Official Next Smash - Speculation & Discussion Thread

[HyperSomari64]

Honestly for Fire Emblem, this San-ei plush line I feel is a good indicator for what IntSys thinks is the most important FE characters

+ anything made after 2022 when the 3H plushes came out

Someday they will do a Xenoblade set. Someday...

 

[Guynamednelson]

Gareg Mach Monastery looks pretty good but the character cameos look awful. I'd love for better models on that stage.

Funny thing about that is they seem to have similar polycounts and texture resolutions as the KoF Stadium cameos.

I think it has less to do with the overall quality of the character models and more to do with the models being imported directly from 3H and given the same shaders as your average NPC in SSBU with no regards for 3H's cel shading.

 

[Idon]

Any revamped Fire Emblem roster that doesn't include Fire Emblem Three Houses representation in some way is, as respectfully as I can put this, smoking crack.

That **** is uber popular, going past the bubble of the "FE fanbase" and reaching the mainstream. It alone was successful enough to get an actual solo Warriors game and a merchandise 5 years after the fact. The "Another 3 years of FE3H" discourse meme is funny, but it really does attest to the fact that it has some serious longevity, more than I think I've seen any JRPG recently outside of FF7 which is now a remake trilogy that adds random crap.

Anyways, as far as likely Smash contendors for next game, I think the characters popular enough for Intelligent Systems to manufacture standalone high quality statuettes of are easily in the running. Not Lilina of course, that's just a package deal with Roy, and Dimitri/Byleth I think can really just stand in for any FE3H lord.

 

[Swamp Sensei]

Any revamped Fire Emblem roster that doesn't include Fire Emblem Three Houses representation in some way is, as respectfully as I can put this, smoking crack.

That **** is uber popular, going past the bubble of the "FE fanbase" and reaching the mainstream. It alone was successful enough to get an actual solo Warriors game and a merchandise 5 years after the fact. The "Another 3 years of FE3H" discourse meme is funny, but it really does attest to the fact that it has some serious longevity, more than I think I've seen any JRPG recently outside of FF7 which is now a remake trilogy.

Yeah, I think any FE roster is going to need Marth, Ike, Someone from Awakening ,and Someone from Three Houses as a minimum. Marth and Ike are uber popular and the two games are too important and popular to ignore.

 

[The Stoopid Unikorn]

Any revamped Fire Emblem roster that doesn't include Fire Emblem Three Houses representation in some way is, as respectfully as I can put this, smoking crack.

That **** is uber popular, going past the bubble of the "FE fanbase" and reaching the mainstream. It alone was successful enough to get an actual solo Warriors game and a merchandise 5 years after the fact. The "Another 3 years of FE3H" discourse meme is funny, but it really does attest to the fact that it has some serious longevity, more than I think I've seen any JRPG recently outside of FF7 which is now a remake trilogy.

Anyways, as far as likely Smash contendors for next game, I think the characters popular enough for Intelligent Systems to manufacture standalone high quality statuettes of are easily in the running. Not Lilina of course, that's just a package deal with Roy, and Dimitri/Byleth I think can really just stand in for any FE3H lord.

Yeah, anyone who tries to cut Byleth should absolutely add someone else. Three Houses is too big to be completely ignored.

And given her importance in all routes, if that someone else isn't Edelgard, they're still smoking something bad.

 

[cashregister9]

And given her importance in all routes, if that someone else isn't Edelgard, they're still smoking something bad.

Okay but like...

Anyways, as far as likely Smash contendors for next game, I think the characters popular enough for Intelligent Systems to manufacture standalone high quality statuettes of are easily in the running. Not Lilina of course, that's just a package deal with Roy, and Dimitri/Byleth I think can really just stand in for any FE3H lord.

I do find it funny how there is exactly 1 IntSys statue not on that list anymore...

(This statue is actually really expensive now because they haven't reprinted it IIRC)

 

[The Stoopid Unikorn]

Okay but like...

Shez would be awesome but there is no way in ****ing hell they would cut Byleth for someone from a Warriors spin-off.

 

[Hadokeyblade]

Any revamped Fire Emblem roster that doesn't include Fire Emblem Three Houses representation in some way is, as respectfully as I can put this, smoking crack.

That **** is uber popular, going past the bubble of the "FE fanbase" and reaching the mainstream. It alone was successful enough to get an actual solo Warriors game and a merchandise 5 years after the fact. The "Another 3 years of FE3H" discourse meme is funny, but it really does attest to the fact that it has some serious longevity, more than I think I've seen any JRPG recently outside of FF7 which is now a remake trilogy that adds random crap.

Anyways, as far as likely Smash contendors for next game, I think the characters popular enough for Intelligent Systems to manufacture standalone high quality statuettes of are easily in the running. Not Lilina of course, that's just a package deal with Roy, and Dimitri/Byleth I think can really just stand in for any FE3H lord.

Part of it is that Three houses's cast is actually filled with characters with their own hopes and dreams and personalities.

The other FE casts just kinda exist to be cannon fodder for the main character.

 

[DarthEnderX]

Goddamn. CV going HARD.

EVERYONE IS HERE!

 

[LiveStudioAudience]

Note that the Vampire Survivors DLC includes even characters removed from canon like Sonia Belmont (which makes this her first actual appearance in anything since Legends in 1997).

 

[HyperSomari64]

Note that the Vampire Survivors DLC includes even characters removed from canon like Sonia Belmont (which makes this her first actual appearance in anything since Legends in 1997).

Sad that there's no Kid Dracula :v

 

[LiveStudioAudience]

Sad that there's no Kid Dracula :v

That and Captain N Alucard will always be the dream:

 

[Idon]

Sad that there's no Kid Dracula :v

Are you kidding? You can't seriously expect Vampire Survivors to have any Vampires now, that'd be silly.

 

[chocolatejr9]

That and Captain N Alucard will always be the dream:

That reminds me of a weird idea I had for a Captain N reboot recently, one that was part-Smash spinoff and part-"what if Astro Bot was made by Nintendo".

 

[TheFirstPoppyBro]

So, are there any existing stages you think would benefit from massive improvements in graphical and processing power?

Gareg Mach Monastery looks pretty good but the character cameos look awful. I'd love for better models on that stage.

Honestly a lot of my picks are stages that already got huge glowups in Ultimate because they were missing for a while, but my mind immediately jumped to Great Bay, Brinstar Depths, and Fountain of Dreams.

If we're talking newer stages, Northern Cave would look insane with massive leaps in power I think. I think Minecraft World could also benefit because it's really noticeable sometimes (to me anyway) that the far background is a 2D image of a Minecraft world.

 

[DarthEnderX]

Sad that there's no Kid Dracula

Alucard is there.

 

[SMAASH! Puppy]

More than half of Corrin's movement utilizes their transformation mechanic, so they have a strong emphasis on what makes them unique from the other sword fighters. The actual main issue is that functionally, Corrin still has similarities to Marth's gameplay, between the tippers, the Up-Air and Forward-Air moves and the problem every Fire Emblem character has aside from Robin and Byleth, a Counter move.

That's really Corrin's issue. It's not their gimmick that's underutilized, it's that their functionality shares a notable amount from Marth, despite most of Corrin's moveset being different from Marth's. Like Corrin's Forward Smash is very different from Marth, but both share the tipper sweetspot mechanic. Even Byleth has a bit of that issue with their Spear-based attacks having a tipper mechanic. Most of the other Fire Emblem characters still borrow from Marth, whether moveset-wise or mechanically, with the only two who differentiate from Marth greatly are Ike and Robin.

The ironic thing here is that Smash was what started the trend of Fire Emblem exploring Corrin's dragon powers.

In Fates, you get one chapter where it matters, it's never explored again and after that, any usage of dragon transformation is not only entirely optional but usually worse than just... using the Yato sword.

Smash did far more with Corrin's dragon blood than Fates did. Heck, I would even argue it's the Yato sword that's heavily de-emphasized because you've got a ****ing handheld chainsaw and that property is only applied exactly once which is still one more time than Fates.

I am kinda biased because I viewed Dragon Lunge as Corrin's core mechanic, and now instead of being a cool movement tool, it's only useful for really silly jumpscare edgeguards. And with that gone he kinda just spams safe aerials like Cloud and swordies like him. There are cool ideas and mechanics at play, but I feel he needs rebalancing for his kit to be more interesting when comparing him to the many other swordfighters of the game.

to appease western fans who want to see "number go down"

I hope these people don't exist. "Number go down" is the bad part of the anti-port side.

Part of it is that Three houses's cast is actually filled with characters with their own hopes and dreams and personalities.

The other FE casts just kinda exist to be cannon fodder for the main character.

Umm....no?

Fire Emblem: Three Houses might have amazing writing, but the other characters aren't just cannon fodder. They're all written as likeable characters that you want to keep around. I mean heck, the series is part dating sim at this point. How would that make sense if you weren't meant to care about them?

Shez would be awesome but there is no way in ****ing hell they would cut Byleth for someone from a Warriors spin-off.

People like Shez? He seemed kinda generic to me, but I didn't get too far in the game because the training mechanics inflict me with heavy decision paralysis.

 

[SharkLord]

Any revamped Fire Emblem roster that doesn't include Fire Emblem Three Houses representation in some way is, as respectfully as I can put this, smoking crack.

That **** is uber popular, going past the bubble of the "FE fanbase" and reaching the mainstream. It alone was successful enough to get an actual solo Warriors game and a merchandise 5 years after the fact. The "Another 3 years of FE3H" discourse meme is funny, but it really does attest to the fact that it has some serious longevity, more than I think I've seen any JRPG recently outside of FF7 which is now a remake trilogy that adds random crap.

Anyways, as far as likely Smash contendors for next game, I think the characters popular enough for Intelligent Systems to manufacture standalone high quality statuettes of are easily in the running. Not Lilina of course, that's just a package deal with Roy, and Dimitri/Byleth I think can really just stand in for any FE3H lord.

I'll also add that it's kinda odd that they haven't put out anyone from Awakening yet. That's the game that got the series off life support, and Lucina in particular seems pretty damn popular to me. Aside from that I think the figures cover most of the bases. I'd say the first four figures are the most notable just because they're the ones IntSys decided to lead with; Byleth might be swappable with the other 3H Lords, who are all very popular in their own right. So that leaves us with Marth, Ike, Lyn, and someone from Three Houses. Again, I doubt Awakening would be tossed aside; I'd advocate for at least keeping Lucina, who seems to be the most popular of the bunch.

 

[The Stoopid Unikorn]

People like Shez? He seemed kinda generic to me, but I didn't get too far in the game because the training mechanics inflict me with heavy decision paralysis.

They're a very grounded, down-to-earth mercenary who, unlike Byleth, isn't stoic and instead is more akin to a goober (affectionate). Sure, all the mercenary stuff is basically the main thing they talk about in supports but given many people in-game expressed interest in how someone like them lived and that it's basically how they live, the fact that it's so prevalent is not unwarranted.

Also, their moveset is by far one of the coolest-looking things in all of FE. It's basically Lyn on crack.

The only real issue is that they are a character with no backstory in a game whose cast has no stones unturned when it comes to their past, especially since what little we know implies Shez's life was never normal but we're never told how outside of being adopted. That makes them extremely jarring from a narrative standpoint and I couldn't even call it "generic" because if her backstory was a generic one, it'd still be more than what we actually got.

Even Byleth had a lot of backstory sauce in Three Houses in spite of what haters would say so Shez being mysterious sticks out in the worst way.

 

[Kirbeh]

I hope these people don't exist. "Number go down" is the bad part of the anti-port side.

I mean, are you honestly surprised? There are plenty of people with the mentality of "I don't like x or am unfamiliar with y so they shouldn't be here."

It's got nothing to do with whether the next game is a port or not, this isn't anything new.

 

[Arcanir]

They're a very grounded, down-to-earth mercenary who, unlike Byleth, isn't stoic and instead is more akin to a goober (affectionate). Sure, all the mercenary stuff is basically the main thing they talk about in supports but given many people in-game expressed interest in how someone like them lived and that it's basically how they live, the fact that it's so prevalent is not unwarranted.

Also, their moveset is by far one of the coolest-looking things in all of FE. It's basically Lyn on crack.

The only real issue is that they are a character with no backstory in a game whose cast has no stones unturned when it comes to their past, especially since what little we know implies Shez's life was never normal but we're never told how outside of being adopted. That makes them extremely jarring from a narrative standpoint and I couldn't even call it "generic" because if her backstory was a generic one, it'd still be more than what we actually got.

Even Byleth had a lot of backstory sauce in Three Houses in spite of what haters would say so Shez being mysterious sticks out in the worst way.

Three Hopes handling of its mysteries is one of the most baffing parts of its storytelling. You give us a very likeable protagonist with a past with a lot of interesting questions you could answer, and we got none of them answered, at least not in a satisfactory way. What makes it worse is they're tied to another character with their own set of questions that are also tied to a group in dire need of expansion, and they also get little explained. It felt like being mysterious for the sake of being mysterious, and as a result pointlessly held back their characters.

 

[fogbadge]

So, are there any existing stages you think would benefit from massive improvements in graphical and processing power?

Gareg Mach Monastery looks pretty good but the character cameos look awful. I'd love for better models on that stage.

I certainly enjoy the graphical updates the 3ds and melee stages got so if the others from those games come back I wouldn't mind more of that

you are right that the models on gareg mach look pretty bad. but I think the way to improve them would be to have a piano land on lorenz every time he's on screen

Part of it is that Three houses's cast is actually filled with characters with their own hopes and dreams and personalities.

The other FE casts just kinda exist to be cannon fodder for the main character.

I don't know what version of the game you were playing but three houses had loads of lovable characters. and a few hateable

 

[Scrimblo Bimblo]

So the next Smash has been in pre-production since 2021 (when Sakurai was assembling Kazuya's presentation) and in production since April 2022!
All the videos of Sakurai's channel were recorded before production started.

 

[Gengar84]

I am kinda biased because I viewed Dragon Lunge as Corrin's core mechanic, and now instead of being a cool movement tool, it's only useful for really silly jumpscare edgeguards. And with that gone he kinda just spams safe aerials like Cloud and swordies like him. There are cool ideas and mechanics at play, but I feel he needs rebalancing for his kit to be more interesting when comparing him to the many other swordfighters of the game.


I hope these people don't exist. "Number go down" is the bad part of the anti-port side.


Umm....no?

Fire Emblem: Three Houses might have amazing writing, but the other characters aren't just cannon fodder. They're all written as likeable characters that you want to keep around. I mean heck, the series is part dating sim at this point. How would that make sense if you weren't meant to care about them?


People like Shez? He seemed kinda generic to me, but I didn't get too far in the game because the training mechanics inflict me with heavy decision paralysis.

I thought Shez was a much better protagonist than Byleth. I’ve never really cared for silent protagonists and I’ve always found them difficult to relate to. I think Shez also has a cooler looking visual design than Byleth, at least the male version. I did really like a lot of Three Houses characters though. My favorites were Petra, Shamir, Catherine, Felix, Dimitri, Bernadetta, Edelgarde and Marianne. Any of those would have been awesome.

 

[Garteam]

So the next Smash has been in pre-production since 2021 (when Sakurai was assembling Kazuya's presentation) and in production since April 2022!
All the videos of Sakurai's channel were recorded before production started.

This is unbelievably massive if true. I'm assuming from this is from Sakurai's final video.

This effectively means that we're seeing a new Smash next year if the series' three-year development windows are anything to go by,

 

[Perkilator]

So the next Smash has been in pre-production since 2021 (when Sakurai was assembling Kazuya's presentation) and in production since April 2022!
All the videos of Sakurai's channel were recorded before production started.

We don’t know if it’s a new Smash; Sakurai only said that it’s a new game project that he can’t announce yet.

That being said, if it is a new Smash, then I wonder what the project plan may have looked like?

 

[Garteam]

We don’t know if it’s a new Smash; Sakurai only said that it’s a new game project that he can’t announce yet.

That being said, if it is a new Smash, then I wonder what the project plan may have looked like?

The biggest factor to consider is timing. If the project plan was completed in late 2021/early 2022, that means this is the cut-off window for when characters from new entries are likely eligible for Smash. Sakurai can't develop characters he doesn't know about and he expressed regret when he got Roy's personality wrong in Melee due to outdated materials, so I don't think he's going to try to work with pre-release materials.

 

[Scrimblo Bimblo]

This is unbelievably massive if true. I'm assuming from this is from Sakurai's final video.

This effectively means that we're seeing a new Smash next year if the series' three-year development windows are anything to go by,

The game being Smash is admittedly conjecture on my part

 

[NintenRob]

Yeah, let's not jump to any conclusions too quickly. There's really nothing to indicate that the game Sakurai started back then was yet another Smash Bros game. That would be a very long time for the dude to be working on essentially nothing but Smash. Whatever that game was though, I wouldn't be surprised if it's nearing development as preparation for Smash is made. Sakurai did say that there's usually some overlap

 

[Gengar84]

The biggest factor to consider is timing. If the project plan was completed in late 2021/early 2022, that means this is the cut-off window for when characters from new entries are likely eligible for Smash. Sakurai can't develop characters he doesn't know about and he expressed regret when he got Roy's personality wrong in Melee due to outdated materials, so I don't think he's going to try to work with pre-release materials.

Do you think Nintendo gives Sakurai advanced knowledge of games and characters still in development that haven’t been publicly revealed yet? I remember something along those lines for Greninja. If that’s the case, I would imagine that could move the timeframe up a bit in regards to what character we could see.

 

[fogbadge]

I thought Shez was a much better protagonist than Byleth. I’ve never really cared for silent protagonists and I’ve always found them difficult to relate to. I think Shez also has a cooler looking visual design than Byleth, at least the male version. I did really like a lot of Three Houses characters though. My favorites were Petra, Shamir, Catherine, Felix, Dimitri, Bernadetta, Edelgarde and Marianne. Any of those would have been awesome.

no offence gengar but do you really need to relate to a character to like them?

 

[Garteam]

Do you think Nintendo gives Sakurai advanced knowledge of games and characters still in development that haven’t been publicly revealed yet? I remember something along those lines for Greninja. If that’s the case, I would imagine that could move the timeframe up a bit in regards to what character we could see.

Well, Greninja, Ike, and Incineroar show that Sakurai isn't afraid to leave a general "Next Pokemon/Fire Emblem character" spot (which could probably be extended to Xenoblade as a fellow revolving door cast franchise), but whether Sakurai would do this for a series with more fixed and consistent characters is questionable.

I'd say Alear, Noah/Mio, and a Gen 9 Pokemon are still probably in the running for this reason, but these are also exceptions to what is otherwise a timing issue.

 

[Scrimblo Bimblo]

Yeah, let's not jump to any conclusions too quickly. There's really nothing to indicate that the game Sakurai started back then was yet another Smash Bros game. That would be a very long time for the dude to be working on essentially nothing but Smash. Whatever that game was though, I wouldn't be surprised if it's nearing development as preparation for Smash is made. Sakurai did say that there's usually some overlap

On the other hand, the next Smash starting development so late (one year or so from now?, after the current project is complete) would be very weird I think.

 

[Shinuto]

If Sakurai started work on what we're assuming is the next Smash in April of 2022. Gen 10 anything for Pokemon is imposssible and foolish to assume given Generation 9 was announced in February and released in November of that year. Designs of Pokemon would've been available from those game for the team by the time work would be started.

 

[The Stoopid Unikorn]

Part of it is that Three houses's cast is actually filled with characters with their own hopes and dreams and personalities.

The other FE casts just kinda exist to be cannon fodder for the main character.

That is just untrue.

While they have different degrees of success at, every Fire Emblem game tries to make its characters interesting enough for permadeath to actually mean something beyond losing a unit. Awakening and Fates in particular have Paralogues which take a deeper dive into some characters and the children mechanic, love it or hate it, helped personalize your experience by letting you play matchmaker with whoever you wanted.

Three Houses and Three Hopes are without a doubt the best cast in the series but that's because getting to know more about said cast has never been as easily accessible in a Fire Emblem game before or even since these two games came out. You don't need high support ranks, you don't need to make them make babies with one another, they just need to be recruited in your party and nothing else (though recruiting some people can be a tall order in itself).

And on top of that, every playable character gets to be part of at least one, including the DLC. That's something Awakening and Fates actually didn't manage to do and something Engage didn't even try.

I don't know what version of the game you were playing but three houses had loads of lovable characters. and a few hateable

I would say there are a few, particularly the house leaders, who can only be enjoyed if you played their route. If all you've ever played is Azure Moon, you have no reason to find Edelgard likeable because you never saw a single one, for example. Well, there's the childhood flashbacks but given how she acts in the present, they don't bring much for you to like the older Edie.

Some of the more pivotal characters are in a surprisingly gray area where they're written without the explicit intend to be likeable unless you specifically play the route where they have the biggest impact. Things aren't always black and white in Fodlan; people can have valid reasons to dislike someone and maybe they don't have the free time to see things your way by getting through the entire game another time just to see the good parts of someone.

And that's fine. I know I'd personally never force someone to play an entire whole ass game just because I think Dedue is neat because I sure as hell would be a hypocrite since I have a good enough amount of games in my backlog that I don't wanna commit to playing every route on a 5 year old game.

Three Hopes handling of its mysteries is one of the most baffing parts of its storytelling. You give us a very likeable protagonist with a past with a lot of interesting questions you could answer, and we got none of them answered, at least not in a satisfactory way. What makes it worse is they're tied to another character with their own set of questions that are also tied to a group in dire need of expansion, and they also get little explained. It felt like being mysterious for the sake of being mysterious, and as a result pointlessly held back their characters.

So ****ing true. I still huff the copium of a potential DLC but at this point I'm running out of copium

 

[TheLamerGamer]

Personally I'm expecting the new project to be kid icarus - I've never played it so this isn't bias or anything, I just think it's more likely. I'd obviously love for it to be smash however.

 

[pitchfulprocessing]

Tbh I'm going to say it probably is not a new Smash. Sakurai said in the video that there was a large gap in time between writing the propsal and assembling the team for it in early 2022. The Smash team heavily overlaps with the Tekken Project, and 2022 would be midway through full-tilt Tekken 8 development, in comparison to Ultimate which would have began development closer to Tekken 7's console release. I don't think it would be feasible to take the necessary devs off of Tekken, as opposed to if it was a separate proposal for a separate IP that required a different team.

 

[SMAASH! Puppy]

When was that Bandai-Namco studio formed? If it was also April 2022 then it's probably Smash.

EDIT: And if not, then that means that Smash's development is starting about now and will probably be a 2026/2027 release date. Probably closer to the latter.

 

[Gengar84]

no offence gengar but do you really need to relate to a character to like them?

Maybe I misspoke on that. I don’t mean literally relate to them. What I mean is that I prefer that the characters have interesting personalities and stories. One of my favorite characters is Sephiroth, for example. That doesn’t mean I want to burn down my hometown and summon a giant meteor to destroy the planet. I just thought he was cool. Silent protagonists are usually just blank slates that you’re supposed to insert yourself into that role. I just have a harder time caring about those characters.

 

[The Stoopid Unikorn]

Tbh I'm going to say it probably is not a new Smash. Sakurai said in the video that there was a large gap in time between writing the propsal and assembling the team for it in early 2022. The Smash team heavily overlaps with the Tekken Project, and 2022 would be midway through full-tilt Tekken 8 development, in comparison to Ultimate which would have began development closer to Tekken 7's console release. I don't think it would be feasible to take the necessary devs off of Tekken, as opposed to if it was a separate proposal for a separate IP that required a different team.

Tekken Project has always been a completely separate studio from the people who worked on Smash. They didn't pull literally every Namco employee to make Sakurai's silly platform fighter crossover. It's a big company with lots of studios and employees so both can be done at once.