As a side note, interesting that it's apparently coming out this year, since that puts it only 4 years apart from 4, in comparison to Brawl and 4 being 6 years apart and Melee and Brawl being 7 years apart.
That's most likely due to the poor sales of the Wii U, and thus poor sales of Smash 4.
Not really, I'd say.
Sort of getting deja vu here so I'm pretty sure I've went over this before, but part of why you have so many years a part from sequel to sequel is because the next one in line didn't start production or anything right after the previous one. Brawl (Early 2008 release) didn't start development until late 2005. Smash 4 (Late 2014 release) didn't start development until early 2012, after Sakurai finishing KI: Uprising.
It's most likely due to the fact that Nintendo knows that Smash is one of their premiere franchises and one that they simply can't wait too long to put on the system (for real though, I took my switch home for the holidays and the only game I could play with my siblings was Mario Kart). By 2015 I'm pretty sure the BOTW team had already been told that the game was now expected to be a Switch launch title. Bandai and Sakurai definitely would have been known about it too, and IIRC we do have reports of job listings from Bandai around the ~2014-2015 mark for a SSB6.
So while development for Smash 4 technically didn't end until Corrin and Bayonetta's release (Early 2016), development for the Switch Smash game very well may have started soon after the original game's release / window for data analysis.
The president will somehow declare it as a historical monument so it can never be destroyed. rip 2 us all.
I mean, at least the Library of Congress isn't achieving every tweet ever made anymore. One does need to stay optimistic about something in life, after all.
I'm assuming it will be 50%-90% port tbh, just with balance changes and new characters. Though that's fine because Sm4sh had the better balance between Melee and Brawl. A story mode would be really nice tho. SSE was the most fun PvE thing in Smash to date, well, imo anyway.
I'm expecting six new characters, and I'm not entirely sure whether that's a super conservative or super optimistic opinion yet.
Inklings obviously, along with Ice Climbers, Wolf, some Xenoblade character, a new Link, and a toss up.
From what I remember, they actually completed the Ice Climbers for Smash 4, but they couldn't get them to run on the 3DS version (and presumably 8 player Smash on Wii U) without the game lagging. Wolf because he's a veteran and I'd like to think
something positive can be feasibly attributed to Star Fox Zero.
Excluding Splatoon, the only real new games (with new characters) of note from Nintendo since Smash 4's roster was finalized was Xenoblade X, Xenoblade 2, ARMS, and BOTW. I could see Rex and/or Pyra getting in, but honestly I'd rather get Elma and/or Rex. But seriously, Elma went a long way in basically making Xenoblade X for me.
We already saw BOTW Link in the trailer, but I feel like if they decided to massively revamp Link's look and moveset in smash, they'd make him an entirely new character (not like there isn't precedent when it comes to Link) so they'll still have green-tonic-still-rocking-that-90s-moveset Link in the game too.
A better single player would be great. Smash 4 3DS had some good ideas, but they were really held back by some of the design decisions. SSE was kind of bull**** though, so I'd say Melee honestly has the best single play content oddly enough (Character exclusive break the targets / platforms, Adventure mode, the 51 missions, etc). But mostly I'm hoping any sort of thing they add will add huge functionality to amiibos. The entire figurine brand started with Smash 4, and Smash 4 is
still the only real game that utilizes these things in any noteworthy way.
