A topic for you guys: How many of you had the bold stance of expecting a few unique newcomers in Ultimate's base game since the beginning. Did your mind change to expect a lower unique newcomer count after the Everyone is Here trailer aired? Was it at the point when Conorr first brought up the box theory sometime later in 2018?
Going into Smash Ultimate, we only knew that the roster was going to be "the best Smash has ever seen" or something of those lines. Honestly it wouldn't be stupid to have thought that even if we would still undergo cuts, we'd continue off the train of Cloud/Bayonetta/Ryu, and that's how I went in going this.
Never would I have thought we'd have absolutely everyone in Smash history back, so after the E3 trailer and looking back, I thought we'd get a total of 10 newcomers. Now, if you include the echo fighters, we DID get 12 or so newcomers, but if you exclude them, Joker and the four upcoming DLC fighters, I think we got either 6 or 7.
Usually in every Smash game before Ultimate, ALMOST everyone was there. There'd be a few cuts, but yet at the same time, we had gotten at the least 10 or more newcomers within every new iteration. So even with Ice Climbers and Snake back, alongside the whole crew, I expected 10, just going back off of the 3 past game's and their history with characters. Even with all the theories going around, I still stood firm with 10 until a concrete leak had happened. The Beta Ken leak was the only one I can think of, but even then, until the very end, I would still say 10, and if not, then hey, at least a good lots of past characters came back.
I think NOW the question going into current Smash is "will Ultimate's DLC live up to the utter spectacle that was Smash For's DLC?" So far it is off to a GREAT start with Joker, but the middle part are always the main pillars. We omly have the foundation made so far.