Three cups of coffee and an Addreall and, oh boy, it's time for more theorycrafting! Today's topic, analyzing Sakurai's dumps... The Mii costume ones. So, per usual, we're using Power of Six theory as our foundation. Quick recap:
"The theory that, when the Fighter's Pass was originally one and done, each pack was meant to have 6 Mii costumes that thematically fit with the pack's character and bring back all 15 of the Smash 4 third party DLC costumes."
Here is our theoretical model:
-Joker (4 Persona, Tails and Knuckles, SEGA theme)
-Hero (4 Dragon Quest, Geno and Chocobo, Square theme)
-Banjo (4 Megaman, Goemon, and Rocket Grunt, the "Dump")
-Terry (3 SNK, Akira, Jacky, and Heihachi, Fighting Game theme)
-Byleth (Ancient Armor, Rex, Lloyd, Gil, Monster Hunter, and Rathalos, Medieval Fantasy RPG theme)
Here's what we actually wound up with:
-Joker (4 Persona, Tails and Knuckles, SEGA theme)
-Hero (4 Dragon Quest, Dragon Quest theme)
-Banjo (2 Megaman, Goemon, Sans, and Rocket Grunt, the "Dump")
-Terry (3 SNK, Akira, and Jacky, Fighting Game theme)
-Byleth (Altair, Rabbids, 2 Megaman, and Cuphead, the "Dump 2": the Second Dumping)
Smash 4 costumes that are MIA:
-Geno and Chocobo (Square)
-Lloyd, Gil, and Heihachi (Namco)
-Rathalos and Monster Hunter (Capcom)
Using this model, we've already theorized that 3 of the 6 Season 2 characters will be Square, Namco, and Capcom. What I realized today is that we can take this even further by looking at Sakurai's dumps under a microscope. First question to be asked, what is the purpose of a "dump?" The answer is to get rid of excess. The Fighter's Pass wound up having two dumps where the Mii costumes had little to do with the actual character; why? Let's go into that.
One strong point of analysis is that SEGA saw all of its Smash 4 costumes return in the Fighter's Pass. This presents the strong argument that we're not going to be seeing anymore SEGA characters because, if we were, one of the pairs would have been saved at the very least. What companies did we see in the pass but only as Mii costumes? Konami (Goemon), the Pokemon Company (Rocket Grunt), Ubisoft (Ezio and Rabbids), and the two indies (Sans and Cuphead). Using the same frame of analysis as we did SEGA, we can likely safely deduce that these companies won't be getting characters in the future because, again, if they were, why would they have content now? This makes the dumps a lot more interesting and perhaps gives them more meaning than we originally thought.
Banjo is RARE/Microsoft but came with no RARE/Microsoft costumes and Byleth is Nintendo but came with no Nintendo costumes. Very strange. As Power of Six shows us, Byleth very easily could have come with Rex and Ancient Armor but didn't. Two Nintendo costumes that very easily fit Byleth's theme but were made bonuses instead. Again, a very strange decision... Or is it?
Going off this model we set up, let's propose that the reason these two dumps happened was because Microsoft and Nintendo costumes were being saved for later. What does this imply? It's very simple: there's a pack coming later that's Nintendo and one that's Microsoft. As pointed out, Mii costume theming appears to be very deliberate, even with the dumps. The "dumps" are either excess or companies that won't have their own pack. Let's bring Geno in because I like to see people squirm.
"Geno and Chocobo weren't in Hero's pack because they wanted to keep the theme strictly Dragon Quest." Exactly. Think about it. Traditionally, Dragon Quest is the Enix side of Square Enix. Nowadays, it's technically owned by Armor Project and Bird Studio. It's not purely Square... But Geno and Chocobo are. See where I'm going with this? Using this observation, we can not only theorize that the purely Square content is being saved for another pack but this was done deliberately. So, ladies and gentlemen, what does this probably tell us? It tells us that the mystery Square Enix character is, just that, a purely Square character. Again, theming. If it was anything else, there would be no need to "save" Geno and Chocobo for later. 2B is part Platinum. Sora is Disney. Pretty groovy.
So, in conclusion, here's some things we can gather based on today's theorycraft:
-We already established that Square, Namco, and Capcom were highly probable based on missing Mii costumes but we can take this even further by looking at missing companies represented by Mii costumes.
-Based on the dumps and theming, we now have a strong hypothesis that two of the six packs will be Microsoft and Nintendo.
-We also have a new theory that our mystery Square Enix character will be a purely Square character.
Hope you all have fun with this.