Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Presents Byleth: Information and Reaction

EDIT (8:54 PM EST): In the reaction, the final total of Ultimate characters was originally listed at ninety; it’s actually eighty-eight. Since corrected.

No choice of character would’ve been in a great position as the “final character” of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Challenger #5 coming after eighty-one video game icons. The anticipation too strong; the series’ hype cycle is so intense that each new fighter only puts pressure on the next one. So the final one turning out to be not a demented third party choice but a normal, sensible Nintendo one – from an already well represented series, at that – was a bit deflating to many fans. But the character, who’s now the youngest member of the Smash Bros. roster, works with some solid ideas and neat touches. Beyond their inclusion, though, were some nifty tidbits about where the game is…and where it might be going. So here’s the breakdown:

Fighter #75 (and the 82^nd total): Byleth, of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, with both male and female versions playable. While nominally a sword user – a long Smash trope openly mocked in the trailer itself – Byleth’s Hero’s Relic changes into the weapons of the game’s three House leaders for specific attacks and control stick inputs. The weapons are:

Sword of the Creator. Used for upward and certain neutral inputs, such as the dash attack. Moves like the up smash and aerial turn it into a whip sword, which hit opponents repeatedly.
Areadbhar: Dimitri’s spear, whose name comes from Celtic mythology. Used for side inputs, it has a long reach with a sweetspot at the tip. Tilting the side smash makes it stronger.
Aymr: Edelgard’s axe, whose name comes from Ugaritic mythology. Down aerial has an intensely powerful meteor effect, and its attacks are slow but strong..
Failnaught: Claude’s bow, whose name comes from Arthurian lore. It compliments the sword in certain neutral moves, such as the neutral aerial..
Neutral Special: fires the bow. It has limits as to when you can loose an arrow (though you can cancel it up until a point), but it’s very powerful.
Side Special: a wide-ranged spear swing that can be shielded. Vulnerable to shielding.
Up Special: a tether move similar to Joker’s Grappling Hook, it catches and reels in opponents. Byleth can then leap off his enemies for a recovery.
Down Special: a charged strike attack comparable to Falcon Punch but slower, wider, and with super armor. Sakurai stresses not using it against enemies with counters.
Final Smash: Progenitor God Ruptured Heaven: supported by Sothis, Byleth launches a single attack.
Byleth is very slow, and like previous Fire Emblem characters their grab is poor.
Costumes reference the House leaders, Sothis, and late game narrative details that some video game director is coy about spoiling.
Their Classic Mode route is A Heroic Legacy; it features Fire Emblem stages and a boss fight against Master and Crazy Hand that has something “amusing.”
The actual names for the specials are unclear; they may just be the names of the weapons themselves.

Stage: Garreg Mach Monastery, the space where players spend much of their time in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. The stage moves through the marketplace, reception hall, bridge, and cathedral. Alongside destructible shops, chandeliers, and benches, there are several cameos: Dimitri, Dedue, and Ingrid of the Blue Lions; Edelgard, Dorothea, and Petra of the Black Eagles; Claude, Hilda, and Lorenz of the Golden Deer; Seteth, Flayna, Rhea, a pegasus knight, and the gatekeeper.

Music: Eleven tracks in all, all from Byleth’s game. Given that Fire Emblem is the first Fighter Pack to be from a series already in Smash, the tracks were chosen to compliment the songs that have already been included. New remixes are bolded.

“Fire Emblem: Three Houses Main Theme (JP)”
“Fire Emblem: Three Houses Main Theme”
“Fódlan Winds”
“Blue Skies and a Battle”
“Tearing Through Heaven”
“Chasing Daybreak”
“Between Heaven and Earth”
“Paths That Will Never Cross”
“The Apex of the World”
“The Edge of Dawn (Seasons of Warfare) (JP)”
“The Edge of Dawn (Seasons of Warfare)”
Minor note. Several battle tracks in Fire Emblem: Three Houses have multiple versions do indicate intensity; the “default” ones we’ve linked might not be the exact arrangement that’ll be used.

The Three Houses Spirit Board will include House leaders, “some other popular characters,” and Sothis as a Legend Class fight. In addition, Challenge Pack #5 releases alongside the following Mii Costumes:

Altaïr costume (Swordfighter), from Assassin’s Creed.
Rabbid hat, from the Rabbids games.
X costume, from Mega Man X (Gunner). Previously DLC in Smash For.
MegaMan.exe costume, from Mega Man: Battle Network (Gunner). Previously DLC in Smash For.
Cuphead costume (Gunner), from Cuphead. Like Sans, his costume is more of a full model change; also like Sans, he comes with a song, “Floral Fury.”

Having been hinted at prior, the release of Challenger Pack #5 will be followed by new fighter inclusions. Fighters Pass 2 will feature six characters, one more than the first Fighters Pass. Due to its size, Challenger Packs #6 through 11 are planned to all have been released by December 21, 2021 – three years after the game’s initial release in December 2018.

As he did with the first Fighters Pass, Sakurai apologies for making it available for purchase before the contents are announced, asking for people to only buy it if they feel confident.
Additionally, the characters have already been decided; it would be “very hard” for Sakurai to consider “requests” for characters made via Twitter.
The Pass will come with an exclusive Mii Costume, the Ancient Soldier Gear from Breath of the Wild.

Miscellaneous:

Video was shot in November, so some details might be different for when the pack releases.
Although it can’t be reached due to Nintendo taking it down, in the version of the presentation used for the livestream Sakurai emphasized keeping the fighter hidden, even from most of Nintendo’s own staff.
Sakurai’s discussion went into a number of places, from the history of Fire Emblem to the difficulty Japanese speakers have with pronouncing its name. He talked about the reason for the prominence of series characters’ counter attacks in Smash as a way of incorporating turn based mechanics.
- When counting out the series titles for his impromptu “Fire Emblem ‘Can You Say It’ Challenge,” Sakurai counted in binary.
Sakurai did research for Byleth by playing an early build of Three Houses, something he also did for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. He had access to his copy of the latter for only two days, giving him enough time to get the ending. Doing the same for Three Houses was much trickier, given its greater narrative focus and three main stories.
Given the size of the base roster, part of the goal with the fighters in the original Fighters Pass was to introduce new mechanics – and with that a “whole new style of play.”
Before ending the presentation, Sakurai took time to discuss the news that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is now the best selling fighting game in history. Alongside his question of whether it even counts as a “fighting game,” he debated the philosophical mechanics of how to classify the myriad of ports, expansions, and re-releases of Street Fighter II, the previous record holder and crowning icon of classic fighting games.

Presentation:

Wolfman’s Soapbox: So I (someone whose Fire Emblem experience admittedly goes little further than playing a lot of Heroes) don’t really find Byleth as a Fire Emblem character that interesting. He isn’t bad or offensive to my sensibilities, just seeming to be stuck in that “JRPG protagonist” field when his more compelling students are right there. And honestly, that’s okay for me. While I generally have a positive outlook over Smash and its characters, it’s hard not to get just a little nervous that a character I don’t care for at times, even if they’ve absolutely no chance, will be next on the roster (I legit freaked out in 2014 because I was scared Adam Malkovich from Metroid: Other M, the definition of a never-was, would get in. I’m not always rational). That’s how I was feeling after the presentation got announced, with butterflies in my stomach over things that were just never going to happen. But Byleth’s appreciably functional, and after choices as inspired and wild as Joker and Terry, functionality is more than enough. It’s okay that not all the characters exist to be my favorites. But Byleth dos provide something I do really like, which is that they keep some Nintendo flavor in the Fighters Pass.

Like, as exciting as it’s been to see series – some worlds away from Smash or Nintendo – getting to join this marquee experience, I do like seeing a Nintendo character amongst them. It shouldn’t just be about reaching out but also looking inward. And a character from after Ultimate came out, no less! I feel like an underrated value of DLC like this is in getting characters who only exist in a field after Smash, and one of Nintendo’s biggest successes of 2019 getting to join their biggest success of 2018 feels important. Sure, I’d have personally probably preferred a monster from Pokémon Sword & Shield, or some kind of beautifully disgusting Gooigi moveset, but it’s really important to me that we get fighters who represent where Nintendo is going right now. We’re in a crazy time for the company. I like that being preserved.

Besides, I now get to make the pettiest of brags. I had been thinking about the possibility of a Three Houses fighter for a while (since the game hit like a megaton and has helped shoot Fire Emblem closer to the A-list), and while I found Edelgard “cooler” as an option, I got how it was sensible to use the protagonist as the character. But, of course, what to do to make them more unique? I thought about some ideas, but then remembered: hey, Byleth isn’t nearly as popular as the House leaders! Let’s exploit that! So last night, my closest friend and I workshopped one utterly implausible concept online while watching…I forget, maybe The Venture Bros.? This comment I made less than a couple minutes before the Direct started provides the solution:

Obviously this would never happen and was never going to – it’d be kinda gross to ask a development team to make three characters and sell them as one – but it came from two real concerns I had: how to make a standard swordsman more interesting, and how to reference the characters who really define Three Houses (I’m sure other fans put forth our or Sakurai’s solutions, but I didn’t read them so my weak sense of pride holds). And seeing a Swiss army knife of a soldier whose moves represent their three students felt like a validation of those concerns, as well as a functional – there that word is again! – way to solve them. It makes me feel like that had been considered from the start. Sakurai does get the issue of diversifying protagonists from a series whose protagonists are cut from similar cloth, and I kinda get the sense that Byleth was developed partially to mitigate complaints of samey style protagonists and a smorgasbord of swordsmen.* That’s working under really bizarre limitations, and I appreciate that a lot.

* Byleth being a character Nintendo requested arguably adds to this, though I don’t think debating whether Sakurai would’ve chosen them otherwise gets us anyway. At the very least, I doubt Sakurai would’ve been willing to pass on their choice unless he really thought they were unworkable.

Looking further, though…god, I have no idea. The culture and space and discourse surrounding Smash are intense, exciting, but also exhausting and kind of depressing at points. Every character means so much to me, but the way we talk about and fight over every single character, every possible character, is overwhelming. The run up to Ultimate‘s release was honestly kind of a nightmare, and I’m not the only one who felt so. I’m excited for the new characters and what Sakurai can cook up, but it’s hard to really express my mixture of excitement and draining fatigue. By the time this video came out, I felt like I’d heard so many ideas and perspectives that it felt like everyone was equally likely to get in; I’d somehow gone from “everyone can get in!” to “everyone can get in.” And I’ve stepped back from the speculation game!

All that said, I am, still, looking forward to more. Sakurai’s characters are wonderful and fun, and his discussions of mechanics, people, and the industry are compelling. Seeing Cuphead and Sans hang out with Pac-Man is wild, and Ultimate is always a blast to play. It’s an almost obscene project by this point in its life; it’s gonna have a cast of eighty-eight fighters by the end. Eighty-eight. Even if I didn’t love the series and the game, I could enjoy gawking at it forever, almost like it’d be a more acceptable Fortnite or whatever. But it’s more than that. So, I suppose, on goes the ride. I look forward to seeing Character #6 at, say, E3 or whenever.