Nintendo really is becoming the king of shadowdropping, huh?
Our cephalopodian prayers have finally been answered! After months of radio silence and a Direct snub, Splatoon Raiders is finally back in the spotlight with a new trailer that includes its long-coveted release date: July 23rd!
There’s a ton of tiny cool things I’d like to ramble about from this, so bear with me if I sound a little all over the place. I can’t believe Nintendo decided on another random weekday drop!
First things first—this goofball is adorable. Look at that mop top! The trend of Splatoon 3 protagonists starting off looking a bit raggedy continues! I do wish you could keep this hairstyle, though. Frye is pretty adamant about giving you a clean cut, and it’s not like you can stop her!
The new hairstyles look really sick! I’m especially big on the various objects the cephs adorn their hair with. Jars, AV cables, bits and pieces of plastic utensils, colored string—it really gives each style a lot more unique flair. It’s pretty sweet seeing how much the game is leaning into the scrappy, post-apocalyptic scavenger vibe through something as simple as a hairdo. And… hold on a minute…
A voice customization option?! Either this is just the same ol’ masculine/feminine choice that Splatoon 3 had in its style selection screen, or there might actually be custom voice options! I’m probably getting my hopes up a little too much, but just imagine if Raiders had voice customization sliders similar to how the new Tomodachi Life game does. That would be sick. Wait. Could the protagonist have actual lines of dialogue instead of being a silent self-insert?! Moving along…
Spoiler alert: From what I can deduce after a second look at the trailer, the voice customization seems to be the same as Splatoon 3’s. It’s fun to imagine, though…
We finally get a real good look at what seems to be the starting island chain, or whatever you’d call this collection of chaos. The landscape looks like a Zelda area scattered with remnants of an iSpy book—it’s funky, alright. But Splatoon’s always been the king of making impossibly strange areas the norm, so I’m excited to delve into this trash-littered wonderland and figure out why exactly the Mechanic and Deep Cut are searching for treasure.
SALMONIDS! I had no doubt these goofy dudes would rear their ugly heads. What’s a Splatoon single-player mode without ’em? It looks like we’ll have to fight waves upon waves of them as we traverse each island, but you’re not alone in doing so! It looks like Deep Cut has co-opted these strange mini submersibles that you can call upon to help you fight the hordes. They can even give you a little boost into the sky, like how the Pearl drone in Side Order does! They even seem to be able to scan around the islands you explore for treasure. which I’d imagine is only a little essential. We’d totally not be up a creek without a paddle otherwise. I love these three goofballs, man.
Speaking of which, I wonder how much treasure really is on these islands, and what the aim of collecting it is…
Fret not! It seems we’ll be collecting little blue crystal shards called Spirhalite, which appear to be found by drilling into large stones scattered across the land indicated by towering pillars of blue light. The Mechanic seems to use them as crafting materials to upgrade their weapons, unlock new special abilities called “Relic Powers”, and upgrade what’s known as the “Hideout Ship”—a massive tower cobbled together from scraps of wood and metal that catapults you and your allies onto different islands, kind of like a rudimentary fast-travel machine. Whatever these crystals are—their origins, what they represent, the importance of their energy—they seem to be vital to your mission, and I can imagine there’s some kind of world-altering secret at the bottom of their mystery. Or maybe DJ Octavio is hiding at the center of another colossal pit again, waiting to sucker-punch you with some sick tunes. I don’t know! We won’t know until release!
There are also buried treasure chests that bestow you with valuable relics worth a boatload of gold that can also be used as upgrade materials, opening a whole new route of power-ups. The one relic we get to see is a cute lil salmonid statue that looks like something Deep Cut would have a whole argument over, trip over themselves playing hot potato with, and accidentally break into a million pieces. I can’t wait to read a full game’s worth of their banter!
Those are the main scraps of gameplay the trailer sheds light on, but while I was surfing Twitter in the aftermath of its release, I came upon a tweet from the official Splatoon NA account indicating the game has a Co-op mode!
It’s strange how this wasn’t mentioned in the trailer at all. I wonder if Co-op will function similarly to Salmon Run, given that Raiders itself seems to be a much more complex, story-driven version of the mode. Yet another thing we’ll just have to hope and pray that Nintendo drops more info about on a random Tuesday morning. Seriously, why do they do that?
I’m super psyched for more info to gradually seep from the mouths of the Squid Research Lab over the next few months. Hopefully, we won’t have to suffer through another multi-month info gap, lest the fandom start grasping at invisible tentacles in hopes that we’ll be fed some kind of content. Splatoon 3 really ended nearly two years ago, huh.
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