Alright, time for a rant on Echo fighters:
Ever since the term "Echo Fighters" was revealed, people have gone mad trying to come up with all these different ideas of who could work as an Echo fighter and it's just getting ridiculous.
papagenos
gave it the right term by calling it "Echo Fever" in one of his videos.
The reality is that the vast majority of these suggestions don't work and are just the result of Sakurai introducing this new term to us for something that was previously received with mixed emotions from the community. Echo fighters are practically glorified alts of the characters they're ripped from. They have the same weight, run speed, moveset, etc. Only differences are incredibly minor things such as Lucina's tipper and all of that. That's literally it when it comes to differences. That's why I believe characters like Dixie, Shadow, Dark Samus, and even Chrom just don't work.
The annoying thing is that since this new term was introduced people have completely forgotten that characters like
,
, and
exist. We can still have clones who borrow HEAVILY from the character their based on and still require very little dev time compared to your average fighter. These aren't semi-clones nor are they Echo fighters, they're just clones. Unlike Echo fighters, they have different properties such as weight, run speed, and special moves being slightly adjusted to better fit the character they're being given to. I believe Shadow and Chrom at the very least have to be in this category because both would require differences in animation to work, they can't be glorified alts. Shadow needs a different running animation at the minimum which is more than your usual Echo fighter can have and I think Chrom can't be directly put onto Ike's model and would have to be made a little smaller and while they're at it they would probably change up his properties such as run speed and weight. Also they would likely have to add lightning effects to his attacks instead of fire effects which is again more than what is classified as an Echo fighter can afford.
Now does this mean that Shadow and Chrom can't be in the game? Of course not! They can easily be made into regular clones with very little effort. Same goes for Dixie and Dark Samus though I think those two are better off as semi-clones but the line between semi-clone and clone territory is where it starts to become more opinionated. In the last month in a half or so since E3, the only Echo fighter suggestions I have seen that I think could truly work as Echoes are Octolings, Impa, Ken, Ninten, Hilda, Ms. Pac-Man, and Jeanne. Personally, I don't think all of those SHOULD be Echo fighters and I don't even think some of them should be in the game because they're just there for the sake of people trying to fill a hole that doesn't need to be filled. But regardless, all of those ones I just listed could be thrown onto the model of whoever they're based off of and it would look fine. You could argue that with Dark Samus as well but Phazon effects combined with the fact that Dark Samus has a slightly different build would probably push Dark Samus to a Pichu type clone at the minimum. It's also worth noting that all of the above mentioned characters I believe COULD work as Echoes have displayed they have the same abilites as the character they could be based off of more or less while Dark Samus kind of falls flat in this category.
Anyway, I hope a lot of people read this and think more about what really should be a clone and what really should be an Echo. If you just finished reading it, thank you very much, I'm glad you took the time.
