Solly

My personal most-wanteds (that have a greater-than-zero chance of happening, anyway) are Phoenix Wright and either Jill or Leon from RE. Leon's always been my guy, but I'm kinda leaning toward Jill because she feels less overused and because the pass could honestly use at least one female fighter if we're being honest. Plus out of all the potential RE picks, her goofy design probably fits Smash the most. Apparently Banjo in Smash was an easy deal to make, so I wouldn't be so sure. Crash could still happen though.

Interested in seeing how they'll address the complaints about weapon durability. A lot of players had very immediate, negative reactions to it, but to me it feels like one of those mechanics that you really need to spend a lot of time playing with to see what it does (and doesn't) add to the experience. On one hand, I really liked the "guns and ammo" approach to combat when the game was forcing you to just scavenge and use whatever you could find, almost like Dead Rising. It's part of what made the Great Plateau so compelling and what made Eventide Island and the Master Trials some of the most revered and talked-about sections of the game. It leads to a lot of improvising and emergent gameplay; players are tasked with considering what weapons they want to use, on which enemies, how to obtain them, what happens if they break in the middle of a fight, whether or not they want to throw a nearly-broken sword to score a critical hit on a distant foe, etc. The problem with this system, in my opinion, is that it loses much of its relevance as you progress through the game. After you upgrade your inventory and start finding weapons that last more than a dozen hits, you can easily end up with more than you know what to do with. You can eventually become choosy; I was frequently turning down weapons that did ~40 damage because I had stockpiles of swords, clubs and spears that did ~60. When you're thriving, rather than just surviving, the durability system starts to feel like an inconvenience at best. That's why I think the sequel should either double down on it and make it a more persistent mechanic throughout the entirety of BOTW2, or rethink the whole thing. I'm inclined to think they'd do the latter, though. As mentioned, many of the negative takes on weapon durability are on a conceptual level.

That looks pretty close, although I was thinking he's based on Terry from DQVI. I agree, they really knocked Hero's costumes out of the park. Not only are they great references, they're all very varied and visually striking. And as a fan of the series it's nice to see people having positive reactions online. That's what I thought, too. His name is Angelo. And yes, he does totally look like Trunks, if Trunks were a foppish womanizing card-cheat.

I want Banjo as much as the next guy but people ought to temper their expectations. It's true that Grant doesn't work at RARE anymore, and that he wouldn't need to be informed about whether or not they made it into the game. But just because he wouldn't need to hear about it doesn't mean he couldn't hear about it. We know he's still got friends at the company, and it's not unthinkable for info to have made its way down the grapevine to him. "FrieNDAs" are very much a thing. Personally, I'm inclined to take Grant's "don't hold your breath" comment at face value and say that he's just giving his own opinion, and I do still think Banjo has a shot. I just think all of the "this means nothing" comments are being too dismissive.

Sonic's got gloves in the teaser image. Are they really going to take away his gross little RAT HANDS? How dare they? In all seriousness though, it's good that they're taking their time with it and that revising the design doesn't (necessarily) mean horrible crunch periods for the VFX artists. Also this is quite the movie for Valentine's Day. I wonder if cute couples will get in free.

This question was answered in the game's first video ad, which happened to be the second red flag. I think it only took a few hours for this to be pulled. It's a real mystery how something marketed like this could possibly fail.

I'm not sure if it's possible to understate what a weird pick Artorias would be. Franchises with playable fighters in Smash are usually represented by the main protagonists of at least one of the series' games. It's usually only when the game has no main character (Duck Hunt, Wii Fit) that we get someone else first. Why include him above one of the player characters? Yes, his lore is interesting and he has his own place in the world of Dark Souls 1, but when it comes down to it he really is just a DLC boss. He's a really cool DLC boss, mind you, but he's not your proxy that you experience the game world through, nor was he even memed into relevance like Solaire. And if you're one of the many people I've seen today who read a wiki article on the character and decided "yeah, he seems important enough to be playable" then it's worth pointing out that the lore in Souls games is dense enough that you could write that much about half the bosses in the series. I'd love it if he got in but he feels like too much of a dark horse pick for me to even buy this rumor.

I see this sentiment a lot. It sounds nice but has no basis in reality. If this teaser for L4D3 is real (it probably isn't) then I don't see how it could be done in response to any of Epic's recent exclusive deals, because the game would probably have been in development for a while. And they're not going to change their approach to curation (which has also been slowly evolving over time) because of them either. If Epic moneyhats a big title, that's the end of it; Valve has no recourse but to do the same thing themselves, or make Steam more attractive for publishers so that Epic store exclusivity isn't worth it. Consumers are going to go where the games they want to play are. Valve already offers the better service, so even if they did the things you're mentioning and removed shovelware from the store it wouldn't matter. On the topic of the teaser; it's very well-made but the real-life brands, like Pepsi and Life cereal are red flags to me. It also doesn't look like it's outside the realm of what a fan is capable of faking--there's little in the way of animation. It's mostly just a camera panning through a gas station. I guess we'll see.

General direct, maybe. I think Smash will get a direct (or at least some sort of presentation) by the end of this month. It's hard to imagine them stealth-dropping Joker and the 3.0 update which we know are coming in April.

@tailsBOOM! @KHCast That makes sense, thank you. Hopefully it pans out and we do get a direct on Thursday. I actually like stage builder a lot. Hopefully the one in Ultimate has more to choose from in terms of level gimmicks/pre-made objects, like bumpers, danger zones etc.

Does Nintendo NYC closing early really mean anything?

Is this your entire argument? Are you going to do anything other than hand-wave criticism by saying it's just business? Because everyone already knows that. It doesn't change the consequences consumers face. Valve has on numerous occasions said that they have measures in place to make sure users still have access to their Steam library in the unlikely event of the service shutting down, so unless something's changed I don't think this is true either? There's definitely a discussion to be had about the security that comes from owning a game vs. owning a license for one because this is a legitimate concern, especially when you consider the prospect of streaming/subscriptions/an all digital future, but I don't really see how that's relevant here.