CopperKoopa
Smash Journeyman
- Joined
- Jan 21, 2014
- Messages
- 266
It has been a theory going back to Byleth that the 2nd Fighter Pass got shuffled around. There was a supposed leak about it on 2chan that spread around and then was quickly forgotten. You can go either way with it, as there's certainly evidence to support either side of the argument.
What we DO know is that all the FP1 characters were decided before the launch of base game (which explains Erdrick/Banjo rumors from back then) and all of their "Sakurai Presents" videos were filmed a few months before their release. This has held true for Steve and Min Min as well, actually. FP2 was decided during E3 2019, but it includes a character that had been in talks for nearly 5 years (Steve). It's very possible that the two DLC passes bled into one another and things were shuffled around to work with scheduling. Even prior to Covid, Byleth was delayed from Dec to January (though FP1 was always meant to be released by the end of that Jan 2019). We also know that Min Min was delayed (from April until June of 2020, apparently) and they knew this was happening at latest by March of this year. Steve was developed entirely during quarantine (so all within this year). He could have been moved forward in order to satisfy the "hype" hunger. Also, Hero was delayed for "playtesting" and Joker was revealed before he even had a working model. It's totally possible even those two were swapped, which again might explain all the DQ rumors from before launch. We also know that Sakurai's team ran into difficulties with negotiations for licensing due to Covid, so it's likely one or more characters had to be put on the back burner until they could get approval/feedback. Who knows!
What sucks is that Sakurai (and Nintendo in general) are so tightlipped (and kind of smug) about how everything works in-house development wise, so we'll likely never know. The only games they ever really divulge good dirt about are the Zelda games and Mario, but even those are often dumped on us in expositions with little or no explanation. How long did it take us to learn about the split timelines, which they apparently had developed the series around since Ocarina? God... I remember those internet forum wars. Different time, bros.
EDIT: Another thing I just recalled was that Nintendo decides when to reveal and release characters, not Sakurai. He has gone on record saying this, and it explains a couple oddities about the DLC. For one, Joker was revealed prior to having an in-game model and the wait to see what his gameplay was painful. Secondly, Terry was revealed in a September Direct (alongside FP2) with hardly any footage. Sakurai eventually showed off both characters, of course, but you could assume from both of these instances that Nintendo's "timeline" was being hard-followed and Sakurai was not quite on track to meet those goals. Someone could always come around and say maybe Nintendo always intended to make the wait for Joker suspenseful or have Terry's reveal seem like a "sneak peek," but you never know with these things. The lack of them having full gameplay trailers was odd considering every other fighter got one. Connecting this back to our current situation, it's entirely possible Nintendo has a timeline that Sakurai and his team are now ahead of schedule on. There's no way they're just kicking back and taking their time to develop the last 4 fighters + content; they absolutely have another character in the can, ready to go and waiting for Nintendo to reveal it. I mean, why else would the Sakurai Presents videos be filmed months in advance (or back to back, like with Banjo and Hero)? And why else would characters like Min Min or Byleth have odd 1 or 2 week delays following their presentations, when other characters had faster turnarounds? It must all be Nintendo's final word, not Sakurai's. Not only does somebody out there know the last 4 characters, but I would bet you actual money that playtesters have played near-complete versions of 1 if not 2 of them by now and the Sakurai Presents 100% was already filmed, waiting for Nintendo to drop it. Wtf is going on at that company I will never know (yes, I'm impatient and want the DLC yesterday, but c'mon... the wait for this Fighter's Pass has killed all hype for this game. You know it, I know it, they know it. So what are they waiting for???)
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