Nintendo, surprising no one but ostensibly upsetting a lot of people, just announced that it's adding a new Fire Emblem character to Smash Bros. Ultimate. The Fire Emblem series has been represented in Smash Bros. since Melee, with eight characters (Marth, Roy, Ike, Robin, Lucina, Corrin, Chrom, and now Byleth). They have been the center of many balance and tier list arguments, and are only outnumbered by the characters from the Mario franchise.
There’s like eight Fire Emblem characters and over half of them play effectively the same with minor differences.
You add in another Fire Emblem character as a free addition. DLC spots should be going to actually interesting choices, like third party picks or more obscure series not getting rep. Heck, I’d take Paper Mario over yet more Fire Emblem.
I wasn’t hot on Hero or Terry, but they at least fit the theme of “new 3rd party representatives”. This doesn’t fit that pattern at all, which is totally on Nintendo for poorly establishing expectations for what this character was going to be.
Even if Masahiro Sakurai pushed for it, the corporate end of Nintendo makes the final call. It’s their foul-up on this one.
Was really hoping for a Toad surprise pick, but after seeing Byleth in action, I do appreciate the changeup in fighting style.
Also, am I the only one who after seeing the Smash x Megaman Battle Network mii fighter dlc, realllllllly wants another Battle Network now? Heck, I’d gladly even take remasters of the old games.
I don’t think I’d find this so disappointing if Byleth had been in the middle of the pack, and not the one ending it. If Terry or Banjo had been the latest addition, I’d be super hyped for the future, but now I’m looking at the next fighter pack thinking “Oh, right, Nintendo gonna Nintendo”
MK getting a Batman Who Laughs skin for Noob Saibot is more interesting than this
The backlash about new FE characters is always baffling to me for 2 reasons:
FE is INCREDIBLY popular in Japan, and pretty damn popular in the rest of the world too.
FE has new characters each game, so there are just way more of them to choose from.
Like, for Nintendo, it makes way more sense to put in the protagonist of your smash-hit (pun intended) new game than another character third party character from a game that no one under the age of 30 has heard of.
Corrin could and if we really want to get into the weeds with Fire Emblem, Ike, given his relationship with Soren, can be argued to be the first LGBT Fire Emblem main character.
One thing I will defend Nintendo on here, is the gotcha attempts about Sakurai saying Xenoblade 2’s release was too late to consider Rex for inclusion into the season pass.
The wider network of Nintendo was probably way more in the know about FE3H along the development cycle than they were about XC2. I’m sure that, as soon as the protagonist design for FE3H was finalized internally, Nintendo and/or the lead staff of SSBU were already preparing to include them.
Also I’m biased and despise the character design of XC2, so the farther it’s kept away from Smash, the better.
I played through and enjoyed XC2. Honestly I think a character with the “Blades” archetype could do some really interesting stuff mechanically. Character design-wise I have to agree with you (though I think the DLC / prequel designs are a vast improvement). Also… 3 Houses is pushing way more sales than XC2 at this point and has a big DLC on the way, so it makes business sense.
Edited to add: Nintendo apparently put a new FE 3 Houses DLC trailer out today too. Not a coinkidink.
it turns out nintendo only actually publishes one franchise that’s even bothered to create new characters and people get mad any time they’re reminded of this
I’ve been banging the “battle network collection” drum for years. Come on capcom you’ve resold us every other damn mega man game you have ever made, give us the best ones.
I’m not against a 3 houses rep but Byleth is totally the wrong choice
