smash.^-^

I actually am fine with fire emblem in smash.

 

View attachment 258145
Sakurai bought this toy a while back so he could use the rifle as a reference for his work (obviously talking about smash). Everyone dismissed this as anything important because it was assumed that it was used for the MK 2 mii costume or whatever its called, but i do not think Sakurai would need a reference for a character like the mii. It's literally just a copy paste situation if you want to make an MK 2 costume. There is also currently no character in the game that has a gun like this. Maybe snake, but sakurai could just use his model from brawl if he needed a reference. I think this could be a hint towards a character that hasn't arrived yet. What do you guys think?

I think it could be used for any character with that sort of weapon, whether it be a Mii Gunner costume, a gunner character like Reimu, or a non-Smash work. However, if he's had it for a while, then it could just be a general purpose reference.

The reason why fans were salty about Byleth is due to them wanting Dante from DmC.

I wanted both. Anyways, from my perspective, only bandwagoners get worked up like that.

 

I'm fine with Byleth. Looks cool at least. He's much more unique than the rest of the FE characters. The slow speed kind of worries me though. It's pretty glaringly obvious though that there's some kind of biasfor Fire Emblem though considering it appears to take so much priority over Zelda and Kirby. Two franchises that struggle to get a single new character after twelve years despite having huge new games very frequently and are top tier money makers for Nintendo. Zelda is truely their real #2 considering Gamefreak are technically the ones that own Pokemon. Even then it sits at a very strong #3 spot for their biggest franchises. Kirby's easily top 5. FE characters tend to be chosen before their games even release it seems, even if they turn out being not very well received.

Edit: Just in case anybody didn't know. All of the DLC in the first pass was chosen months in advance before 3H was even released.

 

People forgot that Sakurai said that NINTENDO chose the DLC for the fighter pass not himself. How quickly people forget.

 

People forgot that Sakurai said that NINTENDO chose the DLC for the fighter pass not himself. How quickly people forget.

Problem with that is that they get too overhyped and too overconfident to remember or even care.
At least that’s how I see it.

 

I think this is similar to Diablo Immortal. If Blizzard announced Diablo 4 after Immortal, they wouldn't have gotten flak. If Nintendo announced Blyeth at like 3 or 4, then, people would've been fine. Order is still very important. You don't serve dessert earlier than main dish for a very good reason. At least, Sakurai teased 6 additional fighters after the announcement, so he managed to calm down folks.

 

People forgot that Sakurai said that NINTENDO chose the DLC for the fighter pass not himself. How quickly people forget.

Apparently Nintendo chose a list and presented it to him and he picked who he thought would work best as a fighter. So yeah, Nintendo did pick the characters but he still had a say in it. It's also possible that he chose the rest and Nintendo just had Byleth as a required fighter that he had to use. He seemed to know there would be some outrage from those who didn't want Byleth considering he said he hoped people wouldn't be too upset which he hasn't said before in other reveals and that it would be shocking in a "wow really?" kind of way.

 

That's likely a big part of it, too. Of the eight, five are sword users. Four of those five are basically clones. Less than 50% of the Fire Emblem characters present on the roster bring something new or different to the table.

Actually, every Fire Emblem character in the game is a sword user. Just because some may have other options does not negate the immutable fact that they all carry and use a sword.
Marth, Lucina, Roy, and Chrom all carry standard broad/longswords.
Ike has a greatsword
Robin has two swords and also carries tomes
Corrin has essentially a chainsaw sword
Byleth has the Sword of the Creator

If we're stuck with another Fire Emblem character, would it have killed them to axe the sword?