'Super Smash Bros. Ultimate' Director Talks About Process Of Picking New Characters
Super Smash Bros. series director, Masahiro Sakurai, has provided some further insight into the [...]
Super Smash Bros. series director, Masahiro Sakurai, has provided some further insight into the process of picking new characters for each game, as well as about surprising players with unexpected selections, such as Petey Piranha.
The insight comes courtesy of a new interview with GameInformer, and reveals that fighters are actually decided upon during early stages of development, and once they are chosen, none are added or removed over the course of develoment.
"It is a project after all, so we take into consideration things like labor, man-hours, the time in which the title will be sold," said Sakurai while speaking about deciding on new characters. "We decide on the fighters from the very early planning stage, and from there, we calculate and begin production. We don't add or remove any characters during the project."
The director continued, noting that the Smash ballot and balancing both play considerable roles.
"We do things like base our consideration on the results of the Smash ballot, and also balance things out so that there's a difference in the types of fighters."
Sakurai also reiterated a point previously made, that Incineroar wasn't selected during the early stage of development like every fighter, but rather a slot was set aside for a Pokemon fighter. The decisions to add Incineroar didn't come until later.
"By the way, as for Incineroar, during our planning stage we knew that a new Pokémon game was coming, so we intentionally kept one spot open for that, and we decided which character to create once we received more info on the title," said Sakurai.
Later in the interview, Sakurai touched upon the surprise factor of revealing characters, revealing that's an element he doesn't pay too much attention to.
"I'm actually not paying too much focus on the surprise element when we introduce a new fighter," said Sakurai. "The surprise element quickly fades once the announcement has been made."
The director continued:
"Rather, I believe it's important to have a good balance as a game. In the past titles in the series, Mr. Game & Watch, R.O.B. and Duck Hunt Dog were some of the examples we offered outside of people's typical expectations. However, if we don't have these types of fighters, and we only had typical "hero/heroine" type fighters in the line-up, there's not much difference. It's probably not very interesting. Correct?
Sakurai also touched upon the inclusion of Piranha Plant, which caught everyone by surprise. But while he surprised many as an addition, the director noted he's actually one of the more recognizable characters added with Ultimate.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is in development for Nintendo Switch, and is poised to release next month on December 7. For more news and coverage on the highly-anticipated platform fighter, click here.
