Sephiroth is in Smash. The biggest reveal for Nintendo fans during
the Game Awards 2020 is that the long-haired, long-sworded villain from Final Fantasy VII
will be joining the Super Smash Bros Ultimate roster as part of the Fighters Pass 2.
While he is, to put things mildly, not the most popular choice among Western players,
his inclusion at this moment in time makes complete sense.
For example, having added Minecraft, a game series from Europe, into Smash in October,
it’s entirely understandable that Nintendo would next want to add a character from an
iconic Japanese developer. Square-Enix and Final Fantasy certainly fit
that bill. Speaking of including Final Fantasy VII in Smash, Masahiro Sakurai once said:
“Final Fantasy is one of the few uniquely Japanese game series revered by players around
the world. I think fans across the globe have hoped a character from one of those series
would appear in Smash, so it was only a matter of time.”
Sephiroth follows in the footsteps of Cloud Strife, the first Final Fantasy character
to be added to Smash half a decade ago. According to Sakurai, there was a phenomenal demand
for Final Fantasy VII’s protagonist to be added to the game.
He said: “This isn’t an exact number, but among
the requests for a Final Fantasy character to appear in Smash, around ¼ to ⅓ of the
requests we got from fans were for Cloud. I really wanted to answer the desires of those
fans, and even though I thought it would be impossible, I reached out [to Square-Enix]
anyway, just to try.” Apparently, the developers at Square-Enix
were a little surprised when Sakurai asked to include a Final Fantasy character in the
game. Tetsuya Nomura said:
“When we first talked, I asked “are you sure you’re okay with Cloud?” He’s not
a character from a new game, after all.” ‘’
What’s more, as Sakurai notes in another interview, Final Fantasy VII may feel like
an odd inclusion for some Smash fans, as the game is notable for being the first in the
series not to debut on a Nintendo console, instead releasing on the rival Sony PlayStation.
Said Sakurai: “A number of people fixate on the fact his
original game was never released on a Nintendo console, but if we were to limit our choices
to characters who appeared on a Nintendo console, we’d end up with Bartz from FFV or the Onion
Knight from FFIII—how would that work? Maybe they could change jobs or something… Actually,
that would be kind of interesting… “At the same time, I think it’s only natural
to prioritize the character who enjoys worldwide popularity.”
This leads us nicely to the reason why Sephiroth is such a perfect inclusion in Smash in 2020:
following his role in Final Fantasy VII Remake, a whole new generation of gamers have been
introduced to this iconic villain. Sephiroth’s inclusion in the new game has
proven a little controversial. FF7 Remake only adapts the first part of the
story from the original Final Fantasy VII, and Sephiroth has been added into new scenes
specifically that weren’t present in the PlayStation One game.
Series producer Yoshinori Kitase says that this was done very deliberately:
“ The way we handled Sephiroth in the original FINAL FANTASY VII was to hide him - hold him
back. “You may not know this, but I was inspired
by the movie Jaws which took a similar approach of teasing this powerful presence, but never
fully showing you the shark until later in the story. We wanted to build him up as this
really big, powerful character in people’s minds. By only referring to him indirectly,
it created this feeling of fear and oppression - so when he makes his first appearance, it’s
a big deal. “But for the remake, that doesn’t work
so well - partly because everybody knows who Sephiroth is (laughs)! We didn’t think it
would be as effective to have him held back until later on in the story.”
So Sephiroth features prominently in Final Fantasy VII Remake, and as such, gains notoriety
among players. If Masahiro Sakurai’s team at Sora Ltd were
looking for an iconic Japanese video game icon that has risen in prominence during 2020,
they couldn’t have made a better choice. Sorry, fans of Crash Bandicoot, Phoenix Wright,
or Waluigi. This just isn’t your year. 2020 belongs to the One Winged Angel.