Hey, remember Super Smash Bros. Brawl? Remember the Subspace Emissary adventure mode? Did you see the CG cutscenes? Well, thanks to spoilers, you won’t have any of those in the upcoming Super Smash Bros. for the Wii U and 3DS.
In his bi-weekly column in Weekly Famitsu, Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai revealed some new details about the upcoming game. One major detail he covered was the exclusion of a story mode and CG cutscenes and his reasons behind it.
In the previous game, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the development team took advantage of the rare occasion of having multiple different series’ characters all appear in the same game, so they painstakingly created a special story called the Subspace Emissary, complete with cutscenes for players to enjoy. It was a project that obviously took a lot of thought, time, and energy. And then, the obvious happened…
“Unfortunately, the movie scenes we worked hard to create were uploaded onto the internet.” Sakurai lamented. “You can only truly wow a player the first time he sees [a cutscene]. I felt if players saw the cutscenes outside of the game, they would no longer serve as rewards for playing the game, so I’ve decided against having them.”
Rather than letting a setback ruin things completely, Sakurai has focused on having video sequences that would instead potentially benefit by being spread around. This has led to the new character intro video sequences for the Villager, Mega Man, and the Wii Fit Trainer. Sakurai expressed a desire to make similar videos for all subsequent new characters.
While there will be no story mode, Sakurai assured that the 3DS version would include a feature that would “act as a separate mode from the standard versus play.”
In terms of features that will be added instead of taken away, Sakurai revealed that the 3DS and Wii U versions would have different stages. The 3DS version will have more portable game-themed stages while the Wii U version will have more home console game-themed stages. Sakurai did not specify whether all the stages would be different.
Finally, Sakurai noted that there will be some form of character customisability in the game. This customisation will alter character performance, though in what way is still unclear. Sakurai is also considering a way to allow players to use customisations from their 3DS versions in their Wii U versions of the game.
Sadly, there was not enough space in Sakurai’s column to allow him to talk about online play. Another topic for another time, I guess.
ファミ通.com [ファミ通.com]
Comments
24 responses to “The Next Super Smash Bros. Won’t Have A Story Mode Or Cutscenes”
Well that’s a stupid reason, and pretty disappointing 🙁
Ok now that I’m not on my phone, I can elaborate a bit more…
I enjoy playing games for their single player content and while I enjoyed playing Super Smash Brothers games with friends, these days I don’t find myself playing games locally with friends as much as I used to when I was a kid. For me, playing local multiplayer has always been better than playing online, and as I rarely play multiplayer, the single player content is where it’s at.
Even if Subspace Emissary was “bad” , it was still fun playing through that first before just focusing on the main fighting/multiplayer bit – but fighting against the AI can only be fun for so long. One thing I disliked about Brawl was the lack of single player content. The original SSB didn’t have much of a “campaign” but it was still fun to play through and targets and platforms added some extra content. Melee also had an interesting campaign that felt a bit like a platformer, it was simple but still fun and still had a bunch of random mini-games and whatnot. I do prefer a story mode compared to an arcade, battle through the stages type of thing though.
And what a stupid reason not to include it as well. If they said something like “it’ll take too long to make” or “it wasn’t well received in Brawl” it would’ve been a bit more understandable but to claim spoilers as the main reason is rather absurd. I don’t know how many people actually look up spoilers for games they haven’t played yet but I know my friends and I don’t. It seems like a really small number of people fall into that boat.
I guess with the Wii U’s “online capabilities”, playing multiplayer shouldn’t be too hard but this is still disappointing news.
But… the game isn’t out yet and I’m still looking forward to it, who knows what’ll be like. I just hope there’s plenty of single player content and unlockables that aren’t just all “play X matches” “play for Y hours”, maybe some sort of challenges, more mini-games, targets, platforms, UGH!
So pretty much no reason for me to buy it now (yes I’m one of those weirdos who buys this stuff for the single player).
Thanks for saving me money and giving me even less reason to hold onto my Wii U Sakurai!
+1
It wreaks of “we must hip this game in 2013”. So very disappointing and yet again Nintendo incorrectly telling me what I want. Bummer, was looking forward to this.
Well that sucks.
I’m not entirely sure why most Nintendo games are far simpler than many others, yet take far longer to make…
They are usually highly polished and pretty much bug free.
http://youtu.be/mwM_aQyBgSw Pretty much this.
Except so many other games taste so much better… More depth of flavour variety. And people put a lot more effort into them.
So its like Nintendo is easy Mac that I have to wait 2 hours for.
Well I for one thought the Subspace Emissary was completely stupid. Random levels and random enemies. You have the greatest franchises in history together in one place and you do that?
Why couldn’t you run through a Hyrule, Zebes or Mushroom Kingdom*?
The GameCube version had levels like this. With appropriate enemies.
I think I would prefer nothing to the silliness in the Wii version. It really was bland.
*Not North Korea
Isn’t this a bit like the whole Mass Effect thing, where they changed the final portion of the plot because someone leaked the original (and quite possibly more sensible conclusion).
Stupid, stupid, stupid. That’s like going to the bar and being refused service because the bartender knows that me having a drink will get me drunk.
I don’t know why people keep saying that. The writers said that they had a few unfinished ideas that they were throwing around, they just decided on the one that fit best for ME3. I think it suited the story quite nicely.
I quite liked the Subspace Emissary in Brawl. Good intro to the game and mechanics, and encourages you to try out a range of different characters.
No Master Hand battles any more? 🙁
Kinda silly reason right there. Sure Subspace Emissary wasn’t the reason I bought the game, but it was a nice, easy bonus with some entertainment value.
Games should be about gameplay, not movies.
Some people (like me) treat video games as stories you can interact with. I’d take a game with an awesome story but with minimal gameplay over some “fun” game with an underwrought narrative holding it together.
Just make another story mode akin to the melee version, that was really fun, and a blast to play through over and over again.
And no stickers!!!!! needs more trophies!
Wow. What lazy development. and the want gamers to choose WiiU over Ps4 and Xbox0ne?
Some people are far too forgiving of Nintendo
Every time I hear something about this game, I’m disappointed. Sounds like it’s going to be a rushed mess.
A lot of knee jerk reactions going around based on a small article written in Japanese,
Subspace was great, but It’s inclusion wasn’t the reason I bought Smash Bros Brawl. It’s one of the best multiplayer games around, the single player has never been it’s selling point.
There will still be a single player component, just as the original and melee had.
Clearly he hasn’t played Metal Gear Solid or any other modern JRPG if he thinks people in the modern age won’t actually play a game whose extensive cutscenes are viewable online.
Subspace Emissary was awesome, the cutscenes were my third favourite part of Brawl(1. the game, 2. that awesome music collection 3. Subspace cutscenes) so this is really disappointing, mostly because of that lame reason.