It’s that time of year again. We are approaching the last major stop on the Smash hype train before it releases on December 7th and it isn’t slowing down anytime soon. With the Smash Direct set to air tomorrow morning (which can be seen here), we might bare witness to one of best Nintendo Directs of all time. I mean, this Direct is supposed to be about 40 minutes long (which is longer than any past Smash-focused Directs) which means there has to be a lot more content to be discussed than ever before.
All we can do right now is speculate what’s going to be in the game and what isn’t going to be in the game. That is why I have written this list of five topics that is most likely going to be covered during this Direct and what I think is going to be in it. The first topic is something that I bet everyone is thinking about right now:
- New Characters
Of course, figuring out who is in the game is the most exciting part during the speculation phase of the development cycle of Smash. But this time it’s different. With all of the controversy with the Grinch leak last week, fans want to know is whether the seven characters that were leaked are in the game or not. In my opinion, I am not 100% sure if the leak is real, but I’m going into tomorrow skeptical that it is real. This way, I can be excited if the rumored characters are in (considering that I am interested how a few of them work) while I won’t be disappointed if there are only two or four character reveals.
That being said, I believe at least Ken, Isaac, and Shadow will be announced at this Direct. To me, there is enough evidence for both Ken and Isaac to be in the game while Shadow makes sense to be a Sonic echo. I would also like to think that Sakurai would also talk about DLC, mentioning one character that is being worked on at the moment, similar how he announced Mewtwo as the first DLC character during Smash 4’s 50-Fact Extravaganza. This time, the character will be Rex and Pyra from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 because they are highly requested characters from a more recent game.
- ‘Spirits’/Adventure Mode
One thing that Sakurai teased us during the last Smash Direct was a section of the game’s main menu that was blurred out. A lot of fans believe that it is a more in-depth single player mode like Brawl’s Subspace Emissary or Melee’s Adventure mode. I do agree that this ‘Spirits’ mode is the game’s big appeal for single player.
This mode won’t be a sequel to Subspace Emissary, but rather a more fleshed out version of Melee’s Adventure mode. Because there are over 30 franchises in the game, this mode can potentially be very big and therefore can have a lot of replay value than the mode in Melee. I figure that this is also the method that Sakurai mentioned during E3 where we can streamline unlocking fighters.
- Other Single Player Modes
While fans are mostly focused on ‘Spirits’ mode in terms of single player content, we need to remember that we also don’t know anything about the other single player modes besides classic mode. Of course, All Star mode will be discussed to a certain extent as well as Event mode. What I hope is that they would go back to the old way they did Break the Targets, having each character having a specific stage, although it would be a lot of work considering the number of characters in the roster already. I would also want to see Smash Run to make a return with the feature to play with friends online.
- Online Mode Details
Earlier this week, it was revealed that you can play up to 32 players online in Smash. I think that this would be talked about during the Direct, going to detail the tournament mode. I also hope that they talk about other aspects of online mode like there being a ranked mode of some sort. This was a feature that was surprisingly missing in Smash 4, considering most fighting games do have online rankings. Building on the last section, I would like to see an online version of Smash Run, since that mode has a lot of potential, especially when you play with friends.
- Smash Online Demo
If Smash is being treated just like other recent Nintendo games that have online multiplayer, then there is no way that there will not be an online test demo for the game. The only reason why they wouldn’t do it is because information being leaked through data mining the demo. Since the Direct is going to show everything, then there wouldn’t be a problem when someone data mines the potential demo. That is why I believe that we will get a Smash demo at some point between the Direct and the release of the game.
Hopefully you all enjoyed this list I created. Was there anything that is important that I missed, something you think I got wrong, or have any other thoughts? Let me know in the comments and remember: hype responsibly!
J Chang Gaming 