Midna (& Wolf Link/ True Form)
I promise to be organized for this one : )
[Collapse: relevance]
Is she too irrelevant? A thing of the past?
I wouldn’t say that exactly.
1. BotW, the fresh new game of the series, seems to have a handful of characters with split support, and no 1 clear candidate. It seems like it’d be best represented from moveset changes, model redesigns (maybe with the old ones as alts), a stage, music, and items. If a single character doesn’t stand out, I don’t see why one would be picked for Smash. I don’t think any of them have reached the popularity of Midna, Skull Kid, or Ghirahim, or the importance of Impa. They’re just new. Which doesn’t mean they need to be the pick for a fighter. Just like we can’t say for sure a new Mario character would have to be from Oddessey, which seems much more accepted than this concept for some reason.
2. With the success of spin off titles, it’s more applicable than ever to look at the series as a whole for impactful characters. Hyrule Warriors has 3 games now, technically, and over a million sales I believe? Also, within that series, not only was she on the initial roster as her imo form, but now takes up 2 characters, alongside her true form.
3. TP is the best selling initial release of a Zelda game, 2nd most after factoring remakes.
http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda
I don’t know how reputable this is, but I can’t imagine it being too far off other than numbers for newer games like HW since it might not be up to date.
4. Consider the TPHD remake (released 3/4/16) not being too far from the last major ssb4 update (1.1.4 on 2/3, 1.1.5 on 3/15, 1.1.6 on 5/20) could help. I read in one of the Smashboard front page posts there was an official date given in Feb or March of when development essentially ended. Link to that maybe be included later.
But yea, the end of real DLC development for Smash coincided with the release of TPHD. These going down around the same time in February/March could give it more importance than we might think today. Obviously, the remake didn’t sell as much as the others. Then again, it was a remake for a more recent game on a system with a low install base while the console was dying, as opposed to the 3ds remakes, or the initial TP release. However, I will note it didn’t seem to have been as full scale of a project. The graphics were better, but nothing incredibly shocking, so this all could’ve been predicted beforehand. However, as a result, she did get new promotion through an amiibo. Which had more compatibility in BotW than it needed to, literally putting Wolf Link in BotW. It’s pretty cool.
5. The Ballot. This brings credibility/relevance to any popular character. This brings up the question of how she wouldve shaped up compared to Skull Kid though, of course. That’s guesswork- I’m not gonna pretend I know one way or the other. Either way, I do think they both likely ranked high enough to be thrown back into the list of contenders.
6. Moveset before character. There is always the potential of a character getting picked to represent some sort of mechanic or style, and there’s tons of potential for interesting gimmicks here. I’ll edit in moveset options in a spoiler tag later.
7. The sidekick. She may not be a recurring character at this point in time in the main series, but she is part of a recurring group of characters, sometimes the 2nd most important character in the game, the sidekick. Midna of course being the most popular and only fitting choice of the sidekicks. If this niche was the intention, maybe there’d be fairies involved in one of her moves or taunts? Not sure.
8. Zelda rework? Saved the least important for last. If Zelda is reworked along with Link and Ganondorf to fit newer appearances/ actually represent the character, perhaps her old moveset could go to Midna’s true form if transformations are back via final smash, which could spark them to develop Imp Midna as the main character. This has so many ifs, so it can’t be factored too heavily lmao. I’m just going off the popular idea of reworking Ganondorf, but giving his old moveset to Black Shadow. If the game started as a port, those assets could be easily accessible. [/Collapse]
[Collapse: other thoughts]
So where does that put her? Ghirahim’s popularity was still relatively high then. Skull Kid has been consistently popular. Impa is always relevant. Maybe it’s my own bias, but I don’t think a non triforce Zelda character has had more impact on a single game than Midna on TP. I like the idea of Skull Kid, but to fill a moveset, it does seem to require making him do a lot of things he’s never done. This isn’t a major point, I know. There are tons of characters in like this, but I do think it’d be something worth considering to some extent when deciding the roster. He ofc uses Tatl and Tael for his main attacks in Hyrule Warriors now that he’s in. He wasn’t in the initial roster, but that has more to do with the structure of the game I think. I think it’d be cool to see him do that in Smash, I’m just not sure the dev team would go for basing him off HW so heavily. For my Midna moveset, I tried pulling from TP as much as possible, heavily prioritizing those abilities and cutscenes.
Despite the low-ish score I’ll give her, my personal roster has both Impa and Midna as newcomers. I guess it’s mostly based on chance, with a little bias from want. : )
I think Impa is a great choice. I’d be surprised if she did very well on the ballot, since she doesn’t seem to be as much the fan favorite as Midna, Skull Kid, Ghirahim, and Tetra, however, she can easily be recognized on her own merits. That isn’t to say people dislike her. I’ve never seen anyone say that. I just don’t see her requested as often. I could entirely be wrong. We have no poll results. I honestly do think he’d care slightly more about including what people want to play as rather than focusing on what’s important to the series as a whole, just as how I don’t expect Anna, but they both have a chance. And Impa a much better one since her series actually warrants a new character lol. Not that they choose based off “reps,” but maybe more-so because fans see the roster that way, and request/complain accordingly. Basically being the same thing but indirectly, or like a self-fulfilling prophecy kinda.
I don’t think there are very many bad choices for this series (other than Toon Zelda & Toon Sheik (((((and Tingle
))))). Definitely hoping for some new blood here. The BotW characters would be cool too. Still don’t know which one they’d pick, but it’d be fine ig. [/Collapse]
Chance: 13%
Want: 100%
I don’t give 13s and 100s to just anyone ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think she’s a legitimate contender, but obviously I have to lean against it. I’d rank every individual Zelda (or FE) character below 50 because there are so many great choices “competing for a spot” AKA they aren’t going to radically oversaturate a series so it’ll probably be 1-2 newcomers.
Layton prediction: 14%
Oof didn’t know about my extra noms until after my post yesterday. I’m guessing the post from yesterday just gets doubled? If not, I’ll make this one easy ig
x5 Azura
And this could just be doubled instead? Idk
Edit: hmmmm turns out I forgot how to do a spoiler tag
I used to know how to do this lmak
I nyactually forgot he even existed until the direct happened nya.
5
