Lloyd Irving Survives the Slaughter in Smash

Lloyd Irving is the main protagonist of the Nintendo GameCube game Tales of Symphonia, the fifth installment in Namco’s popular RPG series Tales Of. 

Once a simple country boy, Lloyd is thrust into the outside world following a raid on his village. The Chosen of Regeneration is one of his closest friends, and after being exiled from his hometown of Iselia, Lloyd joins her on the Journey of Regeneration. Although the young warrior himself plays no part in the prophecy, he is still a strong optimist and a fair leader.

The Tales Series and Its Importance

The Tales series is considered the 3rd most popular JRPG series in Japan, being cited frequently alongside Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. It all started in 1995 with Tales of Phantasia on Super Famicom releasing on December 15th, 1995 and it introduced multiple elements that would become staples of the Tales series after Phantasia. The series has spawned 16 core series titles, 11 escort titles, 5 anime series, 5 spin-off games, 6 mobile games, one MMORPG, two radio shows, and well…..the list goes on and on! The Tales series is still going and the mobile games and Nintendo Switch ports are helping increase recognition of it.

If that wasn’t enough for you, it’s even got its own annual convention called Tales of Festival with the attendance records reaching as high as 20,000 people! It’s so big it’s even posted in soccer stadiums!

The series has been gaining popularity in the west ever since the release of Tales of Symphonia, which is still considered one of its most popular titles. As of May 2019, the series as a whole has shipped over 20 million units worldwide.

Tales of Symphonia

Tales of Symphonia was featured on Nintendo GameCube and was released in North America on July 13, 2004. The game was published by Namco (now Bandai Namco).Symphonia can be considered the Final Fantasy 7 of the Tales games for the western fanbase as it made the Tales series more popular in the west due to help from Nintendo’s promotion, and it shaped the Tales series. The sales of this game in 2004 went above and beyond, and it garnered generally positive reception from critics. Over 100,000 copies were sold in the United States during the first two weeks after its release, even beating out major titles like Paper Mario, Persona, and even Kingdom Hearts!

The game has appeared on many top game rankings and received a Japan Game Awards in 2003 for excellence. It became such a phenomenon that it even has its own exclusive GameCube bundle and it was pushed aggressively during the Nintendo GameCube’s life cycle.

Symphonia is notable for a complete and memorable cast of characters, an amazing soundtrack, expanded environments to explore, and an immersive story that still stands to the test of time as of today! Overall, Symphonia is an instant classic and one that has earned a spot in gaming history.

Lloyd x Super Smash Bros.

Why would Lloyd get in?

As I said earlier, The Tales series has been wildly impactful. Tales of Symphonia, Lloyd’s game of origin, is arguably the most iconic, and Lloyd is the most recognizable character from his series; no other entry has ever managed to replicate Symphonia’s success to the same extent. He is, without a doubt, the one Tales character that most people would recognize.

In addition, Lloyd has appeared in over a dozen games, seven mangas, seven drama CDs, three animes, and two novels. He has also had multiple figurines released. This dude even got a guest appearance in Soul Calibur Legends, a good example of how versatile and open-ended Lloyd Irving can be!

Lloyd and Smash Bros. Support

Lloyd himself received massive support during the Brawl & the Wii U era, so much so that on August 5 2012, Tales producer Makoto Yoshizumi said in the Kingdom of Tales Interview he wanted to push Sakurai to add a Tales character after Sakurai took one of Namco’s developers (Yoshito Higuchi, director of Tales of Symphonia/Vesperia) to help him produce Super Smash Bros for 3DS and Wii U.

“KoT: Now, let’s talk about Yoshito Higuchi! (T/N: Tales of Vesperia producer)
Y: Yes, Higuchi-san! As you already know, he’s working on the next Smash Bros game. It’s a loss for us and the Tales series for the next few years.
KoT: Few years?
Y: Yes. You know, Sakurai-san is an acquaintance. He went to see me and asked “Let me borrow Higuchi-san” and I said “Ok.” *laughs*
KoT: Many fans are dying to know: now that Higuchi-san is working on the next Smash Bros game, can we expect one or several Tales characters in it?
Y: This is a difficult question! Maybe if we beg Sakurai-san, it will happen! I know Higuchi-san would love it, but the decision is Sakurai-san’s. I think it’s still too early to talk about it.
KoT: Smash Bros Melee introduced Marth and Roy from the Fire Emblem series. Those characters were very popular in Occident, and resulted in the Fire Emblem series being localized for the first time in America and Europe. I’m sure Tales characters in the next Smash Bros would be excellent advertising for the series.Y: That’s true. But we need to keep in mind that a character can only appear in a Smash Bros game if he already appeared on a Nintendo console. This is one of the conditions, and many Tales characters do not fulfill it. Of course, some do, like characters from Tales of Symphonia or Tales of the Abyss.”

Makoto Yoshizumi seems to be carrying the same mentality, though Yoshito Higuchi would apparently “love” to see a character or two included.

Yoshizumi has said that getting a Tales character into Smash Bros may prove to be difficult since a character can only appear in a Smash Bros game if he already ap uppeared on a Nintendo console.” This rule limits the selection to a few titles such as Tales of Symphonia, Tales of the Abyss, and Tales of Hearts.

But Sakurai’s ruleset seems to have changed recently after Cloud Strife himself got in as DLC as you don’t necessarily need to be on a mainline Nintendo console to get in (although Final Fantasy 7 did get a Switch port, this was well after Cloud’s Smash debut). 

Speaking of DLC’s lifecycle…

The Smash Ballot

Nintendo released the Smash Bros. Fighter Ballot, where Nintendo would gauge their audience on who their favorite characters were to make it into the game. This allowed the chance for players to present with a small form where they add the character’s name and game of origin, as well as a reason to justify why they want that character.  Players could enter their suggestions until October 3rd, 2015, And the characters with the most support got either confirmed as a fighter or Mii Costumes.

Such characters with the highest votes were turned into characters added via DLC like Ryu, Bayonetta, Cloud, while the runner ups were added as costumes for Mii Fighters. Such characters include Isabelle, Geno, Zero, Monster Hunter, Chrom, King K Rool, Inkling, Akira, Knuckles, and Black Knight! Did you know that many of these characters that got Mii Outfits in Smash 4 are now playable in Ultimate?

Not only that but some characters like Zero, Akira, and Rathalos got upgraded to Assist Trophies.

Wow! This is probably one of the strongest signs that characters that received recognition are more likely to make it in either as a fighter or an assist, as it shows not only that they did receive fan demand but also that they were considered commercially viable.

Now what does this have to do with Lloyd you might ask?

Lloyd Mii Costume

Well, since one of those costumes was dedicated to Lloyd, we know that he did fairly well on the ballot. Not only that but Sakurai said he saw Lloyd as the definitive Tales rep when talking about his Mii Outfit.

“—The Tales series has 20 years of history, how did you decide on Lloyd for the costume?
Sakurai: I’m not sure if there was any other appropriate choice?
—For example, how about the protagonist of the first game, Cress? [TN: From Tales of Phantasia]
Sakurai: I really think it has to be Lloyd here (laughs). I could have gone down the route of choosing from the first entry in the series, but for old games it’s somewhat common for the editorial supervision from the original creator to make the process difficult.”

And that’s not all, Sakurai had considered characters that are later included in Smash Bros, most notably 5 characters considered or planned in Melee. Snake, Banjo-Kazooie, Sonic, Wario and Lucas, all of them are later included in later Smash games. One would ask, what character was casually brought up in any interview that was later included in Smash?

Most importantly, one would be inclined to ask, if Lloyd wasn’t the most likely Tales rep to join the roster, why would they have teased him, of all people?

Worth noting is that every single Namco Mii costume from Smash 4 – Heihachi, Lloyd, and Gil – has yet to be shown in Ultimate. This could very well be to save them for an eventual Lloyd reveal.

Smash Leaks

On October 8, Bandai Namco filed trademarks in Europe for two Tales of icons, ones that look suspiciously like the “full logo and icon” pairing that Smash franchises get in-game. It’s now been over a month now since the filing, yet the icons have never surfaced in a Tales of official release. It’s worth noting that Tales of Arise and its logo is already known so this would be either a collection, a non-mothership game or possibly Smash Bros, and only one of those would require that icon.

Other Bandai Namco Reps

What about the other “Bandai Namco” reps? Do they have a chance to get in over Lloyd Irving? Let’s find out.

We have Yuri Lowell who is the main protagonist of Tales of Vesperia; the arguments in favor of him is that he’s the most popular character within the Tales fandom, and would be a better promotion for the switch port of Vesperia DE (Definitive Version), Now, the problem here is that Sakurai doesn’t always pick characters based on how new or modern they are. In fact, if you look at most of the 3rd parties in Smash, they tend to be older iterations.

Historically speaking, whenever there has been a choice between a newer rep and an older rep in a third party franchise, Sakurai has picked the older ones: he picked Solid Snake over Raiden for a reason, he picked classic Megaman’s design over X’s design for a reason, he picked Cloud over Noctis for a reason, Banjo got picked over Steve for a reason, and Banjo is an older character that EVERYONE has been requesting to get in. Lloyd is the oldest Tales character that is actually famous enough to incorporate. It’s all about who is more iconic. As for the Tales fandom being more familiar with Yuri, that MAY be true but that didn’t stop Simon from being the main character while Richter is the echo, and it won’t stop Lloyd from being picked over Yuri.

“A lot of players would probably be most familiar with Alucard, but fans would probably prefer one of the Belmonts—even though they’re unrelated to the later games in the series”

As you can see, he went with what the actual fanbase would prefer, “the Belmonts”, despite more people knowing Alucard; while Yuri Lowell is slightly more well-known than Lloyd in the Tales fandom, the fandom is not where the core Tales of fanbase resides.

This doesn’t just apply to Alucard though, many characters from Smash has are ones that most are unfamiliar with. 

• Ice Climbers during the Melee era
• Roy during the Melee era
• Marth during the Melee era
• Erdrick during the Ultimate era
• Captain Falcon during the N64 era
• Ness during the N64 era

As for him being a better promotion for Vesperia, literally any Tales rep would do a good job of promoting it. All that matters is that people are introduced to the series, similar to Joker who introduced the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei series to many fans. 

The arguments in favor of him is that Heihachi is the face of the Tekken series, he had a Mii Outfit for Smash for Wii U DLC, and he was considered for Smash Bros for 3DS and Wii U; Smash Bros already has a Namco rep (Pac-Man) but a 2nd one was considered for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS, Heihachi Mishima from Tekken. Sakurai ultimately decided against this for two reasons: 

1. He wasn’t able to come up with a decent moveset for the character, which no longer matters since he famously said similar things about Ridley so it’s reasonable to assume things can change.
2. Heihachi has actually been killed off in his home series, although there are other characters that have been canonically dead such as Dark Samus and Erdrick, both of which are canonically dead and were both added to Smash Ultimate, so I highly doubt this is a factor considered in the character creation process.

Sakurai: There were none. We basically thought of all the characters at the start of development. We decided on characters we knew we could make. However, there were a few in consideration, such as Heihachi from “Tekken.”
Interviewer: Heihachi!
Sakurai: That’s right. However, implementing Heihachi’s movement in Smash would be difficult…

Fast forward to Ultimate, we get this: Heihachi appears as a part of Pac-Man’s taunt. Some people argue that him being in a taunt does not deconfirm a character; while Heihachi being in a taunt may not stop Nintendo from adding Heihachi as DLC, there are other issues that could come up.Heihachi’s voice actor, Unsho Ishizuka, who also voiced Incineroar, passed away on August 13, 2018, and if Heihachi was added as DLC, it would be a disrespect to his late voice actor! Sakurai said that if he’d add another Namco character it would’ve been Heihachi but with his VA’s passing, that’s not happening. This isn’t the only time Nintendo respected someone’s memorial; back in 2012, Campbell’s Japanese voice actor Takeshi Aono passed away, and the voice actors from Metal Gear Solid wanted to replace Campbell’s Japanese voice with another one to add the CODECs for Ultimate, but due to Kojima respecting Takeshi’s memorial, they decided not to.

“How come we don’t have the new CODECs recorded for Smash Ult.?”
“So, Campbell’s Japanese voice actor Takeshi Aono passed away back in 2012, which, normally wouldn’t be an issue of just “replacing” the voice, but due to the wishes of Hideo Kojima wanting to retire the character after his passing, we’re pretty much here.”

Arguments for Agumon often include that Digimon is Bandai’s current biggest and best selling IP other than PAC-MAN; the issue here is that sales DO NOT MATTER! A game selling well doesn’t mean it will be a lock for Smash, and a game selling poorly doesn’t mean it would never get into Smash. I mean, CoD sells ridiculous amounts of copies all the time, but the idea of a character from CoD making it to Smash is never seriously discussed despite discussion of Crash Bandicoot, another Activision-owned character, and of Master Chief and Doomguy, two other FPS reps.

Do you think that Ice Climber broke records in sales? It’s the 43rd best-selling game on the NES and was never seen again until Melee! Excitebike was considered and was the 9th best-selling game on the NES, but they went with Ice Climbers.

Minecraft is considered to be the best selling game in video game history, yet they went with Banjo-Kazooie due to the fan request, and culture impact for N64.

High sales is usually a result of people liking your game, normally because it’s a good game, but it’s the fan request, history with Nintendo and culture impact that determines a character’s possibility…not just the number of sales.

KOS-MOS is from the Xenosaga series on PS2 that was released in Japan and North America. You might or might not know who she is because Xenosaga needs more popularity worldwide. You might recognize her from Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Project X Zone, Mugen no frontier: Super Robot Taisen OG Saga, Namco X Capcom, cameos in Tales games, and even as a CAS in the Soul Calibur series.

She is someone who seems to me the most possible Namco rep apart from Lloyd, to be honest. KOS-MOS is Namco’s baby and she is put in any crossover game that deals with Namco, but all bias aside, it doesn’t hold up to the mountain of evidence for Lloyd.

For DLC? I think they’d rather not pick an obscure Namco rep if they’re gonna make one DLC. Not saying KOS-MOS is obscure, obviously, but she is probably lesser known than Lloyd, although that didn’t stop Banjo to be picked over Steve…

That leaves us with Lloyd, who is arguably still kicking because Sakurai took note of his popularity back in Smash Bros for 3DS and Wii U.

Arguments Against Lloyd Irving

This is the part of the show where I’m going to dig into the meat and potatoes of some common arguments and reasons for believing that Lloyd is NOT is going to be in Smash Ultimate via DLC.

“Hero and Joker are already representing JRPGs, we don’t need another JRPG character!”

I fail to see how this is an obstacle…. That’s like saying we don’t need more fighting game characters because we already have Ryu and Ken. Genres have never been a deciding factor for Smash Bros and never will be, plus, Smash 4’s DLC wave definitely wasn’t different in 3DS and Wii U since 5 DLC characters out of 7 were from RPGs (toss out the veterans viewpoint). The reason why I am tossing out the veterans viewpoint is that, while they were past characters, they’re still PAID characters nevertheless, so if you took away the veterans for 4’s DLC Wave, Half of the DLC characters would still be from JRPG’s, that being Cloud and Corrin.  Roy, Lucas, Mewtwo, Corrin and Cloud so why should it be any different here?

“Lloyd is just another Swordfighter! There’s nothing unique about him!”

Lloyd Irving actually has a variety of weapons that he can pull from for his Smash moveset. The Tales series is known for categorizing its special abilities with Base Artes (basic moves) and Arcane Artes (more advanced) and combos are based Base Artes -> Arcane. 

In the case of the Symphonia it goes from Lvl1 -> Lvl2-> Lvl3.​

That’s not all, Lloyd has a DUEL sword that he can make specials, Tales of Graces battle system included a rather unique and fun basic attack system. There are 4 lvl techs here as seen here. Tales of Graces doesn’t use mana. It uses what’s called the Chain Capacity Cores which puts a limit on how much you can combo. A common easy combo is a Lvl1-> lvl2 > lvl3 > 4> B Move. 

That’s not all either, There are regular attacks and special attacks, and there’s even a special “final smash” type of attack for every character. This all means that Lloyd’s original move-set can be imported into Smash very easily.

“Reggie said at the Game Awards that the characters would be new to the Smash franchise!”

That could’ve been a fair counterpoint if Reggie hadn’t said something along the lines of “characters brand new to Smash”; he just meant they’re not adding Mario as he’s already in the game, it was just PR talk.

Plus, Lloyd isn’t even in Ultimate in ANY shape of form. Not a spirit, nor a Mii outfit, NOTHING about Lloyd nor his series is represented in Ultimate.

Finally, even assuming Reggie meant what some assume, this would only apply to fighter pass characters, not post-pass, meaning existing Smash costumes and spirits are fair game.

“Katshiro Harada asked fans to not ask about Smash! This deconfirms Bandai Namco characters!”

If you actually look at what Harada was replying to, he’s just telling people to stop requesting crossovers in general; this isn’t a deconfirmation of a Smash rep. Even if it was a deconfirmation, so was Grant Kirkhope saying “I wouldn’t hold my breath” in response to a tweet asking about Banjo in Ultimate.

Two videos on the subject of NDAs from ObeseROB and HMK are a very good watch for any people out there, as HMK has actually been under multiple NDA’s for Nintendo, Square Enix, and Disney.

Interestingly enough, Scott Menville; Lloyd’s voice actor in the GameCube version, is apparently under NDA over a secret project they’re not allowed to talk about. This could either be a new Teen Titans property or Lloyd in Smash or it could be something else entirely.

“Unsho Ishizuka’s passing didn’t stop Incineroar from joining the game!”

That’s because Sakurai wanted a wrestler and Incineroar seemed like a good fit from him. It’s also a different scenario all together. With Heihachi, he CONSIDERED him but decided against him, there’s a difference between considered and wanted.

“Eventually after some consideration, they went with Incineroar. Sakurai says he wanted to try making a pro wrestler.”

“When asked about Namco candidates, Sakurai said that ‘there were none!'”

In that same paragraph he actually contradicts himself, saying “there were a few in consideration” and even mentions Heihachi. One person is NOT a few. Also, things could have changed since then and it’s not unreasonable to think Sakurai would change his mind; you could look at the argument against Ridley with the infamous “he’s too big” to be in Smash but that clearly changed.

“Yuri is more popular than Lloyd!”

When people say this, they often point to this poll that he’s banned from because they know he’ll be in the 1st spot. The assumption people make is that this poll of who is the most popular “Tales of” character gives Yuri a good shot, but there is something to consider. Before Lloyd was announced as a Mii costume back in Smash for Wii U, many people had expected Yuri Lowell to be the first Tales rep. People can expect characters without wanting them. 

In addition, even if Yuri was popular, it didn’t stop Sakurai from adding Lloyd as a Mii outfit and it wouldn’t stop Sakurai from adding Lloyd anyway, look at the majority of the fan-requested characters that made it into Ultimate. Both Base and DLC rosters. Not only were they the focus of recent titles but they were also from the old titles in due to the cultural impact and fan demand. The same is entirely possible for Lloyd Irving from Symphonia.

In Conclusion

Lloyd Irving is one of Namco’s poster boys, one of the most popular and iconic characters in the JRPG genre, the protagonist of the most successful and popular entry in his series, and he would be a good fit in many ways. Plenty of the necessary stars have aligned, and the connection between the Tales series and Smash Bros has finally been made by way of both the ballot and the confirmation of co-development.

Credits

• Kagura (@KaguraAnime): creator
• Grapevine (@Grapevin_e): editor and revisor
• snmario128 (@snmario128): editor and revisor