The DanMan

Nintendo never did anything in regards to the ballot. I'm of the persuasion at this point that Bayonetta didn't score remotely high and the "realizable character" excuse was PR vagueness. The dev team likely saw a good promotion opportunity/character with moveset potential and just ran with it (also of note that her games recieved a re-print shortly before her release). If the Ballot has any sort of actual bearing, I see it being now.

And the roster is included in the initial proposal-- of note is that 4's initial proposal didn't even have anything for Chrom, which means his consideration and rejection were entirely Sakurai's part as he was writing up the game plan.

This does kill Rex and Pyra's chances and really does seem to lock in a Gen VII 'mon.

An entire year earlier than people were predicting. I know several people are jumping for joy over specific characters getting deconfirmed over this.

Except "individual changes number in the thousands". By that logic, Peach won't get a new final smash because they didn't directly touch upon it. Nothing was brought up about Snake being changed... but he's got several new attacks and a different Final Smash. The Direct failed to mention that Cloud's limit charge goes away after 15 seconds, or that both his range and power have been toned down. It talked abou Marth's Dancing Blade bein faster and played it off like a buff-- but with slower start-up, greater endlag, and lower damage it's actually a nerf.

I don't exactly remember that-- I only recall Sakurai's Famitsu column right after Robin and Lucina's reveal where he said that Chrom was considered early on but ultimately removed due to being too similar to Ike. I'll be interested to see if the weapon choice bit is as stressed as you claim it was.

Shipped effectively means sold to publishers, so this is more or less a moot point. What. Warriors games have always been fairly niche (for example, DW9, released on three platforms, has only sold 750k). FEW's sales are about on-par with HW, and both of them had 80% of their sales in the West. And as a general rule of thumb: when do spinoffs sell as much as main series titles? Anyways, I'd expect 1.5 million sales or so out of it.

It was a rhetorical question; I know perfeclty well what they are. Sorry if I didn't make that clear.

Robin's is one of the few final smashes we haven't seen-- which is the biggest aspect of this theory. If we do see it and it's the same, then the theory is pretty well shot down. That wasn't the reason he didn't get into Smash 4-- he was excluded early on due to being too conceptually similar to Ike. Complaints about swords are entirely from a vocal sector of fans, and to my understanding have never been brought up or referenced in any official interivews. Now, what are Echo characters again?

He had his shoulder tackle as his side smash in Brawl, but they replaced it with a generic punch in 4. Now it's his dash attack.

Either Grima or an Elemental Mastery-style magic nuke a la his pair-up Musou in FEW.

K.Rool's another one on the list I wouldn't be shocked at seeing make in. ...Heck, what if a lot of the newcomers come from the DLC Mii costumes? K. Rool, Heihachi, Lloyd, Geno, Monster Hunter...

I'm mostly expecting 3rd parties + more highly requested characters. It's a bit weird thinking none of my most wanted have a shot anymore, but that's what I'm expecting right now. With how much fanservice there's been already (deliberately altering the gameplay to encourage more offensive playstyles, Battlefield modes for stages and hazard toggles, Ridley and Daisy), I'm expecting that trend to continue.

September 25th. Three days before Code Vein. Whyyyyyyyyyyyy

Smash doesn't prioritize accurate character representation as much as people seem to think; heck, Celica's deal could be weaker projectiles without durability/having them be a bit more powerful but be stuck damaging herself a la Pichu. They'd just need to move her arm dow a bit in her idle animation so it doesn't look like she should be carrying a tome. EDIT: Actually, y'know what, let's rig up a poll for this: https://strawpoll.com/4f7b281g Ike/Chrom, Celica/Robin, Alm/Roy, and Other as options.

Oh boy, are they going to steal translations from other people again? Is there anything here worthwhile that Vincent's topics/analysis didn't already cover?

Ah. Didn't realize they were connected.

I'm... not seeing anything. Anyways, I'm expecting the "crests" themselves to be something else and these to just be emblems for individual noble houses.

Confirmation that the Steam release date is the localized one.

Tagged due to length:

There seems to have been multiple slightly different builds at E3; for instance, Marth's damage has been seen as both identical to his current version in Smash 4 and the weaker version in 4 at launch. I really don't think character analysis is exactly worth it at this point.

Because Gregor extended to every bit of his dialogue (with a good ol' Incredible Hulk reference stuck in as a crit qoute); Effie remains solely confined to her voicelines. You labelled it a "personality rework" when it's a partial one at best and pales in comparision to examples from Awakening. And really: neither of them really bother me. What bothers me is the overall hypocrisy and selectiveness. People come out in droves to defend Henry recieving a total rewrite, yet as soon as Effie or Hisame get a few different voicelines they start crying foul and labelling them "bastardizations". X-seed could potentially mean no JP audio, which would have a whole other crowd out in droves to complain. I need to learn to stay away from these conversations in the first place.

That's a gross overstatement-- it was exclusively limited to her voicelines; her supports and dialogue are almost entirely untouched. It's a lesser example of what happened to Gregor, who was rather generic in the Japanese version only to end up sounding like a smarter version of the Heavy from TF2 in the localization.

Garon was so generically evil in the first place basically anything could've been better; and removing a single support for the sake of a joke may as well be the same thing as radically altering one to me (I'd rather have nothing in place of Walhart dwelling on the thought of killing his own son). Henry went from an actor to an actor who believes the act; I know a couple of people who personally hate how he turned out and consider his localized and JP versions completely different characters. His localized version is a comedic sociopath who seems to have a fetish for blood and death; it's a pretty far cry from stuff like Effie and Hisame simply getting a couple more gimmicky voicelines.

Something I haven't seen anybody else mention is that Robin's grab range is actually decent now. In the big character overview/everybody's back trailer, you see him grab DK about two steps away; this bit seems very significant and deliberate because in Smash 4 you literally had to have Robin's model overlapping with DK's a bit to get off the grab. So it's no longer garbage. Now give them average movement speed.