So now that the dust has settled a bit, I think it's a good idea to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. There's a certain costume I think deserves a bit more discussion than it's getting at the moment.
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Just kidding, we've talked enough about him, it's actually this guy.
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Yep, the crossover king Heihachi got shafted a second time, so what? Well, just the fact that it's back here at all carries some obvious but still impactful implications.
- We now know with almost 100% certainty that some returning Mii Costumes were moved from the first pass to the second. They only planned for 5 DLC characters so all the Smash 4 costumes would have had to return in those 5 characters, yet that obviously didn't happen but here is Heihachi now because they decided to make more DLC characters. I know that sounds super obvious but there are people who legitimately seemed to think that the costumes that didn't show up in Pass 1 wouldn't come back at all.
- Now that we've established this, Geno and Chocobo NOT returning with Hero looks even more suspicious. It's still the only pack released to not come with any returning costumes. For someone like Heihachi, it makes sense for him to get moved. Terry already had two returning fighting costumes, ARMS is another fighting game, Namco even helped work on ARMS, he slots into the pack nicely. Meanwhile we have the perfect slot for both Square costumes to come back and they didn't show up. The question is, where did they get moved to? Keep in mind Hero released at the end of July, before they even announced more DLC, so whoever they did get moved to has to have been one of the first characters decided. And given they still didn't show up with Min-Min, I think you get the idea.
- The fact that it's Heihachi that's returned raises some interesting eyebrows. I don't know about you guys, but I think pretty much everyone was anticipating the missing Namco costumes to return with a presumed Namco rep in Pass 2, yet here he is at the very start. If they were doing a Namco pack, wouldn't it make sense for them to hold onto him to be released alongside the character? I feel like this hurts Namco's chances quite a bit.
- "Well why hold onto the costumes at all then?" Padding for later packs I suppose, just like we saw today with Heihachi. I don't anticipate this happenning with the Square costumes because of what I said earlier but I'm less confident in the other two sets of company costumes holding as much weight in terms of characters being added.
To be fair, I've thought about this... and I've concluded that Mii costume waves are determined by Sakurai and the team playing darts. All the mii costumes are actually done, so they use competition to see who survives and who doesn't/
Heihachi? He's coming with Min-Min.
Lloyd/Gil? Totally a mii costumes for a Master Chief playable character.
Monster Hunter? Going to be a mii costume for the likes of Arle, totally.
Geno? Totally going to be a mii costume for Travis Touchdown
Chocobo? I dunno, but I think it would make sense for it to come with a playable Qbert.
To be serious, I've given up on mii costumes making any real sense now. There's pretty much no "theme" accompanying a character anymore, and they've shown that they're willing to delay costumes to unrelated fighter packs. Geno, Lloyd, Monster Hunter are all likely to be playable just because their mii costumes haven't returned yet, but who knows maybe they have really bad luck and get costumed incredibly late. I'm pretty sure Sakurai likes Heihachi considering that he was thinking of making him playable in Smash 4, but even he wasn't safe from the delay-deconfirmation.
Downplaying the Heihachi delay isn't really good. Sure, Terry already had a couple returning mii costumes, but lets be honest no one was really expecting Akira or Jacky to be playable, besides it's not like they couldn't have fit Heihachi in there too, considering we have had 6 mii costumes in the same wave before. Sure
technically ARMS fits, but how would you feel if FP 7 turns out to be Paper Mario and he comes with a Geno costume? Sure,
technically it works; but it's still a **** move to delay him if he's just going to turn out to be a mii costume especially if we don't end up with a Namco rep.
Thankfully, if everything follows
expectations we should continue to get at the very least 1-2 returning costumes every pack or so. And by the time FP 8 rolls around, most of these costumes should have returned or straight up have been upgraded (or heavily implied to have been upgraded).
So overall unless something like the Geno mii costume returns, I'll just stop thinking about the suspicions of a missing mii costume entirely. Geno, Lloyd, Monster Hunter are all in good spots, but I'm not going to count a missing mii costume as a huge point FOR them anymore but rather as proof that they're just still on the table. They all have good points supporting them, without even making missing mii costumes a huge deal.
-Geno naturally has extremely high fan demand and a lot of other things in his favor. He doesn't really need anything else to have a shot.
-Tales is the one of the few big JRPGS left in Japan, that's enough to justify the fact that they can get a rep for Tales. Now the question is if that rep will be --Lloyd, but he's definitely high up there.
-Monster Hunter is well, it's MONSTER HUNTER. It's Capcom's biggest series currently and that's saying
a lot. I don't really need to explain myself anymore, even if I think MH is more about the monsters rather then the Hunters. Still a valid option.
-Chocobo, I guess another FF rep would capture a lot of the
general audience; but I think a lot of Smash fans would be a little upset. Regardless, as a
gaming franchise, FF is probably the biggest 3rd party series in Smash (Sonic is bigger in terms of overall entertainment). Sure, it already has a rep; but FF is high up there for a 3rd party series that is justifiably big enough for 2 reps. That said, I don't think Chocobo would be that second rep.
I doubt that we'll get all of them playable, but I wouldn't be surprised if we walked away with 2 of the above as playable characters in Smash. Not counting potential leaks, I think they're all in the same likelihood of being playable; each one has their own strengths and weakness of what they bring to the table. I would put Heihachi up there too, but he's kinda dead at this point.
inb4
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Worth noting the guy who fought during the Ness glitch said it was during the whole game. He saved a replay and when he opened it, the eyes were back for some reason.
I try to stop doing Lloyd vs Yuri posts now (because I like them both). But I will still die on the hill that the best possible Tales rep would be a combination of Yuri and Repede. The most popular Tales character, and his doggo (most popular mascot); when people see that you CAN pet the dog (and that it helps you in battle), I doubt people would complain that he only wields a single sword.
