Official The Game Awards 2019 - Discussion Thread

[EricTheGamerman]

Neku seems more reasonable than Sora but I still think Geno should be the next Square Enix character. The demand and the presence of and really makes his absence a real elephant in the room.

I understand you absolutely hate Sora with all of your might, but in what would does "Neku sound more reasonable than Sora" ???

 

[Cutie Gwen]

I understand you absolutely hate Sora with all of your might, but in what would does "Neku sound more reasonable than Sora" ???

'TWEWY is a cult classic and Sora is Disney' I assume

 

[Megadoomer]

I understand you absolutely hate Sora with all of your might, but in what would does "Neku sound more reasonable than Sora" ???

Isn't Sora owned by Disney? That's what the copyright at the start of every Kingdom Hearts game states, and that seems to be a massive obstacle to his inclusion.

 

[SKX31]

Here's my thing with Bravely. It has to have some defining feature to really make it a viable candidate for Smash. Geno has the fan support angle and Sakurai's approval. Lara Croft has being the first woman of gaming. 2B has being a massive hit that Sakurai has talked very positively about from a revered and highly stylized Japanese creator. Chrono Trigger has the fact it basically gets thrown to the top of every best SNES RPG list, and Sora manages to get fan demand and being from bloody Kingdom Hearts. Hell, even The World Ends with You has an extreme style that makes it stand out despite not having a whole lot else to fall back on sales or fandom wise.

You know, that's one thing that I think should be re-emphasized: Square-Enix's bench is so deep it might as well be a FFA viper's pit. And there's also the question of how many more spots S-E will get within Ultimate's life cycle. If I'm being honest, that's why I'm not ranking any individual Square pick too highly - whichever pick one talks about (Geno, Lara, 2B etc.) the other characters also have tantilizing positives.

Still though, the fact that Bravely Default's getting a sequel shows some confidence on S-E's part. That's not something to completely dismiss either.

 

[Blade of Evil's Bane]

Just you wait for Fighter Five to be a Skull Kid and Katalina tag team, putting Loz and Hitagi back in the mix.

Ngl i'd prefer the Grinch version, Mach Rider riding Skull Kid instead of a bike... or maybe the bike itself is wearing Majora's Mask... i guess we'll never know...

 

[Droodle]

Here's my thing with Bravely. It has to have some defining feature to really make it a viable candidate for Smash. Geno has the fan support angle and Sakurai's approval. Lara Croft has being the first woman of gaming. 2B has being a massive hit that Sakurai has talked very positively about from a revered and highly stylized Japanese creator. Chrono Trigger has the fact it basically gets thrown to the top of every best SNES RPG list, and Sora manages to get fan demand and being from bloody Kingdom Hearts. Hell, even The World Ends with You has an extreme style that makes it stand out despite not having a whole lot else to fall back on sales or fandom wise.

Bravely is mostly just aping Final Fantasy (on purpose mind you, but it doesn't give it much of an identity) with little to no fan support, a pretty weak showing after the initial hype for the first game died down, and seemingly no mentions from Sakurai either. I just don't see a whole lot that Bravely brings to the table. That's what I'm saying, I just don't see a whole lot of defining elements that make it a particularly "good pick" for Smash. It reminds me a lot of my Assassin's Creed criticism. Yes, it's a popular IP, but it just doesn't do a whole lot to stand out or make itself a better pick for Smash. And even it as the "classic JRPG revival series" managed to get completely usurped by Octopath Traveler.

And here's what I'm saying.

Throw in a good leak/rumour and people will bandwagon onto a Bravely Default character rather easily just like they did with Geno so many years ago, and just like they did with KOS-MOS just this week. Fan demand really doesn't guarantee a certain character will get in, although it definitely helps out; and while sure Octopath Traveler did manage to exceed the hype/sales of Bravely, the reception overall has been even more mixed than the bravely games.

In regards to your comments about "the pretty weak showing after the first games hype died", sure it died down a little but the online the reveal of Bravely Default 2 has still been met with rather positively (ignoring the memes about naming). Most fans of JRPGs like the game's, so I think you're bias is getting in the way when you say that it really died down THAT much.

Sure it didn't have as longstanding impact/popularity as the original release of FE:A/Xenoblade Chronicles (1/2)/Nier Automata/Persona 5, which really pushed those series to the front of the JRPG genre, but it still sold well on all accounts. Bravely Default sold over a million and was one of the first big JRPG's on the 3DS, while Bravely Second came out at the end of the 3DS's lifespan and still managed to sell 700 000 while not being advertised as much.

Also while Sakurai hasn't publicly acknowledged the games, that does not mean that he doesn't like them. Sakurai didn't talk about Nier/Drakenguard until Automata's release at which point he stated he's been a fan of them for a long time. Sakurai isn't obligated to write about every small thing he likes for the online community to scrutinize over, he didn't even write about Tales until he talked about the Lloyd costume back in Smash 4.

 

[Professor Pumpkaboo]

tsk tsk with all this talking down Bravely

 

[Guynamednelson]

Ngl i'd prefer the Grinch version, Mach Rider riding Skull Kid instead of a bike... or maybe the bike itself is wearing Majora's Mask... i guess we'll never know...

View attachment 252821

The Grinch Gang shows up in their Final Smash, don't worry.

 

[Droodle]

Neku seems more reasonable than Sora but I still think Geno should be the next Square Enix character. The demand and the presence of and really makes his absence a real elephant in the room.

Ridley, K. Rool, and Banjo all got in, but Isaac didn't.

So in that case Geno really isn't as big of an elephant in the room. I don't know why people ignore Isaac, considering that he had a bigger fanbase going into Smash Ultimate compared to Geno (although not as big as the other 3).

 

[KillerCage]

How are you guys doing?
Have you recovered from the disappointment that was TGA?

 

[Opossum]

How are you guys doing?
Have you recovered from the disappointment that was TGA?

I mean I wasn't disappointed to begin with, so I had nothing to recover from. :V

 

[SSGuy]

Ridley, K. Rool, and Banjo all got in, but Isaac didn't.

So in that case Geno really isn't as big of an elephant in the room. I don't know why people ignore Isaac, considering that he had a bigger fanbase going into Smash Ultimate compared to Geno (although not as big as the other 3).

I always found Issac's fandom a little non existent around Smash 4 speculation. I think the Assist Trophy and Dark Dawn's performance to really play a roll into it. Geno has remained a little more consistent and was usually discussed around Ridley and K.Rool.

Not trying to downplay Isaac's demand, but I personally was not aware that he was still as well received until Ultimate Speculation. Which is great news since I like GS as well

 

[Guynamednelson]

I always found Issac's fandom a little non existent around Smash 4 speculation. I think the Assist Trophy and Dark Dawn's performance to really play a roll into it. Geno has remained a little more consistent and was usually discussed around Ridley and K.Rool.

Not trying to downplay Isaac's demand, but I personally was not aware that he was still as well received until Ultimate Speculation. Which is great news since I like GS as well

Geno's demand really came back after the ballot, while there were people who had hope for Isaac DLC due to the AT not being a problem for him.

 

[Datboigeno]

Geno's demand really came back after the ballot, while there were people who had hope for Isaac DLC due to the AT not being a problem for him.

I mean he had to have had some measure of backing during the ballot considering he was chosen to get a mii costume (and got a splash screen no less) over however many SE characters that could have instead.

Ridley, K. Rool, and Banjo all got in, but Isaac didn't.

So in that case Geno really isn't as big of an elephant in the room. I don't know why people ignore Isaac, considering that he had a bigger fanbase going into Smash Ultimate compared to Geno (although not as big as the other 3).

Isaac is an AT so he's still represented within the game whereas Geno is not at all at this point which is much more conspicuous.

 

[MisterMike]

The CacoMallow leak is not worth much attention though.
It can be real, but at the same time, it's most likely fake. Smash Ultimate mods exist.

Lastly, those models are yes original/never seen before, but they are also very simple to craft, and I can totally see them being fanmade.
Similar to how there were a lot of leaks with Rhythm Heaven characters in them, because they are flat simple drawings and are simple to fake.

Sure, but so far nobody has been able to accurately recreate what we're seeing in the post.

Gameplay#SmashBros #SmashBrosUltimate #Mods pic.twitter.com/mzhaLXJuwK

— Migz92398 🌐 (@Miguel92398) November 9, 2019

While this guy was able to port a Mallow Hat mod from Smash 4 into Ultimate, so far nobody has been able to make a Mallow Hat at the same level of quality as the one seen in the CacoMallow post. The guy who made this mod has gone on to elaborate on what he had to do to make it work in the tweets immediately following:

"But the hard part was not the model but rather the texture. I can't compress the texture due to it being over the compression size. So I posterize it to make it lower. It took me at least 10 tries to make it work in-game. But at least I have it working."

The compression thing he's talking about has to do with how Smash Ultimate handles data, as these two posts below explain.

So while it's possible to mod in hats, and it's possible to make hats of this quality, so far nobody has been able to do both.

And the Cacodemon Hat has seen a few recreations, but not has only one of them been shown to work in-game, nobody has been able to accurately all the precise details. For example, the Cacodemon Hat shown in the image is perfectly surrounding the Mii's face, something that no other recreation thus far has been able to replicate in-game. I'd imagine it'd be pretty difficult to do since you'd not only have to be careful about the file size (which adding an extra detail like that would certainly increase), you'd have to be incredibly careful to avoid any clipping or gaps that would give it away as a fake. Below is an image I've compiled showcasing the hats in question.

Left: CacoMallow post
Middle: Recreation A, done in blender, never used in Smash Ultimate proper.
Right: Recreation B, in-engine mod. Notice the clipping on the right hat.

They say that mii costumes are hard to mod without flaws, though if a modder managed to get it right and wants to make a fake leak, they obviously won't reveal you that said mod is possible until the leak is disproven.

But then why would you not come forward after all this time? It's been over a month since they were first posted, and nobody has come to take credit for it. If you were planning on trolling the Smash fandom, you ideally wouldn't want to wait so long that people forgot what you posted even existed, which is what's happening right now. It'd be like that meme image where a guys says he's gonna prank his friend but his friend never comes, and he stands there waiting for around two months and he's still not there.

And lest we forget, Artsi Omni owned up to his Rayman Hoax a few days after he posted it, using it was a springboard for his own series. It was a very hot topic of discussion at the time and his revealing that it was all a hoax left quite a number of people salty and rustled. There's also the Grinch Hoax which, while nobody has come forward to take credit for it, it's already been proven false and left people salty, bamboozled and, in the case of one particular user by the name of wynn728 , bereft of hope for the future. It has basically done it's job as a successful troll op. But the CacoMallow post? If this turns out to have been done for the sake of a troll, it'll go down as one of the weakest troll jobs in Smash history: Some believed in it, most people dismissed it, and it was found to be fake so long after it was first posted that nobody even cares about it. 0/10, do better next time.

Also, as we said multiple times in the past, those costumes (hats only to be more precise) don't necessarily mean that Geno and Doomguy will be DLCs, they can even deconfirm those character in some circumstances. So, even if it's real, there isn't much information in it.

Sure, it's not a 100% guarentee, but considering everything surrounding them it starts to become less and less likely that that would be the case. Let's start with the Cacodemon Hat. So Doomguy is a costume and he's coming alongside a Cacodemon hat. So who would his costumes go with? The only likely options aside from Doomguy for a Bethesda character are The Dragonborn from Skyrim and Vault Boy from Fallout. (Sorry Commander Keen fans) Sure, Skyrim is one of the biggest western RPGs in history and Fallout is a beloved series, but neither of these characters seem very fitting.

Dovakin has the same issue that the Chosen Undead from Cuphead has, they have no defined personality of their own (being an endlessly customizable avatar of the player does that to you) and their combat stylings aren't all that unique or stand out aside from the possible gimmick of using Estus Flasks to hear yourself a couple times each stock. Vault Boy fares a little better with his obliviously chipper disposition, wide variety of tools and a very recognizable design, but he also doesn't have much that would make him stand out and I can't imagine he's on many people's want lists.

Doomguy on the other hand has plenty of fun tools to work with, from his Plasma Pistol, Shotgun, Chainsaw, Gauss Cannon, and of course the ever powerful BFG. And if you take DOOM Eternal into consideration, he also has a grappling hook that would make for an interesting tether grab. While he's pretty one-note in terms of personality, he's been shown to have a softer, dorkier side to him underneath all of that, and if official sources are to be believed, he lacks a sex drive entirely. (Being an endlessly angry avatar of destruction does that to you)

And while Skyrim may have set the bar for western RPGs, DOOM basically laid the groundwork for every other FPS game to come out since, from Halo to Half-Life. Hell even Sakurai himself has praised John Carmack for his contributions to video games as a whole. He's the kind of character that plenty of people would be thrilled to see make it in if he did, and I think most would agree that him getting in as a Mii Fighter costume would be a complete waste. But I digress.

If Doomguy and a Cacodemon were to be just costumes, they'd have to come with a Bethesda character, because I highly doubt that Sakurai would go to all the effort of negotiating with a western company just for a couple costumes to go alongside whoever, he'd push for a character to make it worth his while. But even if he were to include a costume from Bethesda without a character from said company to go along with it, why would he even bother with a Cacodemon Hat when a Doomguy Costume would be enough of a big deal?

Shifting to the second half of the CacoMallow title, why include a Mallow Hat when the returing Geno Costume would be enough? This would make even less sense since the Geno Costume is old, so why on earth would you include a Mallow Hat to go along with an older returning costume? This isn't even going into the fact that there's so much more to consider with regards to this costume, such as the fact that it didn't return alongside the Chocobo Hat when Hero was released. So you're telling me they held back a Mii Costume and a hat just so they can make a second hat to bring it back with?

And who would they bring these costumes back with? We've never had a DLC Fighter come with more than 2 costumes from any company aside from the one who owns them, so if these three costumes were to return, it'd have to be alongside another SquareEnix character, and who do you suppose that'd be? 2B? Lara Croft? Sephiroth? Crono? Gex? Maybe even Sora? Possibly, but given how highly requested Geno is compared to most of these characters, it'd seem very tone-deaf that things would happen that way. And then we have the Mii Costume list to consider.

This list was given to papagenos via Discord around July 19th, about 10 days before Hero's presentation was to take place. So far it as correctly guessed 4 costumes that have since come to the game, including the very off-base Goemon and Rocket Grunt and only missing Sans. The only ones unaccounted for are the Mallow, Smithy, and Chocobo costumes/hats. Notice anyone missing? Anyone that starts with a G and rhymes with Cappuchino? Now you may be thinking "Well, just because Geno's Costume isn't on this list that doesn't mean it won't still come to the game.", but consider this:

If this list is legit and what you'd hypothetically say is indeed the case, that would mean that whoever this SquareEnix character is would come with three Super Mario RPG costumes and one Final Fantasy costume. That's a whopping 4 costumes that have nothing to do with their own series, which is unprecedented and frankly ridiculous. Now sure, Banjo didn't have any costumes from his own series or any Microsoft IPs in general, but he sure as hell didn't come with a glut of costumes from any other companies to this degree. If Geno were to be an upcoming fighter, however, that would make a lot more sense: He'd come with three costumes from his own company (the Mallow Hat, a Smithy Costume, and the returning Chocobo Hat) and at most 2 other costumes from whoever, such as the Mega Man X and Mega Man.EXE costumes that have yet to return, which could make sense since the Proto Man and Zero costumes came back with Banjo.

My conclusion is that I don't care about that leak because not only it can easily be fake, it also has the potential of being completely useless speculation-wise even if it's true.
Then it can be true, I don't deny that, but as I said, it's too vague to tell us any useful information.

While I agree that there's nothing enitrely concrete that it says about any potential fighters aside from the existence of these hats (if proven true), as I've shown throughout this whole post, they provide many interesting implications when considered in addition to a lot of the other rumors/leaks we've gotten over the past several months as well as the numerous weird details surrounding Smash Ultimate's DLC cycle, and I don't know about you but I find that's certainly worth talking about and plenty useful for discussion.

Of course it's totally possible that this could all be fake, but if anyone's to make those claims they need to provide more substantial evidence and betetr arguments than "Well it could be faked.", because as far as I'm concerned that's really lazy critique and not very worth discussing because it kind of goes without saying. Anything very well could be faked, but anything can be legit as well.

One key difference: Nintendo hasn't taken down a single video on the Mii hat leak. That alone is a huge strike against it.

Not necessarily. I think they're not taking any action against it because they know that if they were to take them down, that would just drive home to everybody that the post was legit. Because why else would they be striking them down? Because it's a mod? There are dozens upon dozens of mod videos on YouTube for Ultimate that have stayed up for a lot longer, why haven't those been taken down yet? Why weren't those taken down as soon as they were made public?

Them not taking any action is probably the smartest move they could make, since it would give people reason to dismiss them as mods and forget about them, which is basically what's happened. The CacoMallow post dropped on the 4th of November, and as of right now people have largely stopped talking about it. They got what they wanted.

 

[XorahnGaia]

And even it as the "classic JRPG revival series" managed to get completely usurped by Octopath Traveler.

As a Bravely fan, i can understand most of your criticism (especially in the context of representing the series in Smash over other Square-Enix offerings) but i honestly don't think this is statement is very objective.

I think OT had more presence in some group mostly because it was a Switch exclusive (and one the first third party game to announced for the console back in 2017) which also released in pretty dry month for gaming in general.
Now i didn't play the game myself so i won't judge it out of hearsay, but i always got the impression that the game relied too much on its "2D-HD" approach (which itself was kinda divisive, since many forum-goers didn't like that they were selling this low budget game at full price).
Plus, and i know that personal experience doesn't matter, but a lot of my friends who played the game weren't much thrilled by it, stating that only two of the eight stories had actual effort put into them and one them going as far as to say that it was soulless. Then again, one them was a big fan of Bravely and he enjoyed...so maybe it just has to do with being able to forgive it's shortcoming so you can appreciate its good elements.

My point being: I don't see this big difference on how these two games were received, again the only thing that could set OT apart is that the Switch itself kinda pushed into the spotlight.

 

[Droodle]

I always found Issac's fandom a little non existent around Smash 4 speculation. I think the Assist Trophy and Dark Dawn's performance to really play a roll into it. Geno has remained a little more consistent and was usually discussed around Ridley and K.Rool.

Not trying to downplay Isaac's demand, but I personally was not aware that he was still as well received until Ultimate Speculation. Which is great news since I like GS as well

Not really, Isaac was always decently discussed throughout Smash 4 by virtue of not having his Assist Trophy return. Geno only gained huge popularity after his costume was confirmed through Cloud, and also after Sakurai publicly acknowledged him.

Even going into Smash Ultimate Isaac was more discussed then Geno until the November Direct, which deconfirmed him. I think the most discussed characters overall during the Smash Ultimate pre-release period were Isaac, Banjo, and Sora (discounting K. Rool and Ridley). Even in terms of page count here, Isaac was beating Geno until the AT.

 

[Cutie Gwen]

I mean he had to have had some measure of backing during the ballot considering he was chosen to get a mii costume (and got a splash screen no less) over however many SE characters that could have instead.



Isaac is an AT so he's still represented within the game whereas Geno is not at all at this point which is much more conspicuous.

Geno's a Spirit though, which impacts gameplay and has a fight meant to represent him

 

[Datboigeno]

I think the most discussed characters overall during the Smash Ultimate pre-release period were Isaac, Banjo, and Sora (discounting K. Rool and Ridley). Even in terms of page count here, Isaac was beating Geno until the AT.

Nah I definitely saw the Geno discussion as being as common pre-release as those other characters and in terms of polling was right there with them as well.

Geno's a Spirit though, which impacts gameplay and has a fight meant to represent him

One is a fully implemented AT with its own render and moves and the other is a .png from google images and without the costume that came in 4. You are correct that he's *represented* but it's not at the same level.

 

[Cutie Gwen]

Nah I definitely saw the Geno discussion as being as common pre-release as those other characters and in terms of polling was right there with them as well.



One is a fully implemented AT with its own render and moves and the other is a .png from google images and without the costume that came in 4. You are correct that he's *represented* but it's not at the same level.

Consideing how much love and care is put in spirits I feel they are indeed at the same level. Shanoa's Spirit references a completely optional glyph you may not even see the room of in her game after all so if they're willing to go deep like that then they clearly put a ****ton of love there

 

[Opossum]

Consideing how much love and care is put in spirits I feel they are indeed at the same level. Shanoa's Spirit references a completely optional glyph you may not even see the room of in her game after all so if they're willing to go deep like that then they clearly put a ****ton of love there

One of my favorites is probably Bord, Cord, and Barst. Just three Simons on the Wuhu Island Bridge spamming Axe. And the stage references the fact that the Pirates of Galder map had like three bridges right at the start.

 

[TheCJBrine]

While spirits impact gameplay a bit and have their own battles, there's nothing stopping Sakurai and his team from promoting them to a fighter. Some playable characters already have non-fighter spirits, like "Pit (Classic)" which is just Pit with his old design. Base-game Spirits were also chosen way before the next season was decided on, and I doubt they're gonna say "nah we can't make this character playable" just because they're a Spirit; heck, even if they're an AT. Just have the AT be disabled while the fighter is onstage, or just remove it because who cares about the AT and work put into it if they decided they want to make the character playable, and as for spirits, they just need to put the game the artwork originates from in the spirit's name and use a different sprite/piece of artwork or the Smash render for their fighter spirit.

 

[Datboigeno]

Consideing how much love and care is put in spirits I feel they are indeed at the same level. Shanoa's Spirit references a completely optional glyph you may not even see the room of in her game after all so if they're willing to go deep like that then they clearly put a ****ton of love there

I mean yeah the spirit fights have thought put into them but in terms of how much time and effort actually went into them a .png and a one off fight is different than a fully modeled and programmed NPC. I just don't see them as being equivalent.

 

[Guynamednelson]

, or just remove it because who cares about the AT and work put into it if they decided they want to make the character playable

A cool thing they could do is subtly increase the chance a certain item will spawn when an AT character is being played as.

Waluigi? Pitfall.
Isaac? Gust Bellows.
Shadow? Timer.
Bomberman? X Bomb.

Unfortunately, this would require more ATs to have similar functionality to an item. That and it won't work if you don't have those items disabled.

 

[I.D.]

As much as I don’t want Verge’s decon-list to be true... the guy had Ken, Incineroar, no-grinch-leak, Erdrick, and Banjo right.

He didn't get Banjo, Shinobi did. And all that **** is from over a year ago. What has veggieboy been leaking lately?

I just remembered too, he said one of his reasons for "leaking" smash ultimate DLC is that he didn't want people wasting their money on characters they may not want. What a ****ing terrible job he's done then.

 

[alemerltoucanet]

Ayyy, just thought I'd stop by this thread to read through and see everyone's thoughts. Seems very mixed lol. I thought they were fine, I enjoyed them. Favorite part was Reggie's speech for fresh new indie award, I loved that so much.
I was going in very neutral about a Smash reveal, and when there wasn't one I was like "That's fine, I had fun watching at the very least" it was definitely not a waste of my time imo.
Like what nessdeltarune00 was saying, I think it may be because I'm easy to please? Idk lol.

 

[Deleted member]

I just remembered too, he said one of his reasons for "leaking" smash ultimate DLC is that he didn't want people wasting their money on characters they may not want. What a ****ing terrible job he's done then.

He did say he's preparing evrryone by saying who the final fighter isn't instead of saying outright who it is.

This is a dark time for speculation. As much as I'm desperate, I can't help but...not trust anything at this point. Nobody won yesterday.

Sigh...

 

[Datboigeno]

You seem to be misunderstanding me, I'm not saying that Geno wasn't discussed pre-release, it's that he wasn't discussed as much as Banjo and Isaac. He was definitely discussed a ton though.

Also if you're willing to argue that being a spirit isn't "good enough", I doubt many Isaac fans were thrilled about being relegated to an AT again either. They're both still present in the game in some form, but not the form that many people want.


Just because most people can't disprove the leak 100% doesn't always mean that it's correct. Most people couldn't really disprove the Grinch leak either, and no one came out to ever take credit for it. When a leak is dubious at best, it's better to take it with a huge grain of salt.

Besides as people mentioned Cacodemon could come with any Bethesda rep and Mallow/Smithy is pretty vague is it Mallow OR Smithy, or Mallow AND Smithy. Doomguy in the games has literally as much personality as Dovahkiin, but that doesn't really matter.

The costumes leak doesn't even have all the costumes either. Sans was revealed at the same time, and this implies that the Mallow/Smithy stuff was done way before the SNK costumes too, which I highly doubt. For all we know, this person could have had some legit information and then mixed it up with some false bits to troll fans kinda like that Dante leaker.

Nintendo has always taken videos of leaks that are real down so far, they did it with ESRB, they did it with pokemon, they did it when Ultimate leaked. Guess what, they didn't take down the video of the Rayman "leak" that everyone thought was true, and they didn't take down the CacoMallow leak.

Aside from them potentially taking down the video of the KOS-MOS mod, which may or may not be fake; they have NEVER taken down videos of Smash mods in a noticeable manner.

Not saying that Geno or Doomguy can't be in, but it's better to assume that the Cacodemon/Mallow leak was fake, rather than going in with the expectation that Geno and Doomguy are happening 100%.

And I disagree and am saying he was discussed more or less as much as they were. Smashboards also isn't the only place where discussion happens so I don't know if post count on character support threads is a complete metric either.

A spirit is a "lesser form" than an AT. Spirits are replacements of trophies. Trophies were never seen as on the same level as ATs so I don't see why spirits would be either. Yeah, everyone would prefer to have their favored character be playable, but I'm saying there's an objective difference in how fleshed out ATs are when compared to spirits. They are both represented but the representation of one is closer to a complete character than the other. That's all I'm saying.

 

[wynn728]

And lest we forget, Artsi Omni owned up to his Rayman Hoax a few days after he posted it, using it was a springboard for his own series. It was a very hot topic of discussion at the time and his revealing that it was all a hoax left quite a number of people salty and rustled. There's also the Grinch Hoax which, while nobody has come forward to take credit for it, it's already been proven false and left people salty, bamboozled and, in the case of one particular user by the name of wynn728 , bereft of hope for the future. It has basically done it's job as a successful troll op. But the CacoMallow post? If this turns out to have been done for the sake of a troll, it'll go down as one of the weakest troll jobs in Smash history: Some believed in it, most people dismissed it, and it was found to be fake so long after it was first posted that nobody even cares about it. 0/10, do better next time.

The Grinch Leak didn't deprive me of hope for the future, that was all Sakurai. Even if the Grinch Leak never happen wouldn't have changed the reception of that last Smash Bros Direct. Ending it on an obligation, putting many fan requested characters six feet under with Assist Trophies & Mii Costume, saying that they couldn't add in that many new characters but proudly devoted a good amount of development time into making Piranha Plant playable then charging for it, the stupid Rex Mii Costume, it was really bad. If anything the Grinch Leak taught me to stop getting invested in leaked materials.

 

[Iko MattOrr]

Sure, but so far nobody has been able to accurately recreate what we're seeing in the post.

Gameplay#SmashBros #SmashBrosUltimate #Mods pic.twitter.com/mzhaLXJuwK

— Migz92398 🌐 (@Miguel92398) November 9, 2019

While this guy was able to port a Mallow Hat mod from Smash 4 into Ultimate, so far nobody has been able to make a Mallow Hat at the same level of quality as the one seen in the CacoMallow post. The guy who made this mod has gone on to elaborate on what he had to do to make it work in the tweets immediately following:

"But the hard part was not the model but rather the texture. I can't compress the texture due to it being over the compression size. So I posterize it to make it lower. It took me at least 10 tries to make it work in-game. But at least I have it working."

The compression thing he's talking about has to do with how Smash Ultimate handles data, as these two posts below explain.
View attachment 252811
View attachment 252810
So while it's possible to mod in hats, and it's possible to make hats of this quality, so far nobody has been able to do both.

And the Cacodemon Hat has seen a few recreations, but not has only one of them been shown to work in-game, nobody has been able to accurately all the precise details. For example, the Cacodemon Hat shown in the image is perfectly surrounding the Mii's face, something that no other recreation thus far has been able to replicate in-game. I'd imagine it'd be pretty difficult to do since you'd not only have to be careful about the file size (which adding an extra detail like that would certainly increase), you'd have to be incredibly careful to avoid any clipping or gaps that would give it away as a fake. Below is an image I've compiled showcasing the hats in question.
View attachment 252813
Left: CacoMallow post
Middle: Recreation A, done in blender, never used in Smash Ultimate proper.
Right: Recreation B, in-engine mod. Notice the clipping on the right hat.


But then why would you not come forward after all this time? It's been over a month since they were first posted, and nobody has come to take credit for it. If you were planning on trolling the Smash fandom, you ideally wouldn't want to wait so long that people forgot what you posted even existed, which is what's happening right now. It'd be like that meme image where a guys says he's gonna prank his friend but his friend never comes, and he stands there waiting for around two months and he's still not there.

And lest we forget, Artsi Omni owned up to his Rayman Hoax a few days after he posted it, using it was a springboard for his own series. It was a very hot topic of discussion at the time and his revealing that it was all a hoax left quite a number of people salty and rustled. There's also the Grinch Hoax which, while nobody has come forward to take credit for it, it's already been proven false and left people salty, bamboozled and, in the case of one particular user by the name of wynn728 , bereft of hope for the future. It has basically done it's job as a successful troll op. But the CacoMallow post? If this turns out to have been done for the sake of a troll, it'll go down as one of the weakest troll jobs in Smash history: Some believed in it, most people dismissed it, and it was found to be fake so long after it was first posted that nobody even cares about it. 0/10, do better next time.


Sure, it's not a 100% guarentee, but considering everything surrounding them it starts to become less and less likely that that would be the case. Let's start with the Cacodemon Hat. So Doomguy is a costume and he's coming alongside a Cacodemon hat. So who would his costumes go with? The only likely options aside from Doomguy for a Bethesda character are The Dragonborn from Skyrim and Vault Boy from Fallout. (Sorry Commander Keen fans) Sure, Skyrim is one of the biggest western RPGs in history and Fallout is a beloved series, but neither of these characters seem very fitting.

Dovakin has the same issue that the Chosen Undead from Cuphead has, they have no defined personality of their own (being an endlessly customizable avatar of the player does that to you) and their combat stylings aren't all that unique or stand out aside from the possible gimmick of using Estus Flasks to hear yourself a couple times each stock. Vault Boy fares a little better with his obliviously chipper disposition, wide variety of tools and a very recognizable design, but he also doesn't have much that would make him stand out and I can't imagine he's on many people's want lists.

Doomguy on the other hand has plenty of fun tools to work with, from his Plasma Pistol, Shotgun, Chainsaw, Gauss Cannon, and of course the ever powerful BFG. And if you take DOOM Eternal into consideration, he also has a grappling hook that would make for an interesting tether grab. While he's pretty one-note in terms of personality, he's been shown to have a softer, dorkier side to him underneath all of that, and if official sources are to be believed, he lacks a sex drive entirely. (Being an endlessly angry avatar of destruction does that to you)

And while Skyrim may have set the bar for western RPGs, DOOM basically laid the groundwork for every other FPS game to come out since, from Halo to Half-Life. Hell even Sakurai himself has praised John Carmack for his contributions to video games as a whole. He's the kind of character that plenty of people would be thrilled to see make it in if he did, and I think most would agree that him getting in as a Mii Fighter costume would be a complete waste. But I digress.

If Doomguy and a Cacodemon were to be just costumes, they'd have to come with a Bethesda character, because I highly doubt that Sakurai would go to all the effort of negotiating with a western company just for a couple costumes to go alongside whoever, he'd push for a character to make it worth his while. But even if he were to include a costume from Bethesda without a character from said company to go along with it, why would he even bother with a Cacodemon Hat when a Doomguy Costume would be enough of a big deal?

Shifting to the second half of the CacoMallow title, why include a Mallow Hat when the returing Geno Costume would be enough? This would make even less sense since the Geno Costume is old, so why on earth would you include a Mallow Hat to go along with an older returning costume? This isn't even going into the fact that there's so much more to consider with regards to this costume, such as the fact that it didn't return alongside the Chocobo Hat when Hero was released. So you're telling me they held back a Mii Costume and a hat just so they can make a second hat to bring it back with?

And who would they bring these costumes back with? We've never had a DLC Fighter come with more than 2 costumes from any company aside from the one who owns them, so if these three costumes were to return, it'd have to be alongside another SquareEnix character, and who do you suppose that'd be? 2B? Lara Croft? Sephiroth? Crono? Gex? Maybe even Sora? Possibly, but given how highly requested Geno is compared to most of these characters, it'd seem very tone-deaf that things would happen that way. And then we have the Mii Costume list to consider.
View attachment 252822
This list was given to papagenos via Discord around July 19th, about 10 days before Hero's presentation was to take place. So far it as correctly guessed 4 costumes that have since come to the game, including the very off-base Goemon and Rocket Grunt and only missing Sans. The only ones unaccounted for are the Mallow, Smithy, and Chocobo costumes/hats. Notice anyone missing? Anyone that starts with a G and rhymes with Cappuchino? Now you may be thinking "Well, just because Geno's Costume isn't on this list that doesn't mean it won't still come to the game.", but consider this:

If this list is legit and what you'd hypothetically say is indeed the case, that would mean that whoever this SquareEnix character is would come with three Super Mario RPG costumes and one Final Fantasy costume. That's a whopping 4 costumes that have nothing to do with their own series, which is unprecedented and frankly ridiculous. Now sure, Banjo didn't have any costumes from his own series or any Microsoft IPs in general, but he sure as hell didn't come with a glut of costumes from any other companies to this degree. If Geno were to be an upcoming fighter, however, that would make a lot more sense: He'd come with three costumes from his own company (the Mallow Hat, a Smithy Costume, and the returning Chocobo Hat) and at most 2 other costumes from whoever, such as the Mega Man X and Mega Man.EXE costumes that have yet to return, which could make sense since the Proto Man and Zero costumes came back with Banjo.


While I agree that there's nothing enitrely concrete that it says about any potential fighters aside from the existence of these hats (if proven true), as I've shown throughout this whole post, they provide many interesting implications when considered in addition to a lot of the other rumors/leaks we've gotten over the past several months as well as the numerous weird details surrounding Smash Ultimate's DLC cycle, and I don't know about you but I find that's certainly worth talking about and plenty useful for discussion.

Of course it's totally possible that this could all be fake, but if anyone's to make those claims they need to provide more substantial evidence and betetr arguments than "Well it could be faked.", because as far as I'm concerned that's really lazy critique and not very worth discussing because it kind of goes without saying. Anything very well could be faked, but anything can be legit as well.

Not necessarily. I think they're not taking any action against it because they know that if they were to take them down, that would just drive home to everybody that the post was legit. Because why else would they be striking them down? Because it's a mod? There are dozens upon dozens of mod videos on YouTube for Ultimate that have stayed up for a lot longer, why haven't those been taken down yet? Why weren't those taken down as soon as they were made public?

Them not taking any action is probably the smartest move they could make, since it would give people reason to dismiss them as mods and forget about them, which is basically what's happened. The CacoMallow post dropped on the 4th of November, and as of right now people have largely stopped talking about it. They got what they wanted.

lol, seriously?
This post convinced me that the Cacomallow leak is 100% fake.
They imported that hat in the game's engine and it looks perfect, there's even a screenshot in this very post.
I don't buy the clipping thing; I worked with 3D modeling and I did some mods myself, I know that something that minor can be worked around easily.
And by the way, they look like the mii's hair more than a clipping artifact, and apparently the clipping only happens in that place, if it was a real problem it would have happend everywhere a surface intersects another.

Honestly, this is Grinch 2.0 and I'm not buying it. Thanks for giving me enough evidence that it's fake. (sorry if the post sounds a bit rude, but really, this is facepalm-worthy).

 

[DeputyDalmatian]

Sure, but so far nobody has been able to accurately recreate what we're seeing in the post.

Gameplay#SmashBros #SmashBrosUltimate #Mods pic.twitter.com/mzhaLXJuwK

— Migz92398 🌐 (@Miguel92398) November 9, 2019

While this guy was able to port a Mallow Hat mod from Smash 4 into Ultimate, so far nobody has been able to make a Mallow Hat at the same level of quality as the one seen in the CacoMallow post. The guy who made this mod has gone on to elaborate on what he had to do to make it work in the tweets immediately following:

"But the hard part was not the model but rather the texture. I can't compress the texture due to it being over the compression size. So I posterize it to make it lower. It took me at least 10 tries to make it work in-game. But at least I have it working."

The compression thing he's talking about has to do with how Smash Ultimate handles data, as these two posts below explain.
View attachment 252811
View attachment 252810
So while it's possible to mod in hats, and it's possible to make hats of this quality, so far nobody has been able to do both.

And the Cacodemon Hat has seen a few recreations, but not has only one of them been shown to work in-game, nobody has been able to accurately all the precise details. For example, the Cacodemon Hat shown in the image is perfectly surrounding the Mii's face, something that no other recreation thus far has been able to replicate in-game. I'd imagine it'd be pretty difficult to do since you'd not only have to be careful about the file size (which adding an extra detail like that would certainly increase), you'd have to be incredibly careful to avoid any clipping or gaps that would give it away as a fake. Below is an image I've compiled showcasing the hats in question.
View attachment 252813
Left: CacoMallow post
Middle: Recreation A, done in blender, never used in Smash Ultimate proper.
Right: Recreation B, in-engine mod. Notice the clipping on the right hat.


But then why would you not come forward after all this time? It's been over a month since they were first posted, and nobody has come to take credit for it. If you were planning on trolling the Smash fandom, you ideally wouldn't want to wait so long that people forgot what you posted even existed, which is what's happening right now. It'd be like that meme image where a guys says he's gonna prank his friend but his friend never comes, and he stands there waiting for around two months and he's still not there.

And lest we forget, Artsi Omni owned up to his Rayman Hoax a few days after he posted it, using it was a springboard for his own series. It was a very hot topic of discussion at the time and his revealing that it was all a hoax left quite a number of people salty and rustled. There's also the Grinch Hoax which, while nobody has come forward to take credit for it, it's already been proven false and left people salty, bamboozled and, in the case of one particular user by the name of wynn728 , bereft of hope for the future. It has basically done it's job as a successful troll op. But the CacoMallow post? If this turns out to have been done for the sake of a troll, it'll go down as one of the weakest troll jobs in Smash history: Some believed in it, most people dismissed it, and it was found to be fake so long after it was first posted that nobody even cares about it. 0/10, do better next time.


Sure, it's not a 100% guarentee, but considering everything surrounding them it starts to become less and less likely that that would be the case. Let's start with the Cacodemon Hat. So Doomguy is a costume and he's coming alongside a Cacodemon hat. So who would his costumes go with? The only likely options aside from Doomguy for a Bethesda character are The Dragonborn from Skyrim and Vault Boy from Fallout. (Sorry Commander Keen fans) Sure, Skyrim is one of the biggest western RPGs in history and Fallout is a beloved series, but neither of these characters seem very fitting.

Dovakin has the same issue that the Chosen Undead from Cuphead has, they have no defined personality of their own (being an endlessly customizable avatar of the player does that to you) and their combat stylings aren't all that unique or stand out aside from the possible gimmick of using Estus Flasks to hear yourself a couple times each stock. Vault Boy fares a little better with his obliviously chipper disposition, wide variety of tools and a very recognizable design, but he also doesn't have much that would make him stand out and I can't imagine he's on many people's want lists.

Doomguy on the other hand has plenty of fun tools to work with, from his Plasma Pistol, Shotgun, Chainsaw, Gauss Cannon, and of course the ever powerful BFG. And if you take DOOM Eternal into consideration, he also has a grappling hook that would make for an interesting tether grab. While he's pretty one-note in terms of personality, he's been shown to have a softer, dorkier side to him underneath all of that, and if official sources are to be believed, he lacks a sex drive entirely. (Being an endlessly angry avatar of destruction does that to you)

And while Skyrim may have set the bar for western RPGs, DOOM basically laid the groundwork for every other FPS game to come out since, from Halo to Half-Life. Hell even Sakurai himself has praised John Carmack for his contributions to video games as a whole. He's the kind of character that plenty of people would be thrilled to see make it in if he did, and I think most would agree that him getting in as a Mii Fighter costume would be a complete waste. But I digress.

If Doomguy and a Cacodemon were to be just costumes, they'd have to come with a Bethesda character, because I highly doubt that Sakurai would go to all the effort of negotiating with a western company just for a couple costumes to go alongside whoever, he'd push for a character to make it worth his while. But even if he were to include a costume from Bethesda without a character from said company to go along with it, why would he even bother with a Cacodemon Hat when a Doomguy Costume would be enough of a big deal?

Shifting to the second half of the CacoMallow title, why include a Mallow Hat when the returing Geno Costume would be enough? This would make even less sense since the Geno Costume is old, so why on earth would you include a Mallow Hat to go along with an older returning costume? This isn't even going into the fact that there's so much more to consider with regards to this costume, such as the fact that it didn't return alongside the Chocobo Hat when Hero was released. So you're telling me they held back a Mii Costume and a hat just so they can make a second hat to bring it back with?

And who would they bring these costumes back with? We've never had a DLC Fighter come with more than 2 costumes from any company aside from the one who owns them, so if these three costumes were to return, it'd have to be alongside another SquareEnix character, and who do you suppose that'd be? 2B? Lara Croft? Sephiroth? Crono? Gex? Maybe even Sora? Possibly, but given how highly requested Geno is compared to most of these characters, it'd seem very tone-deaf that things would happen that way. And then we have the Mii Costume list to consider.
View attachment 252822
This list was given to papagenos via Discord around July 19th, about 10 days before Hero's presentation was to take place. So far it as correctly guessed 4 costumes that have since come to the game, including the very off-base Goemon and Rocket Grunt and only missing Sans. The only ones unaccounted for are the Mallow, Smithy, and Chocobo costumes/hats. Notice anyone missing? Anyone that starts with a G and rhymes with Cappuchino? Now you may be thinking "Well, just because Geno's Costume isn't on this list that doesn't mean it won't still come to the game.", but consider this:

If this list is legit and what you'd hypothetically say is indeed the case, that would mean that whoever this SquareEnix character is would come with three Super Mario RPG costumes and one Final Fantasy costume. That's a whopping 4 costumes that have nothing to do with their own series, which is unprecedented and frankly ridiculous. Now sure, Banjo didn't have any costumes from his own series or any Microsoft IPs in general, but he sure as hell didn't come with a glut of costumes from any other companies to this degree. If Geno were to be an upcoming fighter, however, that would make a lot more sense: He'd come with three costumes from his own company (the Mallow Hat, a Smithy Costume, and the returning Chocobo Hat) and at most 2 other costumes from whoever, such as the Mega Man X and Mega Man.EXE costumes that have yet to return, which could make sense since the Proto Man and Zero costumes came back with Banjo.


While I agree that there's nothing enitrely concrete that it says about any potential fighters aside from the existence of these hats (if proven true), as I've shown throughout this whole post, they provide many interesting implications when considered in addition to a lot of the other rumors/leaks we've gotten over the past several months as well as the numerous weird details surrounding Smash Ultimate's DLC cycle, and I don't know about you but I find that's certainly worth talking about and plenty useful for discussion.

Of course it's totally possible that this could all be fake, but if anyone's to make those claims they need to provide more substantial evidence and betetr arguments than "Well it could be faked.", because as far as I'm concerned that's really lazy critique and not very worth discussing because it kind of goes without saying. Anything very well could be faked, but anything can be legit as well.

Not necessarily. I think they're not taking any action against it because they know that if they were to take them down, that would just drive home to everybody that the post was legit. Because why else would they be striking them down? Because it's a mod? There are dozens upon dozens of mod videos on YouTube for Ultimate that have stayed up for a lot longer, why haven't those been taken down yet? Why weren't those taken down as soon as they were made public?

Them not taking any action is probably the smartest move they could make, since it would give people reason to dismiss them as mods and forget about them, which is basically what's happened. The CacoMallow post dropped on the 4th of November, and as of right now people have largely stopped talking about it. They got what they wanted.

Thank you so much for breaking down all the aspects of the leak! I’ve really been clinging to this one for a while, mostly cause of Geno, but also cause at first glance I feel like it makes sense.

 

[wynn728]

Okay, since the CacoMallow Mii Costume is brought up again let's give a friendly reminder. Even if the costumes are real doesn't mean that Doomguy & Geno are in. There's a good chance that those costumes comes with a Doomguy Mii Costume and a Geno Mii Costume as well in an assorted box of costume like how Banjo was treated. Now an argument that has been made was why would Nintendo negotiate with a third party company and not a character to be playable, and that I point out that Nintendo went to Koei Tecmo to get Yuri from Fatal Frame to be an Assist Trophy and there is no Koei Tecmo characters in the roster.

 

[Droodle]

And I disagree and am saying he was discussed more or less as much as they were. Smashboards also isn't the only place where discussion happens so I don't know if post count on character support threads is a complete metric either.

A spirit is a "lesser form" than an AT. Spirits are replacements of trophies. Trophies were never seen as on the same level as ATs so I don't see why spirits would be either. Yeah, everyone would prefer to have their favored character be playable, but I'm saying there's an objective difference in how fleshed out ATs are when compared to spirits. They are both represented but the representation of one is closer to a complete character than the other. That's all I'm saying.

Most of my information isn't even coming from Smashboards though, gamefaqs, 4chan, reddit were all talking about Isaac more then Geno in those days. In fact, out of all these sites; Smashboards was the one that talked about Geno the most.

And while you may feel as though spirits were lesser then ATs, that doesn't change the fact that spirits are still a way to represent a character without them being playable. Just because Geno's a spirit doesn't mean that he has a better chance to get in compared to Isaac/Waluigi who are ATs. And even then, there is the possibility that neither of those characters get in.

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

The Grinch leak was pretty damn easy to disprove on its own. It was fairly easy to tell it was a photoshop job as is. It also didn't fit what Sakurai said about "not much left". It was actually pretty low quality too. It had multiple errors, didn't use a clean background as is. Another thing is that it was literally a case of too good to be true and didn't fit at all with the actual box being leaked. It lasted longer than it needed to, but at least we got Banjo & Kazooie, so it's not all bad.

The Cacodemon/Mallow Hat leak is actually very difficult to disprove, and there's more evidence that it's real than the opposite. Nintendo not taking it down yet is the only real thing going against it, and keep in mind that it's the other companies IP's that also would care about it. If they don't care, Nintendo might not care either. It's definitely a knock against it, no doubt, but it's not on the same level of bad as Grinch. Especially since nobody has been able to recreate it properly at all. Also, a lot of mods often don't get taken down, so even its biggest knock is questionable. It still can be fake, but we'd need something better than "Nintendo didn't act" at this point as is. It's too high quality to immediately dismiss over questionable means. The creator could come out or we could get a different set of costumes as is. It's in a grey area.

 

[Iko MattOrr]

Not only it's fake, but looking very closely at the original hat and the "recreation", they are perfectly identical, they have the same polygon/vertex shapes, only deformed a bit (or maybe even just misplaced/moved the pivot point) to give the illusion of not fitting well the Mii's head.

Basically, the person who "recreated" the hat is the same person who did the fake leak.

 

[Michael the Spikester]

I come back from work and I still see that the newcomer speculation thread still ain't open.

 

[I.D.]

I come back from work and I still see that the newcomer speculation thread still ain't open.

It is.

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

I come back from work and I still see that the newcomer speculation thread still ain't open.

It opened not that long ago, actually.

Not only it's fake, but looking very closely at the original hat and the "recreation", they are perfectly identical, they have the same polygon/vertex shapes, only deformed a bit (or maybe even just misplaced/moved the pivot point) to give the illusion of not fitting well the Mii's head.

Basically, the person who "recreated" the hat is the same person who did the fake leak.

Did they actually outright admit that? Recreating something similar is absolutely damning, but that doesn't mean it's the same person either. All it really means at best is that they proved it could be faked and it should be dead.

There's an actual difference between those two.

 

[Michael the Spikester]

Whelp nevermind. Brainfart on my part.

 

[Datboigeno]

Not only it's fake, but looking very closely at the original hat and the "recreation", they are perfectly identical, they have the same polygon/vertex shapes, only deformed a bit (or maybe even just misplaced/moved the pivot point) to give the illusion of not fitting well the Mii's head.

Basically, the person who "recreated" the hat is the same person who did the fake leak.

Or maybe they're not the same person and they just couldn't recreate it exactly.

Most of my information isn't even coming from Smashboards though, gamefaqs, 4chan, reddit were all talking about Isaac more then Geno in those days. In fact, out of all these sites; Smashboards was the one that talked about Geno the most.

And while you may feel as though spirits were lesser then ATs, that doesn't change the fact that spirits are still a way to represent a character without them being playable. Just because Geno's a spirit doesn't mean that he has a better chance to get in compared to Isaac/Waluigi who are ATs. And even then, there is the possibility that neither of those characters get in.

Huh well I remember Geno being talked about more than Isaac though both were pretty even. So maybe it's a matter of perspective.

I mean the spirits being different than ATs is just an objective fact. One has a more fleshed out presence in the game than the other. A character fully-modeled hopping around on-screen and sending out attacks is different than a static .png and singular fight. At this point I don't know if spirits have a better shot at being upgraded than ATs or vice-versa. I would think Spirits would have an easier time to be implemented but I'm not a SSBU designer so that's just a guess. At this point it could be either/or or neither getting in post-pass. I hope it would be both tbh but I guess we'll see.