Super Smash Bros Ultimate has managed to keep delivering for months and months and months – no real surprises there; it's a game that thrives on fanservice – but Thursday's Nintendo Direct delivered something we've been awaiting since Super Smash Bros Brawl' "Subspace Emissary" – a new story mode.
Introduced with a stunning four-minute trailer, featuring a vocal remake of the original Smash Bros theme tune, "World Of Light" features the entire roster of fighters being turned into statues and revived as brainwashed underlings for a new big bad. The only survivor is Kirby, though the footage shows that the people we save as we go will join us in our quest.
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There are lots of reasons to be excited for this format, not least because it involves a more open-world feel than the story mode in Super Smash Bros Brawl... and because you seem to be able to ride the oceans on a Lapras (AKA the only acceptable form of oceanic transportation).
In World Of Light, you will also fight "spirits", other characters from franchises featured in Smash Bros, but represented in the game by versions of the main characters redesigned to fit them (eg, a large orange Mega Man represents Guts Man and three Sonics represent the seamstresses from Animal Crossing). These spirits also feature in a whole new mode of their own, in which they can be captured through battles with these facsimile fighters, reached through a notice board of bounties. Then, spirits you defeat can be equipped to your fighter and sub-spirits equipped to your main spirit. The spirits can level up, evolve, fuse and provide individual skills and powers to the fighter they're equipped to.
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You can train them. You can mix and match them. It's all somewhere between Pokemon, Persona and, well, every other monster-hunting game ever. Nintendo Direct really tried to drill home just how many of them there are, with legions of faces from Fire Emblem, Sonic and even Paper Mario rocking up in the footage.
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If this is anything like your standard Smash Bros game, neither World Of Light nor the spirits will actually be necessary for success or for unlocking every character: after all, the game features multiple conveniences that allow competitive players and casual players to splinter off and do their own thing.
While many players will be about as interested in the spirits as they were in the trophy-collecting element of previous games, for others – including us – the idea of a bit of JRPG gotta-catch-em-all fun mixed with punching childhood mascots into oblivion sounds like an absolute treat.
Super Smash Bros Ultimate is out on 7 December.
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