Internet Archeology 001 | Code: SWORDSMEN- What We Can Learn From Byleth In Smash Bros
Welcome to my new ongoing series, Internet Archeology. Here, my intention is to recap and analyze old Internet trends, memes, and controversies, unpacking what happened, why it happened, and what we can learn from the past. Here’s hoping that you will find this both informative and entertaining!
As you may or may not know, I have some experience with the Super Smash Bros. franchise and community (I even went to 2022 SmashCon, and it was great!) But more so than anything else, I am no stranger to the game and community’s many controversies, and how they changed the people in the community as a result. I wanted to start my Internet Archeology series in familiar territory, and what’s more familiar and ingrained into everybody’s minds than the century that was the year 2020. I remember back in January of that year, when the biggest thing on anybody’s mind was a certain “anime swordfighter”…
What Happened?
On January 16, 2020, the 1st DLC pack of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate came to a close with the announcement of its fifth and final character: Byleth (both male and female), the main protagonist of Fire Emblem: Three Houses.
But unlike the character reveals both before and after this one, which were generally met with somewhat positive to very positive reactions, something was very different this time around. If you have the ability to view the Like/Dislike ratio for the reveal trailer on YouTube, you can see that it’s…not great. Reactions on Twitter were much more mixed than usual, with many people more so underwhelmed than anything. And the live reactions are just as telling.
Just for a point of reference, look how excited people got over a Mii costume:
So yeah. Quite a few people were not satisfied.
Why Did This Happen?
First of all, I’m just going to put my cards on the table: I’m not the biggest fan of Byleth’s inclusion; not about the “generic anime-style swordfighter” thing, I just think the DLC packs should have had more…exciting characters. Others were just as unhappy as I was, for much the same reason (I will say, though, it’s impressive that they managed to make female Byleth look cute instead of bug-eyed and weird like in Fire Emblem: Three Houses).
And as we all know, whenever a large portion of a fandom expresses discontent, an equally, if not more vocal portion of said fandom swoops down to shush them into submission because “you’re making us look bad! Stop whining and just be happy with what you get!” or whatever.
I’m not surprised that some people defended Byleth’s inclusion, but I AM surprised at how poor the defenses for Byleth’s inclusion actually were. Here’s just the ones I’ve heard, and why they don’t quite work:
“Byleth’s Not Just A Swordfighter! Look, They Have An Axe And Stuff!”
Byleth’s main draw as a Smash fighter and representative of their respective game is wielding four special weapons known as “Heroes’ Relics”: a sword for upward attacks, a lance for side attacks, an axe for downward attacks, and a bow for (two) neutral attacks.
So it’s not just a sword, like a majority of Fire Emblem characters. There’s other stuff too! This is an improvement, right?
…eh.
Sure, the weapons *look* different, but think about what’s actually happening here.
Super Smash Bros. is a 2D platform fighter, so combat styles featured within need to be reimagined in terms of a two-dimensional space. As such, characters in 2D fighting games who do hand-to-hand combat weapons can be loosely put into one category, as can characters with melee weapons like swords, and then characters who mainly use ranged attacks like with guns.
In a 2D space, swinging an axe is hardly different from swinging a sword. Thrusting a spear or lance is hardly different from thrusting a sword. If all the Relics except the bow were replaced with the sword, nothing that drastic would change.
Besides the bow adding some range, Byleth is functionally a swordfighter.
“There’s More Pokémon Characters AND Mario Characters Than Fire Emblem Characters!”
File this one under “a misunderstanding”. However genuine or however willful, I’ll never know, but this keeps coming up and I feel the need to put it to rest once and for all.
Yes, there’s lots of Mario characters in Super Smash Bros. Yes, there’s also lots of Pokémon characters in Super Smash Bros.
You know what else there is? An actual reason for them to be in Super Smash Bros!
Sure, the Fire Emblem characters aren’t AS homogenous as they appear to the average player, but the major distinctions between them really only come up at the top level, where even the most subtle differences between two seemingly interchangeable characters can place them miles apart in the tier list. Within franchises that have more than three representatives in Super Smash Bros, Fire Emblem has a noticeably higher than average ratio of echo fighters to unique fighters, except for The Legend of Zelda, debatably.
Within other series with lots of representation in Smash, there’s so much more variety in terms of fighting styles. You can’t honestly tell me that Mario plays anything like Yoshi, or that Jigglypuff plays anything like Greninja. Fire Emblem, on the other hand, seems to cut all its characters from essentially the same cloth; most of them have several traits in common, most noticeably similarly almost-completely-vertical up-Bs, as well as counters (other characters in the Smash roster have counters as well, but until Ultimate, Robin was the only Fire Emblem character without a counter). It’s pretty easy to learn the other Fire Emblem fighters once you’ve learned one of them.
This is also why non-Fire Emblem characters whose movesets feature swords aren’t usually put under the label of “anime swordfighter”. Pyra and Mythra, for instance, have less in common with the playstyles of Fire Emblem characters than the Fire Emblem characters have with each other. So if you were one of those people making jokes about the Smash community being upset whenever any character with a sword was announced, or calling them hypocritical for decrying “anime swordfighters” while requesting characters like Sora, just know that you were missing the point: it’s not the number of Fire Emblem characters, it’s the lack of variety in play styles when compared to other series with several representatives.
“Ugh, Fire Emblem Can’t Exist Without Getting Criticized!”
Like I said before, there’s quite a few Smash fans with a mild to strong hatred of Fire Emblem characters in Smash, mostly because of how generic they feel across the board. Even Dunkey jumped on this bandwagon upon Byleth’s initial reveal:
But believe it or not, there was a way for Byleth to be announced that would have cut down on a good portion of the backlash. It wouldn’t involve cutting them out of the first DLC pack, or changing anything about the character itself. Consider the following:
The real problem isn’t any of the characters themselves. It’s how they were announced.
Now, this is just me thinking like a marketing student for a second (look, it’s my one claim to any sort of expertise, I had to put it somewhere), but hear me out when I say that if the order of announcements went like this…
- 1st: Joker
- 2nd: Hero
- 3rd: Byleth
- 4th: Terry
- 5th/ Last: Banjo & Kazooie
…then there was a potential to minimize the “salt” from the community.
Think about it: the pack starts the way it previously did, with Joker bringing the hype as the first DLC character, having been highly requested, and Hero following up with some interesting mechanics of his own, with both fighters being non-Nintendo characters to boot, bringing hype and making sales. So far, so good.
Now here comes the tricky part. For this hypothetical alternate timeline with a re-ordered DLC announcement order, we’re still keeping all the characters in the pack, and we’re keeping the characters themselves and even their announcement trailers exactly as the way they are. And no matter how you slice it, somebody isn’t going to be happy about a Fire Emblem character sitting at the same table as all these cool, interesting outsiders.
And that’s where Terry comes in. While Fatal Fury and King of Fighters aren’t as popular as other fighting game series, Terry Bogard is still very much a recognizable character, and while people weren’t as vocal about wanting his inclusion as many characters that frequent the Smash ballots, very few were outright upset about it. Therefore, it’s most logical that Terry, in this alternate universe, is announced fourth, to restart some of the potentially flagging excitement in the aftermath of Byleth’s reveal.
And last but certainly not least (that’s kind of the point I’m making here), we have Banjo & Kazooie, another highly requested third-party fighter to end the first round of DLC on a high note. If the reaction videos on YouTube are anything to go by, this would have been a more than acceptable ending to the DLC pack.
Obviously I don’t have future vision and can’t say for sure whether this would play out the way I envisioned, but it’s something to consider.
What Can We Learn?
There’s a couple of key take-aways here, I think. First of all, that it’s hard, if not impossible, to represent the wants, needs, and desires of everybody at the same time.
That said, it’s probably in your best interest to do everything you can, especially if you’re an entertainment company whose livelihood depends on meeting the wants of your audience.
But there’s one lesson to be learned here that stands above the rest: If you’ve dissatisfied with a company’s actions, don’t be afraid to let your opinion be known (as long as that’s all you’re doing, threatening and harassing people is off-limits, not that I need to tell most of you anyway). Don’t let anybody pretend to care that you might be coming off as “harsh” or “toxic” for simply voicing your dislike of something; they’re not interested in conversation. They don’t care why you’re angry and disappointed, only that you are angry and disappointed.
Thanks so much for reading. Until next time, stay on the hook!
