1 more DLC characters, place your bets now. Seems we're only getting third parties this time round

[Florete]

1 minute ago, Jingle Bells said:

I didn't realized ethnicity counted in a game where Pokemon, animals, and inadamant objects are playable.

Now you know.

Real talk, if it's okay for people to whine about villain representation, it's okay for me to ask for better diversity.

Lastly, it's "inanimate."

[Slumber]

13 minutes ago, Jingle Bells said:

I didn't realized ethnicity counted in a game where Pokemon, animals, and inadamant objects are playable.

I mean, in a game where like, 50%+ of the human is distinctly human(Or analogous), it's not the worst thing in the world to have diversity. The closest things to somebody with a distinct ethnicity are... Ryu and Ganondorf? Arguably PKMN Trainer, since they're based on trainers from Japanese-inspired regions.

Everyone else is either American/American inspired(The Mario characters, Ken, Little Mac, Snake, arguably Captain Falcon), or European inspired(The FE characters, the Hylians, the Belmonts, Bayonetta), and the few that could have some ambiguity, like Samus, Shulk and Cloud, are blonde. The truly out-there ones are the Kid Icarus characters, who I'd struggle to say are anything but just kinda... anime.

Edited November 6, 2018 by Slumber

[Anomalocaris]

20 minutes ago, Slumber said:

I mean, in a game where like, 50% of the human is distinctly human(Or analogous), it's not the worst thing in the world to have diversity. The closest thing to somebody with a distinct ethnicity are... Ryu and Ganondorf?

Mario, Dr. Mario, and Luigi (and presumably Wario) are Italian or at the very least analogous thereof, Ness is an American analogue of some kind, the Fire Emblem and Zelda crews are ambiguously European except for Corrin and Ganondorf who are Japanese-analogous and ambiguously Arabic(?) respectively, Snake is American with (IIRC) some kind of Japanese heritage mixed in, Pokemon Trainer is Japanese, Little Mac is some kind of New Yorker with a slightly darker skintone than most of the Caucasian characters in his home game, but it's hard to tell what he's meant to be, if anything. Villager and Inkling are hard to pin because their skintone varies with their costume choices, and the latter aren't even humans to begin with.

Not familiar with the third-party folk, though. The Belmont Clan are French and Bayonetta is English, right? Ryu's obviously Japanese, and Ken is some kind of American if I'm not mistaken.

Everybody else is either too ambigous to make any guesses about or simply not human to begin with.

For what it's worth, with regard to Elma and Rex, Elma is a nonhuman alien remotely piloting a synthetic, racially ambiguous mechanical human body, while Rex is strongly implied to be descended from the game's Japan analogue (it's heavily implied that Rex is Prince Addam's descendant).

Edited November 6, 2018 by Anomalocaris

[Jingle Jangle]

4 minutes ago, Anomalocaris said:

Not familiar with the third-party folk, though. The Belmont Clan are French and Bayonetta is English, right? Ryu's obviously Japanese, and Ken is some kind of American if I'm not mistaken.

Ken is 1/2 or 3/4 Japanese heritage depending what version of Street Fighter. With a fully Japanese mom,  and a half-Japanese/half-American dad that lives in America.

[Anomalocaris]

Just now, Jingle Bells said:

Ken is 1/2 or 3/4 Japanese heritage depending what version of Street Fighter. With a fully Japanese mom,  and a half-Japanese/half-American dad that lives in America.

Ah, okay.

I've never played Street Fighter.

[Slumber]

9 minutes ago, Anomalocaris said:

Mario, Dr. Mario, and Luigi (and presumably Wario) are Italian or at the very least analogous thereof, Ness is an American analogue of some kind, the Fire Emblem and Zelda crews are ambiguously European except for Corrin and Ganondorf who are Japanese-analogous and ambiguously Arabic(?) respectively, Snake is American with (IIRC) some kind of Japanese heritage mixed in, Pokemon Trainer is Japanese, Little Mac is some kind of New Yorker.

Not familiar with the third-party folk, though. The Belmont Clan are French and Bayonetta is English, right? Ryu's obviously Japanese, and Ken is some kind of American if I'm not mistaken.

Everybody else is either too ambigous to make any guesses about or simply not human to begin with.

Mario and Luigi are Italian American. You can argue Italian, since it's... really spotty, but New Donk City wears its real life influence on its sleeve, every single depiction of the Mario brothers outside of the Mario games has them hailing from Brooklyn, or somewhere else vaguely-New York-y, and Mario's based on a real-life Italian American.

The only ones I find ambiguous are the Kid Icarus crew, who are angels, and thus, pretty weird to place.

Edited November 6, 2018 by Slumber

[Anomalocaris]

15 minutes ago, Slumber said:

Mario and Luigi are Italian-American. You can argue Italian, since it's... really spotty, but New Donk City wears its real life influence on its sleeve, every single depiction of the Mario brothers outside of the Mario games has them hailing from Brooklyn, or somewhere else vaguely-New York-y, and Mario's based on a real-life Italian American.

The only ones I find ambiguous are the Kid Icarus crew, who are angels, and thus, pretty weird to place.

Right, yes. By "Italian" I meant of some kind of Italian heritage, whether it's homeland Italian or Brooklyn Italian-American. The voices Charles Martinet uses for them blurs it further.

I think using the cartoons and movie as a gauge with which to judge is a bad idea, though, since they're non-canon products licensed but not produced by Nintendo.

With regard to the Kid Icarus crew (and many others like Captain Falcon, Shulk, and Ice Climbers), I assume the golden rule of Japanese animation (all characters are Japanese by default unless implied otherwise) applies, but I doubt the designers had any specific idea in mind with them.

On that note, I find it kinda amusing that the very-distinctly-European-inspired Marth and Roy were stuck speaking Japanese for so long.

Edited November 6, 2018 by Anomalocaris

[Slumber]

14 minutes ago, Anomalocaris said:

Right, yes. By "Italian" I meant of some kind of Italian heritage, whether it's homeland Italian or Brooklyn Italian-American. The voices Charles Martinet uses for them blurs it further.

I think using the cartoons and movie as a gauge with which to judge is a bad idea, though, since they're non-canon products licensed but not produced by Nintendo.

With regard to the Kid Icarus crew (and many others like Shulk and Ice Climbers), I assume the golden rule of Japanese animation (all characters are Japanese by default unless implied otherwise) applies, but I doubt the designers had any specific idea in mind with them.

On that note, I find it kinda amusing that the very-distinctly-European-inspired Marth and Roy were stuck speaking Japanese for so long.

Mario cartoons/movies are non-canon, obviously, but Nintendo still had to give the green light. For every single depiction of the brothers to go with "Hey, they're from New York City!", it just makes me think that that one thing specifically is true to Nintendo's vision. Again, probably because Mario is inspired by a real-life Italian American.

Either way, they fall into the "Western" style of character when it comes to diversity, so there's no real reason to continue splitting hairs.

The Ice Climbers really get me. They were clearly Eskimo-inspired in their original games, they had darker skin and long hair braids that are pretty common for depictions of Eskimos/Native Americans in general. Then comes Melee and they look like Kirby.

Edited November 6, 2018 by Slumber

[Anomalocaris]

4 minutes ago, Slumber said:

The Ice Climbers really get me. They were clearly Eskimo-inspired in their original games, they had darker skin and long hair braids that are pretty common for Eskimos/Native Americans in general. Then comes Melee and they look like Kirby.

Wait, really?

The only art I can find is this boxart, which depicts Nana with pale-ish skin, blonde hair, and her parka covering up any potentiail hair braids. 

[Slumber]

4 minutes ago, Anomalocaris said:

Wait, really?

The only art I can find is this boxart, which depicts Nana with pale-ish skin, blonde hair, and her parka covering up any potentiail hair braids. 

I was talking about their in-game sprites:

Spoiler

I could be seeing "braids" as just creases in their parkas, but they have pretty dark skin in-game.

Though now that you've showed me, it's clear they went with that artstyle for their depiction in Smash, which is why they look like white Kirbys in parka-mechs.

Edited November 6, 2018 by Slumber

[Anomalocaris]

1 minute ago, Slumber said:

I was talking about their in-game sprites:

  Hide contents

I could be seeing "braids" as just creases in their parkas, but they have pretty dark skin in-game.

If you're talking about the diagonal black lines, that's just the gap between their arm and their torso.

The skintone is interesting since it doesn't align with the game's official art. It's probably just color limitations (since it matches the same brown shade as their hammers), but it's possible the sprite designer and the boxart designer had different ideas?

Either way it's interesting that Nana was given brown hair when the pair debuted in Melee, instead of blonde like in the boxart. I wonder what the story there is.

[Slumber]

3 minutes ago, Anomalocaris said:

Either way it's interesting that Nana was given brown hair when the pair debuted in Melee, instead of blonde like in the boxart. I wonder what the story there is.

Maybe they want people to think Nana and Popo are siblings as opposed to love interests?

Or maybe it's just to confuse everyone, which Nintendo is very good at.

Also game designer and boxart designer not having the same ideas wouldn't surprise me, since that happened all the time in the NES era.

Edited November 6, 2018 by Slumber

[Anomalocaris]

1 minute ago, Slumber said:

Maybe they want people to think Nana and Popo are siblings as opposed to love interests?

Or maybe it's just to confuse everyone, which Nintendo is very good at.

To be fair, we don't know what Popo's hair color was supposed to be back then, could have been blonde just like Nana's.

To steer us back onto the subject of DLC, with regard to Elma or Rex I definitely want either of them. Xenoblade craves a second character in Smash Bros. I would prefer Rex since he's the most recent and I much preferred XC2 as a game to XCX, but Elma is really cool too and could have a fun moveset. I'm actually surprised we didn't get Elma on the base roster, given her game came out during Ultimate's planning phase.

I mean, in an ideal world, Smash Bros. features Shulk, Elma, Rex, Malos (as an Echo of Shulk), and Lora, but... that's just me wanting this to be Xenoblade Bros. Ultimate. 

[Johann]

57 minutes ago, Florete said:

Couldn't agree more.

Rex's design flung me straight from "on the fence" to "wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole" with Xenoblade 2. If we got Rex, another plain white boy, over Elma, a woman of color, in Smash, I'd be quite disappointed.

Same, I remember watching the trailer and being put off by all but one character design, and Rex was the worst offender. Like, who thinks that looks cool? He looks like a 7 year old in loosely fitting Spiderman pajamas

Still hoping for Elma though, despite that I haven't gotten around to trying X yet. Twintelle would be pretty cool too, but the ARMS creators seemingly attributed leading man status to vanilla-ass toothpaste-hair Spring Man, who, upon reveal, made me think the game was on the level of 1-2 Switch in terms of design effort. Year after year, with every appearance she makes in a game, I'm still disappointed that we lost Latina Daisy. 

7 minutes ago, Anomalocaris said:

With regard to the Kid Icarus crew (and many others like Captain Falcon, Shulk, and Ice Climbers), I assume the golden rule of Japanese animation (all characters are Japanese by default unless implied otherwise) applies, but I doubt the designers had any specific idea in mind with them.

It can be vague, sure, but you can get a strong idea based on the coding (that is, what makes them inspired by a a group of people):

• Kid Icarus as a series is inspired by Greco-Roman culture, so you could argue that the characters are vaguely Mediterranean in that sense, but the style is so outright anime that, yeah, what else can you call them? Even their original NES designs were more American style cartoony that doesn't really say anything other than generically white, I suppose. The only character I would say actually looks Greek is Magnus, who is also one of the few humans in the game.
• Captain Falcon is a white dude, you can see him with his helmet off in the games and anime. There are some black and Asian characters in the F-Zero series (Michael Chain, Kate Alen, John Tanaka), which further the idea that he's coded as a white man.
• Shulk's blond with blue eyes, and there are people of his race of all kinds of realistic features, so it's reasonable to assume that he's designed based on what we would consider ambiguously (perhaps Scandinavian) European features. This is made stronger if you consider some late-game/ending spoilers.
• Ice Climbers would make sense to be coded as Inuit, but I think it's safe to say that they were originally just what their Japanese creator figured Eskimos looked like. Given that it was a one-off 8-bit game, there's not really a lot to explore who they are, and Smash hasn't really done much to build on that aside from giving them 3D renders.

There are some people that will argue that a character doesn't count as a member of a certain group simply because they're not real, or that the setting is not Earth, etc. I'm not entirely sure that really matters, but it does make a big difference to players who aren't straight/white/male to get the option to play as someone they feel some representation with.

[Jotari]

The funny thing about Rex's race is that there's absolutely no reason why he should be white. He comes from a tropical island where basically everyone ranges from Polynesian to outright black and he's like the only white dude (as far as I can recall, can't be assessed turning on the game and inspecting every last NPC). There's a minor plot point about how he was kind of adopted into the population that seems like it's a set up to reveal his true parantage in some way, but it seems to just be an explanation as to why he's white and just raises some headscratchers as the fact that he's from this area is also a plot point. He also spent a most of his time working outside yet he doesn't even have a mild tan. Rex isn't just white, he's the most pasty ass white guy in existence (probably shortly behind Robin's mother, who's so white no other ethnicity is available for Robin despite Validar being black).

Edited November 6, 2018 by Jotari

[Armagon]

43 minutes ago, Anomalocaris said:

I mean, in an ideal world, Smash Bros. features Shulk, Elma, Rex, Malos (as an Echo of Shulk), and Lora, but... that's just me wanting this to be Xenoblade Bros. Ultimate. 

Same here man. Except i want a Smash game to have every Xeno protag and realistically (right now), it's possible. KOS-MOS would serve as both a Namco and Xenosaga rep and Namco loves putting her everywhere. Elma and Rex are already popular picks. The only one who doesn't really have a chance is Fei because he's stuck in Square Enix purgatory along with a bunch of other Square Enix IPs forgotten during the PS1 era.

27 minutes ago, Johann said:

Same, I remember watching the trailer and being put off by all but one character design, and Rex was the worst offender. Like, who thinks that looks cool?

Did you watch the E3 trailer or the trailer that they showed in November? Because everyone agrees that the trailers that came before the Xenoblade 2 Direct (as in the E3 and September trailers) were pretty bad.

Funnily enough, Rex ISN'T supposed to look cool. There's very valid reasons as to why he looks the way he does. He's a salvager, which isn't exactly the most pleasent job. His design is the kind that values function over fashion. And this bit is more personal but i do like that they went with a more fantasy apporach to a 19th century diving suit.

The only part about his design that i don't like is the leg window, which actually is covered when he's doing actual salvaging and i would've prefered it stayed that way.

If Rex does get into Smash, one potential alt for Rex is a suit he gets later on in the game. Without context, the suit itself isn't a spoiler but it's a cooler version of his normal outfit (although Smash doesn't seem to care for Xenoblade spoilers).

Spoiler

At any rate, Xenoblade 2 only has two actually bad designs and both of them are from optional Blades that you can possibly go through the whole game without seeing any of them.

Edited November 6, 2018 by Armagon

[Lightchao42]

Considering that Sakurai highlighted the existing XC2 content while XCX got no music and only one Spirit shown, I would be surprised if X got a character before 2. I would be happy to see any Xenoblade newcomer though, because having only one character at this point is terrible and should be corrected.

12 minutes ago, Armagon said:

At any rate, Xenoblade 2 only has two actually bad designs and both of them are from optional Blades that you can possibly go through the whole game without seeing any of them.

I have a feeling I know who you're talking about, but it might be rude to say it out loud...

Edited November 6, 2018 by Lightchao42

[Etrurian emperor]

1 hour ago, Slumber said:

The only ones I find ambiguous are the Kid Icarus crew, who are angels, and thus, pretty weird to place.

Greek is probably what they would most likely be considering the Kid Icarus world is very, very loosely based on Greek Mythology. 

[Slumber]

1 minute ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Greek is probably what they would most likely be considering the Kid Icarus world is very, very loosely based on Greek Mythology. 

Yeah. Forgot about that. The fact that Pit wears a toga and a laurel crown should have tipped me off.

Edited November 6, 2018 by Slumber

[Jotari]

45 minutes ago, Armagon said:

At any rate, Xenoblade 2 only has two actually bad designs and both of them are from optional Blades that you can possibly go through the whole game without seeing any of them.

Pyra and Mythra aren't optional

[Lightchao42]

Reposted from the main discussion thread, since it's relevant to this topic.

Quote

So here's something interesting, straight from Sakurai himself. You know he means business because he's tweeting in English.

So it seems that Nintendo gave Sakurai the options this time, and Sakurai picked five of them that he liked. I wonder what this means for the character selection...?

 

[Armagon]

17 minutes ago, Lightchao42 said:

Reposted from the main discussion thread, since it's relevant to this topic.

 

I had to make sure that wasn't the parody account. Interesting that the DLC lineup is done. Obviously it hasn't started yet but i wonder when Nintendo began to send in the list.

 

1 hour ago, Lightchao42 said:

I have a feeling I know who you're talking about, but it might be rude to say it out loud..

If you're thinking of Dahlia and Nim, you are correct. Dahlia at least has a nice personality but Nim makes me wanna die.

[Lightchao42]

14 minutes ago, Armagon said:

I had to make sure that wasn't the parody account. Interesting that the DLC lineup is done. Obviously it hasn't started yet but i wonder when Nintendo began to send in the list.

I checked beforehand, but I would have been pretty embarrassed if it was... The wording is vague so we can't tell if Nintendo decided on all five characters, or if they provided several options and Sakurai picked five of them.

14 minutes ago, Armagon said:

If you're thinking of Dahlia and Nim, you are correct. Dahlia at least has a nice personality but Nim makes me wanna die.

Actually the second character I was thinking of was Newt, not Nim, though I like every Blade personality wise. But at least I got one right.

Edited November 7, 2018 by Lightchao42

[Armagon]

29 minutes ago, Lightchao42 said:

The wording is vague so we can't tell if Nintendo decided on all five characters, or if they provided several options and Sakurai picked five of them.

I think the key sentence is "I decide if we can create a fighter based on their selection" so it looks like Nintendo provided several options and Sakurai picked five of them. Which is likely looking good for Rex. To quote from the Rex Support thread on SmashBoards

Quote

Just read the news about his tweet, yes, this sounds very promising:
- It's basically confirmed that DLC just finished being decided recently (give or take a month or two).
- Xenoblade 2 has become a sleeper hit of the Switch and it has sold as of now 1.5Million copies.
- The game itself has won an award for excellency in Japan, so Nintendo probably has it on their radar.
- Nintendo will more than likely want to market their latest games, it's a smart business move.
- His only competition may be ARMS, Kirby or DK all of which may be in too without pushing his inclusion
- Sakurai is the one who decides in the end if it's possible to make a fighter, and he loves XC2

As well as i my own post from there

Quote

Considering that Xenoblade 2 was a great success (even now, it's among the top 10 best selling Switch games) and how much Nintendo was promoting it in the days leading up to it's release and after, and a continous stream of fantastic DLC that ended in September meant that it was on Nintendo's radar for a long while.

Best part? Sakurai praised the game and i felt a genuine apology from him in the Direct for not being able to include Rex in the base game

 

Edit: on that bit about Newt, i actually like Newt. She's got a cool design and she also does the Ora Ora so by law, i have to like her.

Edited November 7, 2018 by Armagon

[Lightchao42]

14 minutes ago, Armagon said:

I think the key sentence is "I decide if we can create a fighter based on their selection" so it looks like Nintendo provided several options and Sakurai picked five of them. Which is likely looking good for Rex. To quote from the Rex Support thread on SmashBoards

I agree. Some might say "But Xenoblade 2 is too old to be promoted!" but it would definitely have a boost in sales if Rex was included, so it still makes sense even if Nintendo only cares about business.

I think Bandana Waddle Dee also benefits from this arrangement. "But he isn't the main character of Star Allies, so why would they pick him to promote that?" some might think. But those people don't know that Kirby in general is very popular in Japan, and Waddle Dees are among the most popular and promoted (and most merchandised) characters in the series. Bandana Waddle Dee is popular with both the Smash fanbase and the general public, so Nintendo would have a good reason to promote him further.

Edited November 7, 2018 by Lightchao42