Diddy Kong said:
@SSBF: Zelda / Sheik was NEVER balanced. And Sakurai has a team now helping with balancing. If anything Impa would HELP with the balance with finding a new style to fit with Zelda. Characters will play differently anyway in this new game.
Impa would not help with balancing. Balancing by itself is already difficult enough and trying to replace Sheik with Impa would make balancing even harder. Having a Zelda/Sheik team would make it less time consuming and is overall, easier to do. Balancing veterans is an easier process then trying to balance a veteran against a newcomer.
Diddy Kong said:
And the Toon Link / Young Link arguement is actually true. Relevancy strikes again. Granted that perhaps Impa would be more work to replace Sheik than Toon Link replacing Young Link, but you could call Impa the Lucario of Smash 4 then if you'd like.
Problem being is that we're referring to alternate characters replacing alternate characters. That's why many fans were fine with Toon Link replacing Young Link; because it's essentially still Young Link.
Replacing Shiek with Impa is a whole another story. You are talking about replacing a character with a completely different one. Fans do not want to see Sheik replaced by Impa (with the exception of an
exceptionally small minority) and I don't think Sakurai would want to take the time to replace Sheik with Impa. It should also explain why Ike and Lucario fans prefer their character to stay then Chrome and Zoroark to take their place; it's replacing an entirely different character with another one. And contrary to what people may think, Ike and Lucario are not replaceable. And neither is Sheik.