Character Customization is confirmed
When pressed for specifics at this year's E3, Sakurai noted that players would be able to customize and transfer characters between the two versions, and said that the development team was committed to keeping the roster similarly balanced between both versions.
However, exactly what you can customize remains a mystery. I inferred a sort of Pokemon Stadium situation, where you level up your characters in the handheld version before transferring them to the console version to battle. When presented with this idea, Sakurai considered it for a moment before stating, "Perhaps the best way to think of it is: it's not the strength of the attacks that change--their power--but the directionality of those attacks will change with customization." Read into that what you will.
Tripping is confirmed gone
While the director's plans for character customization remain a mystery, his thoughts on tripping--the bane of Super Smash Bros. Brawl players everywhere--were clear. "I think we're going in a direction where we're not going to include [tripping] this time around," he stated.
However Sakurai wants to keep an element of randomness in the game
But while tripping is out, randomness is something Sakurai feels is still an important part of the Smash Bros. series.
"When you boil things down to pure competition, it's not always the most engaging experience. For example, think about the 50-meter dash. This is something that really comes down to speed. You see a lot of people progressing in a linear direction, and the person who is fastest in the beginning is quite often going to be the winner. It's predictable--and while it is pure competition, it's not necessarily engaging in the same way as events with unpredictability. As developers, we have to think about all of these circumstances when designing fighting games."
According to Sakurai, a little unpredictability not only makes fighting games more exciting, but also makes Smash Bros. less intimidating for newcomers.
Sakurai is focusing on the less vocal majority over the vocal minorities, he also believes that there is a larger amount of people that prefer brawl over melee than we think, so take that as you will.
When you look at fighting game forums, you'll see a preference for Melee, and yet, I think there are lots of people in the silent majority who don't post online who prefer Brawl. Ever since I started working on the Kirby series, I've always thought about the needs of the less vocal, beginning players of games."
The gameplay will be slower than melee but faster than brawl
"I would say that the speed of gameplay [in the next Smash Bros.] is going to be a little bit less than Melee, but a little bit more than Brawl."
Sakurai doesn't consider Smash bros to be a fighting game.
For example, I like to think of Smash as a four-player battle royal action game. You'll notice that's a lot longer than saying it's a fighting game, because 'fighting game' is a completely different label.
There's more there, he also confirmed some characters are not returning (didn't say which). Beside that, I don't know how I feel about this interview, on one hand he admits that having stupid mechanics like tripping aren't a good idea, but on the other he says he wants to make the game even more accessible (how do you do that with smash bros?) and focus on the silent majority. TBH I don't really have high hopes for this title, so if anything I'll be pleasantly surprised if they don't add any stupid mechanics this time around.
Log in to comment