Welcome To The SPLATLANDS
After months of waiting and switching places with Xenoblde 3 we finally got some more information on Nintendo’s next installment in the Splatoon series, straight from the Splatoon Research Lab itself in the form of a 30 minute direct: hopefully I can break down what we learned.
To absolutely no one’s surprise Turf Wars has returned and is largely untouched so we will be doing the same 3-minute-long battle to see who can cover the most turf. In addition to Turf War: Splat Zones, Tower Control, Rain Maker and Calm Biltz will be returning as ranked modes, which are Nintendo spins on control the point, defend the tower, capture the flag, and “kill confirmed” respectively. Another returning game mode is Salmon Run which is horde mode but, this time they added more boss monsters to freshen things up as well as showing off Big Run which seems to be Salmon Run but in the hub area of the game, since it was just a teaser I am personally hoping it will increase the team size of Salmon Run from 4 to 8 which would live up to the name.
Some new player abilities were added like the Squid Surge to let you traverse walls in a single burst, and the Squid Roll which is a modified dodge roll from the last game but this time you have a minor shield while you roll instead of being vulnerable to attacks
The stage selection for launch seems to be a mix of only 5 new stages (Scorch Gorge. Eeltail Alley, Haggleefish Market, Undertow Spillway, and MIncement Metalworks) and 7 returning ones (Hammerhead bridge, Museum D’Alfonsino, Mahi-Mahi Resort, Inkbolt Art Academy, Sturgron Shipyard, MakoMark, and Wahoo World) with more coming post launch.
All basic weapons will be making a return along with two new weapon types, the Stringers and the Splatana Wiper which are bows and katanas respectively, that add more mid to long range options. Each weapon has it’s own special and sub weapon to make a kit, while the sub were only shown in a brief info graphic, some new specials were given a bit of spotlight like the: Tacticooler which give 4 buffs one for you and the rest for your team, which is how they show it off but let’s see if players are actually going to play nice when the game launches. The Wave breaker seems to give a different type of support option give your team information on the other team’s location along with doing a minor amount of damage, and lastly the Reefslider which is a slip and slide that explodes at the end of a mini-Akira slide. Some specials will also be making their return.
So, time around instead of just the main hub being used for just selecting games they added the training room to it and also a new feature called ghosts that lets you see and play what your friends are doing if they are online, even letting you join them or vice versa. They also added a battle replayer with multiple views for “training” reasons but it seems like it will have other utilities down the line. After two games they finally added customization options. The new locker room area lets you customize your own locker to express yourself however you want, and if that’s not enough they added battle tags and victory emotes all which can be bought from a shop run by Harmony is or was a member from a band in Splatoon 2 is equal parts amazing and confusing: as to why they made a model character model from a drawing f9rom a one off music bit from the last game. The items in the shop will be on a seasonal timer that rotates three months at a time. In addition to all this they also added a card game version of turf war.
The actual plot of the game was not really talked about since the story kind of takes a backseat to a game like this which the meat of it is I the online multiplayer, however like Splatoon 2 their will be a large scale paid dlc to tie the ending of Splatoon 2 to 3
Helming everything Splatoon 3 is offering we have our new idol/new hosts Deep Cut consisting of Frye, Shiver and Big Man which is a first since previously the games have only had two idol like characters as the face of the in game world which mean instead of their being two options for Spatfest their will be three, which seems to the results of previous Splatfest being skewed heavily in one way. That being said, instead of having 3 teams of 4 players deciding things, the team in 1st place will have a full team and 2nd and 3rd will have two people to fight it out in a turf war which seems heavily skewed in the first place team’s favor. Kicking off all this mayhem will be the first Splatoon 3 Spatfest coming out August 27 from 9 A.M to 9 P.M with the theme of Which one’s the best? Rock, Paper, or Scissors. Nintendo then doubled down on this by giving anyone who downloads the demo a free week of Nintendo’s Online.
Splatoon 3 splats onto the Nintendo Switch September 9th
