The most recent DLC fighter announcement forSuper Smash Bros. Ultimatehas been somewhat controversial.Fire Emblemfans adore the selection of Byleth toSuper Smash Bros. Ultimate. Others disagree, saying thatSuper Smash Bros. Ultimatealready has too manyFire Emblemcharacters, not to mention sword-using characters. In a surprise twist,Smash Bros.director Masahiro Sakurai has chimed in on the topic. Even more surprising, he agrees with his critics.
According to an interview that Sakurai did with the Japanese magazine Fumitsu, he repeats the main criticism ofSuper Smash Bros. Ultimatefans. He says that there are too manyFire Emblemcharactersalready in the game. He says that there are too many swordsmen in the game, too. With Byleth’s addition, there are 8 totalFire Emblemcharacters inSuper Smash Bros. Ultimate. That’s more roster slots than some of Nintendo’s biggest franchises.
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Sakurai isn’t going to take full blame for the decision to includeByleth inSuper Smash Bros. Ultimate, however. Sakurai says he didn’t make the decision to add Byleth as a DLC character forSuper Smash Bros. Ultimate. Nintendo was the decision maker in this circumstance and Sakurai makes clear that Byleth’s inclusion was not his preference. He notes that Chrom, who is a new character inSuper Smash Bros. Ultimate, was added due to him being prominent in many recentFire Emblemgames. Byleth is being added due to being the protagonist of the latestFire Emblemtitle, which wasn’t ready when characters were first being added.
To be fair, it’s not unreasonable for Nintendo to be making decisions about DLC characters forSuper Smash Bros. Ultimate. Nintendo can work with its partners to get characters that would otherwise be unavailable, like withBanjo Kazooie. However, there’s clearly a downside to this, too. Nintendo will prioritize its own characters further partnered additions, it seems. It just happens that fans would prefer third-party characters in their DLC packs more often than not.
ForSuper Smash Bros. Ultimateplayers disappointed with the choice of Byleth for the next DLC character, Nintendo’s got plenty more coming down the pipeline. Six more DLC fighters have been confirmed for the fighting game via itsFighter Pass 2expansion pass. Nintendo doesn’t have any details about these upcoming DLC fighters to share yet, but they’re unlikely to be moreFire Emblemcharacters.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimateis available now exclusively on Nintendo Switch.
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