 Pyra and Mithra from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 have arrived in Smash. Their inclusion isn't too much of a surprise. Masahiro Sakurai has previously stated that the two new fighters, added as a pair as part of the Fighter's Pass Volume 2, have been in development for quite some time. In an interview in 2019, Sakurai admitted that, during the development of Super Smash Bros Ultimate, the team had discussed the possibility of adding characters from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 to the game, but essentially ran out of time to do so. He said, Looking at how things are now, it may seem like a stranger mission that there aren't any new fighters from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and ARMS. However, this is because they needed to be included from the very beginning at the planning stages. It's not possible to decide to include two or more characters when you're in the thick of development. Since this point, the team at Sora Limited have slowly added a series of DLC fighters to Smash, which essentially fall into one of two camps. Iconic characters from third-party developers and characters from recently released games published by Nintendo, such as Byleth from Fire Emblem, Three Houses, Min Min from ARMS, and now Pyra and Mithra. These are essentially the characters that would have made the cut for the initial Smash Ultimate roster had there been time to add them earlier. Sakurai has made it clear that he's not allowed to simply play favourites when adding DLC characters to Smash. The decision for who gets added to the roster is primarily made by his overseers at Nintendo. It's not at all surprising that the company wants to prioritise fighters that serve as advertising for games they're currently selling. While Xenoblade fans are happy to see Pyra and Mithra join Smash, this move is not without controversy, not least because both new characters add to the growing number of sword fighters in the game. Even their accompanying new me fighters from Monster Hunter and Ghosts and Goblins all use swords. To those who object to swords, Masahiro Sakurai feels your pain, and has plainly stated that this wasn't exactly his idea. That said, there's a significant benefit to adding Pyra and Mithra to Smash. It's simple to implement and accurately balance sword fighters. Speaking about Pyra and Mithra on the Washer Live podcast Sakurai said, sword fighters? Hey, it is what it is. Like it or not, it's not up to me whether another sword fighter goes in the game. Even if it is another sword fighter, it will be fine as long as we balance them properly, and in contrast sword fighters are easy. Compare that with Steve. Steve and the rest of the Minecraft characters were incredibly difficult to add into Smash Brothers, not because of their character designs, which are nice and simple, but because the team wanted to include the ability to build with blocks in each stage. To do this, they had to tweak every single stage to allow blocks to be placed within them. This was a scale back part of the plan. They had considered allowing players to create full stages in Minecraft and allow people to import them into Smash. This was soon deemed impossible, but even so, the work that went into Steve was tremendous, and it's understandable that the developers wouldn't want to go through quite so much with Mithra and Pyra. Considering that the team already works such ridiculous hours that Sakurai periodically ends up being hospitalised, perhaps it's fair to let them design a quick and easy sword fighter to balance out the more challenging fighters. This isn't to say that Sora Limited didn't consider doing something complicated and difficult for the latest DLC. There were talks about featuring the protagonist of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Rex, in tandem with Mithra or Pyra, in the style of the Ice Climbers, says Sakurai. During development, we considered having Rex fight alongside Pyra and Mithra, however, getting a simple duo like Ice Climbers to work was already pushing the boundaries of what we could do in the game. If everyone uses Ice Climbers, a battle with 8 fighters becomes a battle with 16 fighters. We had to make a lot of sacrifices to get them to work, and Pyra and Mithra probably have the most complex designs in the game. So, for the sake of keeping the game actually playable, and in an effort to keep Mithra and Pyra's character models as visually distinctive as possible, Rex was relegated to an occasional support appearance, cheering on his blades without being constantly present on screen, draining precious CPU rendering power. So, if your favourite character still hasn't made it into Smash, don't despair just yet. While the timing for Mithra and Pyra wasn't quite right for their initial inclusion in Super Smash Bros Ultimate, they got their chance in the end. Sometimes, we've all just got to be patient, and have hope that tomorrow will be better. It's rubbish, but that's the world we live in at the moment.