Xenoblade Chron­i­cles 2 Char­ac­ter Re­ceives Rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Su­per Smash Broth­ers

MISHAWAKA – The new Nin­tendo Di­rect that aired Feb. 17 listed not only a se­lec­tion of games com­ing later this year or early next year, it also an­nounced the next char­ac­ter for Su­per Smash Broth­ers. 

At long, long, LONG last, a Xenoblade Chron­i­cles 2 rep­re­sen­ta­tive has made its way into Smash, pleas­ing me to no end. Pyra and Mythra, the deuter­ag­o­nists of the game, were an­nounced at the be­gin­ning of the Di­rect on Feb. 17. Though not much is known about their move set ex­actly, they are two char­ac­ters in one, with play­ers be­ing able to freely switch be­tween the two as they see fit. This is iden­ti­cal to the way they work in the orig­i­nal game. 

I, for one, am ec­sta­tic at their ar­rival, as they have been my most-wanted char­ac­ters ever since the game was an­nounced. I was so dis­heart­ened to learn that Masahiro Saku­rai had not added the pro­tag­o­nist, Rex, due to time con­straints, and made him a Mii cos­tume in­stead of a fully-fledged char­ac­ter. I al­most lost all faith that they would add any Xenoblade Chron­i­cles 2 char­ac­ter af­ter that, but since a few char­ac­ters in the game also had Mii cos­tumes, I held out hope. 

Words can­not ex­press how over­joyed I was when the an­nounce­ment came on screen. Words can ex­press, how­ever, how dis­ap­pointed al­most every other Smash fan felt about the ad­di­tion, and ex­press it they did on Twit­ter. Leagues of fans com­mented un­der sev­eral of­fi­cial an­nounce­ment tweets about how dis­gusted they were (us­ing much more col­or­ful lan­guage), lead­ing me to be­lieve that this is the most con­tro­ver­sial char­ac­ter since Byleth, the last “anime sword­fighter” to be added. 

The main gripe with the char­ac­ters is not nec­es­sar­ily the char­ac­ters them­selves, but more so with the type of char­ac­ter, de­ri­sively re­ferred to as the “anime sword­fighter.” As I men­tioned in my ear­lier piece on Byleth, sword-based char­ac­ters adorn the ros­ter, lead­ing fans to take is­sue with the lack of cre­ative and novel char­ac­ters, or, and this is much more likely, the lack of char­ac­ters that they want. 

All in all though, fans com­plain­ing about the new char­ac­ter is noth­ing new and will hap­pen with just about any new in­tro­duc­tion. My per­spec­tive on the char­ac­ter, how­ever, is noth­ing short of ela­tion, and I could not be more ex­cited at the prospect of new peo­ple learn­ing about Xenoblade Chron­i­cles 2, and the en­tire se­ries, as it is cer­tainly one of my fa­vorites and de­serves more recog­ni­tion than it has.