Home Opinion Pieces What Is Next for the Splatoon Franchise

What Is Next for the Splatoon Franchise

by Garrett Boyle

It has been two years since Splatoon 2 released on the Nintendo Switch. In this game, players control Inklings (or Octolings) and splatter the environment with ink to fight battles. The game was frequently supported with updates that added more weapons, gear, and balance adjustments. There was even paid DLC called Octo Expansion that added a challenging story campaign. Every few weeks, there would also be events called Splatfests that had players pick between two choices and pitted each other in online battles. With the final Splatfest over, having ended on July 21, it is the beginning of the end for Nintendo’s new content for Splatoon 2. The upcoming Version 5.0, which will add significant changes to the title, will be the final major update. There will likely be smaller updates past that point, but other than that, Splatoon 2 has had its run.

While the next Splatoon game is not yet in development, according to Splatoon series producer Hisashi Nogami in an interview with Famitsu, it is safe to assume that the franchise does have a future based on its popularity. Splatoon 3 has become a trending topic following the results of the final Splatfest. The question is what sort of game Splatoon 3 would be. There is much to take away from what is known about the development of the previous games that would help speculate on what is to come next for the franchise as a whole.

Inkopolis News Hosts

In both Splatoon titles, the hosts of Inkopolis News would reveal any updates made to the game. This included everything from upcoming Splatfests to stage rotations for the multiplayer modes. The hosts have also been tied into the story campaign, as they maintained correspondence with the Squidbeak Splatoon agents as they venture through the different levels. They also shape the culture of Inkopolis as their music can be heard during online matches.

In the first Splatoon, the hosts were the Squid Sisters, Callie and Marie, and the Splatoon 2 introduced Pearl and Marina, who formed the musical duo Off the Hook. It would only be fitting to have a new set of hosts for Splatoon 3. The hosts will likely be a pair, one for each side of the Splatfests, assuming the way those events function goes mostly unchanged. It is hard to say who these new hosts could end up being, but just remember that the Splatoon series has a wide range of characters types to pull from; not just Inklings and Octolings. Whatever the case, we can only hope that whoever they come up with is as endearing as what they have done before.

The Squid Sisters, Callie and Marie, and Off the Hook, Pearl and Marina, were the hosts of Inkopolis News in Splatoon and Splatoon 2. There may be a new pair of hosts in the next Splatoon game.

Splatfest Results

Ahead of Splatoon 2’s release, Nintendo provided fans with Squid Sister Stories, which chronicled events that would lead up to the story campaign. As hinted at in these narrative tidbits, the story of Splatoon 2 was influenced by the results of the final Splatfest of the first Splatoon. The theme of this Splatfest was Callie versus Marie, so players fought for their favorite Squid Sister. In the end, Team Marie was victorious. Due to this, for the story campaign of Splatoon 2, the developers made the decision to have Marie give orders to Inkling Agent 4 as they fought against the Octarians and searched for the missing Callie. 

This time around, the theme of the Splatocalypse, the final Splatfest of Splatoon 2, was Chaos versus Order. Team Chaos beat out the competition. The outcome of this Splatfest carries some implications about what kind of world Inkopolis will become. This assumption is based on some of the dialogue between Pearl and Marina, who outright declare that the result of this Splatfest will become the trend for the city. As for what a chaotic Inkopolis will look like in Splatoon 3, one can only imagine.

It is Pearl’s city now.

Character Customization

Character customization was extremely limited in the original Splatoon. Players could pick a gender, eye color, and skin color for their Inkling, but that was really it. Splatoon 2 expanded the options for customization by letting players choose their hairstyles (tentaclestyles?) and legwear. The Octo Expansion also offered Octolings that players could use, but these characters were behind a paywall, and the Octo Expansion had to be completed in order to play as the Octolings in multiplayer modes.

Even after all of these additions, the customization is still a bit lacking in scope. To be fair, the variety of gear that your character can equip is practically endless, and the focus on those items is probably why the developers have not prioritized adding new designs to the base characters models. I would argue that having a character that is uniquely yours adds to the appeal of online multiplayer games, so more options for customization would be appreciated.

The first Splatoon had barebones character customization, but Splatoon 2
added new hairstyles and legwear. More were added with updates.

A New Threat

With its story campaign, Splatoon 2 followed a formula established by the first game. Octarians stole the main power-source of Inkopolis, the Zapfish, and your Inkling is hired as an agent to help recover it. The second game adds some twists to the story with more challenging levels, but it recycles several concepts, even the same final boss. Octo Expansion’s narrative thankfully diverged from what has already been done, but it also brought an end to the conflict between Inklings and Octolings. Perhaps Splatoon 3 will have the denizens of Inkopolis facing an entirely new threat.

There are several sea creatures that Nintendo has yet to include in this series, and that is assuming the developers limit themselves to marine lifeforms. My personal hope is that the team creates something equivalent to Inklings and Octolings and eventually makes them playable, too.

I do not believe that DJ Octavio has the staying power of the likes of Bowser from Super Mario or Ganon from The Legend of Zelda. I personally do not want to fight him a third time in a functionally similar boss fight with recycled music.

Co-Op Campaign

This is mostly wishful thinking on my part, but it would make sense. In a series that emphasizes its team-based multiplayer over everything else, Splatoon’s story campaigns feel especially isolated. I can picture something like a co-op campaign working well in the puzzle-platforming focused levels of the campaign. If this ever becomes a feature, it would be appreciated to have the choice of both local and online co-op. The inclusion of co-op to be justifiable. For example, I look to Portal 2’s co-op mode, in which teamwork was crucial for progression. However, unlike Portal, Splatoon features combat, and there could be battles with enemies that can only be defeated with the efforts of multiple players. 

The story campaigns have normally been slower-paced
compared multiplayer modes. Co-op can help change that.

Online Support

This is actually of a gripe about Nintendo Switch Online in general. One thing that is missing from Splatoon is in-game voice chat. It does not make sense to me or really most people that voice chat has to be accessed through an application on a device separate from the Nintendo Switch. Nintendo already helps parents police the use of certain features of the system with the parental controls, so it is not as if protecting younger audiences from toxic players is an issue beyond handling. In Splatoon in particular, there are many instances in which it would have been helpful to have voice chat whenever playing with a random team. Coordination makes a huge difference throughout the course of a match, and voice chat obviously aids in that.

Splatoon also suffers from a specific problem when it comes to connection errors. When a player loses connection and is dropped from a match, a team must go without that player for the rest of the battle. I have played games that allow players to reconnect with a match or let a different player drop into the middle of one, so it is not out of the realm of possibilities. Hopefully, Nintendo addresses issues like this in the future, especially considering that Splatoon is at its core an online game, so it would be nice for it to do online better.

The word “Booyah!” does not communicate as much vital
information as Nintendo seems to believe that it does.

The next title in the Splatoon series is likely years away, as Splatoon 2 is still pretty fresh. That will not stop fans from wanting more, so it is important to keep talking about the game so that Nintendo knows that. Perhaps the more enthusiasm that there is for Splatoon, the shorter the wait will be between now and Splatoon 3.

Thanks go out to @artbenbeau for the featured image.

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