The Super Smash Bros. Ultimate roster of fighters just increased again. The game’s director Masahiro Sakurai announced via broadcast on Thursday morning that Byleth will be the latest addition to the Nintendo Switch game. Byleth is a Fire Emblem character from the Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which was released in 2019. The character will be the first addition from this strategy game.
In Three Houses, Byleth was a professor at a military school who could be either male or female depending on the player’s preference. These two gender options will also be available for Smash‘s adaptation of the character, who will become available on January 28. Sakurai went into further detail about Byleth, saying that the character may have low mobility but is skilled at fighting from a distance. Byleth has the hero’s relic from Three Houses, a weapon that changes depending on the direction of attack.
The long video clip started with a reveal trailer and was followed by Mr. Sakurai breaking down Fire Emblem and Byleth’s character within Super Smash. He’s honestly entertaining to watch as he dives into the specifics of the game.
Byleth looks like a cool character and all, but they literally said the fighters pass 1 was going to be from franchises that aren’t already represented in Smash so I’m pretty disappointed.
— Grace And Glory (@gng_ssb) January 16, 2020
My reaction to discovering an /eighth/ FIRE EMBLEM character has been added to the roster: shouting “BOOOOOO” on the street and startling passersby #SmashDirect
— Clare McBride (@omnivoreal) January 16, 2020
Imagine being a Nintendo employee and being given a super top-secret new character to work on for Smash, and it ends up being BYLETH
— AJ (@Aleczandxr) January 16, 2020
Time for some actual opinions I guess
As an inclusion, I’m disappointed that Byleth was chosen to cap off this Fighters Pass considering how many Fire Emblem characters we already have, but gameplay wise they look really neat which more than makes up for it imo
— Frostsamurai (@Frost_Samurai) January 16, 2020
Byleth for smash…. really? gotta say this is a first that i’m genuinely disappointed— there really wasn’t a need for yet another fire emblem character :\\
— ℭ???? ♡ (@kamadowo) January 16, 2020
linhardt approaches “edelgard” to ask for his chongo back, then she turns around and it’s byleth pic.twitter.com/aMIMjANHoW
— ⠒̱⃝ parker ⠒̱⃝ COMM BACKLOG + SHOP PREP! (@DiOPPIO) January 16, 2020
The people have spoken. That said, there was a large share of fans who either didn’t care or were actually okay with Byleth’s addition. But it seems that an overwhelming amount of people were expecting something different when they watched the live-stream. Either way, Byleth is a part of Super Smash Bros. now, and maybe the next reveal will garner a different general reaction!
Featured Image: Majora’s Puppet/YouTube
