Super Smash Bros. is a crossover party-fighting game that has accumulated a wide fan base over the years due to its massive roster of characters. Those who are in the game range from very well known characters, such as Mario from Super Mario Bros., to Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy, to less popular characters such as Corrin from the Fire Emblem series. Over time, new characters are being created and added to the game and fans are always waiting in anticipation for the next character to be announced. For the most part, fans have been very excited about the Downloadable Content (DLC) characters that have been released in what Nintendo calls “Fighters Pass 1.” So far, four out of five characters are in the game currently, and they have all been from companies that are not Nintendo, thus making them third-party.
On January 16th, a new character was planned to be announced and many people expected another third-party character due to the pattern of third-party releases in the first “Fighters Pass.” Sadly, the release was met with great disappointment, as the main character from Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Byleth, was released. This was disappointing because Byleth is a first-party character, and many people prefer that it would be a final third-party character to end off the DLC pack.
Byleth’s release was met with a lot of resentment, and his release video has the most amount of dislikes of any Smash Bros. release video on YouTube, sitting at 82k dislikes. This is unusual for a Super Smash Bros. release, as all of the previous releases have been met with massive amounts of hype and support.
President of MEGA (Movies Entertainment Games Art) club, Jonah Breaux, expressed his concern for Byleth’s involvement in the Fighters Pass by stating, “I feel that they (Nintendo) should’ve added a different character personally, and that if they wanted Byleth, they could have given a free update including her/him.” This seems to be the general consensus among players, as many people feel that this was the wrong time for Byleth to be released.
Ethan Lucas, freshman, is a competitive Super Smash Bros. player who took a different point of view on Byleth’s release. “I feel like it was a ploy by Nintendo to push Three Houses DLC, and they put Byleth in last because they know how many people were going to buy the fighters pass anyway.” He also feels that this won’t be the first time criticism on a new character will happen; “I guarantee we’ll get another hated character in Fighters Pass 2.”
