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I suppose that's true, yeah. Looking at the article and how they brought it up alongside Pokémon Let's Go, too, makes me wonder if this is just marketing talk and not specifically DLC. One thing that gives me hope is that they 'want Smash to sell for a long time'. It gives me hope for further DLC down the line.
Yeah I didn't see Decidueye's standing on that poll so I went based off Pokemon Sun/Moon and US/UM where no one really plays him or talks about him anymore. I had figured that Incineroar's inclusion would have petered out the Smash fanbase but I was apparently wrong, which is totally fine.
being only subjectively good. His playstyle is something that has never been incorporated in Smash despite it being so a long-running series, and thus the inclusion of a true grappler has given more variety to Smash and that is objectively a good thing. Keep in mind I'm referring to JUST his inclusion and the variety he brings, not whether he is top tier or anything else outside of what he offers as a different playstyle.'s inclusion was a crazy-ass reveal. She was 'too sexy for Smash' yet everyone was talking about her and she was still supported and desired, but Sakurai made it work. She was the Ridley before Ridley of making a character that clearly couldn't work because of their basic premise. Many MANY people lost their minds at her announcement and it was a huge announcement indeed. Other fanbases of other characters being upset really doesn't matter in this one instance because fans get upset whenever another character other than their's makes the cut.
Firox
you'll probably want to step out on this one, considering how you dislike long-winded posts and how we can hardly ever seem to see eye-to-eye.
I mean, that last paragraph sounds a little bit like Nintendo of old you're talking about when you're talking about mature library of games. The Switch has largely done a lot to counteract that notion with releases like DOOM, Mortal Kombat 11, Saints Row The Third, Dark Souls Remastered, Skyrim, etc. There's a very sizable number of AAA titles from last generation showing up in all shapes and sizes, and more developers keep flocking to the system. There's plenty of reason to buy a Switch given the actually decent third party support the system has seen across all ages and also the fact that it just simply has some of the best titles of the past few years with the likes of Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, and Ultimate. That attracts people across all demographics. Plus it does something interesting with the absolute achievement of console quality on the go, so I don't think Nintendo is shooting themselves in the foot by appealing to those gamers at all. They aren't competing with Sony and Microsoft because the Switch can't do the latest AAA games, but it can do basically everything else and a number of Nintendo first party titles have upstaged even the big exclusives on other consoles. Despite its shortcoming, the Switch is doing incredibly well sales wise and it makes complete sense for Nintendo to continue to push for a wider audience.
I'm so happy I waited for the Gen 7 final evolutions. I was going to go with Popplio, but it lost me at the next evolution; in fact, they all did. I never had the urge to go for Rowlet or Litten. Once the final Gen 7 starters were revealed on YouTube, I saw a ghost-owl merged with robin hood, and it shoots arrows with its wings... Decidueye got me the most, and so I chose Rowlet. I was absolutely disappointed with Popplio and Litten's final evolutions. I remember getting Pokémon Moon the day it came out... oh, I couldn't wait to get Decidueye. I don't know if I'm the only one seeing this, but Decidueye looks a lot like a Final Fantasy character, and I think it's pretty neat.
Wow, these disrespectful burns... I guess you could say Incineroar got...
EricTheGamerman
is right, and I'd quote him right now if mobile wasn't being such a huge jerk. Sorry about earlier. This cold's got me all kinds of miserable, but I really should have been more rational regardless. I'm gonna take a step back until I'm well again. 
lol Thanks for the heads up. I don't really mind it if you have a lot to say, as long you aren't attacking me directly. In fact, if you wanna go after Erdrick, be my guest. I'm all for improving Geno's chances if that means discrediting Erdrick "leaks" and such. Just remember that the key to any good argument is evidence. Otherwise all you good work will be for naught.
What is this image you are talking about?
Same. I've been waiting all day.I'm still wondering whatForsakenM 's big post is going to be
I bet you were the kid in school that always went past the maximum pages on an essay just to make the rest of the class look bad because they barely were hitting the minimum.
Funnily enough, I was about to say that I might have to tag you in for this, since this is something you have argued against for a hot while now. I seriously can never understand why people actually think Square is the problem with it all. It's clearly bias, as most of us here love Nintendo and are wonderfully amazed by Sakurai, so CLEARLY neither of these entities could be a fault and thus it HAS to be Square! This is not a logical approach, it is an emotional one that feeds into the bias of Square being a mean company. This is why I said thatI'm going to have to agree with
Verde Coeden Scalesworth
was letting his judgmental nature cloud his statement.
was released on Famicom/NES
Whoa, hold up! Dixie being an echo is a horrible idea. semi-clone at best or she wouldn't be true to her character. She doesn't pick up people with her hands, she uses her hair. She throws with her hair. Her style is mostly centered around her hair and she doesn’t use a gun like Diddy. Making her an echo like Chrom would be going against her character and it would be better for her to be a semi-clone and have many a move function differently while having a good chunck pulled from Diddy.
Now that, THAT is the one that I cannot WAIT for. Will read this post when I get the chance, my man.
Very impressive workAlright guys, here is that big *** post I promised and talked up. I split it off into different spoilers that accurately define that topic behind them. This is so that people who aren't interested in reading the big wall of texts but are interested in my replies can do so. Even so, the middle two topics are VERY long so I warn you before diving into them. Hopefully I did a good enough job separating and formatting them so that it doesn't all just blur together and has some sort of fun and flare, though Smashboard definitely is not Word Online or Google Docs in when it comes to fancier options.
I hope you enjoy it. Also, if you did enjoy it and would like more (god I sound like a typical YouTuber phoning it in right now, jesus) or really liked the documents that were made up by others, please let me know. I know of more documents made up like that and I'm even working on one right now that covers everything one would need to know to be introduced to Geno and his pros and cons for Smash Ultimate. It will have the same amount of effort and even more love put into it than this did.
Have fun reading! :D
--------------------------------------------------------------Funnily enough, I was about to say that I might have to tag you in for this, since this is something you have argued against for a hot while now. I seriously can never understand why people actually think Square is the problem with it all. It's clearly bias, as most of us here love Nintendo and are wonderfully amazed by Sakurai, so CLEARLY neither of these entities could be a fault and thus it HAS to be Square! This is not a logical approach, it is an emotional one that feeds into the bias of Square being a mean company. This is why I said that
------------------------------------------------------------------Now on the opposite coin of what Eric thinks, I'm going to address something: referring to 'Erdrick' from Dragon Quest III as 'the most likely' or 'the front runner' for a Square rep for DLC. This irritates me to no end because it is a statement that is widely accepted despite not only incorrectly displaying the Fighter's Pass situation, but it incorrectly displays Dragon Quest III and Dragon Quest as a whole in terms of its competition.
First off, Square is not guaranteed another rep and there has been zero evidence to come out that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Square is getting another rep in Smash Ultimate. Thus, if you act as if 'Erdrick' from Dragon Quest III is a 'front-runner' then you have already assumed the stance that Square Enix is getting another rep as DLC and that assumption is baseless. This is not the foundation of an argument, it is pure speculation, and thus holds no weight. This is fine for speculation, but many people (including bigger names on bigger media) are phrasing this in a way that makes it sound like another Square rep is already predetermined just like so many 'Erdrick fans' are claiming the character is already confirmed despite having no evidence at all.
Now, onto the issues with Erdrick being referred to as a 'front-runner.' Before we get started, I would like to show you an image that is a shining symbol of the issue of debating about Erdrick.
![]()
First off, as a minor anecdote, I would like to point out that the latter half of this picture is a perfect representation of trying to debate against anyone who was convinced 'Erdrick' from Dragon Quest III was already in the Fighter's Pass from within PapaGeno's leak speculation section on Discord. No matter how solid or well-constructed or polite your argument was, turning your argument into a variation of one of those so as to mock your point and make you look like an idiot was all they ever did and they felt it was good enough to win the debate, however they got bonus points towards being irritable by incorporating ad hominems and grouping up together to bring up things outside the argument and personal to get a rising response out of you and thereby 'win' the argument. If this sounds rather annoying and immature, make no mistake it was, but keep in mind these are people who are now saying that the reveal of Arsene's codename being 'Doyle' isn't really a codename but is an inside joke and thus is irrelevant and thus 'Brave' is still 'Erdrick' 100%.
I see this image as having the same problems as that 'QUIT HAVING FUN!' image when pertaining to objectively bad games (yes, something can be bad
objectively, please do not come at me with this philosophical mindset: I'm not talking about how you feel about something, I'm talking about the game on it's own merits.) With the 'QUIT HAVING FUN!' image, it's not that we do not want others to have fun with what they choose, but that we want them to have enough critical thinking to realize that just because they are enjoying it doesn't mean it's a good game and that monetary support of such a product will show companies that you will continue to pay for poor quality content. In essence, people like myself are trying to help others realize that the game they are having fun with could have been substantially better and that their own bias is preventing them from obtaining that.
Similarly, this image misconstrues the opposition: it is suggesting that those who support 'Erdrick' from Dragon Quest III being DLC for Smash Ultimate are logical within their reasoning and 'evidence' to support this reasoning but that those who disagree are illogical, have poor 'evidence', and perhaps are uneducated. This couldn't be further from the truth.
Let us tackle each argument individually, starting with the so-called 'correct' argument.
"Dragon Quest has the perfect mix of historical relevance, sales and Nintendo presence to be DLC."
First off, there is already some bias/weak terminology here in the word 'perfect.' This would imply being completely flawless, that this combination of history, number of sales and presence on Nintendo platforms is SO divine that it guarantees their inclusion into Smash and there cannot possibly be a counterargument or any holes to point out. This is obviously incorrect as nothing man-made is perfect and there is always room from improvement, especially where debate and speculation is concerned as so much misinformation and assumption gets spread (which we are all guilty of, including myself).
So the first thing this argument mentions is historical relevance, which anyone who does a small amount of research can confirm: the first Dragon Quest released in 1986 on the NES, so it’s been around for a while (33 years to be more exact) and has had semi-consistent releases to this day. However, by historical relevance, what most people are referring to is Dragon Quest III: Seeds of Salvation in which this game introduced the job/class system that is very much well known nowadays which would make it the granddaddy of most RPGs in that sense.
This is definitely NOTHING to sneeze at, as it broke Japan the day it was released and is the founder of a system now taken for granted and is nearly a requirement for the genre. However, there are some counterpoints to be brought up.
--------------------
First off, having a game history like this is impressive, but isn’t relevant for Smash. Characters with much less history have been included and those with more have been included, but it’s less the history itself and more the legacy it left on gaming. To clarify, characters for 3rd Party are chosen not for how long they have been around, but for their cultural impact on gaming mixed with fan request.
Secondly, Dragon Quest was NOT the first RPG to ever exist. In fact, it’s creation was sparked by a trip to the US and Yuji Horii experiencing both the Wizardry series and Ultima, then taking that influence and making his own vision from it. (Just to note that it’s not only interesting to see that the US was a major influence for the creation of one of Japan’s biggest hits in gaming, but also more proof of ‘no original ideas exist’ yet still managing to make success of an idea by making it your own...just a little encouragement for creative types out there.)
This means that Dragon Quest’s only claim to cultural impact, other than being huge in Japan, is that Dragon Quest III invented the first job/class system ever. That’s pretty big, but it’s only one criteria of a claim to fame and it was in 1988. Since then Dragon Quest hasn’t strayed from it’s formula (aside for graphical advances) for 31 years! It hasn’t tried anything new or risked anything to try and advance the RPG genre...it’s just stuck with the ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ method...which is one of the things that hurts it overseas, but that’s another topic. Essentially, the historical relevance is inventing what is now a common mechanic in RPGs and nothing else, while there are many others franchises out there that have done more to impact gaming.
Once again, this isn’t to sneeze at, just merely pointing out that there really isn’t a “perfect historical relevance” here: just one big deal in 1988 and not much afterwards.
---------------------
The next argument is the sales and I’m sure we all know this, but sales DO NOT MATTER! A game selling well doesn’t mean it will be a lock for Smash, and a game selling poorly doesn’t mean it would never get into Smash. I mean, CoD sells ridiculous amounts of copies all the time, but the the idea of a character from CoD making it to Smash is never seriously discussed despite discussion of Master Chief and Doomguy. On the other end, do you think that Ice Climbers broke records in sales? It’s the 43rd best-selling game on the NES and was never seen again until Melee! Excitebike was considered and was the 9th best-selling game on the NES, but they went with Ice Climbers. Roy’s game didn’t even release yet and never did in the West, so it definitely wasn’t sales for him. High sales is usually a result of people liking your game, normally because it’s a good game, but it’s the fan request and culture impact that determines a character’s possibility...not the number of sales.
Finally, the last argument: Nintendo presence. Well, it think it’s easy to say that Dragon Quest has mostly been on Nintendo platforms, but let us actually look at this by installment-
- Dragon Quest released on Famicom/NES
- Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line (huh, the title Luminary has been used prior to DQXI, just like Erdrick...interesting :think
- Dragon Quest III: Seeds of Salvation was released on Famicom/NES
- Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen was released for Famicom/NES
- Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride was released for the Super Famicom in 1992, the Playstation remake in 2004, but the West wouldn’t see it localized until 2009 on the Nintendo DS. It has also gotten a world-wide Android/IOS version since 2015. (Side note, this is the beginning of the show where NA doesn’t get the games for eons afterwards, and frankly whatever reason that was has done nothing but hurt it’s chances for success over here. More than likely it has something to do with the Square Soft and Enix merger as well as the fallout between Square and Nintendo, but we really don’t know all the details.)
- Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation came out on the Super Famicom in 1995 but wouldn’t see Western localization until it’s Nintendo DS remake in 2011. Also got an Android/IOS release in 2015.
- Dragon Quest VII came out on Playstation in 2000, hitting the West in 2001, this is of course during the time period in which Square Enix and Nintendo were not on friendly terms. It got a remake on Nintendo 3DS in 2013 but the West wouldn’t see that until 2016. Also a release on Android/IOS in Japan in 2015.
- Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King released on Playstation 2 in 2004, seeing Western release in 2005. It got a world-wide Android/IOS release in 2015 and a Nintendo 3DS remake in 2015 that the West wouldn’t see until 2017.
- Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies released on Nintendo DS in 2009, hitting the West in 2010. This title was the best-selling in the series in the West up until Dragon Quest XI and has very high reviews across the board. The idea of it hitting Nintendo consoles in the West as shortly after release in Japan as it did seems to have done it well in addition to being a really good game...that and the marketing campaign done by Nintendo was insane (I’ll go into that later, just a point to bring up against those arguing ‘Nintendo is pushing DQ super-hard right now!’).
- Dragon Quest X is...boy it’s something. It was an MMORPG but it never made it to the West, seeing releases and updated versions for the Wii, WiiU, Microsoft Windows, PS4 and Switch. The original came out on the Wii in 2012 and the lastest release was on WiiU, Windows, PS4, and Switch in 2017. It apparently didn’t do that well, though whether it was actually a flop or Square’s ambitions and standards were set too high is a bit of an argument to be had.
- Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age has had an interesting release cycle. APPARENTLY it originally released on the Nintendo 3DS (man, I wonder how it runs...) and the Playstation 4 in 2017, but got Western release on the Playstation 4 at the same time as it’s release on Steam AND now we have that ‘definitive edition’ coming to Switch later this year.
Now of course this isn’t including spin-offs, which have presence on many different consoles with still many on Nintendo consoles, but I think you get this idea: even WITH that messy era of separation, most of Dragon Quest’s history is on Nintendo and that which wasn’t was eventually put on it. Of course, Nintendo presence doesn’t matter solely for inclusion.
Let’s look at Cloud. Cloud himself as a character was never on a Nintendo console in the form of his own game, only some minor spin-offs much later. Yet, as the biggest face of Final Fantasy in terms of cultural impact and fan demand, he was the obvious choice. They could have picked one of the characters that were from a Nintendo release, but Sakurai picked Cloud because he knew who was the best pick. Joker also doesn’t have his main game on a Nintendo console, only spin-offs (including that new Persona Warriors game announcement), yet Sakurai knew it would be a good choice and went with it. Looking at some older characters that have a very old and brief history with Nintendo, you’ve got basically every retro rep: none of them has any current presence with Nintendo as they were all dead franchises, yet we still have Ice Climbers, Mr. Game and Watch, Little Mac and Duck Hunt. Bayonetta just recently had Nintendo presence, yet she was also included. Also, other than a couple of titles, this ‘Nintendo presence’ for Dragon Quest is mostly in Japan and somewhat elsewhere, all outside the West mostly.
I hope you guys are seeing the trend here, but we still have the ‘mocked counterarguments’ portion to go through.
These mock-versions of arguments are all jumbled, as some are more against “Erdrick” while others are against Dragon Quest as a whole, but I will tackle them in order of appearance.
The first argument here is against “Erdrick” in particular, as in DQ3 “Erdrick”. Essentially, because the character himself hasn’t been in a new game focusing on him since 1988, thus he’s forgotten and can no longer be considered for Smash. While this isn’t really the argument being made, I can’t deny that “Erdrick” from DQ3 returning in a new game focused on him would be good for him if it was well received, however what’s more important here is to break apart the real counterargument and the points that the Dragon Quest supporters are trying to make here.
First, the Pro-Erdrick point here: he doesn’t need to be in a new game centered around him to be considered for Smash.
This is completely true: look at the majority of the fan-requested characters that made it into Ultimate. Not only were they not the focus of recent titles or even the old titles in some cases, but also most of them were not in recent titles and had been lost to the past. Yet, via cultural impact and fan demand, here they are. The same is entirely true and possible for “Erdrick” from DQ3.
The Counterpoint is better explained as such: is “Erdrick” from DQ3 still the best pick to represent Dragon Quest? The character hasn’t been very prominent in titles recently, and we’ve even seen that that title “Erdrick” has belonged to multiple persons and belonged to persons before the protagonist of DQ3.
See, Dragon Quest as a narrative (as far as I can tell) has all taken place on the same ‘world’ or ‘kingdoms’, or better said the same exact setting with all the stories tying into the same narrative to be a long-running history of the world of the games. Whereas Final Fantasy is all self-contained separate stories (barring same-numbered sequels), Dragon Quest has a sprawling story that spans generations all in the same world, connecting places and names and people and plotlines. With Final Fantasy, it was easy: Cloud is the biggest face of them all, pick him. With Dragon Quest there is more nuance: “Erdrick” is a prominent figure in history who did an amazing deed to save the world, but he’s not the only one to have the title “Erdrick” nor to have done great deeds for the world, so who do you pick?
Do you lean on relevance to the story, which could easily be “Erdrick” from DQ3? Do you go with recent relevance and pick Luminary from DQXI? Do you go with world-wide recognition, which could end you up with Slime? Do you go with fan demand and end up with someone else from one of the other games like Eighter? Keep in mind, this is all outside of programming and design and movesets: this is just the planning stage, and there is already a lot of nuance and big decisions to make. Also, how relevant IS “Erdrick” to the lore? The title itself is a big deal, as is the iconic sword, shield, and even the armor...but what about specifically the protagonist from DQ3? In light of everything that has happened in the series to date, is he still relevant? With the references made to him in other titles, he could be, but it also could just be a nice little nod like we here see a lot with SMRPG and fear: just a cute acknowledgement, nothing else meant behind it.
The next argument is acting as if people think the character is “bad” because they were ‘leaked.’ No one is making that argument, as the quality of a character could never be determined by whether someone leaked them or not, but once again let find the actual arguments.
Pro-Erdrick: Just because the character was ‘leaked’ doesn’t mean they are definitely not in because ‘you can’t trust leakers’ and those leakers who have been discredited recently can still be correct about his inclusion.
I THINK this is the argument, it’s kind of hard to really decipher anything from what is clearly immature whining, but rather than break this down I will list the counterpoint and it will become clear the issue with this.
Counterpoint: Just because the character was ‘leaked’ doesn’t mean they are definitely in the game because ‘you can’t trust leakers’ and those leakers have been discredited recently, so they can be incorrect about his inclusion.
Do you see what I did there? Do you see what is wrong here? As I’ve tried hundreds of times to state, a leaker saying a character is in with no condemning proof is not justification or evidence for a character just as it isn’t weight against that character. Simply put, what a leaker says is nothing but speculation and can never be solid enough a platform to stand on to make an argument either way, making it a moot point and worthless to bring up no matter whether you are arguing for or against the character. Just leave the leakers out of the equation entirely unless they show damning evidence other than ‘Trust me on this one guys!’
This third argument is essentially saying that personal lack of knowledge of a character or franchise isn’t a solid argument, which is true, but it’s distorting the actual argument on both sides. Allow me to translate bull****-ese into English.
Pro-Dragon Quest: It was one of the most-popular NES franchises back in it’s day and has major significance because of that. Just because you don’t know about that or don’t care doesn’t make it less true or relevant.
Now you may notice that I changed this argument from ‘2nd-most-selling-NES franchise’ to ‘one of the most popular NES franchises’ and there is a reason for that: technically, Dragon Quest is at best third or fourth because both Mario and Legend of Zelda are franchises that sold more on the NES. Then you have games like Tetris and Dr. Mario and others who had some games later on other systems, so if we are talking STRICTLY franchises that had multiple entries on the NES then Dragon Quest becomes the 3rd-best, but franchises that exist outside the NES is a category that drops it further down the ladder. Regardless there is some truth to this argument as, of course, just because you don’t know something or choose to not care and act as if it doesn’t matter or exist, if it is true and does exist...it still exists. Not much with this argument, but on with the counterpoint.
Counterpoint: Many people are not aware of the character’s existence due to time passing, the franchise never becoming big in the West until later titles, and essential cultural differences. We aren’t saying that “Erdrick” isn’t relevant, but rather that he is largely unknown in the West which should be taken into consideration.
This is the actual argument being made: “Erdrick” is not a big name over here in the US or in the West in general. Now sure, our knowledge of him (or lack thereof) won’t be the sole factor in whether or not he was picked as a character, but when you are trying to make money it’s generally a good idea to know your audience and give them something they would want. For the Western Smash fans, “Erdrick” from DQ3 really doesn’t fit the bill as much as other names like Banjo-Kazooie or Rayman or Sora, considering that Dragon Quest as a whole hasn’t really been on our radar. For Japan alone it is a pretty good pick, but world-wide? Once again, this is a planning issue that needs to be thought about way before design ever happens. Is it worth less sales and backlash to take that chance? Could this be what makes Dragon Quest big in the West? Man, lots of big decisions to make by Nintendo and Sakurai before they even contact the companies of the characters, imagine having that responsibility on your shoulders!
This next one really just is someone who is upset about people bringing up the negative qualities of a core developer on the game they like. Sorry, these things are true, get over it and realize that people who make things you love can still be either really horrible people or, on the lesser end, just do things you don’t like or disagree with. It’s called ‘separating the art from the artist’ and if you can’t do that, that’s fine...but don’t deny facts. I digress, there is still something to be found here.
Pro-Dragon Quest: Just because Koichi Sugiyama has said and believes some horrible things doesn’t mean Nintendo will not work with him.
This is in fact very true and frankly, if I’m correct, Nintendo has already worked with people us in the West would find questionable. Even if this is not true, Japan’s culture is totally different from ours and they are not all about this crazy outrage culture that has taken over our nation. Things that would make us stop associating with someone or would make a company fire/not work with a person ever again are not the same there, as shown multiple times recently. His beliefs and claims have NOTHING to do with his skill and position. However, the counterpoint brings up some interesting things to ponder.
The Counterpoint: While it may not stop Nintendo from working with him, his beliefs could stop him from working with Nintendo on this project. Also, if this information went public in the US after getting a Dragon Quest character for DLC in Smash, there could be outrage that would lead to decisions needing to be made. More importantly, situations revolving around Sugiyama and the companies that have rights over his music could lead to getting only Midi tracks instead of orchestral for Ultimate, and that would not fly well over here in the West, and similarly with Sakurai’s determination to provide only the best it could prevent Dragon Quest from being in the Fighter’s Pass.
These are all arguments I think should be more heavily considered. While I think any bad press Smash might get in regards to Sugiyama could easily be negligible with nothing coming of it (I mean, Dragon Quest has had controversy over certain sexual issues in the past), the more important factor is Sugiyama and his issues with his music being in Western hands. See he has some issues with that, and while these issues seem to have been somewhat resolved in regards to the latest version of DQXI...Smash Ultimate is a totally different beast. Sugiyama wouldn’t be the shining star, he would be part of the constellation that is Smash Ultimate and that combined with the heavy catering to the Western audience could lead him to not want to work with them. That aside, before that even comes up as a problem, having to work with the companies surrounding Sugiyama could be a huge road block and apparently have been a roadblock in the past in terms of getting those quality tracks worthy of the Fighter’s Pass.
This last one isn’t really much of an argument because, as I’ve established earlier, sales ultimately do not matter in terms of character consideration. However, there is still an argument of sorts here.
Pro-Dragon Quest: A game doesn’t have to be big in the West to be considered for Smash.This...this is just true. In the past, character choices have been made that clearly show that being big or even known about at all in the West is not a deciding factor. Ness could be argued about considering how Earthbound was not well-received in the West and it’s likely many kids didn’t know who he was when they unlocked him in Smash Bros. for Nintendo 64, but Marth, Roy and Lucas most definitely fall under this as proof. Corrin/Kamui is another arguable one as the game was not even released in the West yet but it had been in Japan for a hot minute so it could have been a mix of advertising and Japanese fan catering. The Counterpoint brings up a good point though.
Counterpoint: Keeping into consideration what Western fans have been requesting and what would succeed in the West is important as well and, other than fairness and balance, Western appeal is more important in terms of sales as most of Smash Bros. sales come from the West.
Now of course I believe that there should be balance in fan requests, both having off-the-wall picks from Sakurai like Piranha Plant but also picks that just weren’t really requested heavily like Incineroar or Isabelle. This balance is what makes Smash so awesome: between big names and fan picks and off-the-wall choices and unlikely entries, everyone gets something they love at the end and it makes Smash so dope that it’s hard not to like it.
However, we have no idea what Nintendo values as important. Normally, they are a ‘bigger picture’ company in terms of profits, but DLC could be approached differently. Most of Ultimate’s reveals have catered to Western audiences or to characters that have been demanded by both West and East. Joker is another example of West and East both liking the game and the character, so it was an easy pick. Now we know more than anyone that Smash LOVES to break it’s patterns the the rules fans lay out, however it never seems to do that within itself...by that I mean, each title breaks the rules in one or two ways and doesn’t stray from that or do more until the next title. We have no idea what Nintendo or Sakurai has in store for us, but don’t let DQ fans cloud your senses with their fluff: they know no more than the rest of us and have no more going for them than the rest of us bigger communities, and in some ways they have less.
----------------------------------------------------------------------Now this is the part of the show where I’m going to dig into the meat and potatoes of the generic arguments and reasons for believing that ‘Erdrick’ from Dragon Quest III: Seeds of Salvation is going to be in Smash Ultimate via the Fighter’s Pass. I’m doing this because so many people are clouded by this overwhelming opinion and truly seem to think that ‘Erdrick’ is the face of this giant wall called Dragon Quest that simply cannot be climbed...and I’m here to tell you that not only can it be climbed, but I’ll blast a hole through it for you.
“Erdrick has already been leaked, so he’s in the game. Vergeben heard his name most often and Tansut’s source confirmed he’s in. Just accept it.”
I will probably have this engraved on my tombstone, but LEAKERS HOLD NO WEIGHT IN AN ARGUMENT! Vergeben gave no evidence that this list was real and nothing more than a list he made up, and Tansut never gave us proof that his ‘source’ confirmed anything. Using the word of a leaker is like using eyewitness testimony in court: it’s unreliable and often completely faulty, requiring us to just listen and believe with nothing but their word to go on. For instance, Vergeben loves Dragon Quest and thus has a bias and has been proven to be completely incorrect on anything Smash since the base game dropped and so far since he’s been heavily wrong on anything Nintendo. Tansut has also been incorrect and his conversation with his ‘source’ shows that he has confirmation bias by taking a neutral situation and assuming it means something he wants it to mean to be correct rather than recognizing it was a completely neutral situation.
For your own sake, remember that unless they come out with real evidence, trust the word of a leaker no more than you would entertain the thoughts of children on how they think the world works.
“Brave is clearly Erdrick’s codename! It’s basically a direct translation, the connection is completely solid. Just give in.”
So unfortunately a lot of people really do believe this when all the actual evidence points in other directions, but the idea here is that since the word ‘Brave’ can translate to ‘Yuusha - 勇者’ which means ‘Hero’ and is not only the class of Dragon Quest III’s protagonist but also a term used in reference to his equipment, that it has to be ‘Erdrick’ as DLC. There are several issues with this, the biggest one being that all the previous codenames have been less direct.
The definition of ‘codename’ is ‘a word used for secrecy or convenience instead of the usual name.’ Now since we can easily rule out convenience as the reason since we know the general practices of Japanese game developers as well as how so far most of the names have been relative in simplicity to their codenames, it’s made apparent that the codenames in Smash Ultimate are used for secrecy. The idea here is to keep the identity of the character a secret from eyes and minds that shouldn’t known, whether that be other devs that do not have clearance or the common man digging where they aren’t wanted.
Now a quick argument about the codename ‘packu’ being a on-purpose corruption of ‘pakkun’ which then is a simple google search to Piranha Plant may be brought up, but dataminers did not have information on the game until after Piranha Plant was announced so hiding him in the code is no longer needed. Also, considering Piranha Plant was planned for base roster but they ran out of time, there would be no need to hide him in the code and no need at all for a codename, thus his name isn’t well ciphered yet still with other DLC characters in the datamine.
‘Jack’ was thought to be a number of different characters before Joker’s reveal, and can be tied to him via Jack Frost being a Persona he can summon as well as a card type in a deck of cards which the Joker is one as well. Both of these are not direct references to the character yet make sense when you figure it out, making it a decent codename. The same is true for Arsene, who’s codename is ‘Doyle’, which is a reference to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote Sherlock Holmes. Arsène Lupin is a fictional thief created by Maurice Leblanc who then tried to have his character interact with Sherlock Holmes, but after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle took some form of legal action, Arsène Lupin instead interacted with ‘Herlock Sholmes’. So the codename connection is made clear, yet it was still well-deciphered.
Thus with the effort put forth here to hide the identity in a cute yet well-ciphered manner thus far, it would make sense that ‘Brave’ is also a codename meant to hide the true identity of the next DLC character in the Fighter’s Pass. This would make no sense then if Erdrick is named after the English translation of the term the Japanese most often use to describe him and the literal name for him in DQ3: it’s way too easy for anyone to figure out! However, there is another issue, which is that ‘Yuusha’ or ‘Hero’ can refer to many different things.
First off, let’s get this out of the way: whoever the protagonist of a game is often ends up being the ‘hero’ of the world the game takes place in. This makes the idea of the translation pretty moot on it’s own as it can easily be a rather broad term. However if we look at ‘Hero’ as a class, then multiple characters from Dragon Quest as well Fire Emblem and likely other J/RPGs fall under this category, so even still it’s rather broad and doesn’t truly point out ‘Erdrick’ from DQ3 directly. This is without going into how broad both Brave and ‘man of valor’ (which is another way of translating ‘Yuusha’) are and how it can easily support other characters in a way that has a deeper connection and makes it less obvious: for example, Sora from Kingdom Hearts is not only the ‘hero’ of his game series and has been called ‘brave’ multiple times but also has a Drive Form in Kingdom Hearts 2 that is called ‘Brave Stance’ in Japanese and ‘Valor Form’ in English.
So not only does the codename not make sense for ‘Erdrick’ as it would be too easy to connect the dots but it also doesn’t make sense because it can easily refer to many a character from many a game, in a way making it so on both ends it doesn’t apply well (and it gets even crazier when you add in the fact that ‘Erdrick’ or ‘Loto/Roto’ is merely a titled give to great heroes in Dragon Quest and doesn’t belong exclusively to the protagonist of DQ3).
Last note here is that, if anyone tries to tell you that the codename ‘Doyle’ for Arsene is “just an inside joke and doesn’t mean anything”, here is what you tell them: “Pick an argument and stick with it.” If they ask for clarification, tell them that the idea that both ‘Brave’ is not a joke and can be seriously linked to Erdrick but ‘Doyle’ is a joke and is not a true codename cannot exist in the same argument as it collapses on itself considering that all the codenames that have been revealed to us so far follow the same logic. If ‘Doyle’ is just a silly joke, then all the codenames have been jokes since they have been applied with the same manner, and thus ‘Brave’ is just a silly joke and anything they can try to tie it to Erdrick doesn’t mean anything; on the other side, if ‘Brave’ is to be taken seriously and not as a joke, then ‘Doyle’ should be taken seriously as well. If they cannot accept that then they are cherry-picking what applies to which codename in an effort to present a hypothetical scenario that can only benefit their cause in an effort to make the whole situation look like it favors Erdrick, thus it is also confirmation bias on top of cherry-picking and a perfect example of mental gymnastics.
“Nintendo is pushing Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age Switch Definitive Edition really REALLY hard right now and with this advertising it’s clear Erdrick is the next DLC character. Hell Japan is getting a Dragon Quest V movie so CLEARLY this is the time to strike for Erdrick in Smash! Just admit it.”
So DQXI gets a big chunk of the February Direct with promise for more later and Japan gets a movie about a completely different game in the series and this is supposed to mean Erdrick is in Smash? Remember when I pointed out how Sentinels in the Starry Skies got a LOT of advertising? Welp...let me go into detail.
So first off, in a special launch event, Yuji Horii himself went to the Nintendo World Store the DAY BEFORE the game launched in the West to commemorate the game’s release. Nintendo made commercials with Seth Green to promote the game and had them play both on television and in theaters (I will provide the commercials below if you are interested). They featured the game for two weeks on Nintendo Week and had special events at GameStop, Best Buy and Simon Mall locations where you could download exclusive treasure maps for the game. It was featured on the front cover of August 2010 Nintendo Power and the game got TWO Iwata Asks segments in which Iwata interviewed both Yuji Horii and Ryutaro Ichimura about the NA release.
THEY.
SHOVED.
THIS.
GAME.
DOWN.
NA’S.
THROAT!
And guess what? Up until DQXI, it was the Dragon Quest title to sell the most in the West EVER! It’s almost like if you market a game well it will sell better...huh….weird how that works.
Yet so far, DQXI:S hasn’t gotten this much push at all, and here is the funny part: all that marketing was JUST for the game. Nothing else special, just the game. So even if DQXI starts to get more of a marketing push in the future, that doesn’t mean anything for Smash at all since Nintendo has pushed DQ hard in the past just to sell the game alone. It is not evidence nor a hint.
Oh, and don’t get me started on how a movie focusing on a completely different story and set of characters and in a different timeframe in the lore is proof that Erdrick is in Smash. Seriously, stop it.
“DQ3 is Japan’s favorite game of all time! They absolutely love it and it would be the only one to pick a character from to properly represent Japan’s fans and DQ as a whole. This obviously means that Erdrick is the perfect pick and he’s totally in. Just take the ‘L.’”
So there are a number of things I mentioned before that bring up issues with this, but I’m going to tackle this from a different angle this time: how do we know Erdrick would be the best pick even if this was true? ‘Erdrick’ is the title the main protagonist gets at the end of the game as part of his reward for saving the world, but their real name? It’s a self-insert. Why is ‘Erdrick’ both male and female? They are a self-insert. The idea is that YOU are the hero and you earn the title Erdrick at the end as a common way to link YOUR HERO to any future title. People talk about DQ3 but they don’t often talk about the main protagonist outside of Smash chances or things related to him. To clarify, they rarely take about ‘Erdrick’ himself/herself and more often it’s ‘Sword of Erdrick’ or ‘Erdrick’s Armor’. It’s the legacy the character makes that people care about, not the character itself, or so it would seem. I know there are actual fans of the character, make no mistake, but from what I have seen it is more the character’s design and their legacy both in-game and out rather than the character themselves considering they are made to be a hollow self-insert.
So, if people seemingly do not care all that much about the character, but they love DQ3, maybe they love the others characters more? Wouldn’t that make another character more of a likely pick? Keep in mind, this is just if DQ3 is the unanimous best pick to choose a rep from. Some articles from Famitsu have had other titles like DQV listed above DQ3 in terms of popularity. This would mean that there is some contention even in Japan on which game in the series is loved the most, which means that DQ3 being the best pick isn’t just an automatic choice to make. This of course means that characters from DQV or DQVIII or any other DQ title could happen and still represent DQ and Japan’s love for the series.
I kid you not, I’ve had some people try to make the argument that having Luminary from DQXI be the Dragon Quest rep would be an insult to Japanese fans and they would riot. I think people truly forget the cultural differences that exist and I’m sure that Dragon Quest getting any rep at all would greatly please Japanese fans. They are not quite like us in the West when it comes to fan demand and outcry.
Lastly, if anyone tries to mention the stats at all, just wipe that away: the stats fluctuate and are very subject to change, so any time stats are mentioned there is no weight to be had.
Down here I am going to link two Google Documents. One is done by people from that PapaGeno’s Discord who I have had this horrible argument problems with. The other is from a friend of mine.
I’m linking both because I think they both do a good job doing certain things. The first one does a good job researching the history and cute little tidbits of Dragon Quest but is biased towards his inclusion. The second does a good job pointing out some of the issues and flaws with the arguments made for Erdrick but is biased against his inclusion and comes off a bit abrasive at times.
Pro-Erdrick - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CwBiANIgYG6K7L_485TIw8E-uuIBuITNjOXEdJJWSFo/edit?usp=sharing
Anti-Erdrick - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dp4rjhK3eoyvDXx86L2mT5PqeyNlZtRNcGqCwRnQOZE/edit?usp=sharing
The last thing I would like to say here is that, no, I didn’t find any hard and fast facts that Erdrick isn’t coming to Smash. I don’t think that would even be possible unless I found a buried tweet from Yuri Horii that stated he wasn’t in or something from Sakurai equating the same. There is no cold hard evidence here, just merely pointing out the holes in arguments on both sides but mainly on the Pro-Erdrick side because there has been a lot of blind faith conversion recently and it feels like noone is looking at it from a clear mindset. I’ll even admit here that after doing the research I have done, I think Erdrick has a bigger claim than I originally did! However, he is by no means a ‘front-runner’: I simply found out that he has more that can be put in the Pros vs the Cons than I initially thought, but that doesn’t mean he’s at the head of the pack. He’s got tough competition with Sora, Sephiroth, even our boy Geno and, hell even other characters from his own franchise like Slime, Luminary or Eighter.
If it feels like I got lost somewhere along the way, don’t worry, I kind of felt that way too. Just look at it from the perspective that Erdrick can’t be ‘the front-runner for a Square Enix in Smash Ultimate’ if there are so many issues that I listed with the statements made about his guaranteed inclusion. Erdrick is a possibility and a strong one, but he is no more near existing than anyone else as far as our outsider knowledge is concerned and don’t let anyone force you to think otherwise.
Whoa, hold up! Dixie being an echo is a horrible idea. semi-clone at best or she wouldn't be true to her character. She doesn't pick up people with her hands, she uses her hair. She throws with her hair. Her style is mostly centered around her hair and she doesn’t use a gun like Diddy. Making her an echo like Chrom would be going against her character and it would be better for her to be a semi-clone and have many a move function differently while having a good chunck pulled from Diddy.
I get that you look a lot at random arguments that people make and all that (including for erdrick), and there's a place for closing them down when they're not good, but it feels a bit like you're taking them all as if they're all being used, and I dont really think they're good points at all (in the first erdrick section, non- common ones or whatever), and I mean that including the pro-erdrick stuff. Some of the counters are to points that i recognize and can tell they're from being tired of seeing the lame arguments against erdrick. There's bias on both sides and I find it odd that you yourself seem tired of them when they came from being tired on the other side. Do you know what I mean? I think a different approach is needed, it just feels like some crappiness from both sides, lol.Alright guys, here is that big *** post I promised and talked up. I split it off into different spoilers that accurately define that topic behind them. This is so that people who aren't interested in reading the big wall of texts but are interested in my replies can do so. Even so, the middle two topics are VERY long so I warn you before diving into them. Hopefully I did a good enough job separating and formatting them so that it doesn't all just blur together and has some sort of fun and flare, though Smashboard definitely is not Word Online or Google Docs in when it comes to fancier options.
I hope you enjoy it. Also, if you did enjoy it and would like more (god I sound like a typical YouTuber phoning it in right now, jesus) or really liked the documents that were made up by others, please let me know. I know of more documents made up like that and I'm even working on one right now that covers everything one would need to know to be introduced to Geno and his pros and cons for Smash Ultimate. It will have the same amount of effort and even more love put into it than this did.
Have fun reading! :D
--------------------------------------------------------------Funnily enough, I was about to say that I might have to tag you in for this, since this is something you have argued against for a hot while now. I seriously can never understand why people actually think Square is the problem with it all. It's clearly bias, as most of us here love Nintendo and are wonderfully amazed by Sakurai, so CLEARLY neither of these entities could be a fault and thus it HAS to be Square! This is not a logical approach, it is an emotional one that feeds into the bias of Square being a mean company. This is why I said that
------------------------------------------------------------------Now on the opposite coin of what Eric thinks, I'm going to address something: referring to 'Erdrick' from Dragon Quest III as 'the most likely' or 'the front runner' for a Square rep for DLC. This irritates me to no end because it is a statement that is widely accepted despite not only incorrectly displaying the Fighter's Pass situation, but it incorrectly displays Dragon Quest III and Dragon Quest as a whole in terms of its competition.
First off, Square is not guaranteed another rep and there has been zero evidence to come out that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Square is getting another rep in Smash Ultimate. Thus, if you act as if 'Erdrick' from Dragon Quest III is a 'front-runner' then you have already assumed the stance that Square Enix is getting another rep as DLC and that assumption is baseless. This is not the foundation of an argument, it is pure speculation, and thus holds no weight. This is fine for speculation, but many people (including bigger names on bigger media) are phrasing this in a way that makes it sound like another Square rep is already predetermined just like so many 'Erdrick fans' are claiming the character is already confirmed despite having no evidence at all.
Now, onto the issues with Erdrick being referred to as a 'front-runner.' Before we get started, I would like to show you an image that is a shining symbol of the issue of debating about Erdrick.
![]()
First off, as a minor anecdote, I would like to point out that the latter half of this picture is a perfect representation of trying to debate against anyone who was convinced 'Erdrick' from Dragon Quest III was already in the Fighter's Pass from within PapaGeno's leak speculation section on Discord. No matter how solid or well-constructed or polite your argument was, turning your argument into a variation of one of those so as to mock your point and make you look like an idiot was all they ever did and they felt it was good enough to win the debate, however they got bonus points towards being irritable by incorporating ad hominems and grouping up together to bring up things outside the argument and personal to get a rising response out of you and thereby 'win' the argument. If this sounds rather annoying and immature, make no mistake it was, but keep in mind these are people who are now saying that the reveal of Arsene's codename being 'Doyle' isn't really a codename but is an inside joke and thus is irrelevant and thus 'Brave' is still 'Erdrick' 100%.
I see this image as having the same problems as that 'QUIT HAVING FUN!' image when pertaining to objectively bad games (yes, something can be bad
objectively, please do not come at me with this philosophical mindset: I'm not talking about how you feel about something, I'm talking about the game on it's own merits.) With the 'QUIT HAVING FUN!' image, it's not that we do not want others to have fun with what they choose, but that we want them to have enough critical thinking to realize that just because they are enjoying it doesn't mean it's a good game and that monetary support of such a product will show companies that you will continue to pay for poor quality content. In essence, people like myself are trying to help others realize that the game they are having fun with could have been substantially better and that their own bias is preventing them from obtaining that.
Similarly, this image misconstrues the opposition: it is suggesting that those who support 'Erdrick' from Dragon Quest III being DLC for Smash Ultimate are logical within their reasoning and 'evidence' to support this reasoning but that those who disagree are illogical, have poor 'evidence', and perhaps are uneducated. This couldn't be further from the truth.
Let us tackle each argument individually, starting with the so-called 'correct' argument.
"Dragon Quest has the perfect mix of historical relevance, sales and Nintendo presence to be DLC."
First off, there is already some bias/weak terminology here in the word 'perfect.' This would imply being completely flawless, that this combination of history, number of sales and presence on Nintendo platforms is SO divine that it guarantees their inclusion into Smash and there cannot possibly be a counterargument or any holes to point out. This is obviously incorrect as nothing man-made is perfect and there is always room from improvement, especially where debate and speculation is concerned as so much misinformation and assumption gets spread (which we are all guilty of, including myself).
So the first thing this argument mentions is historical relevance, which anyone who does a small amount of research can confirm: the first Dragon Quest released in 1986 on the NES, so it’s been around for a while (33 years to be more exact) and has had semi-consistent releases to this day. However, by historical relevance, what most people are referring to is Dragon Quest III: Seeds of Salvation in which this game introduced the job/class system that is very much well known nowadays which would make it the granddaddy of most RPGs in that sense.
This is definitely NOTHING to sneeze at, as it broke Japan the day it was released and is the founder of a system now taken for granted and is nearly a requirement for the genre. However, there are some counterpoints to be brought up.
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First off, having a game history like this is impressive, but isn’t relevant for Smash. Characters with much less history have been included and those with more have been included, but it’s less the history itself and more the legacy it left on gaming. To clarify, characters for 3rd Party are chosen not for how long they have been around, but for their cultural impact on gaming mixed with fan request.
Secondly, Dragon Quest was NOT the first RPG to ever exist. In fact, it’s creation was sparked by a trip to the US and Yuji Horii experiencing both the Wizardry series and Ultima, then taking that influence and making his own vision from it. (Just to note that it’s not only interesting to see that the US was a major influence for the creation of one of Japan’s biggest hits in gaming, but also more proof of ‘no original ideas exist’ yet still managing to make success of an idea by making it your own...just a little encouragement for creative types out there.)
This means that Dragon Quest’s only claim to cultural impact, other than being huge in Japan, is that Dragon Quest III invented the first job/class system ever. That’s pretty big, but it’s only one criteria of a claim to fame and it was in 1988. Since then Dragon Quest hasn’t strayed from it’s formula (aside for graphical advances) for 31 years! It hasn’t tried anything new or risked anything to try and advance the RPG genre...it’s just stuck with the ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ method...which is one of the things that hurts it overseas, but that’s another topic. Essentially, the historical relevance is inventing what is now a common mechanic in RPGs and nothing else, while there are many others franchises out there that have done more to impact gaming.
Once again, this isn’t to sneeze at, just merely pointing out that there really isn’t a “perfect historical relevance” here: just one big deal in 1988 and not much afterwards.
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The next argument is the sales and I’m sure we all know this, but sales DO NOT MATTER! A game selling well doesn’t mean it will be a lock for Smash, and a game selling poorly doesn’t mean it would never get into Smash. I mean, CoD sells ridiculous amounts of copies all the time, but the the idea of a character from CoD making it to Smash is never seriously discussed despite discussion of Master Chief and Doomguy. On the other end, do you think that Ice Climbers broke records in sales? It’s the 43rd best-selling game on the NES and was never seen again until Melee! Excitebike was considered and was the 9th best-selling game on the NES, but they went with Ice Climbers. Roy’s game didn’t even release yet and never did in the West, so it definitely wasn’t sales for him. High sales is usually a result of people liking your game, normally because it’s a good game, but it’s the fan request and culture impact that determines a character’s possibility...not the number of sales.
Finally, the last argument: Nintendo presence. Well, it think it’s easy to say that Dragon Quest has mostly been on Nintendo platforms, but let us actually look at this by installment-
- Dragon Quest released on Famicom/NES
- Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line (huh, the title Luminary has been used prior to DQXI, just like Erdrick...interesting :think
- Dragon Quest III: Seeds of Salvation was released on Famicom/NES
- Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen was released for Famicom/NES
- Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride was released for the Super Famicom in 1992, the Playstation remake in 2004, but the West wouldn’t see it localized until 2009 on the Nintendo DS. It has also gotten a world-wide Android/IOS version since 2015. (Side note, this is the beginning of the show where NA doesn’t get the games for eons afterwards, and frankly whatever reason that was has done nothing but hurt it’s chances for success over here. More than likely it has something to do with the Square Soft and Enix merger as well as the fallout between Square and Nintendo, but we really don’t know all the details.)
- Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation came out on the Super Famicom in 1995 but wouldn’t see Western localization until it’s Nintendo DS remake in 2011. Also got an Android/IOS release in 2015.
- Dragon Quest VII came out on Playstation in 2000, hitting the West in 2001, this is of course during the time period in which Square Enix and Nintendo were not on friendly terms. It got a remake on Nintendo 3DS in 2013 but the West wouldn’t see that until 2016. Also a release on Android/IOS in Japan in 2015.
- Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King released on Playstation 2 in 2004, seeing Western release in 2005. It got a world-wide Android/IOS release in 2015 and a Nintendo 3DS remake in 2015 that the West wouldn’t see until 2017.
- Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies released on Nintendo DS in 2009, hitting the West in 2010. This title was the best-selling in the series in the West up until Dragon Quest XI and has very high reviews across the board. The idea of it hitting Nintendo consoles in the West as shortly after release in Japan as it did seems to have done it well in addition to being a really good game...that and the marketing campaign done by Nintendo was insane (I’ll go into that later, just a point to bring up against those arguing ‘Nintendo is pushing DQ super-hard right now!’).
- Dragon Quest X is...boy it’s something. It was an MMORPG but it never made it to the West, seeing releases and updated versions for the Wii, WiiU, Microsoft Windows, PS4 and Switch. The original came out on the Wii in 2012 and the lastest release was on WiiU, Windows, PS4, and Switch in 2017. It apparently didn’t do that well, though whether it was actually a flop or Square’s ambitions and standards were set too high is a bit of an argument to be had.
- Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age has had an interesting release cycle. APPARENTLY it originally released on the Nintendo 3DS (man, I wonder how it runs...) and the Playstation 4 in 2017, but got Western release on the Playstation 4 at the same time as it’s release on Steam AND now we have that ‘definitive edition’ coming to Switch later this year.
Now of course this isn’t including spin-offs, which have presence on many different consoles with still many on Nintendo consoles, but I think you get this idea: even WITH that messy era of separation, most of Dragon Quest’s history is on Nintendo and that which wasn’t was eventually put on it. Of course, Nintendo presence doesn’t matter solely for inclusion.
Let’s look at Cloud. Cloud himself as a character was never on a Nintendo console in the form of his own game, only some minor spin-offs much later. Yet, as the biggest face of Final Fantasy in terms of cultural impact and fan demand, he was the obvious choice. They could have picked one of the characters that were from a Nintendo release, but Sakurai picked Cloud because he knew who was the best pick. Joker also doesn’t have his main game on a Nintendo console, only spin-offs (including that new Persona Warriors game announcement), yet Sakurai knew it would be a good choice and went with it. Looking at some older characters that have a very old and brief history with Nintendo, you’ve got basically every retro rep: none of them has any current presence with Nintendo as they were all dead franchises, yet we still have Ice Climbers, Mr. Game and Watch, Little Mac and Duck Hunt. Bayonetta just recently had Nintendo presence, yet she was also included. Also, other than a couple of titles, this ‘Nintendo presence’ for Dragon Quest is mostly in Japan and somewhat elsewhere, all outside the West mostly.
I hope you guys are seeing the trend here, but we still have the ‘mocked counterarguments’ portion to go through.
These mock-versions of arguments are all jumbled, as some are more against “Erdrick” while others are against Dragon Quest as a whole, but I will tackle them in order of appearance.
The first argument here is against “Erdrick” in particular, as in DQ3 “Erdrick”. Essentially, because the character himself hasn’t been in a new game focusing on him since 1988, thus he’s forgotten and can no longer be considered for Smash. While this isn’t really the argument being made, I can’t deny that “Erdrick” from DQ3 returning in a new game focused on him would be good for him if it was well received, however what’s more important here is to break apart the real counterargument and the points that the Dragon Quest supporters are trying to make here.
First, the Pro-Erdrick point here: he doesn’t need to be in a new game centered around him to be considered for Smash.
This is completely true: look at the majority of the fan-requested characters that made it into Ultimate. Not only were they not the focus of recent titles or even the old titles in some cases, but also most of them were not in recent titles and had been lost to the past. Yet, via cultural impact and fan demand, here they are. The same is entirely true and possible for “Erdrick” from DQ3.
The Counterpoint is better explained as such: is “Erdrick” from DQ3 still the best pick to represent Dragon Quest? The character hasn’t been very prominent in titles recently, and we’ve even seen that that title “Erdrick” has belonged to multiple persons and belonged to persons before the protagonist of DQ3.
See, Dragon Quest as a narrative (as far as I can tell) has all taken place on the same ‘world’ or ‘kingdoms’, or better said the same exact setting with all the stories tying into the same narrative to be a long-running history of the world of the games. Whereas Final Fantasy is all self-contained separate stories (barring same-numbered sequels), Dragon Quest has a sprawling story that spans generations all in the same world, connecting places and names and people and plotlines. With Final Fantasy, it was easy: Cloud is the biggest face of them all, pick him. With Dragon Quest there is more nuance: “Erdrick” is a prominent figure in history who did an amazing deed to save the world, but he’s not the only one to have the title “Erdrick” nor to have done great deeds for the world, so who do you pick?
Do you lean on relevance to the story, which could easily be “Erdrick” from DQ3? Do you go with recent relevance and pick Luminary from DQXI? Do you go with world-wide recognition, which could end you up with Slime? Do you go with fan demand and end up with someone else from one of the other games like Eighter? Keep in mind, this is all outside of programming and design and movesets: this is just the planning stage, and there is already a lot of nuance and big decisions to make. Also, how relevant IS “Erdrick” to the lore? The title itself is a big deal, as is the iconic sword, shield, and even the armor...but what about specifically the protagonist from DQ3? In light of everything that has happened in the series to date, is he still relevant? With the references made to him in other titles, he could be, but it also could just be a nice little nod like we here see a lot with SMRPG and fear: just a cute acknowledgement, nothing else meant behind it.
The next argument is acting as if people think the character is “bad” because they were ‘leaked.’ No one is making that argument, as the quality of a character could never be determined by whether someone leaked them or not, but once again let find the actual arguments.
Pro-Erdrick: Just because the character was ‘leaked’ doesn’t mean they are definitely not in because ‘you can’t trust leakers’ and those leakers who have been discredited recently can still be correct about his inclusion.
I THINK this is the argument, it’s kind of hard to really decipher anything from what is clearly immature whining, but rather than break this down I will list the counterpoint and it will become clear the issue with this.
Counterpoint: Just because the character was ‘leaked’ doesn’t mean they are definitely in the game because ‘you can’t trust leakers’ and those leakers have been discredited recently, so they can be incorrect about his inclusion.
Do you see what I did there? Do you see what is wrong here? As I’ve tried hundreds of times to state, a leaker saying a character is in with no condemning proof is not justification or evidence for a character just as it isn’t weight against that character. Simply put, what a leaker says is nothing but speculation and can never be solid enough a platform to stand on to make an argument either way, making it a moot point and worthless to bring up no matter whether you are arguing for or against the character. Just leave the leakers out of the equation entirely unless they show damning evidence other than ‘Trust me on this one guys!’
This third argument is essentially saying that personal lack of knowledge of a character or franchise isn’t a solid argument, which is true, but it’s distorting the actual argument on both sides. Allow me to translate bull****-ese into English.
Pro-Dragon Quest: It was one of the most-popular NES franchises back in it’s day and has major significance because of that. Just because you don’t know about that or don’t care doesn’t make it less true or relevant.
Now you may notice that I changed this argument from ‘2nd-most-selling-NES franchise’ to ‘one of the most popular NES franchises’ and there is a reason for that: technically, Dragon Quest is at best third or fourth because both Mario and Legend of Zelda are franchises that sold more on the NES. Then you have games like Tetris and Dr. Mario and others who had some games later on other systems, so if we are talking STRICTLY franchises that had multiple entries on the NES then Dragon Quest becomes the 3rd-best, but franchises that exist outside the NES is a category that drops it further down the ladder. Regardless there is some truth to this argument as, of course, just because you don’t know something or choose to not care and act as if it doesn’t matter or exist, if it is true and does exist...it still exists. Not much with this argument, but on with the counterpoint.
Counterpoint: Many people are not aware of the character’s existence due to time passing, the franchise never becoming big in the West until later titles, and essential cultural differences. We aren’t saying that “Erdrick” isn’t relevant, but rather that he is largely unknown in the West which should be taken into consideration.
This is the actual argument being made: “Erdrick” is not a big name over here in the US or in the West in general. Now sure, our knowledge of him (or lack thereof) won’t be the sole factor in whether or not he was picked as a character, but when you are trying to make money it’s generally a good idea to know your audience and give them something they would want. For the Western Smash fans, “Erdrick” from DQ3 really doesn’t fit the bill as much as other names like Banjo-Kazooie or Rayman or Sora, considering that Dragon Quest as a whole hasn’t really been on our radar. For Japan alone it is a pretty good pick, but world-wide? Once again, this is a planning issue that needs to be thought about way before design ever happens. Is it worth less sales and backlash to take that chance? Could this be what makes Dragon Quest big in the West? Man, lots of big decisions to make by Nintendo and Sakurai before they even contact the companies of the characters, imagine having that responsibility on your shoulders!
This next one really just is someone who is upset about people bringing up the negative qualities of a core developer on the game they like. Sorry, these things are true, get over it and realize that people who make things you love can still be either really horrible people or, on the lesser end, just do things you don’t like or disagree with. It’s called ‘separating the art from the artist’ and if you can’t do that, that’s fine...but don’t deny facts. I digress, there is still something to be found here.
Pro-Dragon Quest: Just because Koichi Sugiyama has said and believes some horrible things doesn’t mean Nintendo will not work with him.
This is in fact very true and frankly, if I’m correct, Nintendo has already worked with people us in the West would find questionable. Even if this is not true, Japan’s culture is totally different from ours and they are not all about this crazy outrage culture that has taken over our nation. Things that would make us stop associating with someone or would make a company fire/not work with a person ever again are not the same there, as shown multiple times recently. His beliefs and claims have NOTHING to do with his skill and position. However, the counterpoint brings up some interesting things to ponder.
The Counterpoint: While it may not stop Nintendo from working with him, his beliefs could stop him from working with Nintendo on this project. Also, if this information went public in the US after getting a Dragon Quest character for DLC in Smash, there could be outrage that would lead to decisions needing to be made. More importantly, situations revolving around Sugiyama and the companies that have rights over his music could lead to getting only Midi tracks instead of orchestral for Ultimate, and that would not fly well over here in the West, and similarly with Sakurai’s determination to provide only the best it could prevent Dragon Quest from being in the Fighter’s Pass.
These are all arguments I think should be more heavily considered. While I think any bad press Smash might get in regards to Sugiyama could easily be negligible with nothing coming of it (I mean, Dragon Quest has had controversy over certain sexual issues in the past), the more important factor is Sugiyama and his issues with his music being in Western hands. See he has some issues with that, and while these issues seem to have been somewhat resolved in regards to the latest version of DQXI...Smash Ultimate is a totally different beast. Sugiyama wouldn’t be the shining star, he would be part of the constellation that is Smash Ultimate and that combined with the heavy catering to the Western audience could lead him to not want to work with them. That aside, before that even comes up as a problem, having to work with the companies surrounding Sugiyama could be a huge road block and apparently have been a roadblock in the past in terms of getting those quality tracks worthy of the Fighter’s Pass.
This last one isn’t really much of an argument because, as I’ve established earlier, sales ultimately do not matter in terms of character consideration. However, there is still an argument of sorts here.
Pro-Dragon Quest: A game doesn’t have to be big in the West to be considered for Smash.This...this is just true. In the past, character choices have been made that clearly show that being big or even known about at all in the West is not a deciding factor. Ness could be argued about considering how Earthbound was not well-received in the West and it’s likely many kids didn’t know who he was when they unlocked him in Smash Bros. for Nintendo 64, but Marth, Roy and Lucas most definitely fall under this as proof. Corrin/Kamui is another arguable one as the game was not even released in the West yet but it had been in Japan for a hot minute so it could have been a mix of advertising and Japanese fan catering. The Counterpoint brings up a good point though.
Counterpoint: Keeping into consideration what Western fans have been requesting and what would succeed in the West is important as well and, other than fairness and balance, Western appeal is more important in terms of sales as most of Smash Bros. sales come from the West.
Now of course I believe that there should be balance in fan requests, both having off-the-wall picks from Sakurai like Piranha Plant but also picks that just weren’t really requested heavily like Incineroar or Isabelle. This balance is what makes Smash so awesome: between big names and fan picks and off-the-wall choices and unlikely entries, everyone gets something they love at the end and it makes Smash so dope that it’s hard not to like it.
However, we have no idea what Nintendo values as important. Normally, they are a ‘bigger picture’ company in terms of profits, but DLC could be approached differently. Most of Ultimate’s reveals have catered to Western audiences or to characters that have been demanded by both West and East. Joker is another example of West and East both liking the game and the character, so it was an easy pick. Now we know more than anyone that Smash LOVES to break it’s patterns the the rules fans lay out, however it never seems to do that within itself...by that I mean, each title breaks the rules in one or two ways and doesn’t stray from that or do more until the next title. We have no idea what Nintendo or Sakurai has in store for us, but don’t let DQ fans cloud your senses with their fluff: they know no more than the rest of us and have no more going for them than the rest of us bigger communities, and in some ways they have less.
----------------------------------------------------------------------Now this is the part of the show where I’m going to dig into the meat and potatoes of the generic arguments and reasons for believing that ‘Erdrick’ from Dragon Quest III: Seeds of Salvation is going to be in Smash Ultimate via the Fighter’s Pass. I’m doing this because so many people are clouded by this overwhelming opinion and truly seem to think that ‘Erdrick’ is the face of this giant wall called Dragon Quest that simply cannot be climbed...and I’m here to tell you that not only can it be climbed, but I’ll blast a hole through it for you.
“Erdrick has already been leaked, so he’s in the game. Vergeben heard his name most often and Tansut’s source confirmed he’s in. Just accept it.”
I will probably have this engraved on my tombstone, but LEAKERS HOLD NO WEIGHT IN AN ARGUMENT! Vergeben gave no evidence that this list was real and nothing more than a list he made up, and Tansut never gave us proof that his ‘source’ confirmed anything. Using the word of a leaker is like using eyewitness testimony in court: it’s unreliable and often completely faulty, requiring us to just listen and believe with nothing but their word to go on. For instance, Vergeben loves Dragon Quest and thus has a bias and has been proven to be completely incorrect on anything Smash since the base game dropped and so far since he’s been heavily wrong on anything Nintendo. Tansut has also been incorrect and his conversation with his ‘source’ shows that he has confirmation bias by taking a neutral situation and assuming it means something he wants it to mean to be correct rather than recognizing it was a completely neutral situation.
For your own sake, remember that unless they come out with real evidence, trust the word of a leaker no more than you would entertain the thoughts of children on how they think the world works.
“Brave is clearly Erdrick’s codename! It’s basically a direct translation, the connection is completely solid. Just give in.”
So unfortunately a lot of people really do believe this when all the actual evidence points in other directions, but the idea here is that since the word ‘Brave’ can translate to ‘Yuusha - 勇者’ which means ‘Hero’ and is not only the class of Dragon Quest III’s protagonist but also a term used in reference to his equipment, that it has to be ‘Erdrick’ as DLC. There are several issues with this, the biggest one being that all the previous codenames have been less direct.
The definition of ‘codename’ is ‘a word used for secrecy or convenience instead of the usual name.’ Now since we can easily rule out convenience as the reason since we know the general practices of Japanese game developers as well as how so far most of the names have been relative in simplicity to their codenames, it’s made apparent that the codenames in Smash Ultimate are used for secrecy. The idea here is to keep the identity of the character a secret from eyes and minds that shouldn’t known, whether that be other devs that do not have clearance or the common man digging where they aren’t wanted.
Now a quick argument about the codename ‘packu’ being a on-purpose corruption of ‘pakkun’ which then is a simple google search to Piranha Plant may be brought up, but dataminers did not have information on the game until after Piranha Plant was announced so hiding him in the code is no longer needed. Also, considering Piranha Plant was planned for base roster but they ran out of time, there would be no need to hide him in the code and no need at all for a codename, thus his name isn’t well ciphered yet still with other DLC characters in the datamine.
‘Jack’ was thought to be a number of different characters before Joker’s reveal, and can be tied to him via Jack Frost being a Persona he can summon as well as a card type in a deck of cards which the Joker is one as well. Both of these are not direct references to the character yet make sense when you figure it out, making it a decent codename. The same is true for Arsene, who’s codename is ‘Doyle’, which is a reference to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote Sherlock Holmes. Arsène Lupin is a fictional thief created by Maurice Leblanc who then tried to have his character interact with Sherlock Holmes, but after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle took some form of legal action, Arsène Lupin instead interacted with ‘Herlock Sholmes’. So the codename connection is made clear, yet it was still well-deciphered.
Thus with the effort put forth here to hide the identity in a cute yet well-ciphered manner thus far, it would make sense that ‘Brave’ is also a codename meant to hide the true identity of the next DLC character in the Fighter’s Pass. This would make no sense then if Erdrick is named after the English translation of the term the Japanese most often use to describe him and the literal name for him in DQ3: it’s way too easy for anyone to figure out! However, there is another issue, which is that ‘Yuusha’ or ‘Hero’ can refer to many different things.
First off, let’s get this out of the way: whoever the protagonist of a game is often ends up being the ‘hero’ of the world the game takes place in. This makes the idea of the translation pretty moot on it’s own as it can easily be a rather broad term. However if we look at ‘Hero’ as a class, then multiple characters from Dragon Quest as well Fire Emblem and likely other J/RPGs fall under this category, so even still it’s rather broad and doesn’t truly point out ‘Erdrick’ from DQ3 directly. This is without going into how broad both Brave and ‘man of valor’ (which is another way of translating ‘Yuusha’) are and how it can easily support other characters in a way that has a deeper connection and makes it less obvious: for example, Sora from Kingdom Hearts is not only the ‘hero’ of his game series and has been called ‘brave’ multiple times but also has a Drive Form in Kingdom Hearts 2 that is called ‘Brave Stance’ in Japanese and ‘Valor Form’ in English.
So not only does the codename not make sense for ‘Erdrick’ as it would be too easy to connect the dots but it also doesn’t make sense because it can easily refer to many a character from many a game, in a way making it so on both ends it doesn’t apply well (and it gets even crazier when you add in the fact that ‘Erdrick’ or ‘Loto/Roto’ is merely a titled give to great heroes in Dragon Quest and doesn’t belong exclusively to the protagonist of DQ3).
Last note here is that, if anyone tries to tell you that the codename ‘Doyle’ for Arsene is “just an inside joke and doesn’t mean anything”, here is what you tell them: “Pick an argument and stick with it.” If they ask for clarification, tell them that the idea that both ‘Brave’ is not a joke and can be seriously linked to Erdrick but ‘Doyle’ is a joke and is not a true codename cannot exist in the same argument as it collapses on itself considering that all the codenames that have been revealed to us so far follow the same logic. If ‘Doyle’ is just a silly joke, then all the codenames have been jokes since they have been applied with the same manner, and thus ‘Brave’ is just a silly joke and anything they can try to tie it to Erdrick doesn’t mean anything; on the other side, if ‘Brave’ is to be taken seriously and not as a joke, then ‘Doyle’ should be taken seriously as well. If they cannot accept that then they are cherry-picking what applies to which codename in an effort to present a hypothetical scenario that can only benefit their cause in an effort to make the whole situation look like it favors Erdrick, thus it is also confirmation bias on top of cherry-picking and a perfect example of mental gymnastics.
“Nintendo is pushing Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age Switch Definitive Edition really REALLY hard right now and with this advertising it’s clear Erdrick is the next DLC character. Hell Japan is getting a Dragon Quest V movie so CLEARLY this is the time to strike for Erdrick in Smash! Just admit it.”
So DQXI gets a big chunk of the February Direct with promise for more later and Japan gets a movie about a completely different game in the series and this is supposed to mean Erdrick is in Smash? Remember when I pointed out how Sentinels in the Starry Skies got a LOT of advertising? Welp...let me go into detail.
So first off, in a special launch event, Yuji Horii himself went to the Nintendo World Store the DAY BEFORE the game launched in the West to commemorate the game’s release. Nintendo made commercials with Seth Green to promote the game and had them play both on television and in theaters (I will provide the commercials below if you are interested). They featured the game for two weeks on Nintendo Week and had special events at GameStop, Best Buy and Simon Mall locations where you could download exclusive treasure maps for the game. It was featured on the front cover of August 2010 Nintendo Power and the game got TWO Iwata Asks segments in which Iwata interviewed both Yuji Horii and Ryutaro Ichimura about the NA release.
THEY.
SHOVED.
THIS.
GAME.
DOWN.
NA’S.
THROAT!
And guess what? Up until DQXI, it was the Dragon Quest title to sell the most in the West EVER! It’s almost like if you market a game well it will sell better...huh….weird how that works.
Yet so far, DQXI:S hasn’t gotten this much push at all, and here is the funny part: all that marketing was JUST for the game. Nothing else special, just the game. So even if DQXI starts to get more of a marketing push in the future, that doesn’t mean anything for Smash at all since Nintendo has pushed DQ hard in the past just to sell the game alone. It is not evidence nor a hint.
Oh, and don’t get me started on how a movie focusing on a completely different story and set of characters and in a different timeframe in the lore is proof that Erdrick is in Smash. Seriously, stop it.
“DQ3 is Japan’s favorite game of all time! They absolutely love it and it would be the only one to pick a character from to properly represent Japan’s fans and DQ as a whole. This obviously means that Erdrick is the perfect pick and he’s totally in. Just take the ‘L.’”
So there are a number of things I mentioned before that bring up issues with this, but I’m going to tackle this from a different angle this time: how do we know Erdrick would be the best pick even if this was true? ‘Erdrick’ is the title the main protagonist gets at the end of the game as part of his reward for saving the world, but their real name? It’s a self-insert. Why is ‘Erdrick’ both male and female? They are a self-insert. The idea is that YOU are the hero and you earn the title Erdrick at the end as a common way to link YOUR HERO to any future title. People talk about DQ3 but they don’t often talk about the main protagonist outside of Smash chances or things related to him. To clarify, they rarely take about ‘Erdrick’ himself/herself and more often it’s ‘Sword of Erdrick’ or ‘Erdrick’s Armor’. It’s the legacy the character makes that people care about, not the character itself, or so it would seem. I know there are actual fans of the character, make no mistake, but from what I have seen it is more the character’s design and their legacy both in-game and out rather than the character themselves considering they are made to be a hollow self-insert.
So, if people seemingly do not care all that much about the character, but they love DQ3, maybe they love the others characters more? Wouldn’t that make another character more of a likely pick? Keep in mind, this is just if DQ3 is the unanimous best pick to choose a rep from. Some articles from Famitsu have had other titles like DQV listed above DQ3 in terms of popularity. This would mean that there is some contention even in Japan on which game in the series is loved the most, which means that DQ3 being the best pick isn’t just an automatic choice to make. This of course means that characters from DQV or DQVIII or any other DQ title could happen and still represent DQ and Japan’s love for the series.
I kid you not, I’ve had some people try to make the argument that having Luminary from DQXI be the Dragon Quest rep would be an insult to Japanese fans and they would riot. I think people truly forget the cultural differences that exist and I’m sure that Dragon Quest getting any rep at all would greatly please Japanese fans. They are not quite like us in the West when it comes to fan demand and outcry.
Lastly, if anyone tries to mention the stats at all, just wipe that away: the stats fluctuate and are very subject to change, so any time stats are mentioned there is no weight to be had.
Down here I am going to link two Google Documents. One is done by people from that PapaGeno’s Discord who I have had this horrible argument problems with. The other is from a friend of mine.
I’m linking both because I think they both do a good job doing certain things. The first one does a good job researching the history and cute little tidbits of Dragon Quest but is biased towards his inclusion. The second does a good job pointing out some of the issues and flaws with the arguments made for Erdrick but is biased against his inclusion and comes off a bit abrasive at times.
Pro-Erdrick - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CwBiANIgYG6K7L_485TIw8E-uuIBuITNjOXEdJJWSFo/edit?usp=sharing
Anti-Erdrick - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dp4rjhK3eoyvDXx86L2mT5PqeyNlZtRNcGqCwRnQOZE/edit?usp=sharing
The last thing I would like to say here is that, no, I didn’t find any hard and fast facts that Erdrick isn’t coming to Smash. I don’t think that would even be possible unless I found a buried tweet from Yuri Horii that stated he wasn’t in or something from Sakurai equating the same. There is no cold hard evidence here, just merely pointing out the holes in arguments on both sides but mainly on the Pro-Erdrick side because there has been a lot of blind faith conversion recently and it feels like noone is looking at it from a clear mindset. I’ll even admit here that after doing the research I have done, I think Erdrick has a bigger claim than I originally did! However, he is by no means a ‘front-runner’: I simply found out that he has more that can be put in the Pros vs the Cons than I initially thought, but that doesn’t mean he’s at the head of the pack. He’s got tough competition with Sora, Sephiroth, even our boy Geno and, hell even other characters from his own franchise like Slime, Luminary or Eighter.
If it feels like I got lost somewhere along the way, don’t worry, I kind of felt that way too. Just look at it from the perspective that Erdrick can’t be ‘the front-runner for a Square Enix in Smash Ultimate’ if there are so many issues that I listed with the statements made about his guaranteed inclusion. Erdrick is a possibility and a strong one, but he is no more near existing than anyone else as far as our outsider knowledge is concerned and don’t let anyone force you to think otherwise.
Whoa, hold up! Dixie being an echo is a horrible idea. semi-clone at best or she wouldn't be true to her character. She doesn't pick up people with her hands, she uses her hair. She throws with her hair. Her style is mostly centered around her hair and she doesn’t use a gun like Diddy. Making her an echo like Chrom would be going against her character and it would be better for her to be a semi-clone and have many a move function differently while having a good chunck pulled from Diddy.
).
Thanks for taking the time to type all of this!Alright guys, here is that big *** post I promised and talked up. I split it off into different spoilers that accurately define that topic behind them. This is so that people who aren't interested in reading the big wall of texts but are interested in my replies can do so. Even so, the middle two topics are VERY long so I warn you before diving into them. Hopefully I did a good enough job separating and formatting them so that it doesn't all just blur together and has some sort of fun and flare, though Smashboard definitely is not Word Online or Google Docs in when it comes to fancier options.
I hope you enjoy it. Also, if you did enjoy it and would like more (god I sound like a typical YouTuber phoning it in right now, jesus) or really liked the documents that were made up by others, please let me know. I know of more documents made up like that and I'm even working on one right now that covers everything one would need to know to be introduced to Geno and his pros and cons for Smash Ultimate. It will have the same amount of effort and even more love put into it than this did.
Have fun reading! :D
--------------------------------------------------------------Funnily enough, I was about to say that I might have to tag you in for this, since this is something you have argued against for a hot while now. I seriously can never understand why people actually think Square is the problem with it all. It's clearly bias, as most of us here love Nintendo and are wonderfully amazed by Sakurai, so CLEARLY neither of these entities could be a fault and thus it HAS to be Square! This is not a logical approach, it is an emotional one that feeds into the bias of Square being a mean company. This is why I said that
------------------------------------------------------------------Now on the opposite coin of what Eric thinks, I'm going to address something: referring to 'Erdrick' from Dragon Quest III as 'the most likely' or 'the front runner' for a Square rep for DLC. This irritates me to no end because it is a statement that is widely accepted despite not only incorrectly displaying the Fighter's Pass situation, but it incorrectly displays Dragon Quest III and Dragon Quest as a whole in terms of its competition.
First off, Square is not guaranteed another rep and there has been zero evidence to come out that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Square is getting another rep in Smash Ultimate. Thus, if you act as if 'Erdrick' from Dragon Quest III is a 'front-runner' then you have already assumed the stance that Square Enix is getting another rep as DLC and that assumption is baseless. This is not the foundation of an argument, it is pure speculation, and thus holds no weight. This is fine for speculation, but many people (including bigger names on bigger media) are phrasing this in a way that makes it sound like another Square rep is already predetermined just like so many 'Erdrick fans' are claiming the character is already confirmed despite having no evidence at all.
Now, onto the issues with Erdrick being referred to as a 'front-runner.' Before we get started, I would like to show you an image that is a shining symbol of the issue of debating about Erdrick.
![]()
First off, as a minor anecdote, I would like to point out that the latter half of this picture is a perfect representation of trying to debate against anyone who was convinced 'Erdrick' from Dragon Quest III was already in the Fighter's Pass from within PapaGeno's leak speculation section on Discord. No matter how solid or well-constructed or polite your argument was, turning your argument into a variation of one of those so as to mock your point and make you look like an idiot was all they ever did and they felt it was good enough to win the debate, however they got bonus points towards being irritable by incorporating ad hominems and grouping up together to bring up things outside the argument and personal to get a rising response out of you and thereby 'win' the argument. If this sounds rather annoying and immature, make no mistake it was, but keep in mind these are people who are now saying that the reveal of Arsene's codename being 'Doyle' isn't really a codename but is an inside joke and thus is irrelevant and thus 'Brave' is still 'Erdrick' 100%.
I see this image as having the same problems as that 'QUIT HAVING FUN!' image when pertaining to objectively bad games (yes, something can be bad
objectively, please do not come at me with this philosophical mindset: I'm not talking about how you feel about something, I'm talking about the game on it's own merits.) With the 'QUIT HAVING FUN!' image, it's not that we do not want others to have fun with what they choose, but that we want them to have enough critical thinking to realize that just because they are enjoying it doesn't mean it's a good game and that monetary support of such a product will show companies that you will continue to pay for poor quality content. In essence, people like myself are trying to help others realize that the game they are having fun with could have been substantially better and that their own bias is preventing them from obtaining that.
Similarly, this image misconstrues the opposition: it is suggesting that those who support 'Erdrick' from Dragon Quest III being DLC for Smash Ultimate are logical within their reasoning and 'evidence' to support this reasoning but that those who disagree are illogical, have poor 'evidence', and perhaps are uneducated. This couldn't be further from the truth.
Let us tackle each argument individually, starting with the so-called 'correct' argument.
"Dragon Quest has the perfect mix of historical relevance, sales and Nintendo presence to be DLC."
First off, there is already some bias/weak terminology here in the word 'perfect.' This would imply being completely flawless, that this combination of history, number of sales and presence on Nintendo platforms is SO divine that it guarantees their inclusion into Smash and there cannot possibly be a counterargument or any holes to point out. This is obviously incorrect as nothing man-made is perfect and there is always room from improvement, especially where debate and speculation is concerned as so much misinformation and assumption gets spread (which we are all guilty of, including myself).
So the first thing this argument mentions is historical relevance, which anyone who does a small amount of research can confirm: the first Dragon Quest released in 1986 on the NES, so it’s been around for a while (33 years to be more exact) and has had semi-consistent releases to this day. However, by historical relevance, what most people are referring to is Dragon Quest III: Seeds of Salvation in which this game introduced the job/class system that is very much well known nowadays which would make it the granddaddy of most RPGs in that sense.
This is definitely NOTHING to sneeze at, as it broke Japan the day it was released and is the founder of a system now taken for granted and is nearly a requirement for the genre. However, there are some counterpoints to be brought up.
--------------------
First off, having a game history like this is impressive, but isn’t relevant for Smash. Characters with much less history have been included and those with more have been included, but it’s less the history itself and more the legacy it left on gaming. To clarify, characters for 3rd Party are chosen not for how long they have been around, but for their cultural impact on gaming mixed with fan request.
Secondly, Dragon Quest was NOT the first RPG to ever exist. In fact, it’s creation was sparked by a trip to the US and Yuji Horii experiencing both the Wizardry series and Ultima, then taking that influence and making his own vision from it. (Just to note that it’s not only interesting to see that the US was a major influence for the creation of one of Japan’s biggest hits in gaming, but also more proof of ‘no original ideas exist’ yet still managing to make success of an idea by making it your own...just a little encouragement for creative types out there.)
This means that Dragon Quest’s only claim to cultural impact, other than being huge in Japan, is that Dragon Quest III invented the first job/class system ever. That’s pretty big, but it’s only one criteria of a claim to fame and it was in 1988. Since then Dragon Quest hasn’t strayed from it’s formula (aside for graphical advances) for 31 years! It hasn’t tried anything new or risked anything to try and advance the RPG genre...it’s just stuck with the ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ method...which is one of the things that hurts it overseas, but that’s another topic. Essentially, the historical relevance is inventing what is now a common mechanic in RPGs and nothing else, while there are many others franchises out there that have done more to impact gaming.
Once again, this isn’t to sneeze at, just merely pointing out that there really isn’t a “perfect historical relevance” here: just one big deal in 1988 and not much afterwards.
---------------------
The next argument is the sales and I’m sure we all know this, but sales DO NOT MATTER! A game selling well doesn’t mean it will be a lock for Smash, and a game selling poorly doesn’t mean it would never get into Smash. I mean, CoD sells ridiculous amounts of copies all the time, but the the idea of a character from CoD making it to Smash is never seriously discussed despite discussion of Master Chief and Doomguy. On the other end, do you think that Ice Climbers broke records in sales? It’s the 43rd best-selling game on the NES and was never seen again until Melee! Excitebike was considered and was the 9th best-selling game on the NES, but they went with Ice Climbers. Roy’s game didn’t even release yet and never did in the West, so it definitely wasn’t sales for him. High sales is usually a result of people liking your game, normally because it’s a good game, but it’s the fan request and culture impact that determines a character’s possibility...not the number of sales.
Finally, the last argument: Nintendo presence. Well, it think it’s easy to say that Dragon Quest has mostly been on Nintendo platforms, but let us actually look at this by installment-
- Dragon Quest released on Famicom/NES
- Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line (huh, the title Luminary has been used prior to DQXI, just like Erdrick...interesting :think
- Dragon Quest III: Seeds of Salvation was released on Famicom/NES
- Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen was released for Famicom/NES
- Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride was released for the Super Famicom in 1992, the Playstation remake in 2004, but the West wouldn’t see it localized until 2009 on the Nintendo DS. It has also gotten a world-wide Android/IOS version since 2015. (Side note, this is the beginning of the show where NA doesn’t get the games for eons afterwards, and frankly whatever reason that was has done nothing but hurt it’s chances for success over here. More than likely it has something to do with the Square Soft and Enix merger as well as the fallout between Square and Nintendo, but we really don’t know all the details.)
- Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation came out on the Super Famicom in 1995 but wouldn’t see Western localization until it’s Nintendo DS remake in 2011. Also got an Android/IOS release in 2015.
- Dragon Quest VII came out on Playstation in 2000, hitting the West in 2001, this is of course during the time period in which Square Enix and Nintendo were not on friendly terms. It got a remake on Nintendo 3DS in 2013 but the West wouldn’t see that until 2016. Also a release on Android/IOS in Japan in 2015.
- Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King released on Playstation 2 in 2004, seeing Western release in 2005. It got a world-wide Android/IOS release in 2015 and a Nintendo 3DS remake in 2015 that the West wouldn’t see until 2017.
- Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies released on Nintendo DS in 2009, hitting the West in 2010. This title was the best-selling in the series in the West up until Dragon Quest XI and has very high reviews across the board. The idea of it hitting Nintendo consoles in the West as shortly after release in Japan as it did seems to have done it well in addition to being a really good game...that and the marketing campaign done by Nintendo was insane (I’ll go into that later, just a point to bring up against those arguing ‘Nintendo is pushing DQ super-hard right now!’).
- Dragon Quest X is...boy it’s something. It was an MMORPG but it never made it to the West, seeing releases and updated versions for the Wii, WiiU, Microsoft Windows, PS4 and Switch. The original came out on the Wii in 2012 and the lastest release was on WiiU, Windows, PS4, and Switch in 2017. It apparently didn’t do that well, though whether it was actually a flop or Square’s ambitions and standards were set too high is a bit of an argument to be had.
- Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age has had an interesting release cycle. APPARENTLY it originally released on the Nintendo 3DS (man, I wonder how it runs...) and the Playstation 4 in 2017, but got Western release on the Playstation 4 at the same time as it’s release on Steam AND now we have that ‘definitive edition’ coming to Switch later this year.
Now of course this isn’t including spin-offs, which have presence on many different consoles with still many on Nintendo consoles, but I think you get this idea: even WITH that messy era of separation, most of Dragon Quest’s history is on Nintendo and that which wasn’t was eventually put on it. Of course, Nintendo presence doesn’t matter solely for inclusion.
Let’s look at Cloud. Cloud himself as a character was never on a Nintendo console in the form of his own game, only some minor spin-offs much later. Yet, as the biggest face of Final Fantasy in terms of cultural impact and fan demand, he was the obvious choice. They could have picked one of the characters that were from a Nintendo release, but Sakurai picked Cloud because he knew who was the best pick. Joker also doesn’t have his main game on a Nintendo console, only spin-offs (including that new Persona Warriors game announcement), yet Sakurai knew it would be a good choice and went with it. Looking at some older characters that have a very old and brief history with Nintendo, you’ve got basically every retro rep: none of them has any current presence with Nintendo as they were all dead franchises, yet we still have Ice Climbers, Mr. Game and Watch, Little Mac and Duck Hunt. Bayonetta just recently had Nintendo presence, yet she was also included. Also, other than a couple of titles, this ‘Nintendo presence’ for Dragon Quest is mostly in Japan and somewhat elsewhere, all outside the West mostly.
I hope you guys are seeing the trend here, but we still have the ‘mocked counterarguments’ portion to go through.
These mock-versions of arguments are all jumbled, as some are more against “Erdrick” while others are against Dragon Quest as a whole, but I will tackle them in order of appearance.
The first argument here is against “Erdrick” in particular, as in DQ3 “Erdrick”. Essentially, because the character himself hasn’t been in a new game focusing on him since 1988, thus he’s forgotten and can no longer be considered for Smash. While this isn’t really the argument being made, I can’t deny that “Erdrick” from DQ3 returning in a new game focused on him would be good for him if it was well received, however what’s more important here is to break apart the real counterargument and the points that the Dragon Quest supporters are trying to make here.
First, the Pro-Erdrick point here: he doesn’t need to be in a new game centered around him to be considered for Smash.
This is completely true: look at the majority of the fan-requested characters that made it into Ultimate. Not only were they not the focus of recent titles or even the old titles in some cases, but also most of them were not in recent titles and had been lost to the past. Yet, via cultural impact and fan demand, here they are. The same is entirely true and possible for “Erdrick” from DQ3.
The Counterpoint is better explained as such: is “Erdrick” from DQ3 still the best pick to represent Dragon Quest? The character hasn’t been very prominent in titles recently, and we’ve even seen that that title “Erdrick” has belonged to multiple persons and belonged to persons before the protagonist of DQ3.
See, Dragon Quest as a narrative (as far as I can tell) has all taken place on the same ‘world’ or ‘kingdoms’, or better said the same exact setting with all the stories tying into the same narrative to be a long-running history of the world of the games. Whereas Final Fantasy is all self-contained separate stories (barring same-numbered sequels), Dragon Quest has a sprawling story that spans generations all in the same world, connecting places and names and people and plotlines. With Final Fantasy, it was easy: Cloud is the biggest face of them all, pick him. With Dragon Quest there is more nuance: “Erdrick” is a prominent figure in history who did an amazing deed to save the world, but he’s not the only one to have the title “Erdrick” nor to have done great deeds for the world, so who do you pick?
Do you lean on relevance to the story, which could easily be “Erdrick” from DQ3? Do you go with recent relevance and pick Luminary from DQXI? Do you go with world-wide recognition, which could end you up with Slime? Do you go with fan demand and end up with someone else from one of the other games like Eighter? Keep in mind, this is all outside of programming and design and movesets: this is just the planning stage, and there is already a lot of nuance and big decisions to make. Also, how relevant IS “Erdrick” to the lore? The title itself is a big deal, as is the iconic sword, shield, and even the armor...but what about specifically the protagonist from DQ3? In light of everything that has happened in the series to date, is he still relevant? With the references made to him in other titles, he could be, but it also could just be a nice little nod like we here see a lot with SMRPG and fear: just a cute acknowledgement, nothing else meant behind it.
The next argument is acting as if people think the character is “bad” because they were ‘leaked.’ No one is making that argument, as the quality of a character could never be determined by whether someone leaked them or not, but once again let find the actual arguments.
Pro-Erdrick: Just because the character was ‘leaked’ doesn’t mean they are definitely not in because ‘you can’t trust leakers’ and those leakers who have been discredited recently can still be correct about his inclusion.
I THINK this is the argument, it’s kind of hard to really decipher anything from what is clearly immature whining, but rather than break this down I will list the counterpoint and it will become clear the issue with this.
Counterpoint: Just because the character was ‘leaked’ doesn’t mean they are definitely in the game because ‘you can’t trust leakers’ and those leakers have been discredited recently, so they can be incorrect about his inclusion.
Do you see what I did there? Do you see what is wrong here? As I’ve tried hundreds of times to state, a leaker saying a character is in with no condemning proof is not justification or evidence for a character just as it isn’t weight against that character. Simply put, what a leaker says is nothing but speculation and can never be solid enough a platform to stand on to make an argument either way, making it a moot point and worthless to bring up no matter whether you are arguing for or against the character. Just leave the leakers out of the equation entirely unless they show damning evidence other than ‘Trust me on this one guys!’
This third argument is essentially saying that personal lack of knowledge of a character or franchise isn’t a solid argument, which is true, but it’s distorting the actual argument on both sides. Allow me to translate bull****-ese into English.
Pro-Dragon Quest: It was one of the most-popular NES franchises back in it’s day and has major significance because of that. Just because you don’t know about that or don’t care doesn’t make it less true or relevant.
Now you may notice that I changed this argument from ‘2nd-most-selling-NES franchise’ to ‘one of the most popular NES franchises’ and there is a reason for that: technically, Dragon Quest is at best third or fourth because both Mario and Legend of Zelda are franchises that sold more on the NES. Then you have games like Tetris and Dr. Mario and others who had some games later on other systems, so if we are talking STRICTLY franchises that had multiple entries on the NES then Dragon Quest becomes the 3rd-best, but franchises that exist outside the NES is a category that drops it further down the ladder. Regardless there is some truth to this argument as, of course, just because you don’t know something or choose to not care and act as if it doesn’t matter or exist, if it is true and does exist...it still exists. Not much with this argument, but on with the counterpoint.
Counterpoint: Many people are not aware of the character’s existence due to time passing, the franchise never becoming big in the West until later titles, and essential cultural differences. We aren’t saying that “Erdrick” isn’t relevant, but rather that he is largely unknown in the West which should be taken into consideration.
This is the actual argument being made: “Erdrick” is not a big name over here in the US or in the West in general. Now sure, our knowledge of him (or lack thereof) won’t be the sole factor in whether or not he was picked as a character, but when you are trying to make money it’s generally a good idea to know your audience and give them something they would want. For the Western Smash fans, “Erdrick” from DQ3 really doesn’t fit the bill as much as other names like Banjo-Kazooie or Rayman or Sora, considering that Dragon Quest as a whole hasn’t really been on our radar. For Japan alone it is a pretty good pick, but world-wide? Once again, this is a planning issue that needs to be thought about way before design ever happens. Is it worth less sales and backlash to take that chance? Could this be what makes Dragon Quest big in the West? Man, lots of big decisions to make by Nintendo and Sakurai before they even contact the companies of the characters, imagine having that responsibility on your shoulders!
This next one really just is someone who is upset about people bringing up the negative qualities of a core developer on the game they like. Sorry, these things are true, get over it and realize that people who make things you love can still be either really horrible people or, on the lesser end, just do things you don’t like or disagree with. It’s called ‘separating the art from the artist’ and if you can’t do that, that’s fine...but don’t deny facts. I digress, there is still something to be found here.
Pro-Dragon Quest: Just because Koichi Sugiyama has said and believes some horrible things doesn’t mean Nintendo will not work with him.
This is in fact very true and frankly, if I’m correct, Nintendo has already worked with people us in the West would find questionable. Even if this is not true, Japan’s culture is totally different from ours and they are not all about this crazy outrage culture that has taken over our nation. Things that would make us stop associating with someone or would make a company fire/not work with a person ever again are not the same there, as shown multiple times recently. His beliefs and claims have NOTHING to do with his skill and position. However, the counterpoint brings up some interesting things to ponder.
The Counterpoint: While it may not stop Nintendo from working with him, his beliefs could stop him from working with Nintendo on this project. Also, if this information went public in the US after getting a Dragon Quest character for DLC in Smash, there could be outrage that would lead to decisions needing to be made. More importantly, situations revolving around Sugiyama and the companies that have rights over his music could lead to getting only Midi tracks instead of orchestral for Ultimate, and that would not fly well over here in the West, and similarly with Sakurai’s determination to provide only the best it could prevent Dragon Quest from being in the Fighter’s Pass.
These are all arguments I think should be more heavily considered. While I think any bad press Smash might get in regards to Sugiyama could easily be negligible with nothing coming of it (I mean, Dragon Quest has had controversy over certain sexual issues in the past), the more important factor is Sugiyama and his issues with his music being in Western hands. See he has some issues with that, and while these issues seem to have been somewhat resolved in regards to the latest version of DQXI...Smash Ultimate is a totally different beast. Sugiyama wouldn’t be the shining star, he would be part of the constellation that is Smash Ultimate and that combined with the heavy catering to the Western audience could lead him to not want to work with them. That aside, before that even comes up as a problem, having to work with the companies surrounding Sugiyama could be a huge road block and apparently have been a roadblock in the past in terms of getting those quality tracks worthy of the Fighter’s Pass.
This last one isn’t really much of an argument because, as I’ve established earlier, sales ultimately do not matter in terms of character consideration. However, there is still an argument of sorts here.
Pro-Dragon Quest: A game doesn’t have to be big in the West to be considered for Smash.This...this is just true. In the past, character choices have been made that clearly show that being big or even known about at all in the West is not a deciding factor. Ness could be argued about considering how Earthbound was not well-received in the West and it’s likely many kids didn’t know who he was when they unlocked him in Smash Bros. for Nintendo 64, but Marth, Roy and Lucas most definitely fall under this as proof. Corrin/Kamui is another arguable one as the game was not even released in the West yet but it had been in Japan for a hot minute so it could have been a mix of advertising and Japanese fan catering. The Counterpoint brings up a good point though.
Counterpoint: Keeping into consideration what Western fans have been requesting and what would succeed in the West is important as well and, other than fairness and balance, Western appeal is more important in terms of sales as most of Smash Bros. sales come from the West.
Now of course I believe that there should be balance in fan requests, both having off-the-wall picks from Sakurai like Piranha Plant but also picks that just weren’t really requested heavily like Incineroar or Isabelle. This balance is what makes Smash so awesome: between big names and fan picks and off-the-wall choices and unlikely entries, everyone gets something they love at the end and it makes Smash so dope that it’s hard not to like it.
However, we have no idea what Nintendo values as important. Normally, they are a ‘bigger picture’ company in terms of profits, but DLC could be approached differently. Most of Ultimate’s reveals have catered to Western audiences or to characters that have been demanded by both West and East. Joker is another example of West and East both liking the game and the character, so it was an easy pick. Now we know more than anyone that Smash LOVES to break it’s patterns the the rules fans lay out, however it never seems to do that within itself...by that I mean, each title breaks the rules in one or two ways and doesn’t stray from that or do more until the next title. We have no idea what Nintendo or Sakurai has in store for us, but don’t let DQ fans cloud your senses with their fluff: they know no more than the rest of us and have no more going for them than the rest of us bigger communities, and in some ways they have less.
----------------------------------------------------------------------Now this is the part of the show where I’m going to dig into the meat and potatoes of the generic arguments and reasons for believing that ‘Erdrick’ from Dragon Quest III: Seeds of Salvation is going to be in Smash Ultimate via the Fighter’s Pass. I’m doing this because so many people are clouded by this overwhelming opinion and truly seem to think that ‘Erdrick’ is the face of this giant wall called Dragon Quest that simply cannot be climbed...and I’m here to tell you that not only can it be climbed, but I’ll blast a hole through it for you.
“Erdrick has already been leaked, so he’s in the game. Vergeben heard his name most often and Tansut’s source confirmed he’s in. Just accept it.”
I will probably have this engraved on my tombstone, but LEAKERS HOLD NO WEIGHT IN AN ARGUMENT! Vergeben gave no evidence that this list was real and nothing more than a list he made up, and Tansut never gave us proof that his ‘source’ confirmed anything. Using the word of a leaker is like using eyewitness testimony in court: it’s unreliable and often completely faulty, requiring us to just listen and believe with nothing but their word to go on. For instance, Vergeben loves Dragon Quest and thus has a bias and has been proven to be completely incorrect on anything Smash since the base game dropped and so far since he’s been heavily wrong on anything Nintendo. Tansut has also been incorrect and his conversation with his ‘source’ shows that he has confirmation bias by taking a neutral situation and assuming it means something he wants it to mean to be correct rather than recognizing it was a completely neutral situation.
For your own sake, remember that unless they come out with real evidence, trust the word of a leaker no more than you would entertain the thoughts of children on how they think the world works.
“Brave is clearly Erdrick’s codename! It’s basically a direct translation, the connection is completely solid. Just give in.”
So unfortunately a lot of people really do believe this when all the actual evidence points in other directions, but the idea here is that since the word ‘Brave’ can translate to ‘Yuusha - 勇者’ which means ‘Hero’ and is not only the class of Dragon Quest III’s protagonist but also a term used in reference to his equipment, that it has to be ‘Erdrick’ as DLC. There are several issues with this, the biggest one being that all the previous codenames have been less direct.
The definition of ‘codename’ is ‘a word used for secrecy or convenience instead of the usual name.’ Now since we can easily rule out convenience as the reason since we know the general practices of Japanese game developers as well as how so far most of the names have been relative in simplicity to their codenames, it’s made apparent that the codenames in Smash Ultimate are used for secrecy. The idea here is to keep the identity of the character a secret from eyes and minds that shouldn’t known, whether that be other devs that do not have clearance or the common man digging where they aren’t wanted.
Now a quick argument about the codename ‘packu’ being a on-purpose corruption of ‘pakkun’ which then is a simple google search to Piranha Plant may be brought up, but dataminers did not have information on the game until after Piranha Plant was announced so hiding him in the code is no longer needed. Also, considering Piranha Plant was planned for base roster but they ran out of time, there would be no need to hide him in the code and no need at all for a codename, thus his name isn’t well ciphered yet still with other DLC characters in the datamine.
‘Jack’ was thought to be a number of different characters before Joker’s reveal, and can be tied to him via Jack Frost being a Persona he can summon as well as a card type in a deck of cards which the Joker is one as well. Both of these are not direct references to the character yet make sense when you figure it out, making it a decent codename. The same is true for Arsene, who’s codename is ‘Doyle’, which is a reference to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote Sherlock Holmes. Arsène Lupin is a fictional thief created by Maurice Leblanc who then tried to have his character interact with Sherlock Holmes, but after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle took some form of legal action, Arsène Lupin instead interacted with ‘Herlock Sholmes’. So the codename connection is made clear, yet it was still well-deciphered.
Thus with the effort put forth here to hide the identity in a cute yet well-ciphered manner thus far, it would make sense that ‘Brave’ is also a codename meant to hide the true identity of the next DLC character in the Fighter’s Pass. This would make no sense then if Erdrick is named after the English translation of the term the Japanese most often use to describe him and the literal name for him in DQ3: it’s way too easy for anyone to figure out! However, there is another issue, which is that ‘Yuusha’ or ‘Hero’ can refer to many different things.
First off, let’s get this out of the way: whoever the protagonist of a game is often ends up being the ‘hero’ of the world the game takes place in. This makes the idea of the translation pretty moot on it’s own as it can easily be a rather broad term. However if we look at ‘Hero’ as a class, then multiple characters from Dragon Quest as well Fire Emblem and likely other J/RPGs fall under this category, so even still it’s rather broad and doesn’t truly point out ‘Erdrick’ from DQ3 directly. This is without going into how broad both Brave and ‘man of valor’ (which is another way of translating ‘Yuusha’) are and how it can easily support other characters in a way that has a deeper connection and makes it less obvious: for example, Sora from Kingdom Hearts is not only the ‘hero’ of his game series and has been called ‘brave’ multiple times but also has a Drive Form in Kingdom Hearts 2 that is called ‘Brave Stance’ in Japanese and ‘Valor Form’ in English.
So not only does the codename not make sense for ‘Erdrick’ as it would be too easy to connect the dots but it also doesn’t make sense because it can easily refer to many a character from many a game, in a way making it so on both ends it doesn’t apply well (and it gets even crazier when you add in the fact that ‘Erdrick’ or ‘Loto/Roto’ is merely a titled give to great heroes in Dragon Quest and doesn’t belong exclusively to the protagonist of DQ3).
Last note here is that, if anyone tries to tell you that the codename ‘Doyle’ for Arsene is “just an inside joke and doesn’t mean anything”, here is what you tell them: “Pick an argument and stick with it.” If they ask for clarification, tell them that the idea that both ‘Brave’ is not a joke and can be seriously linked to Erdrick but ‘Doyle’ is a joke and is not a true codename cannot exist in the same argument as it collapses on itself considering that all the codenames that have been revealed to us so far follow the same logic. If ‘Doyle’ is just a silly joke, then all the codenames have been jokes since they have been applied with the same manner, and thus ‘Brave’ is just a silly joke and anything they can try to tie it to Erdrick doesn’t mean anything; on the other side, if ‘Brave’ is to be taken seriously and not as a joke, then ‘Doyle’ should be taken seriously as well. If they cannot accept that then they are cherry-picking what applies to which codename in an effort to present a hypothetical scenario that can only benefit their cause in an effort to make the whole situation look like it favors Erdrick, thus it is also confirmation bias on top of cherry-picking and a perfect example of mental gymnastics.
“Nintendo is pushing Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age Switch Definitive Edition really REALLY hard right now and with this advertising it’s clear Erdrick is the next DLC character. Hell Japan is getting a Dragon Quest V movie so CLEARLY this is the time to strike for Erdrick in Smash! Just admit it.”
So DQXI gets a big chunk of the February Direct with promise for more later and Japan gets a movie about a completely different game in the series and this is supposed to mean Erdrick is in Smash? Remember when I pointed out how Sentinels in the Starry Skies got a LOT of advertising? Welp...let me go into detail.
So first off, in a special launch event, Yuji Horii himself went to the Nintendo World Store the DAY BEFORE the game launched in the West to commemorate the game’s release. Nintendo made commercials with Seth Green to promote the game and had them play both on television and in theaters (I will provide the commercials below if you are interested). They featured the game for two weeks on Nintendo Week and had special events at GameStop, Best Buy and Simon Mall locations where you could download exclusive treasure maps for the game. It was featured on the front cover of August 2010 Nintendo Power and the game got TWO Iwata Asks segments in which Iwata interviewed both Yuji Horii and Ryutaro Ichimura about the NA release.
THEY.
SHOVED.
THIS.
GAME.
DOWN.
NA’S.
THROAT!
And guess what? Up until DQXI, it was the Dragon Quest title to sell the most in the West EVER! It’s almost like if you market a game well it will sell better...huh….weird how that works.
Yet so far, DQXI:S hasn’t gotten this much push at all, and here is the funny part: all that marketing was JUST for the game. Nothing else special, just the game. So even if DQXI starts to get more of a marketing push in the future, that doesn’t mean anything for Smash at all since Nintendo has pushed DQ hard in the past just to sell the game alone. It is not evidence nor a hint.
Oh, and don’t get me started on how a movie focusing on a completely different story and set of characters and in a different timeframe in the lore is proof that Erdrick is in Smash. Seriously, stop it.
“DQ3 is Japan’s favorite game of all time! They absolutely love it and it would be the only one to pick a character from to properly represent Japan’s fans and DQ as a whole. This obviously means that Erdrick is the perfect pick and he’s totally in. Just take the ‘L.’”
So there are a number of things I mentioned before that bring up issues with this, but I’m going to tackle this from a different angle this time: how do we know Erdrick would be the best pick even if this was true? ‘Erdrick’ is the title the main protagonist gets at the end of the game as part of his reward for saving the world, but their real name? It’s a self-insert. Why is ‘Erdrick’ both male and female? They are a self-insert. The idea is that YOU are the hero and you earn the title Erdrick at the end as a common way to link YOUR HERO to any future title. People talk about DQ3 but they don’t often talk about the main protagonist outside of Smash chances or things related to him. To clarify, they rarely take about ‘Erdrick’ himself/herself and more often it’s ‘Sword of Erdrick’ or ‘Erdrick’s Armor’. It’s the legacy the character makes that people care about, not the character itself, or so it would seem. I know there are actual fans of the character, make no mistake, but from what I have seen it is more the character’s design and their legacy both in-game and out rather than the character themselves considering they are made to be a hollow self-insert.
So, if people seemingly do not care all that much about the character, but they love DQ3, maybe they love the others characters more? Wouldn’t that make another character more of a likely pick? Keep in mind, this is just if DQ3 is the unanimous best pick to choose a rep from. Some articles from Famitsu have had other titles like DQV listed above DQ3 in terms of popularity. This would mean that there is some contention even in Japan on which game in the series is loved the most, which means that DQ3 being the best pick isn’t just an automatic choice to make. This of course means that characters from DQV or DQVIII or any other DQ title could happen and still represent DQ and Japan’s love for the series.
I kid you not, I’ve had some people try to make the argument that having Luminary from DQXI be the Dragon Quest rep would be an insult to Japanese fans and they would riot. I think people truly forget the cultural differences that exist and I’m sure that Dragon Quest getting any rep at all would greatly please Japanese fans. They are not quite like us in the West when it comes to fan demand and outcry.
Lastly, if anyone tries to mention the stats at all, just wipe that away: the stats fluctuate and are very subject to change, so any time stats are mentioned there is no weight to be had.
Down here I am going to link two Google Documents. One is done by people from that PapaGeno’s Discord who I have had this horrible argument problems with. The other is from a friend of mine.
I’m linking both because I think they both do a good job doing certain things. The first one does a good job researching the history and cute little tidbits of Dragon Quest but is biased towards his inclusion. The second does a good job pointing out some of the issues and flaws with the arguments made for Erdrick but is biased against his inclusion and comes off a bit abrasive at times.
Pro-Erdrick - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CwBiANIgYG6K7L_485TIw8E-uuIBuITNjOXEdJJWSFo/edit?usp=sharing
Anti-Erdrick - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dp4rjhK3eoyvDXx86L2mT5PqeyNlZtRNcGqCwRnQOZE/edit?usp=sharing
The last thing I would like to say here is that, no, I didn’t find any hard and fast facts that Erdrick isn’t coming to Smash. I don’t think that would even be possible unless I found a buried tweet from Yuri Horii that stated he wasn’t in or something from Sakurai equating the same. There is no cold hard evidence here, just merely pointing out the holes in arguments on both sides but mainly on the Pro-Erdrick side because there has been a lot of blind faith conversion recently and it feels like noone is looking at it from a clear mindset. I’ll even admit here that after doing the research I have done, I think Erdrick has a bigger claim than I originally did! However, he is by no means a ‘front-runner’: I simply found out that he has more that can be put in the Pros vs the Cons than I initially thought, but that doesn’t mean he’s at the head of the pack. He’s got tough competition with Sora, Sephiroth, even our boy Geno and, hell even other characters from his own franchise like Slime, Luminary or Eighter.
If it feels like I got lost somewhere along the way, don’t worry, I kind of felt that way too. Just look at it from the perspective that Erdrick can’t be ‘the front-runner for a Square Enix in Smash Ultimate’ if there are so many issues that I listed with the statements made about his guaranteed inclusion. Erdrick is a possibility and a strong one, but he is no more near existing than anyone else as far as our outsider knowledge is concerned and don’t let anyone force you to think otherwise.
Whoa, hold up! Dixie being an echo is a horrible idea. semi-clone at best or she wouldn't be true to her character. She doesn't pick up people with her hands, she uses her hair. She throws with her hair. Her style is mostly centered around her hair and she doesn’t use a gun like Diddy. Making her an echo like Chrom would be going against her character and it would be better for her to be a semi-clone and have many a move function differently while having a good chunck pulled from Diddy.
Nothing indicates that history isn't taken into account when choosing characters. Yes, newer characters have joined, but we have an overwhelming majority of older characters (just check how many characters originated on the NES alone vs. other consoles).
I don't think anyone ever claimed that.
Have you played Ultima? Dragon Quest didn't invent the RPG (hell, videogames didn't invent the RPG), but it certainly did invent the RPG as we know it today.
It really isn't. If you're a Dragon Quest fan you know the go-to hero to represent the franchise is Erdrick. It's like saying Fire Emblem representation is more nuanced; just because Marth isn't as well known as Cloud doesn't mean it's not still an obvious affair.
I get what you're aiming for, but you can't honestly expect people to disregard leakers with solid track records after one guy leaked nearly the entire roster for this game.
This is presuming that there would be poor sales and backlash.
This is presuming Dragon Quest hasn't already broken out in the West with DQXI. While this is subjective (I'd say it still has a ways to go, and DQXIS might be the one that does the heavy lifting), it did sell nearly one million copies outside Japan.
Do you have any evidence that might be the case? Dude has worked with Nintendo before, why is Ultimate special?
Unlikely, given that this is all already public information and nobody gives a damn.
Maybe, but Cloud came only with 2 Spirits and there wasn't a huge backlash.
Just because it's easy to figure out doesn't mean it wasn't meant to be hard. People will guess things. Somebody probably guessed that Jack was Joker, somebody probably guessed the plot of Avengers Endgame and somebody probably guessed whatever reveal we're going to get in E3. That doesn't mean they were predictable.
Semantics. That's like saying nobody cares about the Pokemon trainer or the Villager because they're just meant to be you. People still clearly do care about those characters, for whatever reason they might. Yes, cool designs and legacies draw people to characters. I doubt many are drawn to Mario for his intense psychological depth. The nature of videogames means that oftentimes a protagonist is a balancing act between their own personality and the player's input and projection.
No, why would it? It's a common thing in all media: people don't like the hero, they like the wacky side characters. Heroes are boring. We don't want Luke, we want Han. But if you have to put one Star Wars character in your game and you go with Han before Luke, you're insane.
I think this whole post is very funny becauseI get that you look a lot at random arguments that people make and all that (including for erdrick), and there's a place for closing them down when they're not good, but it feels a bit like you're taking them all as if they're all being used, and I dont really think they're good points at all (in the first erdrick section, non- common ones or whatever), and I mean that including the pro-erdrick stuff. Some of the counters are to points that i recognize and can tell they're from being tired of seeing the lame arguments against erdrick. There's bias on both sides and I find it odd that you yourself seem tired of them when they came from being tired on the other side. Do you know what I mean? I think a different approach is needed, it just feels like some crappiness from both sides, lol.
As for the common arguments, I feel like you're (again) generalizing quite a bit and outright dismissing the actual points in erdrick's favor. I think the points that matter should have the right amount of weight, not totally disregarded as if it doesnt matter. The strongest points for Erdrick are the leaks, and secondarily the codename. The Brave codename is another one that you totally dismiss, using a point that generalizes again. You're using one set of codenames (for persona) as if it's all going to be the same. You can only establish a pattern if there are more to go on. It's like in court, if you want to point out a pattern of something (like bad behaviour), there has to be enough to make the pattern or else all you can say is that it's happened int he past, you can't say that it's necessarily going to be like that for the rest (and even then it's not guaranteed). Considering that your entire point relies on that to totally dismiss the codename is.. not too good, loll. That's not how arguments are supposed to work.
There iisn't full evidence for any character. But as far as leaks go, Erdrick has a strong case for being likely. It's odd to divide base and dlc when we only have joker to go on for dlc. Again, one instance that you want to generalize with, but also completely separate from the rest in order to make your generalization -that since nobody got something in the dlc phase then the leak info means nothing. Totally dismissing. And the thing is is that we do have a lot more parts to verge's leaks to show precedents, but you want to make a barrier between base and dlc to make your point work.
Verge said that he heard from his main sources about erdrick. That's the sources that got maybe around 70%? of the base roster, and it's weird to look at things he got wrong (minecraft and SE timing) or what wasnt from his main source to totally dismiss his credit entirely. Again, it's not how making good points work. Things need to be weighted and considered properly, that is if you want to look at it properly. Getting a lot of things right counts for a lot, especially as far as leakers go.
Then again, maybe I dont know how **** posts work, and you want to just **** on everything to make your point. If that's what you want then alright, I guess you wrote what you wanted to ;p
I do think it kinda sucks when some people are treating things as if they're guaranteed (including erdrick), and I'd rather people just see it as possible and leave things open (since they are -we dont know anything for sure
ForsakenM
obviously took a long time to write down all of his points and discussed both pros and cons for every argument I've seen about Erdrick and yet you completely dismiss all that as a ****post. Like, really? You just keep saying there are strong arguments for Erdrick and that Forsaken doesn't know how to make a strong case but you're not really making a strong case yourself and are just restating what he's brought up as pros for Erdrick. You're not actually making any strong counter arguments to what he's brought up either. Just that Verg got things right in the base game and that there's only been one DLC character shown off. But Verg hasn't gotten a single thing correct yet as far as DLC goes and we have both Joker and Arsene as a pattern of misdirection and clear use of ciphers for codenames. Those are things Forsaken brought up.
Eh? I'm not dismissing, and I was playing with what he called it himself.I think this whole post is very funny because
This really to me looks like someone who has obviously done a ton of research and in the end even gave Erdrick an even footing with plenty of other character possibilities and another person person saying "Nuh-uh" and basically disregarding a lot of research and logic presented right in front of them.
lmao it's not that I didn't understand your points it's just that they weren't that in-depth or well thought out for someone pointing to someone else and trying to advise them on how to make a """good case""". There needs to be at least 4 pieces to call something a pattern? Really? Why are you just making up silly rules now? The blatant and objective thing about both codenames is they were not direct references to their respective characters. Which makes sense. Because they're ****ing code names. I don't see the point of moving goalposts on this when it's so blatant. And regarding leakers you can't just say "There's only 1 DLC out they haven't gotten anything wrong" when there have been several things that leakers have gotten blatantly wrong at this point. I feel like you're being disingenuous here because I know you've been around long enough to hear about said things they've gotten wrong. I don't really see the need to list them out. There is a very obvious difference between DLC and base roster in terms of the accuracy of the information that's been given out. Even in terms of non-Smash stuff Verge has gotten major things wrong after the game released. There's also clear evidence that Nintendo has intentionally sent out false information in order to **** over leakers (which they have).
ForsakenM
posted that you blatantly ignored.
ForsakenM
I appreciate the time you've spent on your post and it's an interesting read that defines your perspective on the "Erdrick" question. There's a lot to unpack and I look forward to having more time to formulate my own response in the (semi-) near future. That said, I do think the post reads a bit too much like a piece directed at specific Erdrick supporters/believers that aren't really around this forum and that still feels off to me. It's sort of ends up in a weird middle ground of a biased piece attempting to push back against arguments regarding a character (And while I don't have as much of a personal attachment to Erdrick or Dragon Quest, I definitely see how more invested supporters could take many parts of your post as more confrontational) and a non-biased look at or investigation into Erdrick as a character option for Smash. There's a lot more of this that I hope to get into (and I will absolutely make sure I give everything the time it deserves when I get to that post given the effort you've put in), but there are a couple of moments with phrases like "Sales don't matter" that I'm not sure really work across the board for Smash and can just be one factor that makes Dragon Quest content more likely. That argument is usually used to frame the idea of an unlikely pick still being able to get in, not denying a character entry sort of thing, so it's strange to see how that ends up positioned in your piece. Sales don't prevent unknown character from joining, but they certainly can help a character get in. But again, give me a few days, and I'll get back to you in more detail.lmao it's not that I didn't understand your points it's just that they weren't that in-depth or well thought out for someone pointing to someone else and trying to advise them on how to make a """good case""". There needs to be at least 4 pieces to call something a pattern? Really? Why are you just making up silly rules now? The blatant and objective thing about both codenames is they were not direct references to their respective characters. Which makes sense. Because they're ****ing code names. I don't see the point of moving goalposts on this when it's so blatant. And regarding leakers you can't just say "There's only 1 DLC out they haven't gotten anything wrong" when there have been several things that leakers have gotten blatantly wrong at this point. I feel like you're being disingenuous here because I know you've been around long enough to hear about said things they've gotten wrong. I don't really see the need to list them out. There is a very obvious difference between DLC and base roster in terms of the accuracy of the information that's been given out. Even in terms of non-Smash stuff Verge has gotten major things wrong after the game released. There's also clear evidence that Nintendo has intentionally sent out false information in order to **** over leakers (which they have).
When I said you were dismissing things I meant that there was a clear logic to each of the things
Teeb147
was a little quick to respond with the "****-post" comment, but there's still plenty of room for disagreement in the original post and they do have a point in some areas. For example, you cannot establish a pattern off of one thing and we have one character for DLC, and it's still really hard to make sense of where this DLC season is going and if "leakers" are truly unreliable. The saying goes, "Once is a fluke, two is a coincidence, three is a pattern." While not some sort of empirical reasoning, we just need more information across the board to take more definitive stances of DLC. And to be fair, the baseline supposition of "Leakers are false" is one that people are free to disagree with as well and it's also worth noting that some individuals aren't as keen to throw those same "leakers" out despite some missteps. Verge presumably has his own sources, so he's just as likely himself to receive bad intel and still have legitimate intel elsewhere. He's not gone off the deep end like LoZ18 did or anything like that, so he could in theory be validated by DLC before it's all said and done. I wouldn't love that outcome because I don't like Verge for his attitude, but some people are still keeping an open mind with regard to Verge despite some issues.
This is wrong, second means second, it actually sold more than the Zelda franchise on the NES, that is what "second best selling franchise on the NES" means.
Forsaken has described this very post using that term in a jokingly matter a few pages in the past. It is hardly fair to judge the use of it like this.I think this whole post is very funny because
To be fair, there’s more to inferring a pattern than observing an explicit process of repetition. While that’s obviously the most direct and emphatic way to prove it, the surrounding context and historical precedent can also inform or infer the existence of a pattern. I don’t think it’s reasonable to be that dismissive of a position that takes into account the larger body of evidence...But I also know that proof is based on your willingness to accept it.
Alright guys, here is that big *** post I promised and talked up. I split it off into different spoilers that accurately define that topic behind them. This is so that people who aren't interested in reading the big wall of texts but are interested in my replies can do so. Even so, the middle two topics are VERY long so I warn you before diving into them. Hopefully I did a good enough job separating and formatting them so that it doesn't all just blur together and has some sort of fun and flare, though Smashboard definitely is not Word Online or Google Docs in when it comes to fancier options.
I hope you enjoy it. Also, if you did enjoy it and would like more (god I sound like a typical YouTuber phoning it in right now, jesus) or really liked the documents that were made up by others, please let me know. I know of more documents made up like that and I'm even working on one right now that covers everything one would need to know to be introduced to Geno and his pros and cons for Smash Ultimate. It will have the same amount of effort and even more love put into it than this did.
Have fun reading! :D
--------------------------------------------------------------Funnily enough, I was about to say that I might have to tag you in for this, since this is something you have argued against for a hot while now. I seriously can never understand why people actually think Square is the problem with it all. It's clearly bias, as most of us here love Nintendo and are wonderfully amazed by Sakurai, so CLEARLY neither of these entities could be a fault and thus it HAS to be Square! This is not a logical approach, it is an emotional one that feeds into the bias of Square being a mean company. This is why I said that
------------------------------------------------------------------Now on the opposite coin of what Eric thinks, I'm going to address something: referring to 'Erdrick' from Dragon Quest III as 'the most likely' or 'the front runner' for a Square rep for DLC. This irritates me to no end because it is a statement that is widely accepted despite not only incorrectly displaying the Fighter's Pass situation, but it incorrectly displays Dragon Quest III and Dragon Quest as a whole in terms of its competition.
First off, Square is not guaranteed another rep and there has been zero evidence to come out that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Square is getting another rep in Smash Ultimate. Thus, if you act as if 'Erdrick' from Dragon Quest III is a 'front-runner' then you have already assumed the stance that Square Enix is getting another rep as DLC and that assumption is baseless. This is not the foundation of an argument, it is pure speculation, and thus holds no weight. This is fine for speculation, but many people (including bigger names on bigger media) are phrasing this in a way that makes it sound like another Square rep is already predetermined just like so many 'Erdrick fans' are claiming the character is already confirmed despite having no evidence at all.
Now, onto the issues with Erdrick being referred to as a 'front-runner.' Before we get started, I would like to show you an image that is a shining symbol of the issue of debating about Erdrick.
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First off, as a minor anecdote, I would like to point out that the latter half of this picture is a perfect representation of trying to debate against anyone who was convinced 'Erdrick' from Dragon Quest III was already in the Fighter's Pass from within PapaGeno's leak speculation section on Discord. No matter how solid or well-constructed or polite your argument was, turning your argument into a variation of one of those so as to mock your point and make you look like an idiot was all they ever did and they felt it was good enough to win the debate, however they got bonus points towards being irritable by incorporating ad hominems and grouping up together to bring up things outside the argument and personal to get a rising response out of you and thereby 'win' the argument. If this sounds rather annoying and immature, make no mistake it was, but keep in mind these are people who are now saying that the reveal of Arsene's codename being 'Doyle' isn't really a codename but is an inside joke and thus is irrelevant and thus 'Brave' is still 'Erdrick' 100%.
I see this image as having the same problems as that 'QUIT HAVING FUN!' image when pertaining to objectively bad games (yes, something can be bad
objectively, please do not come at me with this philosophical mindset: I'm not talking about how you feel about something, I'm talking about the game on it's own merits.) With the 'QUIT HAVING FUN!' image, it's not that we do not want others to have fun with what they choose, but that we want them to have enough critical thinking to realize that just because they are enjoying it doesn't mean it's a good game and that monetary support of such a product will show companies that you will continue to pay for poor quality content. In essence, people like myself are trying to help others realize that the game they are having fun with could have been substantially better and that their own bias is preventing them from obtaining that.
Similarly, this image misconstrues the opposition: it is suggesting that those who support 'Erdrick' from Dragon Quest III being DLC for Smash Ultimate are logical within their reasoning and 'evidence' to support this reasoning but that those who disagree are illogical, have poor 'evidence', and perhaps are uneducated. This couldn't be further from the truth.
Let us tackle each argument individually, starting with the so-called 'correct' argument.
"Dragon Quest has the perfect mix of historical relevance, sales and Nintendo presence to be DLC."
First off, there is already some bias/weak terminology here in the word 'perfect.' This would imply being completely flawless, that this combination of history, number of sales and presence on Nintendo platforms is SO divine that it guarantees their inclusion into Smash and there cannot possibly be a counterargument or any holes to point out. This is obviously incorrect as nothing man-made is perfect and there is always room from improvement, especially where debate and speculation is concerned as so much misinformation and assumption gets spread (which we are all guilty of, including myself).
So the first thing this argument mentions is historical relevance, which anyone who does a small amount of research can confirm: the first Dragon Quest released in 1986 on the NES, so it’s been around for a while (33 years to be more exact) and has had semi-consistent releases to this day. However, by historical relevance, what most people are referring to is Dragon Quest III: Seeds of Salvation in which this game introduced the job/class system that is very much well known nowadays which would make it the granddaddy of most RPGs in that sense.
This is definitely NOTHING to sneeze at, as it broke Japan the day it was released and is the founder of a system now taken for granted and is nearly a requirement for the genre. However, there are some counterpoints to be brought up.
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First off, having a game history like this is impressive, but isn’t relevant for Smash. Characters with much less history have been included and those with more have been included, but it’s less the history itself and more the legacy it left on gaming. To clarify, characters for 3rd Party are chosen not for how long they have been around, but for their cultural impact on gaming mixed with fan request.
Secondly, Dragon Quest was NOT the first RPG to ever exist. In fact, it’s creation was sparked by a trip to the US and Yuji Horii experiencing both the Wizardry series and Ultima, then taking that influence and making his own vision from it. (Just to note that it’s not only interesting to see that the US was a major influence for the creation of one of Japan’s biggest hits in gaming, but also more proof of ‘no original ideas exist’ yet still managing to make success of an idea by making it your own...just a little encouragement for creative types out there.)
This means that Dragon Quest’s only claim to cultural impact, other than being huge in Japan, is that Dragon Quest III invented the first job/class system ever. That’s pretty big, but it’s only one criteria of a claim to fame and it was in 1988. Since then Dragon Quest hasn’t strayed from it’s formula (aside for graphical advances) for 31 years! It hasn’t tried anything new or risked anything to try and advance the RPG genre...it’s just stuck with the ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ method...which is one of the things that hurts it overseas, but that’s another topic. Essentially, the historical relevance is inventing what is now a common mechanic in RPGs and nothing else, while there are many others franchises out there that have done more to impact gaming.
Once again, this isn’t to sneeze at, just merely pointing out that there really isn’t a “perfect historical relevance” here: just one big deal in 1988 and not much afterwards.
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The next argument is the sales and I’m sure we all know this, but sales DO NOT MATTER! A game selling well doesn’t mean it will be a lock for Smash, and a game selling poorly doesn’t mean it would never get into Smash. I mean, CoD sells ridiculous amounts of copies all the time, but the the idea of a character from CoD making it to Smash is never seriously discussed despite discussion of Master Chief and Doomguy. On the other end, do you think that Ice Climbers broke records in sales? It’s the 43rd best-selling game on the NES and was never seen again until Melee! Excitebike was considered and was the 9th best-selling game on the NES, but they went with Ice Climbers. Roy’s game didn’t even release yet and never did in the West, so it definitely wasn’t sales for him. High sales is usually a result of people liking your game, normally because it’s a good game, but it’s the fan request and culture impact that determines a character’s possibility...not the number of sales.
Finally, the last argument: Nintendo presence. Well, it think it’s easy to say that Dragon Quest has mostly been on Nintendo platforms, but let us actually look at this by installment-
- Dragon Quest released on Famicom/NES
- Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line (huh, the title Luminary has been used prior to DQXI, just like Erdrick...interesting :think
- Dragon Quest III: Seeds of Salvation was released on Famicom/NES
- Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen was released for Famicom/NES
- Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride was released for the Super Famicom in 1992, the Playstation remake in 2004, but the West wouldn’t see it localized until 2009 on the Nintendo DS. It has also gotten a world-wide Android/IOS version since 2015. (Side note, this is the beginning of the show where NA doesn’t get the games for eons afterwards, and frankly whatever reason that was has done nothing but hurt it’s chances for success over here. More than likely it has something to do with the Square Soft and Enix merger as well as the fallout between Square and Nintendo, but we really don’t know all the details.)
- Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation came out on the Super Famicom in 1995 but wouldn’t see Western localization until it’s Nintendo DS remake in 2011. Also got an Android/IOS release in 2015.
- Dragon Quest VII came out on Playstation in 2000, hitting the West in 2001, this is of course during the time period in which Square Enix and Nintendo were not on friendly terms. It got a remake on Nintendo 3DS in 2013 but the West wouldn’t see that until 2016. Also a release on Android/IOS in Japan in 2015.
- Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King released on Playstation 2 in 2004, seeing Western release in 2005. It got a world-wide Android/IOS release in 2015 and a Nintendo 3DS remake in 2015 that the West wouldn’t see until 2017.
- Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies released on Nintendo DS in 2009, hitting the West in 2010. This title was the best-selling in the series in the West up until Dragon Quest XI and has very high reviews across the board. The idea of it hitting Nintendo consoles in the West as shortly after release in Japan as it did seems to have done it well in addition to being a really good game...that and the marketing campaign done by Nintendo was insane (I’ll go into that later, just a point to bring up against those arguing ‘Nintendo is pushing DQ super-hard right now!’).
- Dragon Quest X is...boy it’s something. It was an MMORPG but it never made it to the West, seeing releases and updated versions for the Wii, WiiU, Microsoft Windows, PS4 and Switch. The original came out on the Wii in 2012 and the lastest release was on WiiU, Windows, PS4, and Switch in 2017. It apparently didn’t do that well, though whether it was actually a flop or Square’s ambitions and standards were set too high is a bit of an argument to be had.
- Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age has had an interesting release cycle. APPARENTLY it originally released on the Nintendo 3DS (man, I wonder how it runs...) and the Playstation 4 in 2017, but got Western release on the Playstation 4 at the same time as it’s release on Steam AND now we have that ‘definitive edition’ coming to Switch later this year.
Now of course this isn’t including spin-offs, which have presence on many different consoles with still many on Nintendo consoles, but I think you get this idea: even WITH that messy era of separation, most of Dragon Quest’s history is on Nintendo and that which wasn’t was eventually put on it. Of course, Nintendo presence doesn’t matter solely for inclusion.
Let’s look at Cloud. Cloud himself as a character was never on a Nintendo console in the form of his own game, only some minor spin-offs much later. Yet, as the biggest face of Final Fantasy in terms of cultural impact and fan demand, he was the obvious choice. They could have picked one of the characters that were from a Nintendo release, but Sakurai picked Cloud because he knew who was the best pick. Joker also doesn’t have his main game on a Nintendo console, only spin-offs (including that new Persona Warriors game announcement), yet Sakurai knew it would be a good choice and went with it. Looking at some older characters that have a very old and brief history with Nintendo, you’ve got basically every retro rep: none of them has any current presence with Nintendo as they were all dead franchises, yet we still have Ice Climbers, Mr. Game and Watch, Little Mac and Duck Hunt. Bayonetta just recently had Nintendo presence, yet she was also included. Also, other than a couple of titles, this ‘Nintendo presence’ for Dragon Quest is mostly in Japan and somewhat elsewhere, all outside the West mostly.
I hope you guys are seeing the trend here, but we still have the ‘mocked counterarguments’ portion to go through.
These mock-versions of arguments are all jumbled, as some are more against “Erdrick” while others are against Dragon Quest as a whole, but I will tackle them in order of appearance.
The first argument here is against “Erdrick” in particular, as in DQ3 “Erdrick”. Essentially, because the character himself hasn’t been in a new game focusing on him since 1988, thus he’s forgotten and can no longer be considered for Smash. While this isn’t really the argument being made, I can’t deny that “Erdrick” from DQ3 returning in a new game focused on him would be good for him if it was well received, however what’s more important here is to break apart the real counterargument and the points that the Dragon Quest supporters are trying to make here.
First, the Pro-Erdrick point here: he doesn’t need to be in a new game centered around him to be considered for Smash.
This is completely true: look at the majority of the fan-requested characters that made it into Ultimate. Not only were they not the focus of recent titles or even the old titles in some cases, but also most of them were not in recent titles and had been lost to the past. Yet, via cultural impact and fan demand, here they are. The same is entirely true and possible for “Erdrick” from DQ3.
The Counterpoint is better explained as such: is “Erdrick” from DQ3 still the best pick to represent Dragon Quest? The character hasn’t been very prominent in titles recently, and we’ve even seen that that title “Erdrick” has belonged to multiple persons and belonged to persons before the protagonist of DQ3.
See, Dragon Quest as a narrative (as far as I can tell) has all taken place on the same ‘world’ or ‘kingdoms’, or better said the same exact setting with all the stories tying into the same narrative to be a long-running history of the world of the games. Whereas Final Fantasy is all self-contained separate stories (barring same-numbered sequels), Dragon Quest has a sprawling story that spans generations all in the same world, connecting places and names and people and plotlines. With Final Fantasy, it was easy: Cloud is the biggest face of them all, pick him. With Dragon Quest there is more nuance: “Erdrick” is a prominent figure in history who did an amazing deed to save the world, but he’s not the only one to have the title “Erdrick” nor to have done great deeds for the world, so who do you pick?
Do you lean on relevance to the story, which could easily be “Erdrick” from DQ3? Do you go with recent relevance and pick Luminary from DQXI? Do you go with world-wide recognition, which could end you up with Slime? Do you go with fan demand and end up with someone else from one of the other games like Eighter? Keep in mind, this is all outside of programming and design and movesets: this is just the planning stage, and there is already a lot of nuance and big decisions to make. Also, how relevant IS “Erdrick” to the lore? The title itself is a big deal, as is the iconic sword, shield, and even the armor...but what about specifically the protagonist from DQ3? In light of everything that has happened in the series to date, is he still relevant? With the references made to him in other titles, he could be, but it also could just be a nice little nod like we here see a lot with SMRPG and fear: just a cute acknowledgement, nothing else meant behind it.
The next argument is acting as if people think the character is “bad” because they were ‘leaked.’ No one is making that argument, as the quality of a character could never be determined by whether someone leaked them or not, but once again let find the actual arguments.
Pro-Erdrick: Just because the character was ‘leaked’ doesn’t mean they are definitely not in because ‘you can’t trust leakers’ and those leakers who have been discredited recently can still be correct about his inclusion.
I THINK this is the argument, it’s kind of hard to really decipher anything from what is clearly immature whining, but rather than break this down I will list the counterpoint and it will become clear the issue with this.
Counterpoint: Just because the character was ‘leaked’ doesn’t mean they are definitely in the game because ‘you can’t trust leakers’ and those leakers have been discredited recently, so they can be incorrect about his inclusion.
Do you see what I did there? Do you see what is wrong here? As I’ve tried hundreds of times to state, a leaker saying a character is in with no condemning proof is not justification or evidence for a character just as it isn’t weight against that character. Simply put, what a leaker says is nothing but speculation and can never be solid enough a platform to stand on to make an argument either way, making it a moot point and worthless to bring up no matter whether you are arguing for or against the character. Just leave the leakers out of the equation entirely unless they show damning evidence other than ‘Trust me on this one guys!’
This third argument is essentially saying that personal lack of knowledge of a character or franchise isn’t a solid argument, which is true, but it’s distorting the actual argument on both sides. Allow me to translate bull****-ese into English.
Pro-Dragon Quest: It was one of the most-popular NES franchises back in it’s day and has major significance because of that. Just because you don’t know about that or don’t care doesn’t make it less true or relevant.
Now you may notice that I changed this argument from ‘2nd-most-selling-NES franchise’ to ‘one of the most popular NES franchises’ and there is a reason for that: technically, Dragon Quest is at best third or fourth because both Mario and Legend of Zelda are franchises that sold more on the NES. Then you have games like Tetris and Dr. Mario and others who had some games later on other systems, so if we are talking STRICTLY franchises that had multiple entries on the NES then Dragon Quest becomes the 3rd-best, but franchises that exist outside the NES is a category that drops it further down the ladder. Regardless there is some truth to this argument as, of course, just because you don’t know something or choose to not care and act as if it doesn’t matter or exist, if it is true and does exist...it still exists. Not much with this argument, but on with the counterpoint.
Counterpoint: Many people are not aware of the character’s existence due to time passing, the franchise never becoming big in the West until later titles, and essential cultural differences. We aren’t saying that “Erdrick” isn’t relevant, but rather that he is largely unknown in the West which should be taken into consideration.
This is the actual argument being made: “Erdrick” is not a big name over here in the US or in the West in general. Now sure, our knowledge of him (or lack thereof) won’t be the sole factor in whether or not he was picked as a character, but when you are trying to make money it’s generally a good idea to know your audience and give them something they would want. For the Western Smash fans, “Erdrick” from DQ3 really doesn’t fit the bill as much as other names like Banjo-Kazooie or Rayman or Sora, considering that Dragon Quest as a whole hasn’t really been on our radar. For Japan alone it is a pretty good pick, but world-wide? Once again, this is a planning issue that needs to be thought about way before design ever happens. Is it worth less sales and backlash to take that chance? Could this be what makes Dragon Quest big in the West? Man, lots of big decisions to make by Nintendo and Sakurai before they even contact the companies of the characters, imagine having that responsibility on your shoulders!
This next one really just is someone who is upset about people bringing up the negative qualities of a core developer on the game they like. Sorry, these things are true, get over it and realize that people who make things you love can still be either really horrible people or, on the lesser end, just do things you don’t like or disagree with. It’s called ‘separating the art from the artist’ and if you can’t do that, that’s fine...but don’t deny facts. I digress, there is still something to be found here.
Pro-Dragon Quest: Just because Koichi Sugiyama has said and believes some horrible things doesn’t mean Nintendo will not work with him.
This is in fact very true and frankly, if I’m correct, Nintendo has already worked with people us in the West would find questionable. Even if this is not true, Japan’s culture is totally different from ours and they are not all about this crazy outrage culture that has taken over our nation. Things that would make us stop associating with someone or would make a company fire/not work with a person ever again are not the same there, as shown multiple times recently. His beliefs and claims have NOTHING to do with his skill and position. However, the counterpoint brings up some interesting things to ponder.
The Counterpoint: While it may not stop Nintendo from working with him, his beliefs could stop him from working with Nintendo on this project. Also, if this information went public in the US after getting a Dragon Quest character for DLC in Smash, there could be outrage that would lead to decisions needing to be made. More importantly, situations revolving around Sugiyama and the companies that have rights over his music could lead to getting only Midi tracks instead of orchestral for Ultimate, and that would not fly well over here in the West, and similarly with Sakurai’s determination to provide only the best it could prevent Dragon Quest from being in the Fighter’s Pass.
These are all arguments I think should be more heavily considered. While I think any bad press Smash might get in regards to Sugiyama could easily be negligible with nothing coming of it (I mean, Dragon Quest has had controversy over certain sexual issues in the past), the more important factor is Sugiyama and his issues with his music being in Western hands. See he has some issues with that, and while these issues seem to have been somewhat resolved in regards to the latest version of DQXI...Smash Ultimate is a totally different beast. Sugiyama wouldn’t be the shining star, he would be part of the constellation that is Smash Ultimate and that combined with the heavy catering to the Western audience could lead him to not want to work with them. That aside, before that even comes up as a problem, having to work with the companies surrounding Sugiyama could be a huge road block and apparently have been a roadblock in the past in terms of getting those quality tracks worthy of the Fighter’s Pass.
This last one isn’t really much of an argument because, as I’ve established earlier, sales ultimately do not matter in terms of character consideration. However, there is still an argument of sorts here.
Pro-Dragon Quest: A game doesn’t have to be big in the West to be considered for Smash.This...this is just true. In the past, character choices have been made that clearly show that being big or even known about at all in the West is not a deciding factor. Ness could be argued about considering how Earthbound was not well-received in the West and it’s likely many kids didn’t know who he was when they unlocked him in Smash Bros. for Nintendo 64, but Marth, Roy and Lucas most definitely fall under this as proof. Corrin/Kamui is another arguable one as the game was not even released in the West yet but it had been in Japan for a hot minute so it could have been a mix of advertising and Japanese fan catering. The Counterpoint brings up a good point though.
Counterpoint: Keeping into consideration what Western fans have been requesting and what would succeed in the West is important as well and, other than fairness and balance, Western appeal is more important in terms of sales as most of Smash Bros. sales come from the West.
Now of course I believe that there should be balance in fan requests, both having off-the-wall picks from Sakurai like Piranha Plant but also picks that just weren’t really requested heavily like Incineroar or Isabelle. This balance is what makes Smash so awesome: between big names and fan picks and off-the-wall choices and unlikely entries, everyone gets something they love at the end and it makes Smash so dope that it’s hard not to like it.
However, we have no idea what Nintendo values as important. Normally, they are a ‘bigger picture’ company in terms of profits, but DLC could be approached differently. Most of Ultimate’s reveals have catered to Western audiences or to characters that have been demanded by both West and East. Joker is another example of West and East both liking the game and the character, so it was an easy pick. Now we know more than anyone that Smash LOVES to break it’s patterns the the rules fans lay out, however it never seems to do that within itself...by that I mean, each title breaks the rules in one or two ways and doesn’t stray from that or do more until the next title. We have no idea what Nintendo or Sakurai has in store for us, but don’t let DQ fans cloud your senses with their fluff: they know no more than the rest of us and have no more going for them than the rest of us bigger communities, and in some ways they have less.
----------------------------------------------------------------------Now this is the part of the show where I’m going to dig into the meat and potatoes of the generic arguments and reasons for believing that ‘Erdrick’ from Dragon Quest III: Seeds of Salvation is going to be in Smash Ultimate via the Fighter’s Pass. I’m doing this because so many people are clouded by this overwhelming opinion and truly seem to think that ‘Erdrick’ is the face of this giant wall called Dragon Quest that simply cannot be climbed...and I’m here to tell you that not only can it be climbed, but I’ll blast a hole through it for you.
“Erdrick has already been leaked, so he’s in the game. Vergeben heard his name most often and Tansut’s source confirmed he’s in. Just accept it.”
I will probably have this engraved on my tombstone, but LEAKERS HOLD NO WEIGHT IN AN ARGUMENT! Vergeben gave no evidence that this list was real and nothing more than a list he made up, and Tansut never gave us proof that his ‘source’ confirmed anything. Using the word of a leaker is like using eyewitness testimony in court: it’s unreliable and often completely faulty, requiring us to just listen and believe with nothing but their word to go on. For instance, Vergeben loves Dragon Quest and thus has a bias and has been proven to be completely incorrect on anything Smash since the base game dropped and so far since he’s been heavily wrong on anything Nintendo. Tansut has also been incorrect and his conversation with his ‘source’ shows that he has confirmation bias by taking a neutral situation and assuming it means something he wants it to mean to be correct rather than recognizing it was a completely neutral situation.
For your own sake, remember that unless they come out with real evidence, trust the word of a leaker no more than you would entertain the thoughts of children on how they think the world works.
“Brave is clearly Erdrick’s codename! It’s basically a direct translation, the connection is completely solid. Just give in.”
So unfortunately a lot of people really do believe this when all the actual evidence points in other directions, but the idea here is that since the word ‘Brave’ can translate to ‘Yuusha - 勇者’ which means ‘Hero’ and is not only the class of Dragon Quest III’s protagonist but also a term used in reference to his equipment, that it has to be ‘Erdrick’ as DLC. There are several issues with this, the biggest one being that all the previous codenames have been less direct.
The definition of ‘codename’ is ‘a word used for secrecy or convenience instead of the usual name.’ Now since we can easily rule out convenience as the reason since we know the general practices of Japanese game developers as well as how so far most of the names have been relative in simplicity to their codenames, it’s made apparent that the codenames in Smash Ultimate are used for secrecy. The idea here is to keep the identity of the character a secret from eyes and minds that shouldn’t known, whether that be other devs that do not have clearance or the common man digging where they aren’t wanted.
Now a quick argument about the codename ‘packu’ being a on-purpose corruption of ‘pakkun’ which then is a simple google search to Piranha Plant may be brought up, but dataminers did not have information on the game until after Piranha Plant was announced so hiding him in the code is no longer needed. Also, considering Piranha Plant was planned for base roster but they ran out of time, there would be no need to hide him in the code and no need at all for a codename, thus his name isn’t well ciphered yet still with other DLC characters in the datamine.
‘Jack’ was thought to be a number of different characters before Joker’s reveal, and can be tied to him via Jack Frost being a Persona he can summon as well as a card type in a deck of cards which the Joker is one as well. Both of these are not direct references to the character yet make sense when you figure it out, making it a decent codename. The same is true for Arsene, who’s codename is ‘Doyle’, which is a reference to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote Sherlock Holmes. Arsène Lupin is a fictional thief created by Maurice Leblanc who then tried to have his character interact with Sherlock Holmes, but after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle took some form of legal action, Arsène Lupin instead interacted with ‘Herlock Sholmes’. So the codename connection is made clear, yet it was still well-deciphered.
Thus with the effort put forth here to hide the identity in a cute yet well-ciphered manner thus far, it would make sense that ‘Brave’ is also a codename meant to hide the true identity of the next DLC character in the Fighter’s Pass. This would make no sense then if Erdrick is named after the English translation of the term the Japanese most often use to describe him and the literal name for him in DQ3: it’s way too easy for anyone to figure out! However, there is another issue, which is that ‘Yuusha’ or ‘Hero’ can refer to many different things.
First off, let’s get this out of the way: whoever the protagonist of a game is often ends up being the ‘hero’ of the world the game takes place in. This makes the idea of the translation pretty moot on it’s own as it can easily be a rather broad term. However if we look at ‘Hero’ as a class, then multiple characters from Dragon Quest as well Fire Emblem and likely other J/RPGs fall under this category, so even still it’s rather broad and doesn’t truly point out ‘Erdrick’ from DQ3 directly. This is without going into how broad both Brave and ‘man of valor’ (which is another way of translating ‘Yuusha’) are and how it can easily support other characters in a way that has a deeper connection and makes it less obvious: for example, Sora from Kingdom Hearts is not only the ‘hero’ of his game series and has been called ‘brave’ multiple times but also has a Drive Form in Kingdom Hearts 2 that is called ‘Brave Stance’ in Japanese and ‘Valor Form’ in English.
So not only does the codename not make sense for ‘Erdrick’ as it would be too easy to connect the dots but it also doesn’t make sense because it can easily refer to many a character from many a game, in a way making it so on both ends it doesn’t apply well (and it gets even crazier when you add in the fact that ‘Erdrick’ or ‘Loto/Roto’ is merely a titled give to great heroes in Dragon Quest and doesn’t belong exclusively to the protagonist of DQ3).
Last note here is that, if anyone tries to tell you that the codename ‘Doyle’ for Arsene is “just an inside joke and doesn’t mean anything”, here is what you tell them: “Pick an argument and stick with it.” If they ask for clarification, tell them that the idea that both ‘Brave’ is not a joke and can be seriously linked to Erdrick but ‘Doyle’ is a joke and is not a true codename cannot exist in the same argument as it collapses on itself considering that all the codenames that have been revealed to us so far follow the same logic. If ‘Doyle’ is just a silly joke, then all the codenames have been jokes since they have been applied with the same manner, and thus ‘Brave’ is just a silly joke and anything they can try to tie it to Erdrick doesn’t mean anything; on the other side, if ‘Brave’ is to be taken seriously and not as a joke, then ‘Doyle’ should be taken seriously as well. If they cannot accept that then they are cherry-picking what applies to which codename in an effort to present a hypothetical scenario that can only benefit their cause in an effort to make the whole situation look like it favors Erdrick, thus it is also confirmation bias on top of cherry-picking and a perfect example of mental gymnastics.
“Nintendo is pushing Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age Switch Definitive Edition really REALLY hard right now and with this advertising it’s clear Erdrick is the next DLC character. Hell Japan is getting a Dragon Quest V movie so CLEARLY this is the time to strike for Erdrick in Smash! Just admit it.”
So DQXI gets a big chunk of the February Direct with promise for more later and Japan gets a movie about a completely different game in the series and this is supposed to mean Erdrick is in Smash? Remember when I pointed out how Sentinels in the Starry Skies got a LOT of advertising? Welp...let me go into detail.
So first off, in a special launch event, Yuji Horii himself went to the Nintendo World Store the DAY BEFORE the game launched in the West to commemorate the game’s release. Nintendo made commercials with Seth Green to promote the game and had them play both on television and in theaters (I will provide the commercials below if you are interested). They featured the game for two weeks on Nintendo Week and had special events at GameStop, Best Buy and Simon Mall locations where you could download exclusive treasure maps for the game. It was featured on the front cover of August 2010 Nintendo Power and the game got TWO Iwata Asks segments in which Iwata interviewed both Yuji Horii and Ryutaro Ichimura about the NA release.
THEY.
SHOVED.
THIS.
GAME.
DOWN.
NA’S.
THROAT!
And guess what? Up until DQXI, it was the Dragon Quest title to sell the most in the West EVER! It’s almost like if you market a game well it will sell better...huh….weird how that works.
Yet so far, DQXI:S hasn’t gotten this much push at all, and here is the funny part: all that marketing was JUST for the game. Nothing else special, just the game. So even if DQXI starts to get more of a marketing push in the future, that doesn’t mean anything for Smash at all since Nintendo has pushed DQ hard in the past just to sell the game alone. It is not evidence nor a hint.
Oh, and don’t get me started on how a movie focusing on a completely different story and set of characters and in a different timeframe in the lore is proof that Erdrick is in Smash. Seriously, stop it.
“DQ3 is Japan’s favorite game of all time! They absolutely love it and it would be the only one to pick a character from to properly represent Japan’s fans and DQ as a whole. This obviously means that Erdrick is the perfect pick and he’s totally in. Just take the ‘L.’”
So there are a number of things I mentioned before that bring up issues with this, but I’m going to tackle this from a different angle this time: how do we know Erdrick would be the best pick even if this was true? ‘Erdrick’ is the title the main protagonist gets at the end of the game as part of his reward for saving the world, but their real name? It’s a self-insert. Why is ‘Erdrick’ both male and female? They are a self-insert. The idea is that YOU are the hero and you earn the title Erdrick at the end as a common way to link YOUR HERO to any future title. People talk about DQ3 but they don’t often talk about the main protagonist outside of Smash chances or things related to him. To clarify, they rarely take about ‘Erdrick’ himself/herself and more often it’s ‘Sword of Erdrick’ or ‘Erdrick’s Armor’. It’s the legacy the character makes that people care about, not the character itself, or so it would seem. I know there are actual fans of the character, make no mistake, but from what I have seen it is more the character’s design and their legacy both in-game and out rather than the character themselves considering they are made to be a hollow self-insert.
So, if people seemingly do not care all that much about the character, but they love DQ3, maybe they love the others characters more? Wouldn’t that make another character more of a likely pick? Keep in mind, this is just if DQ3 is the unanimous best pick to choose a rep from. Some articles from Famitsu have had other titles like DQV listed above DQ3 in terms of popularity. This would mean that there is some contention even in Japan on which game in the series is loved the most, which means that DQ3 being the best pick isn’t just an automatic choice to make. This of course means that characters from DQV or DQVIII or any other DQ title could happen and still represent DQ and Japan’s love for the series.
I kid you not, I’ve had some people try to make the argument that having Luminary from DQXI be the Dragon Quest rep would be an insult to Japanese fans and they would riot. I think people truly forget the cultural differences that exist and I’m sure that Dragon Quest getting any rep at all would greatly please Japanese fans. They are not quite like us in the West when it comes to fan demand and outcry.
Lastly, if anyone tries to mention the stats at all, just wipe that away: the stats fluctuate and are very subject to change, so any time stats are mentioned there is no weight to be had.
Down here I am going to link two Google Documents. One is done by people from that PapaGeno’s Discord who I have had this horrible argument problems with. The other is from a friend of mine.
I’m linking both because I think they both do a good job doing certain things. The first one does a good job researching the history and cute little tidbits of Dragon Quest but is biased towards his inclusion. The second does a good job pointing out some of the issues and flaws with the arguments made for Erdrick but is biased against his inclusion and comes off a bit abrasive at times.
Pro-Erdrick - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CwBiANIgYG6K7L_485TIw8E-uuIBuITNjOXEdJJWSFo/edit?usp=sharing
Anti-Erdrick - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dp4rjhK3eoyvDXx86L2mT5PqeyNlZtRNcGqCwRnQOZE/edit?usp=sharing
The last thing I would like to say here is that, no, I didn’t find any hard and fast facts that Erdrick isn’t coming to Smash. I don’t think that would even be possible unless I found a buried tweet from Yuri Horii that stated he wasn’t in or something from Sakurai equating the same. There is no cold hard evidence here, just merely pointing out the holes in arguments on both sides but mainly on the Pro-Erdrick side because there has been a lot of blind faith conversion recently and it feels like noone is looking at it from a clear mindset. I’ll even admit here that after doing the research I have done, I think Erdrick has a bigger claim than I originally did! However, he is by no means a ‘front-runner’: I simply found out that he has more that can be put in the Pros vs the Cons than I initially thought, but that doesn’t mean he’s at the head of the pack. He’s got tough competition with Sora, Sephiroth, even our boy Geno and, hell even other characters from his own franchise like Slime, Luminary or Eighter.
If it feels like I got lost somewhere along the way, don’t worry, I kind of felt that way too. Just look at it from the perspective that Erdrick can’t be ‘the front-runner for a Square Enix in Smash Ultimate’ if there are so many issues that I listed with the statements made about his guaranteed inclusion. Erdrick is a possibility and a strong one, but he is no more near existing than anyone else as far as our outsider knowledge is concerned and don’t let anyone force you to think otherwise.
Whoa, hold up! Dixie being an echo is a horrible idea. semi-clone at best or she wouldn't be true to her character. She doesn't pick up people with her hands, she uses her hair. She throws with her hair. Her style is mostly centered around her hair and she doesn’t use a gun like Diddy. Making her an echo like Chrom would be going against her character and it would be better for her to be a semi-clone and have many a move function differently while having a good chunck pulled from Diddy.
I think it’s disingenuous to chalk up the evidence we have right now to “one character” when what we have are two code names (Jack and Doyle) that were used for Joker and Arsene respectively. Arsene isn’t a separate character sure but it’s still obvious they went to lengths to disguise its inclusion anyway. Sure, more information in the form of more characters would be helpful. But a precedent has been set that a code name was used to disguise who a character was. So what logical reason then would a code name be used that actually doesn’t disguise the identity of a character at all?
I have been part of Smash speculation forums for over a decade. I've participated in probably every forum thread, subreddit thread and imageboard thread dedicated to popular specific characters during that time. I felt vindicated when Sonic was added to Brawl and I could tell people on Nsider 2 "I told you so". I was with my Mega Man boiz losing our minds over someone we thought was dead being revealed for Smash 4. I've seen Geno fans disappointed thrice over and Ridley and K. Rool fans on the cusp of giving up before this game came out.
This x1,000,000. I for one never thought that she would get in simply because I hadn't seen ANY prelim ballots with her in the top 10 let alone the top 5. That said, I wouldn't quite go so far as to say that she doesn't belong in smash at all, but yeah, she was far more of an advertisement in my opinion than a legitimate fan-decided pick. As I've said before, I strongly doubt the legitimacy of the official smash ballot as a true determination of who gets in. It was more of an affirmation on Nintendo's part to confirm their own choices.
Eh, I'll be honest: gender doesn't mean that much to me. If it does to someone else that's fine, but to me personally it's not that important, thus if I misgender someone in a situation where it's not immediately obvious what their gender is I don't get into a tizzy about it. It's for the same reason when I did call center work and I got called 'Ma'am' a lot even though I'm a dude. I never corrected them because it was never a big deal.
Verde Coeden Scalesworth
then know I didn't mean anything by it.There were a lot of interesting theories out there that are suddenly taking shape, like how the codenames is a word-game on top of being hints at the character and that each codename starts with the same letter as the actual name of the character (Packu starts with 'P' and so does Piranha Plat, Jack starts with 'J' and so does Joker. Arsene isn't a character and is an asset of a character so being Doyle doesn't break the theory). I left all those out of my post because they have no true weight to them. However, we DO have a case of "three is a pattern": Jack, Doyle and Brave are all signs of masking character names with cutesy codenames that somehow link to the character choice. Packu is not an outlier because Piranha Plant was never meant to be DLC until there was no more time for base roster and the character was revealed before copies of the game were available to be datamined, meaning there would be no reason to go to such lengths to hide the character's identity.
So you are actually correct, Dragon Quest is the second-best-selling franchise due to the pure number of titles: Dragon Quest had four games come out while Zelda only had two. I did the math, and Dragon Quest just barely snubs Zelda by 85,000 units. I find it hilarious that it's the sales of Dragon Quest I that REALLY didn't do nearly as well in comparison that brings the franchise into that 2nd place spot just barely.
I also have been a part of Smash speculation for over a decade, and while I've never been super active on forums, I have been super active in other media like YouTube, and I can tell you right now that there is more to a character's speculation than just a forum or two. All over YouTube people had been wishing for her but convinced she was 'too sexy for Smash' or 'she uses guns so she can't get in' and she was very much in Joker's place of 'I want her but I'm not gonna talk about it all too much because it's not possible at all' sort of scenario where there WERE people wishing for the character but they had little faith.
So the stance that I take about leakers is that they never offer anything for proof. It's always just 'take my word for it' which you cannot use 'Hey, this leaker said X about this character, so they are/aren't in' when leakers rarely ever have visual or audio evidence. Even if a leaker gets something right or even gets multiple things right, you still have to take their next statement with a grain of salt unless proof is provided because for all we know the previous statements were just lucky guesses. This is coming from someone who thinks Verge did have real information on the base game, but it's been made clear that he burned his bridges and resources at this point. He rarely pipes up about Nintendo stuff, the last time he did he was wrong, he backpedals and alters his claims to make him look better, and he hasn't been right about a damn thing related to Smash since Incineroar. This isn't to mention how it's clear he is gullible and that his sources have given him false information on TOP of multiple persons in the leaker community stating that he piggybacked and lost his sources in one way or another. THIS was the most trustworthy leaker for Smash Ultimate, and now look at him! He's nothing.
Fun fact, in Soul Calibur IV we got Darth Vader, Yoda and Starkiller. No Luke to be found.
I'm sorry Datboi, but my points have a lot more to them, and from what you say you don't really understand them.lmao it's not that I didn't understand your points it's just that they weren't that in-depth or well thought out for someone pointing to someone else and trying to advise them on how to make a """good case""". There needs to be at least 4 pieces to call something a pattern? Really? Why are you just making up silly rules now? The blatant and objective thing about both codenames is they were not direct references to their respective characters. Which makes sense. Because they're ****ing code names. I don't see the point of moving goalposts on this when it's so blatant. And regarding leakers you can't just say "There's only 1 DLC out they haven't gotten anything wrong" when there have been several things that leakers have gotten blatantly wrong at this point. I feel like you're being disingenuous here because I know you've been around long enough to hear about said things they've gotten wrong. I don't really see the need to list them out. There is a very obvious difference between DLC and base roster in terms of the accuracy of the information that's been given out. Even in terms of non-Smash stuff Verge has gotten major things wrong after the game released. There's also clear evidence that Nintendo has intentionally sent out false information in order to **** over leakers (which they have).
When I said you were dismissing things I meant that there was a clear logic to each of the things
EricTheGamerman
I had trouble with the quote but this is in reponse after your post:You're making assumptions about jack and doyle. They didn't necessarily go to more lengths for it, since someone there or from atlus could've known some inspirations around Arsene and other themes.
Hold up hold up, what?
GoodGrief741
there are times that the hero is passed up when other characters are more popular, but I would agree it doesn't happen often. Forgot to add that in my last post.
Sorry I don’t have a lot of time to respond to this but I think it’s pretty clear that I do understand exactly what you are saying and just do not agree with your points and/or think your points are pretty thin on actual logic. And you’re just kind of repeating yourself at this point.
