Super Smash Bros. for Wii U/3DS - Settle It In Smash!

[Sami]

> ZSS Smash 4 design

> downgrade

 

Have you seen her Brawl design? Just awful. Samus actually looks like a proper human being here, face-wise. And the rocket boots are an ingenious idea, and actually makes the high heels springy and practical, like Chell's Long Fall Boots from Portal.

 

Smash 4's ZSS is one of the last character's I'd ever describe as looking like a "proper human being". She looks like a Barbie. 

 

 

I don't see how those heels look efficient at all, either. They'd have to be flatter lest she break her ankles falling from any sort of distance. As they are they're way too thin and elevated. Boots would not only have been more fitting for the character, but also look much more practical. They should have given her combat boots or something.

[Salamander]

Seems to me that the Smash Bros. team wanted to be faithful to the most recent design but thought like most of us that the high heels are idiotic, and the jet heels are their compromise.

[Sami]

Seems to me that the Smash Bros. team wanted to be faithful to the most recent design but thought like most of us that the high heels are idiotic, and the jet heels are their compromise.

 

So to compromise for idiotic high heels they made them even more ridiculous...?

[PSI Wind]

I seriously barely see a difference between the two designs between SSB4 and SSBB. They look pratically identical to me. And considering the game is generally zoomed out, we'll barely notice anyways.

[JezMM]

Bulky boots do ruin the slim look of the zero suit though.  Every attempt I've seen to give her boots makes her design really bottom heavy.  The heels, despite their technical impracticality, are so bare-bones in design they just sort of have a "clipped on" look that doesn't affect her overall silhouette or lose the athletic aesthetic.

[Carbo]

Any human design in Brawl was straight up hideous. Marth and Zero Suit Samus were the guiltiest offenders and looked absolutely awful in those games. Despite ZSS being modeled after the Prime 3 iteration, it looked nothing alike. The game not only had a terrible color palette but also had the most dead, lifeless faces imaginable and were uncanny valley territory.

I could do without the heels on Zero Suit Samus, however it is not a big deal to me. I appreciate Sakurai wanting to stay faithful to one of the more recent games in terms of design representation while at least taking some liberties to justify it's practicality, and character design was hardly one of the worse things in terms of Other M's many offenses. The primary color palette in Smash 4 is easily remedying some of the many worse aspects of Brawl, as well as Other M come to think of it.

Samus sporting a bit more of a stylized look here is hardly the equivalence of barbie doll depiction. She's expressive, agile and overall, generally more appealing to look at when placed alongside her peers. Sexualized or not, she, along with Marth and a plethora of other inclusions, have been changed to blend much more with the rest of the cast and look less out of place. If the price of that is that I have to see her sport Bayonetta shoes then frankly I say let Sakurai go nuts, because at the very least I'm not looking at a model going for a jarring and dead realistic angle. If the games they hail from want to go for a more detailed approach then by all means they can do that - but trying to emulate their exact appearances is one of the many things that can make crossovers like these fall flat on their face, case in point being Playstation All-Stars.

Incidentally, even if her general design attributes are modeled more after Other M her facial details has a lot more common with her look in Prime 3. Team Ninja did a pretty hideous job at modeling Samus anywhere outside of the pre-rendered cutscenes courtesy of D-Rockets.

[azoo]

Yeah, I suppose you're right. Like said, I don't particularly have a problem with it as much as I just kind of questioned the decision.

 

As long as Samus is her own different thing outside of Smash, I'm fine. Link and others aren't exactly representative of future installments either, anyways.

[MegasonicZX]

I think its kind of funny that she's been named a barbie doll through all of this even though the real barbie doll here is peach

[Blitz 'n Burst]

The heels are clearly spring-loaded, giving her extra power in her legs, never mind the fucking rockets that are also attached. Also ZSS' moveset is based almost entirely around kicks. Have you ever been kicked by a girl wearing heels? Because it fucking hurts.

[Sami]

The heels are clearly spring-loaded, giving her extra power in her legs, never mind the fucking rockets that are also attached. Also ZSS' moveset is based almost entirely around kicks. Have you ever been kicked by a girl wearing heels? Because it fucking hurts.

 

The heels are clearly quite thin and long, making them very unstable for quick movements and long jumps, never mind falling from fifty feet in the air like Smash characters do every ten seconds. Have you ever broken your ankle from falling on your foot wrong? Because it fucking hurts.

[ProfessorZolo]

I think you're forgetting something critically important here.

This is a video game.

Fun is the primary objective, not realism. If we're going to get all technical about the physical effect heels would have on a fight, let's also think about how the characters can breathe in space, and not turn into charcoal when in contact with fire. Hm?

Rocket heels are only as ridiculous as everything else the Smash series has offered.

[Sami]

I think you're forgetting something critically important here.

This is a video game.

Fun is the primary objective, not realism. If we're going to get all technical about the physical effect heels would have on a fight, let's also think about how the characters can breathe in space, and not turn into charcoal when in contact with fire. Hm?

Rocket heels are only as ridiculous as everything else the Smash series has offered.

 

Would the game have been less fun if her they had given her shoes that didn't look blatantly stupid? 

[ProfessorZolo]

Would the game have been less fun if her they had given her shoes that didn't look blatantly stupid?

'Look stupid'? That's your opinion. Frankly, I disagree. I like the clipped on look, and the complementary yellow glow.

And of course, that's just my opinion.

Edit:

And might I add- Would the game's fun be affected for you if the boots changed? This goes both ways.

[Sami]

'Look stupid'? That's your opinion. Frankly, I disagree. I like the clipped on look, and the complementary yellow glow.

And of course, that's just my opinion.

 

Lovely. As far as I recall there wasn't a time at which I claimed my opinions were objective fact. 

 

I don't, however, see how my complaints are somehow invalidated by the fact that this is a video game. You're of course free to disagree, but I don't see how breathing in space is at all relevant to the fact that anyone with eyes can see the intent they had when changing Samus' design.

[Indigo Rush]

While we're at it, let's talk about how pointy shoes wouldn't work for someone who runs an average of 700 mph

 

 

...noodle-limbs and mono-eyes notwithstanding.

 

What's practical isn't always what's used. Samus' boots are hardly a problem in the bigger picture.

[Sami]

The primary difference there is that Sonic's design was never changed to be more unrealistic, nor did the series ever have a more grounded look to it like Metroid did.

 

But whatever, I don't care enough about this to argue about it for multiple pages. It's clear that Samus has been very blatantly sexualized, and that's not something I care for. Obviously didn't start with Smash 4, but this is the worst it's ever been.

[Indigo Rush]

 

I don't think the high-heel boots are that much of an oddity.

 

But whatever. This thread is about Smash Bros, not Samus' sexualization.

[ProfessorZolo]

Honestly, I'm not seeing it. The whole 'over sexualised' thing, I mean. To me, she looks more-or-less the same as she always has, except with Other M's zero suit.

...I dunno, maybe she's a little less skinny than she was in Brawl too?

[Mando-Whirl-Wind]

 

I don't think the high-heel boots are that much of an oddity.

 

But whatever. This thread is about Smash Bros, not Samus' sexualization.

She was also raised by bird people and infused with their blood, for all we know she moults and smells like a bird, and added heels cause she wanted a rear foot talon

[SIXTH-RATE SOMA]

I think you're forgetting something critically important here.

This is a video game.

Comrade, video game or not, people do have genuine concerns here, concerns that wouldn't change much in film, books, or television. It's not enough to say that a game is merely entertainment, and thus that these things aren't problems. The more people defend the backwards nature of a new medium, the longer it stays backwards; just look at poor comic books. Video games have proven themselves capable of telling amazing stories and crafting interesting experiences; if the medium is to grow any further, we must take a closer look at what we consider integral to the medium. And I, for one, don't believe such nonsense to have any permanent place in the heart of the video game, this thing I've come to love.

[Wraith]

I honestly don't see a huge difference between how samus looks now and how she looked in the other smash bros and metroid games. You know, aside from the heels, which were probably intended to be more of a style thing than anything else. Smash Bros has always gone for overexaggerated and stylized depictions of their characters over practical ones. 

 

I've seen a few people say it looks like she's wearing some kind of makeup, and I initially thought the same thing, but I noticed that Link has a similar effect on HIS eyes. It's probably just an effect to make them look more intimidating. Or Link is wearing makeup. 

[Sami]

I honestly don't see a huge difference between how samus looks now and how she looked in the other smash bros and metroid games. You know, aside from the heels, which were probably intended to be more of a style thing than anything else. Smash Bros has always gone for overexaggerated and stylized depictions of their characters over practical ones. 

 

I've seen a few people say it looks like she's wearing some kind of makeup, and I initially thought the same thing, but I noticed that Link has a similar effect on HIS eyes. It's probably just an effect to make them look more intimidating. Or Link is wearing makeup. 

 

So that's why people keep calling him Zelda!

 

edited the delivery of the joke there hehe

[Mando-Whirl-Wind]

for that matter, Samus is barely human at all, she has so much Chozo, metroid, and X DNA in her, then throw in some Phazon corruption, its surprising she hasnt started growing feathers or become translucent by now, heels should be the least of our worries, and in hindsight the old Nintendo power of her with purple hair might eventualy become accurate XD

[JezMM]

I don't really see her as that much more sexualised than she did before either.  She has pretty much the same figure her modern look has always had (only the early games portrayed her as muscular or super tall etc).

 

I honestly think most of the aesthetic changes that make her look more attractive are basically just side effects of redesigning her for the higher graphical fidelity.

 

 

I guess I just don't see heels as being automatically a sexual thing.  I think they look cool and flashy.

[Blitz 'n Burst]

While I'm still a little upset over Squirtle's removal, the fact that Charizard is a standalone character means they don't need to balance him with the other two Pokémon in mind and can focus on making him an absolute beast this time around. I'm incredibly excited to see what they do with him.