Smash Bros. Ultimate Datamine Leads To Fan DLC Speculation

When Persona 5's Joker was announced as the first DLC character for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, fans everywhere were certainly surprised. On stage, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said that the Joker announcement sets the tone for the remaining four characters from the five-fighter pack. Since then, Smash Bros. aficionados have gone wild with speculation over who is left, but a new datamine of the game is fueling a lot of speculation.

It took dataminers until recently to break the game open, revealing information important for competitive play like weight and speed values. Including in that information, though, were values for three characters that did not have placement in the base roster.

The labels are for Packu, which likely refers to Piranha Plant's Japanese name of Pakkun Flower, Jack which is likely referring to the already-announced Joker and Atlus' mascot character Jack Frost, and a third character named Brave. The final name, Brave, has lit up speculation of who the third character could be, with a number of rumors not only backing up the speculation but throwing other names in the mix.

In early December, before The Game Awards, a poster on a Japanese message board claimed to know the contents of Smash Bros. Ultimate's fighter pack. The poster claimed that Persona 5's Joker would be joining, then went on to name Erdrick from Dragon Quest III, Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden, the Doom Marine from the Doom series, and Steve from Minecraft. As near as we can tell, this appears to be the first time before the character's announcement that anyone had claimed knowledge of Joker in the game.

The reason this rumor comes back up is the name "Brave," which many are speculating does refer to Erdrick from Dragon Quest. While every Dragon Quest game's protagonist is called "Hero" as that's their character class, Erdrick is a special case due to the way they're mentioned and talked about as legendary in the previous two Dragon Quest games and games beyond. To drill down a bit deeper, the term actually used in Japan instead of "Hero" is "Yuusha," of which a very direct translation comes out to "Brave."

All this has reignited discussion of that rumor, which already felt a little curious considering it nailed Joker early. While that doesn't necessarily indicate they had seen the entire fighter pass, perhaps they simply had knowledge of the trailer instead. Combined with the information from the datamine, however, it starts to paint a different picture. The rumor also suggested that Joker's stage would be Mementos and that one of Erdrick's skills would involve the Slime, Dragon Quest's blubbery blue mascot.

Additionally, Piranha Plant, Joker, and Brave all have weight and some attack values attached to them. The Mario enemy's weight value is 112, which puts him fairly close to characters like Ridley and Bowser. Joker, who apparently has a number of short jabbing attacks, has a weight value of 89. Brave is heavier than Joker at 101, making them a mid-weight, and seems to indicate an armor-wearing character wielding a sword.

It is possible this is all just a lucky coincidence or extrapolation from leakers who knew some things but not everything. With Dragon Quest XI coming to Switch soon, and Square Enix clearly showing an interest in porting RPG back catalogs to Switch given the recent Final Fantasy announcements, a Dragon Quest DLC character could both satiate old school fans and bring in new ones. No one knew who Corrin was when they were announced as DLC, but Fire Emblem Fates ended up breaking records for the series in America.

While the datamine does appear to be quite legitimate, what it actually means could still be open to interpretation. What do you think of these rumored DLC characters? Do you they make you more or less interested in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's DLC?