 Well, surprise surprise. The final fighter and the first wave of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate DLC comes from Fire Emblem. Despite being arguably the least interesting character in Fire Emblem 3 houses, player character Byleth has accepted an invitation to Smash, and will now be battling alongside the seven Fire Emblem fighters that were already in the game. Even Masahiro Sakurai himself clearly feels like Fire Emblem in Smash is a joke by this point, as the Smash Direct that revealed Byleth features a complaint that there are too many sword fighters in the game. Why, then? With so many Fire Emblem characters in Smash Bros. already, has yet another been added to the mix? Well, some characters get added to Smash because they'd be fun inclusions, and some get added for the sake of Nintendo cross-promotion. Speaking about Fire Emblem characters in Smash Bros., Masahiro Sakurai once said, industry trends around the time when development begins is a pretty big factor. I started development on Smash for 3DS slash Wii U right after I'd wrapped up Kid Icarus Uprising, and Fire Emblem Awakening was released one month after Uprising, so what's popular around the time when I begin designing the game is important. The decision to include Byleth in Smash was taken while Fire Emblem 3 houses was still in development, and long before Nintendo knew whether the character would actually resonate with players. The DLC team for Smash needed to know how Byleth should behave and what Easter eggs they could include in the 3 houses stage, so Masahiro was allowed to play an early build of the game to get a vague sense of its world. By his own admission, he really struggled. He said, With there being 3 houses and multiple endings it was really hard to get a feel for it, and of course there weren't any walkthroughs I could reference. The game has multiple routes, and the outcome of each is very different. Your experience will vary depending on the route you choose, and many of the characters you meet will adopt different roles in the story. Perhaps this is why the team ultimately based the DLC content around some of the more universal elements of 3 houses, building the game's stage around communal areas in Garrick Merc. But if you're going to include a fighter from 3 houses, arguably the most interesting characters are the house leaders. Why stick with Byleth instead of featuring Dimitri, Claude, or especially Adelgard, who arguably has the most influence of the 3 over the many branching storylines? Well, everyone at Nintendo knows that there's a definite benefit to sticking with the simplest, easiest option, especially when building a character in a game that hasn't been released yet. Masahiro has been burned in the past by assuming that a Fire Emblem game's plot and characters will remain static throughout development. Byleth was by far the safest choice for a game that wasn't yet complete when the team started making plans. All the way back when working on the original Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 64, Masahiro had desperately wanted to include one of his favourite Fire Emblem characters, Marth. He thought, interestingly enough, that there weren't enough swordfighters in this first version of Smash. Clearly, he's been overcompensating ever since. Unfortunately, much of the first Smash Brothers was thrown together at the last minute, and the four secret fighters were built primarily out of reused model parts, so there was no time to put Marth into the game. When he started work on Super Smash Bros. Melee, Masahiro decided right from the start that he wanted to include Marth no matter what. Then, during meetings with Nintendo higher-ups, it was decided that Roy should appear in the game as well. Fire Emblem, the Binding Blade, was in development at the time, and the heads at Nintendo wanted Melee to reference this game. So, having been given instruction to include Roy in Melee, Masahiro talked with the developers at Intelligence Systems who were making the Binding Blade. They gave him a description of who Roy was going to be, and Masahiro used this as the basis for this character in Smash. Then, much to Masahiro's frustration, plans for Roy changed. He said, When I first heard a description of Roy's character, I felt he was a bit more energetic, had a bit more strength inside of him. So, in comparison to Marth, whose sword is stronger at the tip, I made Roy's sword stronger near the hilt, which I felt made them feel very different. But I played Binding Blade and he's really not like that at all. In terms of personality, he's mostly the same as Marth. But in Melee, Roy is expressed as a very strong character because that's how I envisioned him during the development phase. I just want to make it clear his representation in Melee is not because I didn't understand his character. Speaking about this many years after the fact, Masahiro said, I wasn't that angry, but he clearly wasn't very impressed. Perhaps problems like this are why, when asked to include Fire Emblem 3 houses in Smash, Masahiro and his team decided to avoid any element of the game's story or characters that might shift in development. Plus, nobody wants spoilers to creep in by accident. Speaking about the selection of DLC fighters, Masahiro stated back in November of 2018, this time the selection was made entirely by Nintendo. I decide if we can create a fighter based on their selection, then come up with the plan. So from the sounds of it, Nintendo decided that Smash really needed a fighter from Fire Emblem 3 houses and Masahiro's team at Sora Limited decided on the safest, broadest possible choice that would make development as uncomplicated as possible. Sometimes that's just how game development goes. They can't all be left field surprises like Joker. At least six more characters are still on the horizon.