Smash Bros: The Last Directbender Part 2

[ShadeStrider]

Oh how disappointing the direct was so far.

I was hoping for newcomers that were on par

with Sephiroth, Raiden, Dante and Leon

Now, it seems, i'll wait an eon

For DLC fighters, whoever they may be

But Rex and Pyra? No show, I see

 

World of light looks OK I guess

More CG cutscenes, with a plot that's a mess

 

But worst of all, the new characters

Only two of them, and of the fighters

Incineroar, my most hated of all

made it in, and the grinch took the fall

 

No Rex and Pyra, no Raiden, no fair

Zack fair, i mean, or Hojo's Lair

Golden sun fans, it must really hurt

this direct made me want to eat my shirt.

 

So, I hope you enjoyed this odd serenade

Vergeben deniers, we were swayed

By a leak in a poster, very well fake

And the leak wasn't delayed because of no quake.

 

 

This Song quite accurately represents my mood.

Now, I'll go. I need some food.

 

[Autumn Zephyr]

Not gonna lie, I kept thinking of how utterly salty you must be throughout the Direct. Everything you were hoping wouldn't happen did, all at once!

 

Personally, I'm glad we don't have Decidueye hogging both of Pokemon's fighter slots. Sure, we could probably have gotten something that wasn't quite so obvious, but Inceneroar was practically made for a fighting game and is certainly a better pick than, say, crabominable, so I'm chill with that. The fact that the other character was an Echo of a third party rep. I don't care for myself was a bit of a bummer, but that's probably to be expected from a series that's trying to be The Greatest Crossover Fanfic of All Time^tm. I was admittedly surprised that wait until the end of the last Direct to reveal this game's Lethal Joke Character (a gosh darned Pirhana Plant, of all things!), but considering that they didn't formally reveal the Duck Hunt Duo in the last one, I'd say that's still making a stride or two.

 

Spirits being Stickers+ was unexpected, though the story aspect is a little lacking from what little we've seen so far. Speaking of- Dammit, Sakurai, quit giving your OC the spotlight! Though, this is admittedly the sort of situation Kirby has to deal with every other month, so it does admittedly make sense that he, of all characters, survived, but still... Oh, and let's not forget this man's tendency to deal in false securities:

 

Sakurai: "This game's story mode is intended to be more fun than serious."
Story Mode: *Murders everyone in the multiverse and reanimates the corpses a few powerful individuals*

 

Well, that certainly escalated far quicker than it had any right to! Whoops.

[LOLZLION]

We shadow fans are hurting too 

We're so disappointed there were so many clues.

 

[Godot]

I am sad that Isaac and Skullkid got the AT treatment and Geno only got as far as a Spirit, but I can’t complain.  This game has so much damn content regarding characters, stages, modes, and music that it is hard to be disappointed.  At the end of the day The newcomers we got are all amazing inclusions.  Even if you don’t like some of these characters, their play styles are amazing and some like Ridley, Simon, K Rool, and Incineroar add so much to the roster in diversity and flavor that it is almost too much to fathom.  We also got every competitively viable stage in smash history.  On top of hazard toggles, Battlefield forms, stage morphs, and Crew Battles.  That is ridiculously  hype.  Maybe later today I’ll make the one positive thread about Incineroar’s inclusion.

I also despised the Grinch leak because it was obviously fake.  It also contradicted everything we knew going into the final month of the game.  The things people were counting as “strong evidence” didn’t actually prove anything.  The evidence that did disprove the leak was disregarded and was countered by “we don’t have enough proof to prove it fake or real.”  When the real driving force behind it was false hopes.  Due to those false hopes it made the final reveal sting so much more to those that actually believed it.  And that is why the internet is so damn mad at the moment.  It’s worth noting that every legit leak we ever got was clear as day, not blurry.   Blurry leaks are blurry to hide that they are fake.  Our camera phones are more powerful then people give them credit for.  And snap chat quality is not that trash.

[ShadeStrider]

@G'doots You sure it isn’t just Hindsight Bias that the leak was fake? The evidence put up in its favor was pretty convincing. It wasn’t “obviously” fake.

[Commander]

14 hours ago, ShadeStrider said:

@G'doots You sure it isn’t just Hindsight Bias that the leak was fake? The evidence put up in its favor was pretty convincing. It wasn’t “obviously” fake.

So the story is someone brought this fake banner to work on top of a fake rolled up one and added images to the smash roster and moved them around. These images were not in the same art style as the Smash artists so to cover it up they zoomed out and blurred it. It probably didn't take a long time to make, but this biggest mystery is why the name wasn't properly crossed out. Even if it was or wasn't him, that just damages a guy's reputation hard and it's not easy to bounce back from that...on top of two companies getting targeted for a leak.

 

There were also a couple little design choices such as Isaac being slightly more in the front on top of Banjo looking more 3D that made me skeptical but I decided to remain neutral after looking at both pictures for an overlooked inconsistency. Mostly said there's a 70% chance because the person who did it timed and planned it out rather well. Also because I didn't think someone would be that stupid to take things that far, but humanity is willing to do so. Then I saw there was going to be a 40 minute direct and them announcing 7 characters was unlikely. 5 of which were new and needed a bunch of time to explain.

 

I still have the image in my head and I could go back and say "that was so obvious they faked it." It was kind of believable due to all the effort put into it and leaking some actual set pieces (the Grench stuff), but the fake pics definitely could have used better artwork to cover it up. Banjo was the most obvious one if you look at it. There was a lot of little things where I don't think we could simply chuck it away as an obvious fake, but there was a number of things where we could be skeptical. One I disagree with is the background inconsistencies on the page being decisive evidence. That's not an uncommon thing to have inconsistencies with set board pictures. The set pages lacked details in terms of writing explaining where things go along with the pics themselves being too detailed.

 

I do think one thing blinded people's logic which was the Incineroar leak. People really didn't want Incineroar to be the last new fighter. People also were getting upset with only two fighters left (but we got 3 \o/...even if he's coming later). People really did not want that leak to be true which kind of helped push the promotion of this one. I would've been down for most of these and interested in the smash teams take on them. I guess the moral of the story is don't get into leaks.

[Godot]

It was obviously fake.  Don’t feel like writing out why for the billionth time.  But long story short.

1. Art assets got legit debunked and all of the “team real” guys straight up ignored it.

2. It contradicted all actual evidence and information that we knew leading up to that point.

3. It was very Wishlisty and too good to be true.

4. It made no business sense to announce Banjo so late in the hype cycle.  He’s a major 3rd party character.

5. Every actual leak we got was clear as day.  Blurry leaks are done to hide that they are fake.

6. The “proof” didn’t actually prove that the info was real, just that the guy who took the photo was real.  Which is a “no duh” thing.

7. People assumed that no one was bored enough to go through the effort of forging this and saw it as unfeasable to fake. 

8.   It’s 2018.  Snap chat and our iPhones and Androids don’t take pictures that shitty.  What was this guy using? A flip phone? And what flip phone works with Snapchat?

9.  People really really didn’t want Incineroar in the game.

10. People really really wanted Geno, Banjo, Isaac, and Shadow in the game.

 

Its also worth noting that I really really really really want Isaac in smash.