#which meant that even without the datamine website

[randomnameless]

Sorry for this ask being a little out-of-nowhere, but in regards to Ryoma being jealous of Corrin's leadership skills, i do think there's more evidence in favor of Corrin being decently old when they were kidnapped than against; the afterlife section at the end of Conquest confirms that Corrin and Ryoma used to have full-on sparring matches together, meaning that Corrin was being constantly trained in how to fight while living in Hoshido, which would very likely only happen when they were in their early-to-mid-teens at the youngest, given how there's no implication anywhere in the game that Hoshidan soldiers start their training at a very young age.

The only thing that implies they do is Hinoka stating in her support with Camilla that she was 6 years old when she first started training to rescue Corrin (meaning the latter would also have to be 6 at the oldest due to being younger than her), but that line is a mistranslation; JP!Hinoka just states that she's been training to rescue Corrin for a long time.

No worries!

I know I ranted about FE16's lolcalisation, but FE14 takes the cake though - every single piece of intel seems to have been lolcalised.

With FE16 you can safely assume anything regarding Supreme Leader/Rhea was lolcalised to make one worse than she should to prop the other, but with FE14? Why the fuck did they need to lolcalise Corrin's age, which in turn creates this weird line from lolcalised!Ryoma ?

Corrin being older than what the loc implied would make more sense regarding the events that happened - granted, afair, FE14 doesn't reveal character ages or something?

[andorknuckles]

An analysis of the 3 Smash Brothers Leaks and their credibility.

First, I wanna share this image

This is a simplified version of my initial analysis of the leaks, with the claims broken down, and ordered from when they were first posted. Of these three leaks, only the first came from before Joker’s reveal, with the second one coming mere days after the fact, while the third one came a little over a week later. I do want to stress that even if I make a perfect case for destroying a rumor’s credibility, that doesn’t mean I 100% believe it will be false. Credibility doesn’t equal probability.

4Chan Leak

This one won’t take long. I don’t think this one has any real credibility, and it’s really only getting attention because they happened to get a lucky guess. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily wrong, but there’s almost nothing one can use to gauge its veracity. On top of that, all of the choices are rooted heavily in pre-existing speculation.

Joker is the most out-there of the five listed here, but Sakurai did state an enjoyment of Persona 5. Realistically, though, if enough people make fake leaks, then at least one person is going to get one thing right, so I’m chalking this up to coincidence.

Infamous leaker Vergeben frequently discussed how Square was getting a character in the Fighter Pass. I’ll be discussing this more down the line.

Microsoft had some suspect things to say, describing themselves as ‘third parties’ at E3 2018, leading to considerable discussion regarding a number of their characters.

Edelgard has been speculated as an obvious choice for a cross-promotion.

Sylux has been built up as an upcoming villain/chaotic-neutral in the Metroid series for some time, and so cross-promotion with a theoretical appearance in Metroid Prime 4 would seem logical.

As such, these five characters really just seem like safe picks, with Joker as the possible exception. Other than listing the names of the characters, they do say one other interesting thing, that incomplete character models exist, which I think segues into an important bit of speculation I have regarding the Fighter Pass and how it’s being developed.

Intermission: Important Speculation

Smash 4′s DLC development cycle seemed a little improvised and unstructured, with each phase of development seemingly existing as a self-contained run through 3 or 4 characters, with one of those characters receiving a bit of a head start. In Smash Ultimate’s case, however, I have little doubt that the entire run of characters has at least entered the planning stages, and that the development model is something far more graceful than Smash 4′s.

The (presumed) process model used for Smash 4 was to create characters in batches, spreading the team out across a small number of characters, making sure that there’s enough for everyone to be working on something. In many ways this model seemed to work, but there are certain problems it must have created. Namely, balance testers can’t adjust attack properties until designers are done working on hitboxes. Designers can’t work on hitbox and hurtbox placement until the animators are done animating. Animators can’t animate until the Modelers are done modelling and rigging, etc.

This is why, for the Fighters Pass, a pipeline style of development is ideal. A pipeline model would consist of something like Team A, Team B, Team C, etc.

Team A finishes the first parts of Character 1′s development, then passes them on to Team B as they start on Character 2. Now Team B can finish that part of Character 1, and pass that on to Team C. This continues, until you eventually have Team A working on Character 3, Team B working on Character 2, Team C on Character 1, etc. This way no one’s time is ever wasted, and character releases can happen on a near constant basis.

I may go into further detail on why I think this is the case at a later date, but for now the evidence largely comes from how the two characters have been released so close together, and yet always one at a time.

5Channel Leak 1

So, here it is, the big one. The leak that seems to have gained the most traction. It’s a common misconception that it and the second 5Channel leak are one-and-the-same, but the two contain very different levels of information, with very different levels of credibility. Erdrick, Hayabusa, Steve?, and Doomslayer. A mix of a character from a series hugely popular in Japan, an NES character who had a brief resurgence in the 00s, a rep from arguably the most popular game of all time, and a character from the most influential and most ported FPS of all time.

This one also gets some points for predicting P5R would be coming in 2019, but then loses them again for getting the specifics wrong, neither mentioning its full title, nor getting the general time frame of its release right. Normally just getting the official abbreviation of an announced game right gives a lot of credibility, but that information had already leaked from an official website registration.

So, the character this and the next leak both include, as well as the one the former leak has a Square Enix-shaped opening for... Erdrick.

This is the character that tends to grant a lot of credibility to these leaks, as the character was rumored here well before a certain datamining incident occurred. In the code of Smash Ultimate, there previously existed data for three then-unreleased characters. However, the data for two of those characters did not reference those characters by name, but instead gave them codenames. Specifically, Joker was referenced as ‘Jack’, while the other character was given the name ‘Brave’.

While speculation is open as to what the name ‘Brave’ could mean, such as an equivalent to NATO code, where a word sharing the first letter of the character’s name is used, or perhaps a reference to the game Bravely Default, the most common interpretation is that this refers to the Japanese name of the Dragon Quest main character’s title, which literally translates to brave.

The fact that all three leaks match the datamine in implying the character after Joker is Erdrick is part of what makes them so credible. However, in the case of this leak, it all comes crumbling down thanks to what it says about E3.

“Doom Guy and Steve? will be announced at E3 2019.”

Hoo nelly, I smell a contradiction, or at the very least, a bit of an unlikely scenario.

So, a part of me thinks this person expected Erdrick to be out before E3. That Joker and Erdrick (and maybe Piranha Plant) would be released at roughly the same time, just because of how Smash 4′s DLC went down.

But that rides on the assumption that this leaker actually meant the characters would be coming in the order they posted, and that Erdrick isn’t coming in May or something. But let’s go with that, let’s run with those premises.

Premise 1) Erdrick isn’t next

This Premise is a bit dead-on-arrival, since it means that ‘Brave’ has to either refer to a different character, or that data from the fourth or fifth character slipped in next to the first one. But for the sake of argument, we’ll say that ‘Brave’ actually means ‘Steve?’ due to the similar lettering.

In this scenario, we get both classic and relatively modern reps for Smash, both of which are very well known globally and, while a bit too ‘obvious’ for some, are definitely worthy of inclusion. If there’s ever going to be a time when the Fighters Pass reveals more than one character at a time, it’s going to be E3. If that does happen, I’d assume one would be released on the day, while the other would be for release down the line. Either way, we’re left with one big problem:

The only two characters left to reveal are incredibly Japan-centric. Japanese fans are pretty fond of these characters, but the global appeal of Dragon Quest, while not terrible has never been particularly high, while Ninja Gaiden’s declining sales in the US are part of why the franchise’s brief resurgence in the 00s eventually died off.

All-in-all, these are just two characters that wouldn’t really bring much fanfare if they were all that July 2019-February 2020 had to offer. While Erdrick might work as the final curtain call, it would ultimately mean ending Smash Ultimate off on a spark, rather than a bang. 8 months is a long time to announce nothing but a pair of niche characters.

Premise 2) Erdrick is next

After that last breakdown, having THREE at E3 would really just push the problem even further. Unless Nintendo is secretly publishing a Ninja Gaiden game that’s intended to be the next Breath of the Wild in terms of its magnitude, Ryu Hayabusa simply cannot work as the only character to be announced in all of the second half of 2019.

Unless you want to believe that there’s a second Fighters Pass coming (and that it will be filling out the rest of the space before February 2020), this is a scenario of different factors pushing at each other until something has to give, and that something is the announcement of Doomslayer and Steve? at E3, and if that’s breaking, then this leak breaks down even further.

Oh, and the idea that Steve? was moved from base game to DLC? I find that idea rather suspect. You can’t really change something like that so late in development without making a footprint on your game. Perhaps they scrubbed the files very effectively, with the only remnants being the Microsoft/Rare Spirit data people found, and the extra development time the removal of Steve? created going to Echo Fighter development. Maybe that’s why Isabelle is half-derivative, half-original? Probably not, though.

5Channel Leak 2

When you actually leak something that couldn’t have been reasonably guessed beforehand, you immediately start off on the right foot. Of course, some people have leaked things like this before, and had the other parts of their leak turn out false. In those scenarios, it can be because a person had inside information, and added their own made up information to it for one reason or another (trolling, not wanting to be caught, etc.), and in other scenarios, it’s because they get their information from multiple sources, and one or more of them turn out to be wrong.

However, most of the rest of their Smash leaks have proven to be correct, or are thus-far indeterminate. Joker’s stage was Mementos, and Nintendo has been making a suspiciously big push for the new Dragon Quest games. The only mistake in the leak was that of Jack Frost’s appearance ‘as a skill’ on the Mementos stage.

The details regarding Joker are things I would consider a safe assumption. Mementos just makes sense as a Persona 5 stage, while Jack Frost is a mascot for the superseries, as well as Atlus in general. That he would appear as a stage Easter Egg or in Joker’s moveset is a reasonable expectation. It’s possible that the Leaker (or their source) saw Morgana and thought he was Jack Frost due to a lack of familiarity, or that a Jack Frost cameo was planned but eventually removed.

Another possibility is that this person knew of the datamine information ahead of the general public, learning of the Mementos stage, and used the codename Jack to further spurn on their expectations regarding a Jack Frost appearance.

But that’s a narrative that really can’t be proven, and requires further narrative to explain why they know what they know about the Dragon Quest promotion, or the Granblue game.

So... this leak passes the test. The Erdrick stuff lines up with Vergeben’s generally accurate Smash leak portfolio, Mementos was accurate, and Brave definitely lines up with Erdrick. Personally, I’d rather almost any other character to Erdrick, but I’ll at least take having the remaining three characters still being a mystery.