Fans of Fire Emblem have been given the star treatment in Super Smash Bros for Wii U and 3DS, with 4 confirmed characters from the Fire Emblem series appearing in the new game. However, those who played Fire Emblem Awakening have been severely disappointed with the lack of one major protagonist: Chrom.
Nintendo recently announced that Lucina, Robin and Captain Falcon will be joining the roster of Smash Bros 4; with Lucina and Robin being from Fire Emblem Awakening, whilst Captain Falcon is a returning character. They also announced that you can select a female version of Robin due to this character being the player’s avatar in the game. Despite seeing him during the CGI cinematic, Chrom wasn’t confirmed to be playable and instead only appears in Robin’s Final Smash move. Masahiro Sakurai, the developer of the Super Smash Bros games, explains in depth why he didn’t want to include Chrom:
“At the end of the day, Chrom would just end up being another plain-old sword-wielder like Marth and Ike. Compared with other characters, he lacks any unique characteristics.”
You might then be wondering what the purpose of including Lucina might be, considering she seems to have Marth’s exact moves and even looks very similar to him. Sakurai also explains this decision:
“Lucina uses the same techniques as Marth, a fighter with whom I’m sure most of you are already familiar. I even went so far as to make their strength, speed, and special attacks almost identical.
However, what sets Lucina apart is the fact that the strength of her attacks is uniform along the blade. Marth’s playstyle emulates the elegant swordplay of a fencer by dealing more damage when he strikes with the tip of his blade, but the damage Lucina deals is evened out. Thus, I think that Lucina will be much easier than Marth for novice players to play with.”“Initially, I had considered including Lucina as one of Marth’s alternate costumes. After all, she has a close relationship with him in FE:A. In such cases, even if two characters’ names and voices differ, as long as they function the same way, I assign them as alternate costumes. The Wii Fit Trainers, Villagers, and Robin are examples of this setup.
However, even though Lucina shares her physical stats and techniques with Marth, the characteristics of their attacks differ. When two such similar characters function in an even slightly different manner, I give them a separate spot on the roster since that will affect battle records and whatnot. In that sense, you could say she was very lucky to join the fray!”
So there you have it. Sakurai didn’t exclude Chrom due to any unfair reasons, but instead he felt that both Robin and Lucina would be more unique choices. Admittedly, it would have been overkill to have practically two Marths in the game and it’s interesting to see a slight variation on Marth with Lucina. We’ll certainly see how all these characters operate when Super Smash Bros launches later this year for Wii U and 3DS.
Source: My Nintendo News
