Despite Nintendo and Sora Ltd. ceasing to release major updates for the game quite some time ago, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate remains a bright jewel in the crown of the Switch, sitting in the top five best-selling Nintendo Switch games with a comfortable lead of 31 million units sold over the competition. The game remains popular with casual fans and competitive players alike, but both groups still hope for a Super Smash Bros. Ultimate sequel someday. Smash Ultimate's design philosophy makes its scale a tough act to follow, but if its developers go all in on reworking the playable characters, Smash 6 could still stand out.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is defined by its "Everyone is here!" slogan. When the game was first announced, few could've guessed that Sora Ltd. intended to include every fighter to date, but it managed to do pack in dozens of playable characters anyhow. That puts pressure on the next Smash game to do something special with its characters too, and dramatic reworks might just be the best way forward. Smash has changed a lot over the years, but in many ways its fighters are still echoes of their earliest iterations, so a total overhaul could be exactly what the cast needs to feel fresh again.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's Successor Needs a Hard Reset for its Fighters
A Smash Ultimate sequel will probably still feature all kinds of familiar characters -- Mario, Link, Samus, Pikachu, and a variety of other Nintendo stars. However, they could feel like entirely new characters if they have completely different movesets. Many of these Nintendo stars have seen adjustments in Smash, like Link's use of the Remote Bomb from Zelda: Breath of the Wild in Smash Ultimate, but they still retain a lot of basic moves from their past selves. That makes these characters easier for players to pick up when moving from one Smash game to another, but it also means they risk feeling stale.
There's a case to be made that a lot of Smash characters aren't representative of their franchises these days. Some characters like Donkey Kong have rather generic kits that don't pay much homage to the games they come from, in part because they've preserved a lot of their game design from older Smash entries like Smash 64. A couple characters have grown, but there's still a ways to go. For instance, Ganondorf started to distance himself from being a Captain Falcon clone in Smash Ultimate, but his kit still doesn't fully capture the skills and moments that he's known for in The Legend of Zelda.
A slow pace of change is excusable for rare characters with only a couple iconic appearances, like Sheik, but it shouldn't be the norm for the entire cast. A lot of Nintendo characters have picked up new abilities, gone through major character arcs, and even dabbled in new genres since their earliest Smash days, so Smash Ultimate's sequel ought to put a little more care into capturing the key modern qualities of Nintendo's mascots. Link's BotW and TotK abilities, Mario's friend Cappy from Super Mario Odyssey, Pokemon's ever-expanding list of gimmicks, and other iconic features of Nintendo's current era can inspire wholly new movesets for Smash's oldest fighters.
Luckily there's hope for such character-driven reworks in a new Smash game. Competitive players may have balance questions concerning Smash Ultimate DLC fighters like Minecraft's Steve, but the DLCs generally do an excellent job drawing from their source material. Byleth wields the unique properties of Fire Emblem: Three Houses' most iconic weapons, Steve taps into a multitude of Minecraft mechanics, Min Min brings a striking imitation of Arms gameplay, and so on. Even the Inkling in the Ultimate base game makes rich use of Splatoon's central ink system. The next Smash game can apply that same design philosophy to Nintendo's biggest mascot characters in order to start a new generation for the franchise.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is available now for Nintendo Switch.
