"Find me where I said she was added for nothing but shock value. Go on, do it."
Her addition absolutely was played up for shock value. Sakurai literally walked onstage after her trailer at E3 and asked the crowd "Was anybody expecting that?" He proudly asserted in the Developer Direct that "I get requests from all over the world, but I guarantee no one expected her." There's nothing outrageous about pointing that out.
My mistake. It came off as complaining over WFT only being included for the sake of shock value.
Though if may critique your use of Ironic Echo, not only did you do it wrong (the "do it" needs to be italicized), but whereas I didn't say anything remotely
close to Ganondorf being Sakurai's "main", you
did say something that could easily be misinterpreted as WFT only being worth shock value.
Let's analyze the post, shall we?
I like that we can get one or two unexpected characters here or there (Duck Hunt is an example of this done right), but when it gets played up as shock value for the sake of shock value (WFT), it's just frustrating to me personally.
You state WFT was "played up as shock value for the sake of shock value". If it weren't for this later post of yours explaining what you're referring to, that can easily be seen as "WFT was only for the sake of shock value".
Now, let me criticize the point itself.
-Sakurai literally walked onstage after her trailer at E3 and asked the crowd "Was anybody expecting that?"
He would have done the same for
any character.
Bear in mind that
when WFT was revealed, no one was anticipating any more Smash news. We already had the initial trailer (and Mega Man's trailer right after) during the Nintendo Direct.
And when the trailer was shown, it started off like if it was a trailer for a new Wii Fit as opposed to Smash.
At that point, you might be saying "But that's
proof it was just for shock value!", I will point out that the same argument would apply to Villager.
The initial Smash 4 trailer started off as a
hint it was Smash (the flaming Smash Ball), then quickly started off like a trailer for a new Animal Crossing. Then SURPRISE! It really
is Smash! DOUBLE SURPRISE! Villager Comes to Town! at the end.
And when you think about it, if say, Rosalina's or Little Mac's trailers (minus any references to WFT or other undisclosed characters at the time) were shown in Wii Fit Trainer's place,
they would have had the same effect.
Especially since that whereas it became quick to show WFT's trailer was Smash related for a specific character, people either wouldn't have assumed the trailer was for Smash (Little Mac) or wouldn't have known who the trailer was for when they realized it
was for Smash (Rosalina) until later into the cinematic.
-He proudly asserted in the Developer Direct that "I get requests from all over the world, but I guarantee no one expected her."
Yeah....that's not playing up shock value.
What he's basically saying is "This character was not included based on fan request."
WFT was absolutely added as shock value, I thought this was common knowledge...welp.
Common knowledge to the ignorant, maybe.
But those who actually do their research know better.
At least starting in Melee (it's debatable whether or not Smash 64 had one), there has been a single character added to be the token "surprise" character.
In Melee, it was
.
In Brawl, it was
.
In Smash 4, it was
.
There have been other characters
throughout the series that weren't expected, but they
weren't thrown in for the sake of being unexpected.