Fans of Kid Icarus: Uprising were given a wonderful surprise during E3 when it was announced
that Palutena would indeed be a new fighter in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U & 3DS.
And based on her trailer, it seems like her personality from that game has transferred
intact.
And her moveset looks to be truly unique, mainly pulling from Uprising.
But you know us.
We have to pull out the old Analysis Machine to see just how many secrets and hidden details
there really are in her reveal trailer.
What did it find?
Well let's start with her basic moves.
We see several of these basic moves as the trailer progresses such as her dodge, which
is actually Palutena disappearing completely and reappearing elsewhere.
It gives the sense that Palutena is quite quick, but we don't think that's entirely
true.
Multiple times, she's seen gliding across a stage at high speeds.
We believe those are specifically special moves, which we'll get into later.
Instead, her actual speed is when she's seen running.
It looks to be quite slow which could mean that she's a heavier, power character.
And that assessment seems to fit as we see her use several standard attacks such as spinning
her staff in front of her, striking with a multi-hit attack, and even her back throw
into a dash, bashing the Wii Fit Trainer with her shield.
Even in the air she seems capable as her standard aerial swings her staff in front of her, hitting
opponents on both sides.
However, we noticed something about her animations.
With all of her standard attacks, her symbol of being a goddess does not appear.
It only happens whenever she uses a taunt, a smash attack, or a special.
Because of that, we believe that all twelve of her customizable moves appear in her trailer.
But before we get into that, let's finish identifying her taunts and smashes.
One taunt has her tap her staff and briefly reveal her goddess symbol while another shows
her spreading her arms and revealing it; though we do wonder if the second one could possibly
be her entrance animation.
Palutena's smashes mainly seem to use her wings which look to have a decent range.
We see her use her side smash against Link and a down smash that will hit opponents on
either side of her.
And while we're not 100% sure, we believe that her up smash is the blue beam of light
that hits Donkey Kong.
It makes the move a little unusual for up smashes since most strike directly above the
character.
But there's no hint of any of her other moves being an up smash, and it does force Donkey
Kong higher into the air.
So, about those specials, Palutena names fourteen of them throughout the trailer.
Every single one of them is actually a reference to one of the powers that Pit could equip
during Kid Icarus: Uprising.
It's actually a rather smart way of differentiating Pit from Palutena; give him the weapons from
the game while she gets the powers.
The first we see is Heavenly Light.
In Uprising, it unleashed a light that hurt approaching enemies, and it looks to work
mostly the same in Smash Bros. What's interesting though is how wide of an area it covers.
Despite that, it only seems to do minor damage since it doesn't even interrupt Mario and
Rosalina's animations.
It can actually be compared to Fox's Blaster where it's mainly used to rack up an opponent's
percentage.
Next is the Explosive Flame which also seems to work like it did in Uprising, only with
a much more concentrated blast.
The question though is whether it's always unleashed at the same distance.
While it looks similar to Zelda's Din's Fire special, there's no indication that it travels
along the stage before being activated.
Instead, we believe it might only appear at that distance meaning that Palutena players
would have to stay aware of their positioning when using it to get its full effect.
The Warp actually looks very similar to Zelda's Farore's Wind, but will Palutena be able to
control where she warps?
Or will she only be able to go left and right?
We believe it'll be the former though mainly because this looks like it could be one of
her recovery specials.
Meanwhile, the Rocket Jump creates an explosion on both sides of Palutena before launching
her into the air.
It seems pretty self-explanatory though we do wonder if she'll be able to charge the
ability.
There's no indication of it in the trailer, but she could just be using its simplest form.
The Reflect Barrier looks to be a slower version of Falco's Reflector as it doesn't appear
that she can hold it indefinitely like Fox's.
Instead, it slowly spreads away from her and eventually sends back Samus's Charge Shot.
But if you look closely, you can see that the move is effective as soon as it's used
as Little Mac is sent back before the barrier even fully forms.
The Auto-Reticle is another special that has a blink and you'll miss it moment.
As Palutena is using it, there's a frame of animation that shows a yellow light emanating
from her.
We believe that this could show the exact range of the Auto-Reticle.
And while we can't see just how far it extends outward, it does prove that there are blind-spots
for the attack.
Otherwise, it seems to be a fairly weak attack though we do believe Peach could have dodged
it.
Slowing down the footage again, we can see the reticle forming and staying where it had
locked onto Peach.
If a player could get out of that general area then the attack could be avoided.
The Jump Glide looks to be an absolutely fantastic recovery move as not only does it launch her
high into the air but allows her to float around the level just like Peach.
It's difficult to say how much offensive capability it has, but we can't imagine that it has much.
Meanwhile, the Counter looks to work just like every other counter we've seen.
And the Super Speed special looks to be a somewhat different attack that allows her
to barrel through opponents.
Next is the Angelic Missile which could be compared to Luigi's and Pikachu's side specials.
We don't see her charging the attack though so we're not sure if she's using it immediately
or if she's unable to charge it for more power like Luigi and Pikachu.
And then there's the Celestial Firework which looks to be a multi-hit special.
We can see the initial spark rising up to hit Luigi for burn damage before exploding
and launching him even further into the air.
Finally, there's the Lightweight special.
It looks to be faster than her Super Speed, so much so that she actually catches and passes
Sonic.
However, it looks to work in the same way as we can see Sonic dodging the attack at
the very last moment.
We wonder if the trade-off for speed is less power though.
The last of the Powers Palutena uses is the Black Hole and Mega Laser.
Based on the glow surrounding her body, we believe that this might be her Final Smash.
The Black Hole is launched in front of her and whoever's caught in it is hit by the Mega
Laser.
If no one is caught in it, the Mega Laser likely won't fire.
So we've identified all of her specials, but which ones are the default choices and which
are the customizable?
Well, based on this chart released showing Mario's customizable moveset, we believe we
can possibly identify them all.
But before we get to that, we wanted to point out how all of Mario's moves use the same
basic animation.
It's only the effects that are different.
We even see this with Donkey Kong's Storm Punch.
However, for the Mii Fighters, each of their animations is different for their customizable
attacks and that seems to be the same case for Palutena.
The other thing we noticed is that the customizable attacks seem to have a common pattern.
There's always a slower but more powerful version and a lighter but faster version.
The default special is the one that lies between those two.
Based on that, we believe we can form an educated guess on which of Palutena's attacks are the
customizable ones and which are the default though there's always the chance that we are
wrong with these predictions.
So let's start with the standard special.
We believe that the three standard specials are Heavenly Light, Explosive Flame, and Celestial
Firework mainly because they work a lot like how other characters' standard specials do.
They're rarely anything fancy and are usually designed to do basic damage with few tricks.
And thanks to our previous reasoning, we believe that Celestial Firework is the default standard
special.
Mainly because Heavenly Light seems to be a lighter attack that covers a wide area and
the Explosive Flame seems much more powerful but requires some distance to use.
However, in one of Palutena's screenshots we see the Explosive Flame being used again
which could be evidence that it's the standard special default.
But until we see more, we'll stick to the theory that the Celestial Firework is the
default.
Next is up special which is typically used as a recovery.
The three specials that look like they could be used for that is Warp, Rocket Jump, and
Jump Glide.
The Warp looks to be the quickest option but also has the least range.
This is assuming of course that the Warp is able to be used in any direction like Farore's
Wind.
Meanwhile, the Explosive Flame looks to focus on the power of the attack with a decent recovery.
That would make the Jump Glide the default up special.
We believe this because of the similarity to Pit's recovery and how it leaves Palutena
open for attacks unlike the other two.
For the down specials, we believe that Counter, Reflect, and Auto-Reticle fit the bill.
All of these are types of moves typically used as down specials with the other characters.
But we think that Counter is the slow and powerful option while the Auto-Reticle is
Light and Fast.
The Auto-Reticle is also simpler to use than the comparatively more complex Counter and
Reflect Barrier.
Based on this, we believe the Reflect Barrier is the default down special as it's not as
powerful as the Counter but is trickier to time than the Auto-Reticle.
There's also the fact that Palutena uses the Reflect Barrier during the animated sequence
which would lend credence to this assumption.
Finally, for the side specials, we think that Angelic Missile, Super Speed, and Lightweight
fit into that category.
Angelic Missile is a similar kind of attack to Luigi and Pikachu's side specials while
Super Speed and Lightweight could be matched with Fox's.
However, we think Super Speed could be the default since, once again, the Angelic Missile
is powerful but slow and Lightweight seems faster yet lighter hitting.
So Celestial Firework, Jump Glide, Reflect, and Super Speed seem to be Palutena's default
specials based on our reasoning.
We could be completely wrong, but we believe we have some solid reasoning behind our choices.
This is Sakurai though so it's impossible to say for sure.
Okay, we're almost done here but there are still a few things worth pointing out.
One is that we get to see Kirby's Palutena transformation.
It may be just us, but we think he makes a much cuter Pseudo-Palutena.
And finally, there's the mysterious ending to Palutena's trailer where Dark Pit appears.
She mentions him crashing her party so could this be a sly hint that he'll be a playable
character too?
After all, the same kind of thing happened in Pac-Man's reveal trailer with Mr. Game
& Watch.
It's worth noting that the black outfit option for Pit, which served as the inspiration for
Dark Pit, was not an option during the Smash Bros. demo at E3.
This could be another hint to him being his own character, or perhaps that not all of
the costumes were implemented into the demo.
After all, Wire Frame Mac wasn't an option either.
Finally, there's the point that Dark Pit actually appears on Palutena's poster.
Up until this point, only playable characters have appeared on the newcomers' posters.
The only exception to this was Isabelle showing up in the Villager's poster.
However, she was eventually revealed to be an Assist Trophy in the game.
At the very least, could we see Dark Pit appear in the game as one as well?
And is it possible that Viridi could make some kind of appearance in the Wii U version
too?
We hear her voice at one point taunting Palutena but no footage of the 3DS stage Reset Bomb
Forest is shown.
Every clip is from the Wii U version.
If she does appear, what form would she take?
It's difficult to say exactly, but we will say that Palutena looks to be another fantastic
addition to the roster.
We may not know exactly which of her specials are her defaults but every option should be
fun to use.
But that's everything we could find in Palutena's reveal trailer.
Of course, if we missed something, please let us know in the comments.
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