Long post, buckle up.
I see that Lloyd is making the rounds again and I feel like I need to be a debbie downer for a brief minute: Lloyd really doesn't have the strength that Geno has because his
only boon is longevity in the community, and to echo shades of Wynn, if that meant
anything, he and Geno would already be in. Lloyd's other selling points are happenstance and trademarks that were proven to be for something totally different.
I am in total agreement with Fatman that Ryu was, at best, leakbait for Byleth thanks to Koei Tecmo's involvement with 3 Houses. He's perfect leakbait for two reasons: few fan rosters or fake leaks ever included him until recently, and any mention of Tecmo brings him to mind - he is almost their mascot character. For instance, Fatman says insiders were hearing Ryu in December 2018? Congrats to them, because pretty much every commoner who had heard that Koei Tecmo was making an announcement at TGA 2018 thought for sure the Fighters Pass was about to open with Ryu - myself included. For those who are unaware, the announcement was Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3.
... But Lloyd. I think as recently as December it hit me that the Mii costumes that we're still missing were obviously intentional. Power of six or power of two or whatever you want to roll with, the trend we had for Mii costumes wasn't going to allow every Smash 4 Mii costume to return - consider that even if every pack was supposed to come with 3 returning Mii costumes, we would still be missing one costume, and that's with giving a totally non-Square costume to Hero. Again, there is definitely a reason they took the costumes out that they took out, and I think that reason is to disguise that
one of these costumes is going to become a playable character. It's
too obvious what they're planning if Geno, Lloyd, and even Heihachi (who Sakurai supposedly tried to make a fighter?) were turned into fighters because their Mii costumes failed to come back.
Byleth, as much as he displeases me, did at least further the cause of theorycraft: There are 6 slots now, and 7 Mii costumes missing (Geno, Chocobo, Lloyd, Heihachi, Gil, [Monster] Hunter, Rathalos), which would conveniently allow for every one of these new packs to come with one returning costume... and leave an extra. No guarantee on that and we won't know until we get the first character and their Mii list (which, if it isn't Geno... cheeks clenched.), but it lines up with my idea that we're unfortunately going to have a sacrificial lamb among the costumes (more if you actually wanted Heihachi or... Gil? idk), and thanks to Sakurai's latest Famitsu column, I just don't think Lloyd's gonna make it.
Sakurai once again tries to assure us that Nintendo was twisting his arm, or in the kindest words possible, that he felt like something new should be represented and Fire Emblem just
happened to line up (which I call bull on, Nintendo twisted his arm if he doesn't just outright love Fire Emblem). He thinks there's too many Fire Emblem characters (and for a franchise with its impact, I agree) and that there's too many sword characters. Now... I know "sword character" is fighting words. It has become a ****post phrase, but Sakurai has given it the context that most people give it subconsciously - characters whose moveset is entirely sword based.
Let's look at Byleth. Functionally, Byleth is a sword character regardless of what weapon they're holding. Disjoints, bad frame data in exchange, tipper mechanic... Yeah. By that definition, Richter is a sword character too. And Dedede. But you know, we don't hate them or think of them as sword characters because of what they're holding, so in that regard, Sakurai
tried to make Byleth less of a sword character. He has a bow, like Link, and even uses it as a melee weapon because he's...
not that bright? very creative. He's one of two (1 out of every 4) FE characters to not have a counter on his down B. The overall distaste for Byleth is that he's a Fire Emblem character, at this point, not that he's a swordsman.
Serenade said:
Lloyd is in a bad boat, here. If you go back in this thread and find where I said that Lloyd's problem is all the he'll bring is a sword(x2), you'll see that I was never proven wrong. Sure, he has arts that look magical, but they're still sword techniques. His primary weapon is a sword and he uses them exclusively throughout his game, to the point that the moveset wouldn't be able to incorporate other elements and remain true to the character. You can dislike me and disagree with me for this, but I just don't think he stands a chance. In my humble opinion, he's going to be the casualty of this Mii costume coverup and I feel extremely bad for Lloydbros because I'd be upset to think Geno would end up the victim of a long con like that.
Maybe I'll be wrong and both Geno and Lloyd will show up. Maybe I'll be wrong and we'll both be the victims of the long con so that Heihachi can punch with both fists separately. Maybe this meant nothing and none of those characters show. Just doing my best with what we've got, and what we've got smiles on Geno. Pick any other missing costume that has:
Two music tracks copyright removed on YouTube
A text leak that turned out to be right about every costume, with two characters from their game being fresh new Mii costumes that haven't shown up yet.
A video leak with one character from their game being a fresh new Mii costume
in action
7NATOR My thing on Waluigi is that Waluigi is pretty unbelievable on his own. Like I said I believe last week, of the 6 characters I'm currently predicting, Waluigi has the least amount of confidence among insiders by a long shot. More insiders entertain the idea of Master Chief than Waluigi and that's saying a lot. This topic has definitely bled over to Geno and Lloyd but insiders are human too and come with their own biases. Again, Geno was regularly dismissed by insiders until the Mii costume was MIA and brought with it a banquet worth of humble pie. People heard Terry but dismissed him because they personally didn't expect him. As the record shows, I dismissed Hero for a variety of reasons. Pretty much everyone dismissed Byleth for obvious reasons. There are a ton of examples of this and we often trip over our own feet. Steve proceeding Banjo was "logical" until it wasn't. Waluigi is not "logical" under the more popular frames of analysis that Smash speculators typically use.
