I'm back!!
I haven't been on here for a couple weeks now because Byleth left a sour taste in my mouth, especially since I was really expecting another character (My fault, I know) and the wait for FP5's reveal was already painful, but now that I have to wait even more for someone I at least somewhat care about, it just left me unmotivated and tired of speculation.
But now I got some of the Smash spirit back! (no pun intended). I've accepted Byleth now and am looking forward to checking his content out tonight.
I want to take this moment to review Geno's likelihood. The CacoMallow leak is in a very awkward position right now. I'm gonna say now that if Geno and a Bethesda rep are not Fighter 6 and/or 7, the leak is most likely fake. Still, we got plenty of evidence in Geno's favor. The two music tracks taken down, the Mii costume leak, a heavy competitor in the form of Hero is no longer an issue, and with a fresh, new fighters pass with 6 slots, company repeats are definitely back on the table. I think out of all the characters in the DLC, Banjo and Terry really helped Geno's chances. Banjo being a long-time big fan request, and Terry getting in before Soul Calibur and Tekken of all things which was a big surprise (let's be real, most people were expecting Heihachi, not Terry). Not to mention Sakurai saying that a character's popularity is not the only big factor taken into consideration. While that might have been obvious, it was still good to hear it from the man himself.
I'm still sticking with a 50% chance score for Geno. We got at least 6 more characters promised. Surely at least 1 or 2 of them will be big fan requests.
Now, I just thought of something interesting. I saw Fatman's post a couple days ago (yes I still lurked a little bit during my hiatus) detailing timelines and bringing up the fact that characters usually take 10 months to a year to complete. When did a lot of Geno's evidence like the music tracks taken down take place? I think it was either June or July. Guess what is roughly 10 to 11 months later? April. The same month that we got Mewtwo in Smash 4 and Joker for the first fighters pass. It's a consistent pattern. I'm sure I'm not the only one who brought this up (Fatman probably did already, knowing him), but it's real damn interesting. The only thing is, I'm not too sure if Geno would make sense as Fighter 6 as I've just been implying. He is not very well known throughout the Smash community. Yes, more and more people have been bringing him up (most notably Arlo and ZeRo), but I don't think he is even on Joker's level of popularity. Other characters like Dante, Rex, or dare I say it....Steve would make more sense (I can hear people already sending me hate mail) as Fighter 6 to get the general audience interested in the Fighters Pass. But then again, this is Nintendo, and they would probably choose someone controversial like Steve to start things off with.