To address those above who are again assuming things and putting words in my mouth, I said it's commonplace for leakers to mix real information with fake information. I never said it was intentional, and I never called anyone a mastermind or a liar. I merely said 'leakers often tend to give both right and wrong information, often at the same time' and suddenly now it's all about Vergeben's character and his intent and that I'm claiming to know what that is when I couldn't possibly. That's a lot of assumptions and leaps in logic there, as well as changing the topic of the conversation yet again.
It started as 'I think Chief is CP11, and a major reason is that Vergeben popped up and said Chief and specifically was WRONG about Chief being CP10/at E3, but this matches up nearly tit-for-tat with his Minecraft content leak years back so I think we have a repeat offender' to 'Vergeben isn't credible because of another post he made in the same thread' when it never was about his credibility but the odd situation. It was brought back to the original conversation with 'leakers tend to have right and wrong information and share both, so this doesn't invalidate the odd repeat of events, especially when matched up with everything else that happened' and then it was changed yet again to 'Vergeben isn't credible and wouldn't purposely mix false information' and then moved farther to 'Vergeben isn't a liar, he's just an idiot and has no real information' when the conversation was never about his character or intent.
Do you see why I moved from the Newcomer Thread to here? Because here we only have someone from the Newcomer Thread and so far one other derailing the original conversation and arguing a point that was never made by me but by themselves, where as the Newcomer Thread by now would have anywhere between 5-10 comments acting just like this while also insulting me and all of them would have many likes from people who dislike me personally but are too cowardly to openly admit it with a post.
And you wonder why, when combining this with the overall toxic fanbase, the staff causing self-sabotage to their own active user base and generally doing a poor job at moderation, and this site being a dying social media platform in the face of Twitter and Reddit, that nobody wants to be active here.
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The only thing I feel that will determine if Geno had a chance again is if Sakurai wraps up the Kazuya presentation and reveals a Fighter Pass 3.
If he just ends the presentation and claims there is only one more character left, then that might be all she wrote for Smash Ultimate.
This is very narrow-minded, but then again you have shown that as a trait of yours. I don't even mean this to be rude, just something I've observed over time spent with you.
Do you really think that Smash Ultimate can only live on if Sakurai announces a FP3 even though he CLEARLY has gone out of his way to state that there is nothing after this pass? There are no other avenues other than 'FP3' or 'RIP Smash until the next console in like 5 years?'
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This brings me back to a topic I mentioned before, which was Sakurai informing us that the presentation hasn't been recorded yet. After reflection and conversation with people as and more intelligent than myself, I've come to the conclusion that we can safely say that Sakurai and Co. wouldn't be slowed down by anything at this point, so in other words...
We also know that Sakurai films the presentations on average a month in advance for editing and translation, though he has done it further out than that, but seemingly never less than. So when you only have two characters left for Ultimate, why wouldn't you have recorded the presentation already at this point? You could easily have both character fully ready, trailers and presentations and all. So, why don't you? Well, I see three scenarios here.
- The clip of Sakurai in the Direct was recorded well in advance and the presentation is actually already recorded by now, suggesting the clip was recorded minimum April/May.
- Sakurai and his team hit some unforeseen snags and they were just heavily delayed in recording the presentation, maybe even pandemic related.
- Sakurai and Co. are busy and juggling tasks, which could suggest they are working on something else at the same time.
Obviously this can be considered reaching, and I completely understand if anyone thinks it is, as I personally listed them in order of of what I find believable. I just figured this is something worth noting, and when adding it in with everything else, it's fun to speculate that something may mean more than what it seems at surface level.
I think we can safely cross off Suggestion #2 there. This is because that the clearly intended and nearly-reached goal of having all of FP1 show up and drop in 2019 as well as the amount of work done during the pandemic rules and in the face of being bounced around between work-at-home and the office, there is nothing that could really stall Sakurai and his team to delay the recording.
This leaves us with Suggestion #1, in which Sakurai's clip was simply recorded many a month ago and the presentation is actually already recorded (which is very likely the case) and Suggestion #3 which is that Sakurai and his team are in fact busy working on something else which by the very nature of being spread so thin has caused priority shifts and minor delays, leading to the presentation not being ready yet.
I find this one fascinating to dig into, but before I do, I must point out that I was wrong yet again: Sakurai has purposely recorded a presentation less than a month from a reveal before, and it was with Sephy in Dec, recording it within the same month. However, previous to this, he always recorded the presentation at a minimum of a month before it aired, if not before that. We know this to be because of editing and translation.
Funnily enough, we don't know when Pyra/Mythra's presentation was recorded, or at least I haven't been able to dig up that information yet and it wasn't made readily apparent by Sakurai when he normally informs us as such. So suddenly, with have Sephy being recorded in the same month as release, no info on when Pyra/Mythra were recorded, and now Kazuya's isn't recorded yet?
Now you COULD suggest that, since the team works on three characters at a time and they are very near completion of the entire game and finalization, that they have decided take things slower...but I will counter by stating the obvious, which is that it is incredibly out of character for Sakurai and general Japanese work ethic to simply be lackadaisical just because they are almost done. This is why I think it's either an older clip, or they are working on something else at the same time.
Now, let's dig into some juicy tidbits here. Sakurai and his team, which is significantly smaller than the one working on the base game, very nearly released an entire pass of five characters and all their content as well as having a lot more additional general content then FP2 has had (Stage Builder, Home Run Contest, etc) in a single year. In the face of a pandemic and jarring rule changes about the work place, they were barely all that affected and still chugged along. They have more than proven what they can do and how fast they can do it.
FP2 was 'pseudo-announced' with Terry's reveal in the 2019 Sept Direct, when they announced there was in fact more DLC after FP1. We got Banjo's presentation that day as well, which was recorded soon after Hero's, which was in July. This puts the beginning of work on FP2 at the absolute LATEST at sometime in Summer of 2019, but it's much more likely it was earlier than that for negotiations and blueprints, so in reality it's more fitting to say that actual development in terms of coding and design started at the LATEST in Summer of 2019. This is further backed by us knowing that the characters are worked on three at a time, and Banjo would have been finished somewhere between July and August, which would mean that Terry, Byleth and Min Min were the ones in the oven at the time of Terry's reveal.
So, if the first character for FP2 was being actually made since Summer of 2019, and Sakurai's team is not only not lazy but churns out quality content at a break-neck pace, why was the original placeholder for FP2 by the end of 2021? It's not like they could have predicted how bad the pandemic would be that early on, and it only really got bad in early 2020, plus it was being downplayed prior to that.
So if it wasn't the pandemic, and it wasn't so they could sip sake at the beach for weeks, then why place such a date?
Another interesting thing is, what was up with Byleth's delay? If you believe certain leakers, Byleth was originally planned for base game (which would shave off some amount of dev time, though how much is uncertain), and we know that they would have been in the oven since Hero was finished which is likely sometime in June. With the trailer that was clearly not meant for a Smash-exclusive presentation, why the heck were they delayed by about a month?
This question is also brought up for Min Min: as mentioned earlier, she would have started development in July or August, pre-pandemic issues. So why in the hell was she delayed until June when she was initially slated for April? That would imply that she was SO difficult to get right that even with this team's previous ability and pace that it took upwards of an ENTIRE YEAR for a singular character and I'm sorry but I don't buy that for a second. She wouldn't need to be delayed for Steve, and Steve would have been in development since Terry was done around Sept/Oct...so why is there this huge three-month gap where we got literally nothing?
What about Hero? If you believe information from certain leakers, much like Byleth he was originally intended for base game, but got pushed back. That would also shave off development time, though once again we don't know how much, making the delay of Byleth and subsequently all of FP2 even more dubious. If you believe Verge that there was a swap between Joker and Hero, then that could shave off even MORE dev time from Hero.
Also, what is up with that weird gap in 2020? Min Min was originally April, and Steve was on time in Oct. Are you seriously trying to tell me that they planned on no character reveal and release between May and September? With only six characters being made, which is only one more than FP1 which was nearly released in one year? Having that kind of a gap planned for seemingly no reason doesn't add up to me, and having a date of the end of 2021 when they could have easily had all of FP2 revealed by this E3 or even earlier. Heck, they could have done that even now, and they didn't.
And finally, Sephy's presentation was recorded the same month when prior they were all recorded a month or more ahead of time, we don't know when Pyra/Mythra's was recorded, and Kazuya's potentially isn't done yet?
Yeah, I'm sorry guys, this isn't adding up at all. The is completely uncharacteristic of Sakurai and his team, and COVID or random snags just simply can't explain away all of this. All of this is much too
ඞ for me. I'm sure there is a bigger reason for all this, but what it is, I think we can only hope we get an answer for sooner rather than later.
