“Official” being the operative word, I guess, since Bayonetta is probably just subtext.
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This is a boring pick, and I’d probably be more disappointed if my interaction with Smash didn’t end at Smash lobby comics.
As such, I pretty much wrote Ultimate off as anything but a party experience for me the second I got my copy. I didn’t like the campaign mode all that much, and I’m not good enough at FG to want to play against other people in anything but a party setting where the emotional investment is near 0 and I can lose and go back to eating chips. I’ve never played a Fire Emblem game, and I probably never will since I have Problems with some of the narrative choices in various installments of the franchise, and I tried Awakening and didn’t really like the gameplay.
That said, even as someone who’s lukewarm on Smash, this is still kind of a disappointment. Nintendo worded their announcement for DLC in a way that made it seem like it was going to come from new franchises, not new installments in already established ones. I’m not gonna knock people for being reasonably disappointed in this choice. No one was expecting just another Fire Emblem character when Nintendo established this as a baseline, and I imagine this wouldn’t have been the case if Three Houses hadn’t been such a hit(?) but here we are.
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I’m only disappointed they went with Byleth of all people. The game was immensely popular, so adding a representative makes sense, but why not one of three far more popular Lord’s of the eponymous Three Houses?
Byleth is obviously the safe choice, since you don’t have to risk upsetting fans of one of the houses you didn’t pick, but I think any one of them would have been more exciting than Byleth, even if it wasn’t my personal favorite.
But also, whatever, who cares. People get too worked up about the Smash roster.
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With Pokemon, they’ve had to settle on just one of the three starters for gen 6 and 7 rep. Going with Edelgard would have been the better choice IMO, and helped a little with the game’s severe lack of women in the roster.
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But does anybody really play Male Byleth though?
I actually played M!Byleth because I hate F!Byleths outfit. Put some ducking pants on her
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I think I’m much more positive on this than most folks and even I’m kinda disappointed. That said, I’m disappointed only because of when they announced Byleth. Byleth was basically inevitable as a DLC character. The first fighters pass was full of such weird picks that I think it needed a sufficiently weird pick to cap the pass off, instead of someone that was obviously going to be added.
All that said, I think the announcement video was great. I’m excited for Byleth, even if I’d prefer that they be added later in favor of a stranger pick being added earlier. I’m a somewhat competitive smash player, it’s my “fighting game” of choice. I think each FE character does a good job justifying their place in smash from a gameplay perspective. Adding another FE character is fine as long as their gameplay justifies their addition and Byleth has an interesting set of moves. I don’t know how good it’ll be, but it’s unique!
I also don’t think it’s reasonable to expect anyone but Byleth for three houses. When it comes to Fire Emblem, Smash only adds non-player characters as fighters if they are central to the story. FE Fates had three routes, so it got the MC and just the MC. Houses has four routes so it was even less likely they’d pick anyone but Byleth,
Idk. Really my take away is that the Byleth announcement was badly timed, but they look like a good addition for a FE character. And honestly if anyone expected any 3 house rep in place of Byleth I think they were just setting themselves up for disappointment.
PS: I’m biased to have no strong feelings on 3 Houses rep because I haven’t really cared about FE since the best one, Radiant Dawn.
PPS: It shoulda been Reimu
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I feel like you could make a strong argument that Edelgard is a pretty central character on every route.
Also I don’t think this argument really holds up when you look at other roster additions of side characters from other games. Falco, most Pokemon besides Pikachu, Palutena, even Luigi back during the original Smash had yet to star in his own game.
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To clairify, I’m not trying to say this is why it should be Byleth. I’m trying to say that given Smash’s track record it was gonna be Byleth. Fates had characters in both routes that from what I understand (never finished em cause they weren’t Radiant Dawn) were pretty central to the overall plot, but they ain’t get added and probably never will be added.
Yes, it is not surprising at all, even just given that every other rep has been the protagonist of a FE game (barring Lucina, but she barely counts), but it is still disappointing. And I do feel like Three Houses was the game that could most easily buck that trend, as the other three Lords really overshadow Byleth imo.
But I’ll also fall back on my “whatever, who cares” stance. Byleth is fine.
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I think that’s ultimately the big issue here. Ultimate has mostly been firing on all cylinders for DLC characters, and then the final DLC fighter of the pass is just “fine”.
They’re “fine” as a three house rep, adding another FE character is “fine”, as a DLC addition they are “fine”
which, is fine. It’s just not Ridley or Banjo or Joker.
I like that they included the market in the stage as a nod to Byleth making a last minute shopping trip to buy like 12 new weapons after they heard everyone’s negative reaction to yet another sword user.
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Hearing Sothis say “Too Many Sword Users” had me in stitches.
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A big thing to keep in mind in regards to the heavy backlash: these are not free updates. It’s a paid season pass DLC, with the first character revealed being touted as the example of what the rest of them would be.
It’s less a division between creative decisions and fan expectations, and more a failing of a corporate entity to appropriately gauge what their audience wants (if the ultimate goal was having them be fully satisfied with the purchase they made).
I know this is some gross consumerist rhetoric to be dredging up, but the modern structures of games-as-a-service makes that the framing which we look at these things from.
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Me seeing all the smash kids be angry about another fire emblem character being added, but then realizing they probably went with Byleth after they internally committed to having another season of characters and needed to put them in while Three Houses was still fresh in everyone’s mind. Meanwhile, all the fighting games I play are either irrelevant or still up in the air whether they’re getting new characters/versions.
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This is the first dlc character who actually appeals to me lol, thank god Nintendo finally decided to throw me something that wasn’t a marketing deal
If anyone bought the Smash DLC pass relying on unknown characters to justify it I’m going to have to say that’s completely their own fault. That’s just bad consumerism. You either wait until the whole thing is released to guarantee it is a worthwhile investment, or you buy it knowing that what has already been released is worth the cost or that you know you will be content regardless of what else is released.
I have no sympathy for anyone acting like they wasted their money because Byleth is the last DLC character.
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I just don’t agree with that notion, even as bad a purchasing decision as most season passes have shown themselves to be. A business putting something up for sale, making a promise about what it is, and then them not following through with it shouldn’t be the end customer’s fault.
The “buyer beware” mantra has become way too convenient a means of shifting blame away from publishers and platform-holders.
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Both the game/roster and the community have grown so large and diverse that there’s a) no meaningful way to even attempt to cater to the community beyond a certain point, and b) no reasonable way for anybody in the community to ever safely think “I’m sure I’ll like every character in this season pass that I’m buying.”
Like, this isn’t a new phenomenon at all in fighting game DLC in general, but at this point you really just have to multiply everything by like a hundred for a game like Smash, especially in the Ultimate Era where all bets seem to be off in terms of potential crossovers (unless the character shows too much skin, since Sakurai doesn’t want to deal with ratings boards anymore.)
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I’d be more sympathetic to this argument if it wasn’t the 5th dlc character. Like if we got crappy dlc picks for 2-4 I’d be in your camp, but it’s the 5th and even if they aren’t that interesting as a character pick, their kit is relatively weird for smash.
