Official DLC Speculation Discussion Volume II

[Mushroomguy12]

View attachment 317820

I did it! I finally finished my Crash writeup, written in red ink!

Splash.

 

[Icedragonadam]

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Splash.

This should be edited with CP10 on it if the non-Crash character has a red background.

 

[Shroob]

The funny thing is, during the Sakurai Presents for Pyra/Mythra thing, there was a scene where the two were given different background colors.


Mythra still had the green that's on the site.

Pyra had a pinkish-red.

 

[MonkeyDLenny]

I truly feel like we peaked with Steve and Sephiroth. I feel like anyone wanting Crash better just look into modding their Switch to get the Crash skin. I really don't see these last two reveals being anything mindblowing.

 

[TCT~Phantom]

I truly feel like we peaked with Steve and Sephiroth. I feel like anyone wanting Crash better just look into modding their Switch to get the Crash skin. I really don't see these last two reveals being anything mindblowing.

CP10 at E3:

 

[MooMew64]

I truly feel like we peaked with Steve and Sephiroth. I feel like anyone wanting Crash better just look into modding their Switch to get the Crash skin. I really don't see these last two reveals being anything mindblowing.

Impossible, Gooigi's reveal still hasn't happened yet.

 

[UltimateCyborgOverlord]

I truly feel like we peaked with Steve and Sephiroth. I feel like anyone wanting Crash better just look into modding their Switch to get the Crash skin. I really don't see these last two reveals being anything mindblowing.

You can not escape her. She will find her Sonic and she will reunite with him.


Say the mantra with me:

"YOU ARE GONNA HAVE YOUR AMY ROSE AND YOU ARE GONNA LIKE IT!"

 

[MooMew64]

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You can not escape her. She will find her Sonic and she will reunite with him.


Say the mantra with me:

"YOU ARE GONNA HAVE YOUR AMY ROSE AND YOU ARE GONNA LIKE IT!"

Now this is speculation I can get behind.

 

[LiveStudioAudience]

The element that's making prediction particularly difficult is that there's not been a major Smash DLC cycle that's definitely ending like this one is. Smash 4's felt more like a case by case scenario with its release, and Nintendo was clearly both getting their feet wet with downloadable content in a major console and essentially figuring out where fan interests in fighters were.

Ultimate by contrast has had planned passes with likely more internal road maps about what to release and when. Thus Nintendo's decisions about them, including how to end the second one, could very well be subject to a lot of factors that we have few examples to compare with.

 

[Perkilator]

I truly feel like we peaked with Steve and Sephiroth. I feel like anyone wanting Crash better just look into modding their Switch to get the Crash skin. I really don't see these last two reveals being anything mindblowing.

I wouldn't give up hope yet. Vol. 2 was supposed to go through two E3's, so there's still a sliver of hope left for Crash. If not...well, at least it was there.

 

[UltimateCyborgOverlord]

Now this is speculation I can get behind.

Well, lemme quit with the jokes and try to get real with the whole Amy thing. Potentially faulty theory incoming:

SO. LET'S ASSUME that, for reasons ONLY understood by Sakurai, that Assist Trophies and background characters are NOT getting upgraded to playable fighters for whatever reason. We can go back and forth all day about how there's precedent for shutting off background characters with the whole Alfonso/Toon Link thing and various Assist Trophy functions on various stages (Knuckles on Green Hill, Alucard on Wii Fit Studio, etc), but for the sake of the conversation, let's say that for WHATEVER REASON, they're off the table.

That removes Sonic (since he's already playable), Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, and weirdly enough Silver (plus the little animals on Windy Hill if you wanna get technical). Go down the line, who's the next most prominent Sonic character?

Doctor Eggman of course! HOWEVER... that guy's kind of an embarrassment of riches. SO MANY MECHS at his disposal, how do you just pick ONE? That would take a lot of time to whittle down a moveset that they can all agree upon, MUCH LESS actually program and implement it within the constraints of the DLC time and budget, and those are the magic words right there: time and budget. If I remember right, Bowser Jr was a little tricky to get working when he was introduced in Smash 3DS/Wii U and they had to stick their nose to the grindstone to make it work. And HERO they had to settle for FOUR Dragon Quest heroes as alts instead of 8 on the grounds that they did not have the time and budget for 8. Time and budget are very real enemies for DLC choices, and Doctor Eggman and his embarrassment of riches and potential difficulty in actually implementing in a timely and budget friendly manner may very well be enough to foil Eggman's plans once again.

SO. Who's the NEXT most prominent character? Well... that could very well be Amy Rose. And she's easy enough to implement too, nothing too crazy with her.

And that's how you get to Amy Rose chasing Sonic into Smash Ultimate.

 

[Guynamednelson]

The element that's making prediction particularly difficult is that there's not been a major Smash DLC cycle that's definitely ending like this one is. Smash 4's felt more like a case by case scenario with its release, and Nintendo was clearly both getting their feet wet with downloadable content in a major console and essentially figuring out where fan interests in fighters were.

Ultimate by contrast has had planned passes with likely more internal road maps about what to release and when. Thus Nintendo's decisions about them, including how to end the second one, could very well be subject to a lot of factors that we have few examples to compare with.

I wouldn't give up hope yet. Vol. 2 was supposed to go through two E3's, so there's still a sliver of hope left for Crash. If not...well, at least it was there.

At the very least, we should learn try and see how to compromise between "E3 mega hype bomb" and "lame finale shill pick" if E3 conflicts with the idea that we can't have someone the Smash community would complain about en masse.

 

[Mushroomguy12]

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Splash.

Making me finish the meme on my own smh.

Aw barnacles.

 

[Shroob]

I think it's a good idea to keep expectations in check, it always is.


But I think there's a difference between keeping them in check and "Nope, it's all downhill from here."

 

[MooMew64]

I think it's a good idea to keep expectations in check, it always is.


But I think there's a difference between keeping them in check and "Nope, it's all downhill from here."

We're really seeing a self fulfilling prophecy here.

They could reveal Crash and people would still say it was a let down because at this point, people want to be let down with how much they keep repeating doomsday scenarios.

 

[Pillow]

We're really seeing a self fulfilling prophecy here.

They could reveal Crash and people would still say it was a let down because at this point, people want to be let down with how much they keep repeating doomsday scenarios.

I'm fully expecting Crash mostly because he would be a let down for me.

 

[WeirdChillFever]

I don’t think they select characters based on E3-yness, and the business idea of frontloading a pass might take priority over the last two characters happening to go through E3. They can’t really organize the final two characters to have the most two hype of the two be revealed at E3 because....there’s but two left to reveal.
If CP10 releases, like, soon, it’s likely Smash Ultimate won’t end on a Final Smash Direct of some kind which would break a pattern for a similar reason: There’s no shuffling around content anymore, not to have the worst for last nor to have the best at E3.

I do believe CP11 might be a bit more low-key, but that’s not because “it was Corrin last time and Corrin sucked so yeah”, it’s because the rationale behimd Corrin was that they set aside a character to be from a recent in-house game, a role I can see being reprised in the longer-spanning DLC of Ultimate. I think it wouldn’t be weird if they took the opportunity of having more than a year’s worth of DLC to look in the agenda to see what was ahead.

Now that I think about it, Byleth had to be at the tail-end of pass 1: Three Houses wasn’t released until July 2019. That’s not frontloading, that’s making sure a game releases before a character.

 

[Deleted member]

At least for me it’s all downhill after Pyra/Mythra. They peaked with my most wanted honestly I’d be happy with anything at this point. Hoping for Adol and Phoenix I guess but I don’t really care tbh.

 

[LiveStudioAudience]

I think it's a good idea to keep expectations in check, it always is.


But I think there's a difference between keeping them in check and "Nope, it's all downhill from here."

It feels telling of the up and down nature of both the Nintendo and Smash specific hype cycle. For some its better to keep expectations low and predict a logical but unspectacular character rather than getting even somewhat hyped. There's probably been a decent amount of people with too many disappointments in both passes to even let themselves get excited for fighter reveals at this point.

I don't think I'm at that point, but even I admit that my realistic hope is simply that they're fun to play in game as the selections themselves have gone in too many directions for me to really think that my long time favorite will get in now.

 

[Noipoi]

I think it's a good idea to keep expectations in check, it always is.


But I think there's a difference between keeping them in check and "Nope, it's all downhill from here."

What if I’m doomer-ing myself so I subconsciously expect worse case scenarios so I get even more hyped when it’s something cool?

 

[Guynamednelson]

Either way, a rule HAS to be broken by CP10, and don't take this as some "well mustard chef has to break rules too so PFFFFFFFFFFFFFT" thingy.

If it's a big third party, that breaks the "late reveals can't be hype" rule. If it's a fan favorite Nintendo character, that breaks the "first parties have to be shillpicks" rule. If it's Corrin 3.0, that breaks the "E3 reveals must be super hype" rule. And of course if it's someone like Master Chief or Lara Croft that's breaking the "no double dipping in one pass" rule alongside "late reveals can't be hype". So the one thing you should expect from E3 is something that doesn't keep all the supposed rules in check.

 

[MonkeyDLenny]

I don’t think they select characters based on E3-yness, and the business idea of frontloading a pass might take priority over the last two characters happening to go through E3. They can’t really organize the final two characters to have the most two hype of the two be revealed at E3 because....there’s but two left to reveal.

This^

In a hypothetical "No Covid" timeline it's not unreasonable to assume that Min Min would have released in April (When we got the guessing game) and Steve and Sephiroth would have been our double-header WHAM reveals just like Banjo and Hero. Instead they got parceled out individually over the course of October and December.

So we already had our E3-tier reveals. Of course whatever is left is going to be something more on the low-key side. I'm guessing maybe a C-list third party character and one more first party rep.

I want Crash so badly, but by the mere virtue of so many people speculating he's going to show up at E3 and acting like it's a done deal has completely turned me off from expecting him. There's way too much overconfidence in his chances, and I've seen how that overconfidence backfires time and time again. So, yeah, I'm keeping my expectations nice and low. I refuse to fall into the hype trap.

 

[Gengar84]

So for those who are expecting something more low key, who do you think we’ll get? Who would you like to see from a smaller series? I’ve already mentioned my favorites enough times so I won’t bore everyone with talking about them too much but pretty much all of them would be viewed that way by the general public.

 

[SirCamp]

Anyone think maybe we could see a samurai shodown character as one of the final 2? I remember people were talking about Nakoruru quite a bit once upon a time. Tho she did end up getting a spirit in the first pass, so maybe not.

 

[Technomage]

Either way, a rule HAS to be broken by CP10, and don't take this as some "well mustard chef has to break rules too so PFFFFFFFFFFFFFT" thingy.

If it's a big third party, that breaks the "late reveals can't be hype" rule. If it's a fan favorite Nintendo character, that breaks the "first parties have to be shillpicks" rule. If it's Corrin 3.0, that breaks the "E3 reveals must be super hype" rule. And of course if it's someone like Master Chief or Lara Croft that's breaking the "no double dipping in one pass" rule alongside "late reveals can't be hype". So the one thing you should expect from E3 is something that doesn't keep all the supposed rules in check.

There's also the breaking of the "loose-ends" trend.

 

[Schnee117]

I think it's a good idea to keep expectations in check, it always is.


But I think there's a difference between keeping them in check and "Nope, it's all downhill from here."

The latter just gives the impression that some people care far more about being right than they do the actual characters tbh.

 

[MonkeyDLenny]

So for those who are expecting something more low key, who do you think we’ll get? Who would you like to see from a smaller series? I’ve already mentioned my favorites enough times so I won’t bore everyone with talking about them too much but pretty much all of them would be viewed that way by the general public.

I'm fully expecting a Gen 8 Pokemon, despite people pointing to the spirit event as proof it won't happen. Everything is a rule until it isn't. Plus that event covered like... six Pokemon out of the 40+ new ones? There's plenty to add to a spirit board.

As for a third party character, I'm thinking Nightmare from Soul Calibur. A fighting game rep with Nintendo history for how Link was in SC2 way back in the GameCube era. Soul Calibur is still a relatively low-key fighting game series over here in the west compared to Street Fighter, MK, and so on.

 

[N3ON]

This^

In a hypothetical "No Covid" timeline it's not unreasonable to assume that Min Min would have released in April (When we got the guessing game) and Steve and Sephiroth would have been our double-header WHAM reveals just like Banjo and Hero. Instead they got parceled out individually over the course of October and December.

So we already had our E3-tier reveals. Of course whatever is left is going to be something more on the low-key side. I'm guessing maybe a C-list third party character and one more first party rep.

I want Crash so badly, but by the mere virtue of so many people speculating he's going to show up at E3 and acting like it's a done deal has completely turned me off from expecting him. There's way too much overconfidence in his chances, and I've seen how that overconfidence backfires time and time again. So, yeah, I'm keeping my expectations nice and low. I refuse to fall into the hype trap.

You know under that timeline we'd be getting FP11 around now, which is a full half year before the deadline. Seems a little unrealistic imo.

 

[Pillow]

So for those who are expecting something more low key, who do you think we’ll get? Who would you like to see from a smaller series? I’ve already mentioned my favorites enough times so I won’t bore everyone with talking about them too much but pretty much all of them would be viewed that way by the general public.

My expectation is Dark Souls + Crash with Arle as a runner up, none of which are really low key.

I've mentioned it before, but I'm personally rooting for an IDOLMASTER character because the reaction from Western audiences would be great. Generally I'm the type of guy who thinks that fame and recognizability should be very important for Smash characters, so there's not many weirdo picks that I want that aren't just heavily Japan-centric.

 

[TheLamerGamer]

So for those who are expecting something more low key, who do you think we’ll get? Who would you like to see from a smaller series? I’ve already mentioned my favorites enough times so I won’t bore everyone with talking about them too much but pretty much all of them would be viewed that way by the general public.

An SMT rep, but since I really want that, I'm probably (definitely) biased.

 

[Gengar84]

Anyone think maybe we could see a samurai shodown character as one of the final 2? I remember people were talking about Nakoruru quite a bit once upon a time. Tho she did end up getting a spirit in the first pass, so maybe not.

I don’t think I’ve ever considered a Samurai Showdown character but Smash doesn’t really have any samurai at the moment so that could be a fun addition.

 

[Noipoi]

So for those who are expecting something more low key, who do you think we’ll get?

my heart says Rayman but my head says “no way in hell”

 

[Technomage]

So for those who are expecting something more low key, who do you think we’ll get? Who would you like to see from a smaller series? I’ve already mentioned my favorites enough times so I won’t bore everyone with talking about them too much but pretty much all of them would be viewed that way by the general public.

Maybe a smaller 3rd party like Sol Badguy or the Chosen Undead? Hopefully nothing too lowkey like another 1st-party shill pick.

 

[Opossum]

I mean to me it's pretty obvious that if covid didn't happen, and we got two reveals at E3 2020, it would've been Min Min and Steve, not Steve and Sephiroth.

 

[Garteam]

While I do genuinely admire this thread's optimism, I'm just not feeling it personally. Smash reveals getting progressively more lowkey and niche past a certain point has been a thing since Brawl. While precedent can be broken, this reveal also has to compete against the marketing tactic of showing your best hand early, which is more or less the standard in video games.

That being said, more lowkey and niche =/= uninteresting. Many people thought that Hero, Min Min, and Pyra would be boring and they're all pretty interesting and fun.

 

[Gengar84]

Maybe a smaller 3rd party like Sol Badguy or the Chosen Undead? Hopefully nothing too lowkey like another 1st-party shill pick.

I don’t really mind so much if they’re a shill pick as long as I like the character. I’m not really even sure who’s left that people would consider a shill pick. Most of them seem to have been ruled out by spirit events.

 

[Schnee117]

Anyone think maybe we could see a samurai shodown character as one of the final 2? I remember people were talking about Nakoruru quite a bit once upon a time. Tho she did end up getting a spirit in the first pass, so maybe not.

SamSho would be cool, I'd take Darli Dagger, Charlotte, Jubei or Galford but I doubt we get more SNK anyway.

 

[Technomage]

I don’t really mind so much if they’re a shill pick as long as I like the character. I’m not really even sure who’s left that people would consider a shill pick. Most of them seem to have been ruled out by spirit events.

Hmmmm, I've been thinking a Gen 8 starter Pokemon, but after your comment, I'm not so sure anymore.

I guess the only Ninty shill picks I could think of are Ayumi and King Boo, though for some reason they don't really bother me that much (maybe I'm just being a hypocrite?).

Edit: Then again, my only problems with another Pokemon rep are another lame-old starter.

 

[Adrianette Bromide]

An SMT rep, but since I really want that, I'm probably (definitely) biased.

If an SMT rep gets in ooo that would be so good but I doubt it. If it happens like idk I'd do a solo run of Nocturne or some ****. I'd pop off so hard you wouldn't believe.

 

[jamesster445]

While I do genuinely admire this thread's optimism, I'm just not feeling it personally. Smash reveals getting progressively more lowkey and niche past a certain point has been a thing since Brawl. While precedent can be broken, this reveal also has to compete against the marketing tactic of showing your best hand early, which is more or less the standard in video games.

That being said, more lowkey and niche =/= uninteresting. Many people thought that Hero, Min Min, and Pyra would be boring and they're all pretty interesting and fun.

I just had a war flashback. I almost forgot how toxic the discourse around Erdrick was. It hit its peak when Japanese twitter got annoyed with the West's constant bashing of one of its cornerstones of its gaming culture.

And then Sakurai showed them off. Let's just say no matter people think about Hero. Boring is not going to be one of them.