Sakurai on Smash Bros. Ultimate – slowing down on character reveals, Isabelle’s inclusion, more

Masahiro Sakurai returns to Famitsu this week with a new column. The Super Smash Bros. Ultimate director says Nintendo will be slowing down on the reveal of new characters, talks about Isabelle’s inclusion (such as how she differs from Villager, her design), and more.

Here’s our full translation:

Apologies for my absence last week. The earthquake in eastern Iburi, Hokkaido put a hold on the Nintendo Direct, as we could no longer use the original draft we had prepared.

Right, in any case… Isabelle “turns over a new leaf” in Smash Bros. Ultimate!! More than anything, you can really get a feel for how cute Isabelle’s move set is by watching the reveal trailer, don’t you think? After all, it really is a world that’s defined by “movement.”

… However, it’d be incorrect to say that we’re going to keep releasing information on new fighters until the game’s release. Up until now we’ve been revealing characters one after another a bit too quickly, so we’re going to show some restraint from this point on!

You might notice that in Smash Bros. Ultimate, Isabelle is lacking in any honorifics or titles like “Ms.” It’s the same for other characters, too: Bowser and Dedede aren’t referred to as “King” and Peach and Zelda likewise aren’t referred to as “Princess.” As a rule, we try to only use the fighters’ names themselves. Of course, you’re free to call her “Ms. Isabelle” if you like; I’d call her just “Isabelle,” though.

While Isabelle as a fighter is based on Villager, the items that she can use are different. For instance, she can ride on a swing carried by balloons as opposed to Villager’s Balloon Trip move. That being said, she is by no means an Echo Fighter for Villager.

At the core of the matter, Isabelle and Villager differ greatly in terms of both their physiques and the characters’ natures. To that end, we couldn’t make Isabelle an echo fighter. The way they move is also different – there isn’t a single shared movement.

Isabelle first appeared in the 2012 title (2013 overseas) Animal Crossing: New Leaf; in that game, all of the characters’ proportions – including the mayor – had been tweaked slightly to be a bit slimmer. In Smash Bros. Ultimate, Isabelle’s model is based on that appearance, whereas Villager is a bit shorter and stouter.

When we were considering Villager for Smash 4, there was some discussion as to whether or not we should go with the “slimmer” design from New Leaf. We ended up going in the opposite direction, to make the character feel like it had “substance.” There were two reasons for that, the first being that – more so than a character like Mario – if we changed Villager’s proportions it wouldn’t capture the character’s “personality.” The other reason being that since the Animal Crossing games play from a top-down perspective, the characters’ bodies appear shorter than they actually are.

Actually, per the original development team’s request, we made the bottom of Villager’s head a bit wider than it was in Smash 4. Each game has a certain “design” that suits it, so to be frank, I didn’t really want to do it… But somehow or other it made its way into this game.

Through and through, Smash Bros. Ultimate is a strange game. Utterly chaotic. What we wanted to do with the stages and characters we were working on could change in a matter of minutes. Make cool things cooler, and cute things cuter! Even so, we’ve been doing our very best to make sure things don’t feel out of place between those two elements. At the same time though, it really keeps things from getting boring! The team’s skills and their specific abilities allow us to pursue a certain “range” of things – there isn’t a job with as much variety as we have!

What exactly is “cool?” And what does “cute” mean, for that matter? I can’t explain it concretely, but there’s a lot of know-how involving both tangible and intangible elements. I feel like you have to consume a lot of different kinds of works for that knowledge to be useful. In the case of Smash Bros.’ characters, a lot of them come from older games. Yet, if you follow an older work too closely, you wind up not being able to make something suitable for the present. It’s important to know what elements to bring back, what to create, and how to balance those two aspects so as not to be overwhelmed by them. It’s indispensable, in fact.

Even though this game is a hodgepodge of a lot of different things, we did our best to make it so that it can stand on its own as a contemporary game while still maintaining a sense of unity. We just have a little more to go until it’s done… as planned!

Translation by provided by Nico Thaxton on behalf of Nintendo Everything

If you use any of this translation, please be sure to source Nintendo Everything. Do not copy its full contents.