We got a bit of a surprise this morning from today’s expected Smash Bros. announcement in the Nintendo Direct program: what was supposed to have been a new character reveal turned out to be three instead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3BzHoZJD4g

In addition to Captain Falcon finally making his appearance (he and Jigglypuff have been in all three games so far, but hadn’t been announced), Sakurai really upped the ante by including two more Fire Emblem characters: Lucina and the main character Robin from Awakening.

I like this for a number of reasons, and most of them have to do with people’s early overreactions.

• Toward the beginning of the game’s development, Sakurai talked about how this game’s cast might not be as expansive to accommodate the Wii U/3DS versions. People went “oh noez only 20 characterz or so whyyyyyyy.” Well guess what, balls-for-brains? Today’s reveal brings the cast to 36, which is more than Brawl or any other game in the series so far — and we’re almost certainly not done yet.
• Fire Emblem only had a minimal appearance at E3 (a trailer for Shin Megami Tensei x Fire Emblem) and no new game was shown to follow up on the tremendously successful Awakening. People went “oh noez is Fire Emblem in the Statez ded?” Well guess what, chucklebreath? Today’s reveal means there will be a stunning four characters from the FE series in Smash, and I guarantee we’ll be seeing a new game within 12 months still.
• When the Wii Fit Trainer was announced, there was talk about how at least Smash was incorporating a new female character finally. People went “oh noez, now there’z a whoppin 4 too choose frum.” Well guess what, dumpsterface? Depending on how you feel about Sheik’s gender, check out this list of females in the new game: Peach, Zelda, Sheik, Zero Suit Samus, Samus, Rosalina/Luma, Robin (who’s playable as both male/female), Wii Fit Trainer (ditto), Mii FIghters (ditto), Villager (ditto), Lucina, Palutena. Kudos to Nintendo for finally leveling the playing field and tapping into some of their cooler prospective new characters.

I’m not saying that people shouldn’t question the direction of some of their favorite series — that’s perfectly fine. However, some of the early backlash for a game that had just been announced was ridiculous. I know that the temptation in today’s internet age is to react immediately to every single thing we see, but…maybe some folks can cool their jets next time?

Anyway, today’s unveilings make me even more excited for a game I was already going to purchase on day one. Lucina was perhaps the most awesome part of Awakening (and having the main character be her mother was especially cool) and Robin looks to be a lot of fun as well. Some folks may be disappointed about Chrom being reduced to Final Smash status, which I understand. But this is still more Fire Emblem than we expected, especially after Ike was announced — it seemed like with Marth/Ike on board, there would be room for only one Awakening character at best. I’m happy to see that was not the case.