On a serious note I have been hearing so many rumors of a DQ character getting in as the square rep alongside possibly Sora from kingdom hearts given that relevance of KH 3. Do you guys think Geno will still be the one to make it having to face these two titans?
This has been discussed ad nauseam these last couple weeks, but here’s the largest points.
In general:
-Vergeben claims that the Square character will be the first revealed, and others back him up.
-Multiple less credible leakers have specified an announcement at the VGAs, the night before the game’s launch.
Against DQ:
-The series, while basically being a cultural phenomenon in Japan, never really got popular at all in Western countries.
-Even with said Japanese popularity, the idea of “DQ in Smash” hasn’t exactly been too popular or well-requested over there, let alone worldwide.
-If the claims about the Square character starting off the pack are true, then the two leading DQ choices are either “another generic enemy” or “another anime swordsman”, both of which would be quite controversial, especially among Western audiences.
-DQXI
is coming to Switch, but the release has a non-specific timeframe of “sometime next year” and hasn’t been announced for anywhere but Japan. Kind of clashes with the idea that the DQ character would be the first one announced, instead of closer to the port’s launch.
-DQ’s composer is generally unpleasant to deal with, to say the least. Not only does he have some
particular views that essentially make him bad PR to even negotiate with in the first place, he’s insanely stingy and obsessive when it comes to the Western world hearing his music, most notably leaving Western releases of DQXI with
MIDI versions of the incredible orchestrated tracks from Japanese copies.
-Dragon Quest is partly owned by Armor Project, who Square would have to share DLC profits with, something that they might not exactly want to do.
Against Sora:
-Sora is not actually owned by Square in any way, Disney owns him 100%.
-Sora being announced as the first DLC would throw a giant wrench into KH3’s marketing plans, as it would cause confusion from casual audiences over whether the game was coming to Switch or not a literal month before release.
-With Cloud, you had a Playstation-centered character that served as a mascot for a series with a long-standing Nintendo history, including many 3DS releases. Kingdom Hearts, on the other hand, has largely moved on from Nintendo platforms, with the titles that used to be only on their systems recently remastered exclusively for Playstation platforms with no intention to bring them anywhere else.
-The first Smash DLC directly tying into and advertising an imminent release that is only coming to competing platforms because theirs can’t actually run it would be an... interesting move on Nintendo’s part, and one that they probably want to avoid.
-The one time that Sora cameo’d in a non-KH game was as bonus DLC for World of Final Fantasy, which was only available for the first month of the game’s release and then disappeared
forever, which could certainly cause its own kind of issue since Smash DLC would obviously have to be quite permanent.
For Geno:
-I’ll skip over the whole “he’s got a sizable following of Smash fans/that one interview/his Mii Costume” stuff, you’re likely well aware of all that.
-We’ve seen roughly 85% of all the Spirits in the game, and he hasn’t shown up as one yet. He
has shown up as an “online battle token”, but those have been confirmed to be an entirely separate thing, and not directly sourced from your Spirit collection.
-Said online battle token has not actually been seen in any sort of direct footage, instead being part of the given screenshot for one of the online modes on the menu(notably attached to a Shulk player if you want to get a bit tin-foily about it). No actual footage of the token in use exists.
-One of our users here, PolarPanda, has a friend who has friends that work at NOA, who have leaked Smash-related info before that has turned out to be true with a 100% success rate. They’ve claimed that there’s an ongoing rumor at NOA that says Geno’s in a playable state already, as DLC.
-Recent reports have painted Square as quite hard to work with, with Cloud actually being the
final returning character confirmed for the base game due to issues negotiating. Nintendo already has the rights to use Geno for Smash, making negotiations for him as DLC far less of an issue than any other Square character.
-Jon from GX, who regularly makes
insanely specific “predictions” that regularly come true, has been recently quite adamant about Geno being the first DLC.
Additional notes:
-Unlike Smash 4, Ultimate has a blind five-character pass on offer for $25. This makes the first reveal that much more important, as it “sets the tone” of said pass.
-Starting off with Sora or a DQ rep, while definitely selling a
bunch of individual $5.99 DLCs, would most likely not sell as many full passes as a fan-favorite character would, whether Geno or otherwise. A fan-favorite request would raise hopes that “your Smash request” got in, compared to Sora and DQ indicating a more “mass-market” sort of approach that could actually serve to turn people off from buying in blindly.
That’s about every big point that I can think of, now you’re caught up with the last two weeks or so.
