Subspace Emissary - two words sure to fill the hearts and minds of Smash players with overwhelming joy.Super Smash Bros. Brawl’s’campaign' mode hasn’t been replicated in the series since the release of that title in 2008, with one of the reasons for this being the sharing of cutscenes online. This practice ‘killed’ series creator Masahiro Sakurai’s passion for adventure modes in Smash as he feels the wide sharing of cutscenes ruins any feeling of reward for the player when they watch a cutscene.
The Subspace Emissary is a full-fledged narrative, with the various characters of Smash playing roles in the story, usually in line with the personalities of those characters. For example, Bowser, Wario and Ganondorf are wrong’uns in their respective series, so naturally, they take the role of antagonists to the morally good characters in the Subspace Emissary. The whole thing was neat, and the mode quickly became beloved, despite the overall disdain for Brawl among the community.
However, it appears that Sakurai has yet to forgive those pioneers of video sharing who uploaded Brawl’s cutscenes to the Internet in 2008 (thanks,TheGamer). In hismost recent YouTube video, the legendary creator speaks about cutscenes in video games, and the topic comes up.
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At one point, Sakurai muses on the reward factor of cutscenes before conceding it’s difficult to still consider them rewards because of online video sharing. This echoes the opinions Sakurai expressed in avideo from last year, where he confirmed he stopped putting cutscenes between gameplay segments because of leaks.
The vendetta Sakurai holds against the Brawl leakers has been simmering for over a decade, with no signs of him moving on any time soon. Unfortunately for fans of Subspace Emissary, the slim chance of a similar mode in the next Smash title is looking more and more unlikely.
At least I’ll always have the memory of Star Fox dramatically saving Diddy Kong from that Rayquaza, which I saw when I played Brawl as I would never engage in the online viewing of cutscenes.
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