Masahiro Sakurai has revealed Adventure Mode: World of Light, the new campaign for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
With an intro cutscene that shows rainbow-like beams vaporizing almost all of Smash Bros.’ characters, the mode appears to have players travelling across an overworld, and taking part in fights against fighters, seemingly to reclaim their spirits and unlock them in the core game.
Sakurai wouldn’t give specific details, but the mode appears to take place across multiple different kinds of area, includes light puzzle elements, and a very large looking skill tree.
This also appears to be where the boss battles teased in a previous Direct – against the likes of Monster Hunter’s Rathalos – will take place.
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The mode appears to tie into the game’s new Spirits system, which was also revealed.
Spirits replace the series’ traditional Trophies, adding a more practical application for the many franchise references that usually appear solely as collectibles.
The Spirits Battles feature is the main means of new Spirits. Players fight in bespoke challenges, with unique rulesets or enemy behaviour and, if successful can then win the spirit in a “roulette challenge”.
Spirits can be attached to characters, acting as power-ups, either for your playable fighters, or as support characters for other Spirits. Spirits will also level up, and can be combined for extra effects – for instance,
Brilliantly, it seems that players’ guesses that the game’s story mode would involve retrieving Luigi’s soul were partly true – it’s just that he’s been evaporated rather than seemingly scythed down by Death itself.
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Sakurai announced a lot more than just these new systems. In the course of today’s Nintendo Direct, we saw two new launch characters, heard about DLC plans, and found out about brand new Amiibo.
Joe Skrebels is IGN’s UK News Editor. The whole Thanos thing is popular this year, eh? Follow him on Twitter.