Topic: Sakurai Says Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS Will Change Direction

[syrindigo]

WHY WOULD YOU NOT WANT THIS?!?!


Everyone knows he's going to use this to let us power up our characters on the 3DS and throw them on to the Wii U and beat the hell out of each other.... THAT IS FRIKIN AWESOME.

[Adrock]

My hope for the Adventure Mode, if it absolutely must exist, is that it take place in the actual individual universes or at least have the levels closely resemble them. I want to trek through actual Mario levels and punch/stab Goombas in the face. Melee's Adventure Mode generally changed the look but didn't stray as far as The Subspace Emissary. I know Smash Bros. takes place in its own Trophy/Toy Box World but that's what sucks about it. Nintendo's history is what makes Smash Bros. awesome. Ignoring that takes away the game's greatest asset.

[hibern81]

Sounds cool to me!  No reason to be  getting your panties in a ruffle for a game that has just barely started production.  Give it time.

[Adrock]

I'm pretty excited despite the limited info available if only because I like the series. I was hoping the 3DS version would get axed so Sakurai could focus his energies on the Wii U game and maybe get it out faster but if he can juggle both games simultaneously, I see nothing wrong with that. More things for me to play.

[Luigi Dude]

I'm pretty excited despite the limited info available if only because I like the series. I was hoping the 3DS version would get axed so Sakurai could focus his energies on the Wii U game and maybe get it out faster but if he can juggle both games simultaneously, I see nothing wrong with that. More things for me to play.

Well the 3DS version will probably run on a modified Brawl engine just like NSMB DS 2 is running on a modified NSMB Wii engine.  This should allow them work on the 3DS version much easier since all of Brawl's returning characters will basically be done already and can easily be edited to make any move or design changes.  The same for stages where reusing Brawl's existing assests will allow for much quicker development.


I imagine the 3DS version will be out sometime in 2014 because of easier development while the Wii U version won't hit until 2015.  Of course this won't be too bad since we'll all have the 3DS version to keep us busy for a year before the Wii U version which I imagine Sakurai would like since we'll have are customizable characters ready to use on day 1 for the Wii U game.

[Adrock]

That's a bit disconcerting. I don't want it to seem like they're just retreading ground. I already own Brawl. I don't need a Brawl version 2. I hope it's not too, too similar.

[Yoyomom]

"The simple addition of new characters does not appear like it will cut it"? Oh my. I hope Sakurai knows what he's doing. The reason we loved Smash bros in the first place is because of our favorite Nintendo console characters. And I refuse to believe you can have enough characters. There's always that one character you've always wanted to see in a game with Mario, Link and the others. It's been that way since the dawn of smash bros, or even before that.


Then again, if Sakurai plans on giving us the ability to make custom characters, it may make up for the rejection of that one character.

[Luigi Dude]

That's a bit disconcerting. I don't want it to seem like they're just retreading ground. I already own Brawl. I don't need a Brawl version 2. I hope it's not too, too similar.

Just because it's using the same engine doesn't mean it'll play the exact same.  All it means is when they design the characters, they'll already have 39 existing already done so it won't be like Melee or Brawl where all the returning characters need to be completely overhauled because their previous character models and animations were out of date with the hardware.  Since the Wii and 3DS are pretty close in power, Brawls existing characters won't need to be updated that much expect for characters like Link and Zelda who'll have their Skyward Sword designs now.

In comparison, the Wii U version will have to be completely redone from scratch since there's a huge gap between the Wii and Wii U and all of Brawl's assests will be too out of date for that game.  This is the real reason I think Sakurai wants to make a 3DS version because he knows the Wii U version could easily take over 3 years to make because of what making everything from scratch on an HD system and he wants to get a handheld Smash Bros that can be made reusing Brawls assests out quicker to help make the wait for the Wii U version easier since that game will take a long time to make even if they weren't making a 3DS version.

[Adrock]

Just because it's using the same engine doesn't mean it'll play the exact same.  All it means...

It could mean a lot of things which is what makes it disconcerting.

And I didn't suggest that it would play the exact same way, I said, "I hope it's not too, too similar." The mechanics of Brawl are largely unchanged from Melee; it didn't evolve the gameplay as much as Melee did over the original. If Sakurai and his team are in fact using the Brawl engine, concern that the 3DS version falls too close to Brawl isn't at all preposterous. I don't want simple tweaks. I'd prefer the development team rethink the gameplay from top to bottom, evolving what works and tossing what doesn't out entirely. Still, Sakurai claiming that he plans to "change direction" is a good sign.

The GameCube and Wii aren't too far off in power. Was that extra horsepower really the motivator to create Brawl's assets from scratch? Sakurai and Game Arts didn't reuse Melee's assets but they did have access to Melee's source code. That said, I'd prefer the 3DS team build their game's assets from scratch, merely using Brawl's source code as a guide rather than reusing entire assets. Who knows what the art style is going to be like but if the 3DS game and the Wii U game are going to connect to each either and work in tandem, I'd would like some parity between the 2. Brawl was in development for a little less than 2 and a half years so I'd expect roughly the same here.

[Caterkiller]

I certainly remember Sakurai saying the first course of action was to port over the contents of Brawl to the Wii U and 3DS, so it would make sense the 3DS version would come out first. But I also remember even earlier after Brawl had released he said he could not port over Brawl because the hardware difference would be too great, so which is it?

It was recently after Smash U was announced that he said he would be moving the contents of Brawl over to the next game. I suppose one can do that but still have to build character models from the ground up.

[nacorious1]

cant wait

[NWR_insanolord]

"The simple addition of new characters does not appear like it will cut it"? Oh my. I hope Sakurai knows what he's doing. The reason we loved Smash bros in the first place is because of our favorite Nintendo console characters. And I refuse to believe you can have enough characters. There's always that one character you've always wanted to see in a game with Mario, Link and the others. It's been that way since the dawn of smash bros, or even before that.


Then again, if Sakurai plans on giving us the ability to make custom characters, it may make up for the rejection of that one character.

I don't think he's saying he's not going to add new characters, but that he needs to do more than just that. Sakurai's got great ambition, as is usual with him; hopefully he manages to pull off what he's set his mind to.

[Ian Sane]

Brawl is actually so forgettable to me that when I looked at that page with the list of generic enemies I didn't recognize ANY of them.  And I beat the damn thing!  Realistically in SSB there shouldn't be original enemies.  It would make more sense to put in enemies from Nintendo games.  The story mode should have us fighting Koopas and Metroids and Moblins.

One reason that fighting games don't change things up too much is that doing so would turn off the existing fanbase.  Fighting games are almost all about the engine.  The fans want new characters and tweaks to the existing characters to improve balance but the whole thing is almost like a sport.  They like the way the game handles and don't want to **** with it.  Or maybe a good comparison is the different editions of AD&D.

I think it would be a funny idea if SSB switched to Street Fighter II quarter-circle style special moves.  Boy would that piss a lot of people off.  No I don't seriously want them to do this.

A Nintendo-themed Kingdom Hearts style game has been on people's wishlist for a long time.  A good concept for connectivity would be to make such a game on the 3DS and have it connect with the fighting game on the Wii U.

[GoldenPhoenix]

Whatever he does, all I ask is no more clone characters, at least when it comes to characters that shouldn't be clones. Alternative forms for a particular character is fine to clone, as long as it doesn't take too much away from developing other areas, but make every distinct character fresh and unique.


I hope they just ax subspace emissary (or some other alternative) and go back to the more simple 1 player modes of the previous games. Sadly I don't think Sakurai will let go of that idea, he seems to like cramming everything he can into a game, even if I feel it would be better to direct the vast majority of the resources to crafting characters, levels, and balance.

[NWR_insanolord]

For once, I'm with Ian; it would be awesome if Sakurai played up the single player in the 3DS one to the point of being a Nintendo-ized Kingdom Hearts-ish kind of game, but only if he writes the story himself in a similar style to Kid Icarus: Uprising's awesomely insane story.

[Luigi Dude]

Whatever he does, all I ask is no more clone characters, at least when it comes to characters that shouldn't be clones. Alternative forms for a particular character is fine to clone, as long as it doesn't take too much away from developing other areas, but make every distinct character fresh and unique.

The only clone character in Smash Bros that doesn't make any sense is Ganondorf.  All the other clones in Melee and Brawl have made sense because they're based on characters from the same series that are similar to each other in the games they're from.


Of course since it sounds like customization is going to be a huge part of the next Smash Bros technically there won't be anymore clones since the player will be able to customize how their characters play.  So if people don't want Ganondorf to be a Caption Falcon clone, they can just equip him with something that will give him different attacks and then he'll know longer be a clone.


Seriously, people need to look up Kid Icarus: Uprising and all the customization it allows when talking about what Sakurai will do with the next Smash Bros.  You can tell he was planning something like this when he started doing this in Brawl's Subspace Emissary with the stickers to the trophies to change stats for that mode, and then took it to the next level with Uprising and all the weapons that can be created that change how Pit plays.  This pretty much points to the next Smash Bros having a deep customization system like Uprising does which will basically allow the player to change the way the way characters will play.

[Mop it up]

Hopefully they'll be changing direction in more ways that simply adding connectivity between the two games, and hopefully that will be in addition to adding in more content like characters and stages instead of replacing them, and hopefully everything isn't dictated by Sakurai this time.

That sounds like a lot of hope, but I'm not very hopeful. Smash Brothers isn't a game suited for single player, and if they are still going to focus on stuff like that, then I'm not even going to waste my time hoping the game will be what I want from a Smash Brothers game.

[Spak-Spang]

Who cares if the clones make sense or not...they weren't fun characters...and those characters could of been made with new moves. 


The thing with clones is it a lazy way of adding characters, and it tends to treat those characters as less important. 


I would love for a Smash Brothers Game on the 3DS to be more focused on single player...as long as you aren't allowed to take weapons and leveled up characters from the 3DS game into the Wii U game.  That is where I say NO.


Since my favorite mode from Melee was the Adventure mode, that expanded single player game would make Smash Bros. 3DS the version of the game I would want.  However, I don't want generic enemies.  I honestly wanted to stop playing the single player modes, because the enemy design was so bad it sucked all the excitement from the game.

[SMWiz]

What I personally would like to see in the next Smash Bros. game is the inclusion of more classic stages--especially the ones from the N64. Those were some great stages, but the only one to make it to Brawl was Corneria. Very few N64 stages made it into Melee and few Melee stages made it into Brawl. In Brawl's stage builder, I recreated (to the best of my ability with the limited pieces) several of the classic stages. From the developer's statements, it does not seem like he would be particularly interested in adding these classic stages, but it is something I would love to see.

[tendoboy1984]

I'm curious how they're going to interact with each other.

I'm also curious what Sakurai means by "change direction." I'd like to see the gameplay evolve well beyond the minor changes that Brawl introduced. He also mentioned the issue of simply increasing volume not cutting it. I agree. That should be one aspect of the new games but certainly not the extent of it.

Aside from Final Smashes, Brawl did little to change the formula that had been improved by Melee. Melee was where the series truly defined itself.