Erdrick in Smash Ultimate, and Why It's Not as Likely as You Think it is: A TED Talk by yours truly

/thread/

(can't wait for this to be shot down and then bashed by his fans lol initiate the shitshow)

Alright well, let's start off positively.

He's got a few points going for him.
- SE seems interested in promoting DQ in the West
- Japan fucking loves DQ3 in particular (see below)
- DQ3 is the best selling in the series
- DQXIS is coming to Switch and is the definitive addition

ok now here comes the shitshow

Erdrick has started gaining notoriety around the smash community since about November when we were given the go ahead on DQ by leakers.

But consider this: literally none of them are credible.

It's hard for me to act like I know everything because I don't, however, Hitagi saying no ATLUS reps is incredibly telling of his credibility.

DQ was only also backed by Xenother, who has gotten a whole lot of nothing right thus far, and LeakyPandy which writes itself.

It's also worth noting insiders started backing a list of characters before Joker however it never gained much traction.

This list included Tales of, TOWN, Melmetal, DQ, and Steve.

TOWN, Melmetal, and Tales of were all leakbait

Steve has henceforth been deconfirmed.

Top that onto the fact Square has been known to jebait leakers pretty hard, and the fact that Erdrick and Luminary were heard the most of any other Square character on the list, it's VERY possible this has all been incredibly elaborate bait.

Dragon Quest has always performed poorly in the West.

Erdrick is left in a weird spot because of that.

He's not the first one, he's not the most recent one, and he's the most popular of a franchise only Japan cares about.

It seems counterintuitive for a widespread audience.

Erdrick has never had any support. Japan likes DQ3, but they hardly care about Erdrick.

Take for instance, this poll. Slime is at 15, Monster Hunter (also wildly popular in Japan), at 20, but Erdrick nowhere to be seen.

Slime in of itself is a massive wall in Erdrick's way.

I've heard Armor Project and Square have a huge bias for this little thing, and he was even put into Sports Mix and Fortune Street on Square's own accord.

Slime is like the Pikachu or Agumon of DQ.

It seems unlikely that Slime, a commonly recognized character even to foreign regions, would be passed over for a generic protagonist, let alone one who is only important to the lore of a franchise, not its legacy.

The little fucker's even got his series of own spinoffs.

Erdrick himself has not been playable since the 1980's at DQ3's launch if you don't count ports.

Negotiations are always brought up to denounce characters, but Erdrick, and DQ as a whole, has it rough.

Bird Studios, Armor Project, Square Enix, Akira Toriyama, and Koichi Sugiyama.

That's FIVE whole parties needed to be in the discussions.

Armor Project and Square Enix have ownership over DQ somewhat akin to ATLUS, Sega and SMT and Persona.

They make it and own it, but it's published and on a larger scale owned by SE.

Akira Toriyama owns the character design as well.

He's been prone to cause issues with his characters pretty much not being the main shit in crossovers as far as I know.

He also played a part in the near shutdown of Dragonball FighterZ

Koichi Sugiyama is easily the biggest problem here and trust me it's a MASSIVE problem.

Final Fantasy had two songs.

We'd be lucky to get ONE Midi of a song from DQ.

Sugiyama is a massively controversial figure.

He's a known homophobe and Holocaust denier. It's also taken him over 30 YEARS to finally give the West a proper DQ soundtrack.

Now, look at me, and tell me with a straight face family friendly Nintendo is gonna wanna deal with that

Compare that to the other popular Square rep, Sora.

Sora is co-owned by Disney and Square, who have both stated they're open to it.

Yoko Shimmomura is already on the music team and has been contributing remixes to Smash for a long while.

Nomura and Sakurai are friends, as well

Nomura and Sakurai have even talked about Kingdom Hearts and mentioned doing another collaboration or project together.

Now let's get to the real meat and potatos

BRAVE.

Brave is a codename that was found in the data for Super Smash Bros Ultimate under the fighters category next to "Packun" and "Jack", Piranha Plant and Joker respectively.

Brave, as a codename, literally cannot be Erdrick.

As proven by this Instagram post people thought was a hard confirmation of Erdrick, Brave is a way of referring to Erdrick.

This is the same as putting "Akira" or "Ren" as Joker's codename

Off topic, but it's entirely possible this post breaks NDA.

However, this point is potentially flimsy and should not be used as a means of hard fact denying Erdrick's presence in the game.

It is merely a possibility.

Now let's consider Brave's height and stats.

As provided by Mizumi, Brave is floaty, slides when turning, and is about Mario's height.

This does not support Erdrick whatsoever, and in fact, completely goes against him.

Brave's height, despite most likely being a placeholder, actually supports Banjo and Sora!

Now, the argument for Kid Erdrick.

Lemme give it to you straight.

THIS DESIGN HAS NOT BEEN USED IN NORTH AMERICA, EVER.

This design was used for the original launch of DQ3 on the famicom, and never again. The only art or merch of him are the original Toriyama drawings.

This "modern" design has actually been around since DQ3's launch, and instead it was used for merchandising and other promotional material such as posters for the game's launch in NA.

It's also worth noting it's impossible for FemErdrick or Luminary skins with Kid Erdrick.

Brave has been speculated to be Banjo, and it's worth noting that the stats back that up.

The slide is characteristically Banjo-Kazooie, and the floatyness and height fits perfectly.

I'm almost positive at this point Brave is none other than the Bear and Bird.

Luminary or Slime work far better as picks for DQ.

Luminary helps promote the latest game, and by its launch, will be the new face of DQ akin to how Joker is for Persona.

Slime is the mascot of DQ and has his own spin offs.

Erdrick's importance to DQ is also way overstated.

He's not important, like at all.

In DQ1, the main character is his descendant and he is very relevant to the plot.
In DQ3, he's playable.
In DQ1 and DQ9, he has an armor set.
In DQ11, he's teased at the end.

That's it.

Erdrick is important to the lore of Dragon Quest, not its legacy.

Think of it this way.

He's not the Cloud or Joker of DQ because those were characters that shaped the way their franchises evolved.

DQ3, from my knowledge, did not drastically change anything about DQ.

He is generally unimportant to how DQ evolved.

As unimportant as the 2nd protgaonist, or the 4th, or even the 10th.

Really, he only appeals to hardcore DQ fans, which in of itself, is a hardcore part of the JRPG fanbase outside of Japan.

Finally, Sakurai has mentioned wanting to give each newcomer a personality of their own and ways to be unique to stand out.

Erdrick has magic, a sword, and a shield.

To the average player, he will be Robin with a shield that looks like Goku.

Compare this to Slime, who has tons of potential to be a unique character and appeal to far more people.

This is why we only saw one swordfighter this time around, who was Chrom. It's also important that Chrom was heavily requested, and he was an echo fighter.

Which leaves us with Sora, who after all this, I am led to believe is in fact our Square rep.

- Nomura and Sakurai are good friends and mentioned a collab
- KH has been rumored to come to Switch
- KH3 shattered records within literally a week

I really believe this is the case.

And that's that.

Thanks for reading. I'm open to discussion if you wanna talk or have any questions!

Alright I heard pinging people would probably get this bad boy some traction so here we go

@Billybae10K @GenosPapa @SakakiNeko1997 @tomotakino26 @AllSourceGaming

by the way, go read @SakakiNeko1997 's thread from February! It's got a lot of the stuff I drew from here and it backs this up decently too.

I'd really like to thank everyone who's been supporting this thread, but even more the DQ fans who have been helping me correct some of this stuff!

I obviously don't like Erdrick, but more importantly I'd really just like to reason my through who I think our next characters are.

Hey guys! For all my Erdrick fans, this thread by my friend @MintPepsi1 might bring up some good counter points.

I've acknowledged this thread has misinformation and some of this corrects that! Give it a read, man! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CwBiANIgYG6K7L_485TIw8E-uuIBuITNjOXEdJJWSFo/edit