There’s a lot to talk about and discuss with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, but lately there’s one thing that’s been on my mind above all else: is Sakurai going to be okay after this?
I wonder. Director and series mainstay Masahiro Sakurai has long since earned fame and infamy for his work on the Smash Bros. Series. Reportedly, he’s a workaholic who’s put in an insane amount of hours from game to game, with the calcific tendonitis to show for it. And to what end? Barring the drop of a major story mode from Brawl to 4, every new installment is bigger than the last. More characters! More stages! More music! More tweaks! Items, Assist Trophies, Pokemon, options, modes, everything, everything, everything! It sure as hell doesn’t seem like there’s an endgame for the franchise, a plateau upon which to rest.
It leads me to believe -- or guess -- that this is Sakurai’s last hurrah. Throw in everything for this game, then announce his departure -- maybe dabble in smaller or passion projects. It’s a “salt the earth” strategy you’d kind of expect from a troll-happy creator; make a big mess, then leave the next guy to deal with the cleanup as you put on your sunglasses and backflip outta there. As one would.
Now, as for Smash Ultimate --
Seriously, Sakurai. Take care of yourself, man.
Now, as for Smash Ultimate…
--We’re going to be waiting with bated breath for even a sliver of official news from the devs. That’s been true for a while, to be fair (remember when everyone was wondering if it’d be a port or a new entry?), but now Sakurai and crew are swerving into that role with something as audacious as hiding modes on the main menu. I mean, I don’t know what they’re planning with prophetic accuracy, but based on the color and position of the pixelated option? It’s the Vault, which means at a bare minimum trophies and the stage creator are back.
--More trophies? That’s a given at this point. Maybe we’ll see stickers, as well. Custom stages will either see an expansion or a complete overhaul, even if it goes criminally underused (as it does in my case). Still, there’s probably a reason why it got blurred out in the big presentation, and I doubt it’s just a name change. Maybe that’s the hub for all types of customization -- moves, stats, etc.
--Speaking of which? I’ll say upfront that part of the reason why I keep going back to Smash 4 -- even solo -- is because I’ve gotten a kick out of loading up fighters with tweaked stats and specials. It was kind of a necessity at first to see how far I could go with Master/Crazy Orders (wonder if those will be back this time around), but after that? Now it’s just an arms race against myself to come up with the most broken combination of equipment that’ll make my character of choice a walking death machine.
--For some weird reason, though, character-specific upgrades mean some are better than others at being broken. To wit: Zero Suit Samus can put on a combination of equipment that gives her invincibility at the start of a match if the lands the first hit, progressively raises her attack and speed while she’s at 0%, and heals gradually over time to reactivate the effect if she’s knocked out of it. Turtle up for a while, and you’ve got an ever-growing, ever-evolving bounty huntress. Or, alternatively, you can give her junk that gives her a flat attack/defense multiplier but starts her out at 90% damage, only to have an extra gradual buff kick in once she hits 100%. High-risk, high-reward stuff that scrapes at the underbelly of the gods.
--Or you can take the boring route and give your fighter a 200-point defense boost (at the cost of 200 points of speed). But godhood, though!
--As always, the main draw is going to be seeing who’s going to be playable next. Like countless other reaction videos on YouTube, I was beside myself at the sight of Jonathan Joestar Richter Belmont when he was announced right after Simon. Dark Samus is a welcome arrival, with some menacing flourishes to her (its?) animations. And Chrom? He was a given despite the legit “too many Fire Emblem characters” complaint, but honestly, I’m interested in trying him out even if it means phasing out my boy Roy. I wonder where he’ll fall stat-wise, I.e. if he’ll be a heavy hitter, a speedster, or something in between.
--Real talk, though: there’s a part of me that says, if we have to have another FE character -- and it has to be one of the newer ones -- then I want Camilla. Not on her dragon or anything (except maybe for her Final Smash); just on foot swinging around her axe for some serious-fuck-you damage. Then again, with Three Houses coming down the pipeline, I suspect we’ll be seeing a DLC push for whoever is in that.
--I haven’t forgotten about King K. Rool, though. I don’t have any plans to play as him right now outside of a once-in-a-blue-moon pick, but I still think he’s interesting. The most important detail, though? The thing that I’m distressed that everyone is missing? It seems like the big boss has a Potemkin Buster, and not enough people are cheering over that.
--I don’t get the push for Waluigi to be playable. I mean, I get it, but still. Why now? Why not post-Brawl when Wario made his debut? Why not for the big DLC vote instead of Shrek or Goku? It’s not some major omission to exclude a character whose canonical -- and I use that term lightly -- debut was in Mario Tennis 64. Maybe we can just let this one slide on by.
--Looping back to the beginning, this is part of the reason why I’m worried about Sakurai’s health. The amount of stress the man faces must be intense, and powerful enough to cripple weaker souls. The central promise of Smash Ultimate is “Everyone is Here!” and he and the devs have made good on that promise…only for fans to start ranting, seriously or sarcastically (through the power of memes) that this one character that was barely on the radar should be a playable character. It’s got to be infuriating as shit, dealing with people who’ll never be satisfied with what you give them.
--Also? Let’s say that by some miracle the fans’ pleas are heard and Waluigi becomes playable. Given that the game’s roster is 70 strong (a ballpark figure), how many of you out there would actually even play as Waluigi seriously? Would you main him? Would you be a character specialist? Or would you just jump to Cloud or Bayonetta instead?
--Is there going to be a story mode -- like The Subspace Emissary -- in Smash Ultimate? I suppose it’s possible, but I strongly doubt it. A campaign of that scale would be a flagship feature, not something to be tossed out on a whim one morning. Given how large and unwieldy the cast has become, how would that even work? From both a narrative and technical perspective, it’d probably be a mess. Best to save it for the next game, unless they pulled off a miracle for this one.
--This probably won’t happen either, but given the difference in asset creation/use it still seems more feasible: the revival of Melee’s Adventure Mode maps. Traversing the Mushroom Kingdom, exploring the depths of a Hylian dungeon, running across an F-Zero track…I wouldn’t mind having that. It all depends on how much import the devs give to single-player content. If the answer is “zero”, then I guess we’re boned on that front.
--There’s an option to have (a weaker) Final Smash on tap by filling up a Super Meter? You mean the thing I’ve always secretly fantasized about regardless of how it’ll change the flow of combat and core gameplay mechanics? Jotaro, you wanna take this one?
--So here’s the thing about me -- and the rest of us -- and Smash Ultimate. Again, I have to loop back to the beginning; what’s the endgame here? What’s the strategy? “Ultimate” has a pretty definitive…uh, definition in the dictionary, and topping that is about as easy as giving an angry rhino a makeover. If this game is going to have 900+ songs and over 28 hours of music, then how is the next game going to top that? How can it?
--It just keeps escalating, and escalating, and escalating, and nothing about this growth seems sustainable. The saving grace is that we’re not dealing with a Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed release schedule, wherein we get a new, slightly-different version every year until the heat death of the universe. There’s time for the devs to put in the work without being shackled so strictly to deadlines.
--But again, is it sustainable? The roster this time around is so definitive I’m having trouble imagining who could get added next. The gameplay, while modified over the course of two decades, still follows the same general formula. This game has the biggest numbers yet, but what happens when the next game needs even biggerer numbers? And what happens when those numbers don’t matter anymore?
--We all know Smash as a perpetual engine of hype. Thousands, and easily millions of people, have an investment in Nintendo’s flagship fighter. But what happens when the bubble bursts? What happens if numbers aren’t enough, or they reach the absolute limit of what hype can do? What happens if, God forbid, there’s a drop in quality that signals the franchise’s decline? What happens if, all the gods forbid, the drop starts with Smash Ultimate?
--These are the kinds of questions that keep me up at night.
--Okay, no, not really. My dogs are responsible for that more often than not. Sometimes King needs to kick me in the ribs at 2 in the morning.
There is a silver lining to this situation -- a typical, optimistic outlook that I tend to throw in at the end of posts. We can’t have doom and gloom all the time, after all. With that said, I think I’ll save that for a future post -- something closer to release day, or even past it. We’ll see. Until then? Make no mistake, I’m absolutely ready for Smash Ultimate. I’m itching to see what it has to offer; plus, it’ll be in the palms of my hands, so I don’t even have to get out of bed to start landing some hard ass reads.
Ha. I like pretending that I’m good at fighting games. At any rate, that’ll do it for now. See you next time.
Maybe not Waluigi though. But we’ll live.
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