Official Next Smash - Speculation & Discussion Thread

[dream1ng]

Well fwiw I do think we're going to get another Astral Chain, because, even aside from that tease, Platinum has very few financially successful titles of their own IP, so just on a viability basis getting more makes sense. And I think we're gonna see it fairly early in the Switch 2's life.

Then if and when there are two games in the series, a characters seems pretty probable. Though it could even happen before that.

 

[DarthEnderX]

I'm sure this is a tired out topic, but since I haven't seen it directly discussed yet since coming back - what is everybody feeling about the direction of the roster for the next game? In the broadest sense, what do you expect/want from the next game?

How would you all feel if the newcomers in the next game were all 1st party?

Suicidal.

 

[dream1ng]

Nintendo didn't sell Rare. They never owned Rare. They just didn't buy Rare before Microsoft did.

Well they did, they just didn't own a majority share. They owned 49%, which would be futile to keep with MS having 51, so they sold their portion.

 

[ninjahmos]

If Snake makes it into the next Smash game, I think Big Boss (Naked Snake) would make a good Echo or semi-clone of him. Except while Solid Snake's moveset is based on MGS1&2, they could base Big Boss' moveset off of his CQC moves from MGS3-MGSPW and MGSV.

 

[DarthEnderX]

If Snake makes it into the next Smash game, I think Big Boss (Naked Snake) would make a good Echo or semi-clone of him.

Several of Snake's alts are already Naked Snake.

Liquid would make a better Echo.

 

[Gorgonzales]

God I would love a Kirby rework.

I'd like a Game & Watch/Villager-esque moveset where every damn tilt, aerial and smash attack is a unique reference to a different power-up.

Bruh I thought we were all collectively past this point of "more references = better moveset".

It works for Game & Watch because he's an amalgamation of different G&W games (and it's easy to suspend your disbelief with him because he's a very stylized and unorthodox character), and Villager because he has nothing else to fight with and it's a clever way of incorporating an AC character into a fighting game. This type of moveset should be used very sparingly and only on characters that it works for. Kirby is not one of those characters. His kit is one of the most straightforward and intuitive designs in the game; it's not perfect, but we shouldn't do a 180 and have him inexplicably and suddenly use fancy macguffins for stuff like a frame 4 up-tilt.

Including all of Kirby's copy abilities for the different tilts and whatnot would not only make him an unholy clustertruck of clashing attacks and visual effects with no clear direction, it would be disorienting or at least harder to grasp for new players. You know, the demographic Kirby is designed for.

Could Kirby be improved? Abosolutely! Improved air speed would be great, like you suggested. Slide kick as down tilt is the most glaring omission he has. I think Hi-Jump as a new up-special would be great, and it'd be nice if he had a functional side special. He could also stand to get a better, more unique final Smash.

It's just, I don't think cramming references down a character's throat is a very good way to "rework" them. There's more nuance to it than, "guys! he did it! he did the thing!"

 

[Zerp]

How would you all feel if the newcomers in the next game were all 1st party? Still with 3rd party veterans

Depends, could go either way. If it's still a normal roster that focuses mostly on iconic characters I'd probably question the decision to not have any third parties. But, if their focus was less on big huge mega iconic characters and we ended up getting a lot more weird and unique characters, I'd be all for it really! Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with third parties. But like, given that you have to take time to get licensing and all for them, Nintendo is only going to bother going out of their way for "big" characters. And I just can't get myself to care much about every character being some huge icon, it's predictable and a little boring.

That said, the rest of the community would hate that shift in direction and I'd imagine sales would suffer as a result. So you know, probably never happening lol

 

[Guynamednelson]

I'd imagine sales would suffer as a result

To be fair there are probably other factors that could result in SSB6 selling less anyway. You can't always expect eternal growth, as the current AAA industry is proving.

 

[smashkirby]

I can definitely understand people wanting to keep the focus primarily on Nintendo’s own properties rather than going too heavily towards third party. The series started out as a massive Nintendo crossover and keeping that focus gives us a chance to see many of their smaller franchises people may not be familiar with and introduce them to a new audience.

I personally lean towards third party for my own wishlists because I have a bias towards characters and games I have a connection to, which I don’t really have with a lot of the more niche first party titles. That said, it is always fun to get a few surprise characters I didn’t know much about beforehand. It was actually Smash that got me into Fire Emblem, for example. Smash is very good at building interest in various titles and it’s a great way to revitalize some dormant IP like Brawl did for Kid Icarus.

I’d love to at least see some more of the third party selections put more emphasis to their importance to Nintendo’s own history. The Nintendo connection is one of the major reasons I strongly support RARE getting more characters. During the SNES and N64 days, they were essentially a part of Nintendo. Though they are no longer connected with Nintendo, I’ve still always viewed their characters as honorary Nintendo characters since those are the consoles I played all their games on and they had a very close relationship at the time.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed to 3rd parties or anything. I assume I've made it clear that I've got no shortage of characters I'd like to see from SEGA, Capcom, and Namco in particular. That said, I can't say that I wouldn't appreciate it if 3rd parties who had just a bit more connection to Nintendo were a bit more of a priority, but it's not like the 'end-all, be-all' for me. I've just come to appreciate the ride.

How would you all feel if the newcomers in the next game were all 1st party? Still with 3rd party veterans

I'll be honest. I'm probably in the modern-day minority (and I mean very, VERY small minority) of folks who legit wouldn't find this a total dealbreaker. I figure that by now, I've probably made it pretty clear that I'm not opposed to Nintendo's own catalogue of characters joining Smash, from the obscure to the well-known.

That said, I'm very much aware that Smash Bros., post-Brawl, cutting down on 3rd parties is something that has a snowball's chance in heck of actually happening. Like I've said in the past, I don't even mind the 3rd parties in Smash. I just don't like the idea of, nor want them to totally overtake Nintendo's own characters in a Nintendo-made crossover.

What's more, I imagine that 'Everyone Is Here' is most likely going to be harder to accomplish, the more 3rd parties get added to Smash, so they might want to be careful on that front...

 

[jamesster445]

How would you all feel if the newcomers in the next game were all 1st party? Still with 3rd party veterans

I'll live. Theres only 3 guests that I truly "need".

 

[dream1ng]

But like, given that you have to take time to get licensing and all for them, Nintendo is only going to bother going out of their way for "big" characters. And I just can't get myself to care much about every character being some huge icon, it's predictable and a little boring.

You can care/not about whoever you like, but... it's not like you know which character it's going to be. That pool - big third parties - is vast and can be full of surprises. Especially if it can scale from like Steve to Terry. Without leaks, how many of Ultimate's third-parties were actually predicted?

If anything, the first-parties are probably more predictable. We're going to get characters of recent relevance, maybe a fanbase favorite, certain series will get promotional additions, and we'll probably get the token wildcard. And then apart from the last, all of those categories have a far shallower pool than the third-parties. Plus, most of those characters will also be "big", at least by current first-party standards.

Not like they're gonna be out here picking Captain Rainbow.

I mean if being "big" is a blanket fault, Smash is a strange series to gravitate towards.

 

[Guynamednelson]

If anything, the first-parties are probably more predictable.

At the same time, "only the most recent first-parties could possibly be DLC" managed to have ARMS slip by despite being a Switch game, because it wasn't an ultra-recent Switch game.

 

[Golden Icarus]

Bruh I thought we were all collectively past this point of "more references = better moveset".

Yes, I definitely agree with this and do not think it’s the direction most characters should go and that it’s a disaster when it’s poorly done, or overdone. I just think Kirby is one of the few exceptions where it would be both justified and could work well if done with care.

You do raise a good point about Kirby being designed to appeal to new players and having a visually jarring moveset could make him less easy to understand, but I don’t know if I’d be all that concerned. Villager and Game & Watch are already pretty simple characters as well and the things that do make them difficult has less to do with the random objects and references, but rather their overarching playstyle and weird mechanics in their moveset (pocket, tree, bucket, etc.)

I just think Kirby being a character that mostly punches and kicks is very uninspired when you think of all the things he could be doing. Just things as simple as making his up smash a plasma zap, his up air a sword swing, his forward tilt a yo-yo. Nothing crazy, just some stuff to show him off a bit more. Plus, adding a few disjoints to his kit would probably make him a bit easier for new players.

We already have a lot of relatively simple characters that punch and kick and appeal to new players. Mario, DK, Falcon, Fox, etc. I think it would be alright to let Kirby stretch out a bit and I don’t think you’d run that high of a risk of overcomplicating him.

 

[Gengar84]

Bruh I thought we were all collectively past this point of "more references = better moveset".

It's just, I don't think cramming references down a character's throat is a very good way to "rework" them. There's more nuance to it than, "guys! he did it! he did the thing!"

I’m not. Obviously you want to prioritize having a Smash moveset that’s both fun to play and somewhat balanced but I’ve always thought it was more fun when the character feels like they came straight out of their home series and into Smash. That’s part of the appeal to me. Sure, you could give Samus a bunch of punches and kicks because she’s a humanoid with arms and legs but it’s more fun to me to see her use actual attacks that she’s known for. Anyway, it’s all just personal preference whether you like more direct source inspiration in movesets or more creativity making new moves so I don’t think it’s accurate to say we should “move past it”.

 

[dream1ng]

At the same time, "only the most recent first-parties could possibly be DLC" managed to have ARMS slip by despite being a Switch game, because it wasn't an ultra-recent Switch game.

I'm not sure that's true. People were still predicting Rex/Pyra, and XC2 was only a few months later than ARMS. Some people were even holding out for a BotW champion, and that game came out before ARMS.

I think it was more that ARMS had just cooled off in peoples' minds, and it had fewer fans than Xenoblade or Zelda (or Waluigi) leading fewer people to discuss it. Also, don't forget, the character originally seen as most likely had gotten AT'd, which further put a damper on expectation.

It may not have been the most predicted, that's true, but I think it's less that it was something that would blindside people and more something that, conceptually, didn't greatly excite people.

 

[Guynamednelson]

It may not have been the most predicted, that's true

Yeah, that's kind of what I was saying. It wasn't a common prediction despite how "first-parties are more predictable". It was only after the ARMS rep was announced that you could predict anyone from that game, Spring Man, Min Min, or otherwise without getting shunned.

 

[SpecterFlower]

Since characters are already numbered in Ultimate and Sakurai has already said that he'd like for the next game to top it, I'd just keep everyone who's in Ultimate and try to hit the 100 characters milestone in the next base game (alongside some gameplay tweaks). Then go even crazier for DLC.
With Sora being #82 that would mean 18 newcomers, a little too many perhaps... But eh, Smash 4 had 15 and the budget has to be bigger now...

Sakurai also said he would never be able to do ultimate agin.

What if Nintendo never sold RARE to Microsoft 20+ years ago? Thats one I always wonder about for multiple reasons. I imagine we’d at least have Banjo, Rash, Fulgore, Joanna Dark, and Conker in Smash by now. I’m curious whether Nintendo would have done more with their IP than Microsoft has. I know the core team was already on their way out by that point but I think there’s so much missed potential in their IP for the past couple decades.

Nintendo never owned rare, they had the option to and rare came to them first and Nintendo decided not to buy them.

I don’t think rare was anything special really, or is today.

View attachment 387672

erm...what the scallop?

Thrown old ganondorf in the trash, not even rework just straight into the garbage and from the ground up with no relation to falcondorf make a new one.

 

[Golden Icarus]

I’m not. Obviously you want to prioritize having a Smash moveset that’s both fun to play and somewhat balanced but I’ve always thought it was more fun when the character feels like they came straight out of their home series and into Smash. That’s part of the appeal to me. Sure, you could give Samus a bunch of punches and kicks because she’s a humanoid with arms and legs but it’s more fun to me to see her use actual attacks that she’s known for. Anyway, it’s all just personal preference whether you like more direct source inspiration in movesets or more creativity making new moves so I don’t think it’s accurate to say we should “move past it”.

Right. I mean there’s definitely some kind of balance that ought to be struck here. You got characters that are mostly broad fighting game archetypes with very few references (Captain Falcon, Marth, Bowser, etc.) and characters with uncanny playstyles that are essentially plucked straight from their source material (Steve, Mega Man, Min Min, etc.) with most characters falling somewhere in-between.

Overall I think Smash has done a great job at incorporating either design philosophy depending on the character, but I’ve always disliked that most Smash 64 characters fall in the first camp, while a lot of newer characters fall in the second camp. I think certain characters like Kirby and Donkey Kong could benefit by having some more variety in their kit that reference their source material. Donkey Kong doesn’t have to stick to being the classic heavy weight archetype as we already have plenty of new characters to fill that roll.

 

[LiveStudioAudience]

In an odd twist, classic Ganondorf will be cut in favor of the Ganondorf from the rarely discussed Katsuyuki Ozaki novelization of Link to the Past:

 

[CannonStreak]

Right. I mean there’s definitely some kind of balance that ought to be struck here. You got characters that are mostly broad fighting game archetypes with very few references (Captain Falcon, Marth, Bowser, etc.) and characters with uncanny playstyles that are essentially plucked straight from their source material (Steve, Mega Man, Min Min, etc.) with most characters falling somewhere in-between.

Overall I think Smash has done a great job at incorporating either design philosophy depending on the character, but I’ve always disliked that most Smash 64 characters fall in the first camp, while a lot of newer characters fall in the second camp. I think certain characters like Kirby and Donkey Kong could benefit by having some more variety in their kit that reference their source material. Donkey Kong doesn’t have to stick to being the classic heavy weight archetype as we already have plenty of new characters to fill that roll.

More variety for Donkey Kong?

Give him his coconut gun! It fires in spurts, and if it shoots ya, it’s gonna hurt!

Sorry, but I had to.

 

[SpecterFlower]

Just give snake a tranq instead of grenades.

that’s the only updated I want him to have.

Other than that playstyle is still great.

 

[ninjahmos]

Do you think they could include both of Ganondorf's designs from OOT and TP?

Also, should he use his sword more often, or has Ultimate already done enough of that for him?

Maybe his taunt where he pulls out his sword could be a switch to a different playstyle/moveset where he uses it.

 

[Gengar84]

Do you think they could include both of Ganondorf's designs from OOT and TP?

Also, should he use his sword more often, or has Ultimate already done enough of that for him?

Maybe his taunt where he pulls out his sword could be a switch to a different playstyle/moveset where he uses it.

I think the Zelda characters should have alts for each of their appearances in each game. That worked great for Hyrule Warriors. I’d rather see Ganondorf use the trident and magic than his sword since we have a lot of sword users already and no dedicated pole-arm users.

 

[Noipoi]

Even with the efforts to set him apart through the years, Ganondorf is just too similar to Captain Falcon.

I say we cut him and replace him with Crenando.

 

[Swamp Sensei]

If we cut Captain Falcon, Ganondorf is no longer a Falcon clone.

Sometimes my genius disturbs me.

 

[ninjahmos]

It'd never happen, but what if they added Dragon King as an alt for Captain Falcon?

 

[Laniv]

How would you all feel if the newcomers in the next game were all 1st party? Still with 3rd party veterans

I personally wouldn't mind, cause a lot of my most wanted characters are first party

Then I would realize Bomberman wouldn't be making it, and I'd mind a little bit

 

[SPEN18]

Once again, 4 and Ult had the exact same pattern, a couple more big guest names they could put on the back of the base game box, and then more third parties in DLC. I know some people want to push this narrative that the outstanding first party picks aren't exciting enough to push sales, but it's just patently false the way fans eat up everything from the Mario regulars they know and love to the wackier one-timers like Wii Fit.
The bottom line, though, is that they simply can't afford to break this pattern too much regardless. There's too much work to do on the first party side, and the gains from third parties beyond the first few newcomers aren't enough relative to additional licensing costs and efforts they necessitate.

For one, keeping more third party veterans means cutting closer to the core of the first party roster, and adding more than a few third party newcomers is going to make it tough to hit enough of the necessary marks on the first party side of the additions. With so many franchises experiencing big-time growth during the Switch era, it would be a massive whiff on their part if they failed to capitalize on the opportunity to further promote those series through Smash. It would be a similarly huge loss for third parties to come at the expense of smaller series who get their biggest time to shine in Smash, or longstanding fan-faves that are still waiting for their turn.

 

[dream1ng]

Yeah, that's kind of what I was saying. It wasn't a common prediction despite how "first-parties are more predictable". It was only after the ARMS rep was announced that you could predict anyone from that game, Spring Man, Min Min, or otherwise without getting shunned.

No, not most predicted and not commonly predicted aren't the same thing. Daisy, for instance, wasn't the most predicted character, but she was still predicted somewhat commonly.

It was only after the ARMS rep announcement you could predict a character without people raising how ARMS was dead, but there were people still saying Ridley was too big right up until his reveal. Just because people raise detraction, which will always be present, doesn't mean that precludes prediction.

And ARMS fully falls into one of the original categories I laid out; recent relevance. Not being as discussed as Rex doesn't mean ARMS didn't spend a good portion of Ultimate (when it was considered on the table) being one of the more common "recent game" picks.

And let's be real, how many people were predicting some of those unleaked third-parties in comparison to an ARMS character? And if ARMS is one of the less predicted first-parties, that's a testament to the overall predictability of that group.

 

[Guynamednelson]

Just because people raise detraction, which will always be present, doesn't mean that precludes prediction.

It wasn't "too big" that was the only thing keeping Ridley down in post-4, pre-Ultimate speculation. Most people were predicting that its newcomer selection would comprise of picks that were too new for 4 and whatever Inkling counts as since Splatoon released before FE Fates.

 

[superprincess]

She’s a one off from a game that isn’t even in the 3 most popular in the series.

???

Ocarina isn't just one of the most popular Zelda games, it's one of the most popular games of all time period. It's a cult classic. And Sheik plays a huge part in it.

Anyways, I haven't been on the boards in the past few days, so if you guys don't mind, I wanna reply to some of the previous comments!

RE: Can Villager Up B and Balloon Fighter coexist?

If we're being objective about it, absolutely not. When Smash gives a consolation prize to a character, it's safest to assume that they won't be playable. Think of Peach's Daisy costume or the Toad neutral special. When they include something to give an illusion of the character, then the character probably wasn't good enough to make it.

RE: Melee +6 months of development

I asked something akin to that a few days ago and wasn't expecting the answers to be so... idealistic. My idea was to simply switch one clone character for another (Dr. Mario -> Daisy) but some people here are suggesting like 5 more characters in the place of the clones plus a unique Ganondorf. No problem with having pipe dreams but these hypotheticals can get annoyingly "anti-clone" and repetitive especially now that we know why Melee clones were a thing and how many sacrifices would have to be made for a new character to make it in Melee. As somebody else mentioned, I think if Melee had a few more months of development, one of the cut stages would've made it, and the game would've been slightly more polished. Probably the FE stage, to save Marth and Roy from being the only "homeless" characters lol. It was always kinda weird that they were fought on Temple.

RE: Zelda series resurgence in the Switch era will be reflected in Smash 6

My Zelda fan heart wants this to be true so bad but we've been burned twice now (thrice if you count Brawl)... Still, even if there's a new character, I'd totally expect it to be someone from the Era of the Wild, considering people actually played those games recently. Unless TP gets re-re-released and somehow becomes an overpowering success, I don't expect Midna.

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

Temple being fought on is weird indeed for Marth and Roy. ...Not the worst locale secondary choice, though. Definitely fits the games they're from.

But yeah, looking at the character list, I like each clone and honestly all I'd want is just the stages finished, and depending if the timing was possible, a few more trophies(like Diddy).

 

[Sucumbio]

Sure, you could give Samus a bunch of punches and kicks because she’s a humanoid with arms and legs

Now that you mention it her Dread iteration is very CQC focused and I really hope the next Smash adds moves from it or at the least her dash counter!

 

[CapitaineCrash]

I don’t think rare was anything special really, or is today.

Well Rare was pretty special in the N64 era, but already at the end of the N64 era they where starting to fell of pretty hard. Despite having a big cult following today, Conker's was originally a big comercial failure, and most of their games that was planned for Gamecube but released on Xbox also sold poorly and got at best okayish review (Kameo elements of power) or fairly bad reviews (Grabbed by the ghoulies). People blamed Microsoft for the "death of the studio" but it just happen that Microsoft bought a studio that was already on the verge of dying. Either way, Sea of thieves is by far their biggest games so that's good to them. Nintendo fans still hope that Rare do silly platformers for some reason despite that there's probably literally nobody still at Rare today who worked on the original Banjo.

 

[Wonder Smash]

How would you all feel if the newcomers in the next game were all 1st party? Still with 3rd party veterans

Seeing how all my MWs are 3rd party characters, that might actually convince me to pass up a Smash game for the first time.

 

[Perkilator]

On the topic of Melee stages; my Melee fantasy involves each individual character getting their own unique stage. And I don’t mean “home stages” necessarily, I’m talking—just as an example—Bowser getting a Bowser’s Castle stage, Ganondorf getting a Gerudo Valley stage, etc.

 

[superprincess]

RE: Next Smash roster direction

This is a topic we've discussed before but my stance on it just keeps on changing, and the same seems to hold true for a good portion of the fanbase. You could see someone insisting the next SSB game should be a total reboot, then a week later the same guy is claiming the series should keep adding onto Ultimate.

The truth is that people will be disappointed either way. An Ultimate port would be redundant and stale on arrival, since Ultimate itself could already be considered Smash 4.5 by some people, and it's a(n almost) 6 year old game. A reboot would be frowned upon due to cutting too many fan favorites and switching up the basic gameplay too much.

My current opinion? They should keep aiming for as big as possible. Smash already kinda has a quantity over quality approach... so be it. Only the hardcore fans care that their favorite character isn't 100% faithfully depicted. We could lose a few lesser characters who either are unpopular and/or haven't had a big or consistent presence in Smash (Dr. Mario, Pichu, Young Link, Wolf, Corrin). The heavy third party skew of Ultimate's DLC newcomers will probably continue, maybe not in the base game but I absolutely expect a lot of big names and less wild cards.

 

[Guynamednelson]

Only the hardcore fans care that their favorite character isn't 100% faithfully depicted

I think it's all sorts of fans who want Ganondorf to be more Ganondorf-y. For one thing, "he keeps being bottom tier" couldn't have been a reason why people want a new Ganondorf moveset pre-Brawl, because A:Competitive Smash was a lot less popular back then, and B:He isn't bottom tier in Melee.

 

[TheQuester]

I could see Astral Chain and Ring Fit geting a rep for unreped 1st party franchises, maybe Golden Sun for an older franchise.
For 3rd party i think Profesor Layton has a decent chance to get a rep, specially if his new game sells well, Atelier, Tales and Guilty Gear are probably up there too.
I was going to say Genshin Impact and Elden Ring as well, but they have no Nintendo presence so yeah most likely won't happen.

 

[superprincess]

I think it's all sorts of fans who want Ganondorf to be more Ganondorf-y. For one thing, "he keeps being bottom tier" couldn't have been a reason why people want a new Ganondorf moveset pre-Brawl, because A:Competitive Smash was a lot less popular back then, and B:He isn't bottom tier in Melee.

I've seen a lot of people defending Falcondorf because "he's fun" and while I can't agree because I don't play slow and strong heavies, I wouldn't take that away from them because muh references. Even as a Zelda fan, I wouldn't say Ganondorf even needs a full on overhaul. The TOTK incarnation can fit very well with the existing Smash base.